A Documentary History of Lutheranism, Volumes 1 and 2: Volume 1: From the Reformation to Pietism Volume 2: From the Enlightenment to the Present 1506416640, 9781506416649

Citation preview

About the pagination of this eBook This eBook contains a multi-volume set. To navigate this eBook by page number, you will need to use the volume number and the page number, separated by a hyphen. For example, to go to page 5 of volume 1, type “1-5” in the Go box at the bottom of the screen and click "Go." To go to page 5 of volume 2, type “2-5”… and so forth.

A Documentary History of Lutheranism

A Documentary History of Lutheranism From the Reformation to Pietism

ERIC LUND, EDITOR

FORTRESS PRESS MINNEAPOLIS

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM, VOLUME 1 From the Reformation to Pietism Copyright © 2017 Fortress Press, an imprint of 1517Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email [email protected] or write to Permissions, Fortress Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209. Cover images, from left: “Baptism,” Lucas Cranach the Elder; “The Last Supper,” Lucas Cranach the Elder; “Penance,” Lucas Cranach the Younger. All public domain, wikimediacommons. Cover design: Joe Reinke 2-Volume Set Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-1664-9 eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-1665-6 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z329.48-1984. Manufactured in the U.S.A. This book was produced using Pressbooks.com, and PDF rendering was done by PrinceXML.

Contents PREFACE

xv

ABBREVIATIONS AND SHORT TITLES

xix

THE LIFE OF MARTIN LUTHER: A CHRONOLOGY

xxi

A CHRONOLOGY OF LUTHERAN HISTORY (1517–1750)

xxv

CHAPTER 1: CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

1

The Call for Reform 1. Luther: Lectures on Romans (1515–1516) 2. Luther: Disputation against Scholastic Theology (1517) 3. Pope Leo X’s Indulgence Bull (1517) 4. Luther’s Memory of the Indulgence Controversy (1541) 5. Luther’s Memory of a Moment of Insight (Preface to Latin Writings, 1545) 6. Luther’s Letter to Archbishop Albrecht (October 31, 1517) 7. Luther’s Sermon on Indulgence and Grace (March, 1518) 8. The Heidelberg Disputation (May, 1518) 9. Luther’s Explanation of the Ninety–Five Theses (August, 1518)

7 8 8 9 11 13 14 15 16

Luther on Trial 10. Prieras’s Dialogue Concerning the Power of the Pope (December, 1517) 11. Proceedings at Augsburg (Luther’s Interview with Cajetan, October, 1518) 12. Papal Bull Cum Postquam (On Indulgences, November 9, 1518) 13. Luther’s Letter to Spalatin on the Leipzig Debate (July 20, 1519) 14. Papal Bull Exsurge Domine (The Threat of Excommunication, June 15, 1520) 15. Luther: Appeal to the German Nobility (August, 1520) 16. Luther’s Answer at the Diet of Worms (April 18, 1521) 17. The Edict of Worms (May 26, 1521)

18 18 19 20 21 22 24 25

The Threat of Radical Reformers 18. Luther: Admonition against Insurrection (March, 1522) 19. Luther: Letter to Melanchthon on the “Prophets” (January 13, 1522) 20. Luther: Letter to Elector Friedrich of Saxony (March 7 or 8, 1522)

25 27 27

21. Luther: Invocavit Sermons 1 and 2 (March, 1522) 22. Luther: Against the Heavenly Prophets (February, 1525)

28 29

The Peasant’s Revolt 23. The Twelve Articles of the Peasants (March, 1525) 24. Müntzer: Letter to the People of Allstedt (April 26 or 27, 1525) 25. Müntzer: Letter to Albrecht of Mansfeld (May 12, 1525) 26. Luther: Admonition to Peace (April, 1525) 27. Luther: Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants (1525)

30 31 32 32 34

The Conflict with Erasmus 28. Luther: Defense and Explanation of the Condemned Articles (March, 1521) 29. Erasmus: Diatribe on the Freedom of the Will (September, 1524) 30. Luther: The Bondage of the Will (December, 1525)

35 35 37

The Sacramentarian Controversy 31. Luther: The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (October, 1520) 32. Luther: The Adoration of the Sacrament (April, 1523) 33. Luther: The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ (1526) 34. Zwingli: Friendly Exegesis (February, 1527) 35. Luther: Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper (1528) 36. The Marburg Colloquy (1529)

38 39 40 41 42 42

Negotiations with the Emperor 37. The Imperial Proposition at the Diet of Speyer (March 15, 1529) 38. The Protestation at the Diet of Speyer (April 19, 1529) 39. The Secret Agreement: The Protestant Union (April 22, 1529) 40. Luther: Letter to Elector Johann of Saxony (May 22, 1529) 41. Letter from Elector Johann to Luther and Others (March 14, 1530) 42. The Augsburg Confession (1530) 43. Luther’s Warning to His Dear German People (1531)

43 44 44 44 45 45 49

The Assaults of the Devil 44. Luther’s Letter to Duke Johann Friedrich (February/March, 1530) 45. The Wittenberg Concord (1536) 46. Luther: Commentary on Galatians 4:3 (1535) 47. The Antinomian Theses Reported by Luther (December, 1537) 48. Luther: Third Disputation against the Antinomians (September 6, 1538) 49. Luther: Letter on Philip of Hesse’s Bigamy (June 10, 1540) 50. The Regensburg Book of 1541

50 50 51 52 52 53 54

51. Melanchthon’s Reply to the Book and Articles at the Colloquy (1541) 52. Letter from Luther and Bugenhagen to Johann Friedrich (June 29, 1541) 53. Luther: On War Against the Turk (1529) 54. Luther: On the Jews and Their Lies (1543) 55. Luther’s Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Angels (September, 1544)

55 56 57 57 59

CHAPTER 2: THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

61

Luther’s Lectures and Sermons 56. Sermon for the Sunday after Christmas on Galatians 4:1–7 57. Lecture on Galatians 4 (1535)

64 66

Communal Affirmations of the Gospel Message 58. Luther’s Small Catechism (1529) 59. Early Lutheran Hymns (1523–1529)

68 72

Philip Melanchthon’s Systematic Theology 60. The Apology of the Augsburg Confession: On Good Works (1530) 61. Outline of the 1521, 1555, and 1559 Versions of the Loci Communes 62. The Loci Communes (1559): Why Should Good Works Be Done?

74 75 77

Guidance for Daily Living 63. Von Gunzburg: A Beautiful Mirror of the Christian Life (1524) 64. Zell: Letter to the Suffering Women (1524) 65. Luther: On Marriage and Sexuality (1519 and 1525) 66. Luther: A Sermon on Preparing to Die (1519)

78 80 81 82

Pamphlet Literature: Defenses of Luther’s Reformation 67. Von Grumbach: A Christian Writing of an Honorable Woman (1523) 68. Alber: Declaration of War from Lucifer to Luther (1524)

83 85

Satirical Propaganda 69. Murner: The Great Lutheran Fool (1522) 70. Cochlaeus: The Seven-Headed Luther (1529/1549) 71. Osiander: Wondrous Prophecy of the Papacy (1527) 72. Luther: Depiction of the Papacy (1545)

87 88 89 91

Evaluations of Luther 73. Marschalk: On Luther’s Name (1523) 74. Mathesius: A Commemorative Sermon (1566)

92 93

CHAPTER 3: THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORM PROPOSALS

97

Recommendations by Luther and Melanchthon 75. Luther: Formula of Mass (Formula Missae) (1523) 76. Luther: The German Mass (Deutsche Messe) (1526) 77. Melanchthon: Instructions for the Visitors of Parish Pastors (1528)

101 102 106

Selections from Lutheran Church Orders 78. Catechization: The Wittenberg Church Order (1533) 79. Baptism: The Order of Baptism (1526) and Brandenburg-Nürnberg (1533) 80. Confession: The Church Order of Albertine Saxony (1539) 81. The Lord’s Supper: Württemberg Church Order (Brenz) (1536) 82. Acts of Devotion: Braunschweig Church Order (1528) 83. Marriage Orders: The Order of Marriage (Luther) (1529) 84. Burials: Visitation Articles for Electoral Saxony (1533) 85. Confirmation: The Brandenburg Church Order (1540) 86. Ordination: The Ordination of Ministers of the Word (1539) 87. Visitation Procedures: Hesse Church Order (1537) 88. Church Workers: The Church Order for the City of Braunschweig (1528) 89. Discipline: The Order for the Wittenberg Consistory (1542) 90. Pastoral Care: The Wittenberg Church Order (1533) 91. Poor Relief—The Common Chest: The Leisnig Agreement (1523) 92. Schools: To the Councilmen . . . That They Establish Schools (1524)

109 110 111 112 113 114 115 115 115 116 117 118 118 119 120

CHAPTER 4: THE CHURCH’S STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL (1546–1648)

123

The Schmalkald War and Interim Crisis 93. The Alliance between Emperor Charles V and Pope Paul III (June 26, 1546) 94. The Augsburg Interim (May, 1548) 95. The Leipzig Interim (December, 1548) 96. Amsdorf: Warning against the Godless Duke Moritz (1549) 97. Amsdorf: Letter against the Leipzig Interim (February 15, 1549) 98. Manifesto of Duke Moritz against the Emperor (1552) 99. The Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555)

126 127 129 131 132 132 133

The Thirty Years’ War 1618–1648 100. The Formation of the Protestant Union (1608) 101. The Edict of Restitution (1629) 102. King Gustavus Adolphus: Farewell to the Swedish Estates (May, 1630)

134 135 135

103. King Gustavus Adolphus: Reply to the Ambassador (July, 1630) 104. The Treaty of Osnabrück, Westphalia (1648)

136 136

The Effects of War on the Lutheran People of Germany 105. The Diary of Hans Heberle (1618–1649) 106. The Autobiographical Writings of J. V. Andreae (1634–1635) 107. Battle Hymn from the Thirty Years’ War (1631)

137 139 141

CHAPTER 5: FACTIONALISM IN THE LATE REFORMATION (1546–1580)

143

The Adiaphorist Controversy 108. Melanchthon: Letter on the Leipzig Interim (1548) 109. Response of Flacius and Gallus to Some Preachers of Meissen (1549) 110. Melanchthon: Letter to Flacius Expressing Regrets (September 5, 1556) 111. Final Report of the Theologians of Wittenberg and Leipzig (1570) 112. Epitome of the Formula of Concord: Article 10 (1577)

147 147 148 148 150

The Majorist Controversy 113. The Leipzig Interim of 1548 114. Major: Answer to Amsdorf (November, 1552) 115. Amsdorf: Brief Instruction Concerning Major’s Answer (1552) 116. Flacius: Against the Evangelist of the Holy Gown, Dr. Miser Major (1552) 117. Major: Sermon on the Conversion of Paul (1553) 118. Melanchthon: Judgment Concerning Good Works (1553) 119. Amsdorf: Preface to Luther’s Sermons on John 18–20 (1557) 120. Amsdorf: Good Works Are Injurious to Salvation (1559) 121. Epitome of the Formula of Concord: Article 4 (1577)

150 151 151 152 152 152 153 153 154

The Synergist Controversy 122. Melanchthon: Letter to Spalatin on the Luther–Erasmus Debate (1524) 123. Melanchthon: Loci Communes of 1548 124. Pfeffinger: Five Questions on the Freedom of Human Will (1555) 125. Heshus: On So-Called Free Will—Against the Synergists (1562) 126. Epitome of the Formula of Concord: Articles 2 and 11 (1577)

154 154 155 155 156

The Flacian Controversy 127. The Weimar Disputation between Strigel and Flacius (1560) 128. Flacius: Treatise on Original Sin from Clavis Scripturae (1567) 129. Final Report of the Theologians of Wittenberg and Leipzig (1570) 130. Epitome of the Formula of Concord: Article 1 (1577)

158 160 160 161

The Osiandrian Controversy 131. Osiander: Concerning the Only Mediator (1551) 132. Osiander: Disputation on Righteousness (October 24, 1550) 133. Mörlin: Apology Concerning the Osiandrist Enthusiasts (1557) 134. Melanchthon: Confutation of Osiander (September, 1555) 135. Epitome of the Formula of Concord: Article 3 (1577)

161 162 162 163 163

The Crypto-Calvinist Controversy 136. The Consensus of the Churches of Zurich and Geneva (1549) 137. Calvin to all Ministers in Saxony and Lower Germany (1556) 138. The Dresden Consensus of 1571 139. Exegesis Perspicua (of the Saxon Crypto-Calvinists) (1573) 140. Epitome of the Formula of Concord: Articles 7 and 8 (1577)

164 164 166 166 167

CHAPTER 6: THEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF ORTHODOXY (1580–1700)

169

Theological Prolegomena 141. The Discipline of Theology 142. The Sources of Theology: Reason and Revelation 143. Natural and Revealed Theology 144. Sacred Scripture as Divine Revelation 145. Fundamental Articles of Faith

172 173 174 175 176

Disputed Issues in Didactic and Polemical Theology 146. Chemnitz: The Two Natures of Christ (1578) 147. Chemnitz: The Lord’s Supper (1590) 148. Chemnitz: Examination of the Council of Trent (1566–1573) 149. Gerhard: Confessio Catholica (1633–1637) 150. The Syncretist Controversy: Calixtus and Calov

178 180 181 183 185

The Ordo Salutis 151. Hunnius: Epitome (1625)

188

CHAPTER 7: SEVENTEENTH CENTURY DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE AND HYMNODY Johann Arndt: Six Books of True Christianity (1605–1610) 152. Forward to Book One 153. Book One, Chapter Five: What True Faith Is 154. Book One, Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Abuse of Disputations

193

196 196 197

155. Forward to Book Three 156. Book Three, Chapter Two: Faith the Only Means 157. Book Six: Defense of Book Three

198 199 200

Johann Gerhard: Sacred Meditations (1606) 158. Spiritual Marriage of Christ and the Soul 159. General Rules for a Godly Life 160. Imitation of the Holy Life of Christ

201 202 202

Joachim Lütkemann: Foretaste of Divine Goodness (1653) 161. Daily Renewal

203

Theophilus Grossgebauer: Cry of a Watchman from Devastated Zion (1661) 162. Preface: The Loss of Zeal

204

Heinrich Müller: Spiritual Hours of Refreshment (1664) 163. Spiritual Drunkenness 164. The Idolatry of the Mouth-Christians 165. Faith and Love

205 206 207

Christian Scriver: Gotthold’s Occasional Devotions (1663–1669) 166. The Sailors 167. The Rowers 168. The Butterfly Catchers 169. The Vine 170. Tuning the Lute

208 208 209 209 210

Seventeenth-Century Hymnwriters 171. Nicolai: How Brightly Beams 172. Heermann: O Holy Jesus 173. Rinkart: Now Thank We All Our God 174. Rist: O Living Bread from Heaven 175. Gerhardt: Two Hymns 176. Ludaemilla Elisabeth: Jesus, Only Jesus

210 211 212 212 213 213

CHAPTER 8: Lutheran Pietism (1670–1750)

215

Philip Jacob Spener (1635–1705) 177. An Evaluation of Martin Luther 178. Whether Luther Urged Works Enough (1688)

218 219

179. Whether Everyone Ought to Know the Hour of Conversion (1690) 180. On Tobacco (1691) 181. On Dancing (1680) 182. Pia Desideria (1675) 183. Letter to a Foreign Theologian about the Collegia Pietatis (1677)

220 221 221 222 225

August Hermann Francke (1663–1727) 184. Sermon on Renewal (1697) 185. The Footsteps of Divine Providence (1709)

226 229

Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752) 186. Exposition of the Apocalypse (1740)

231

Accounts of Spiritual Experiences 187. The Conversion of the Peasant Farmer Jacob Schneider (1697) 188. Petersen: Dreams and Revelations (1719)

234 235

Pietist Hymns 189. Freylinghausen: Who Is There Like Thee? 190. Laurenti: Rejoice, All Ye Believers 191. Hiller: O Son of God, We Wait for Thee 192. Von Bogatzky: Awake, Thou Spirit of the Watchmen 193. Woltersdorff: Come, My Heart, No Longer Languish

236 236 237 237 237

Count Nicholaus von Zinzendorf (1700–1760) 194. On the Essential Character and Circumstances of a Christian (1746)

238

Valentin Ernst Löscher (1673–1749): A Lutheran Critique of Pietism 195. The Special Characteristics of the Pietistic Evil (1718)

239

CHAPTER 9: THE REFORMATION IN SCANDINAVIA AND EASTERN EUROPE (1523–1738) Denmark/Norway 196. Denmark: An Edict of Toleration—The Ordinance of Odense, 1527 197. Hans Tausen: Letter to Bishop Jens Andersen of Odense (1529) 198. Denmark: Confessio Hafniensis (The Confession of Copenhagen), 1530 199. Luther: Letter to King Christian III (December 2, 1536) 200. Peder Palladius: The Precious Time of Grace (1541) 201. Katarina von Bora Luther: Letter to the King of Denmark (1550)

241

244 245 245 247 247 248

Sweden/Finland 202. Sweden: The Ordinances of Västerås, 1527 203. Olaus Petri: The Swedish Church Manual of 1529 204. Laurentius Petri: The Swedish Church Order of 1571 205. The Decree of Uppsala (1593) 206. Mikael Agricola: Preface to the Finnish New Testament (1548)

249 249 251 252 254

The Baltic Region 207. Martin Luther: Exhortation to the Livonians (1525) 208. The Consensus of Sandomierz: Formula of Recessus (1570)

255 256

The Age of Orthodoxy and Pietism 209. Hemmingsen: The Supper of our Lord (1574) and Revocation (1576) 210. Hemmingsen: Admonition Concerning the Black Arts (1575) 211. Rejection of the Formula of Concord by King Frederik II (1580) 212. Instruction of King Frederik IV to the First Pietist Missionaries (1705) 213. Pontoppidan: Truth onto Godliness (1737) 214. Pontoppidan: The Mirror of Faith (Troens Speil) (1727/1740)

256 257 259 259 260 261

Early Scandinavian Hymns 215. Iceland: Hallgrímur Pétursson (1614–1674) 216. Denmark: Thomas Kingo (1634–1703) 217. Norway: Dorothe Engelbretsdatter (1634–1716) 218. Sweden: Haqvin Spegel (1645–1715) 219. Denmark: Hans Adolph Brorson (1694–1764)

263 263 264 265 265

NOTES

267

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE RESOURCES

271

SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

277

PERMISSION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

281

INDEX

283

Preface

The year 2017 marks the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Celebrations worldwide will prompt people to reflect on the Reformation as one of the major turning points in the intellectual and social development of Western civilization. Since Martin Luther, more than anyone else, initiated the rise of Protestantism, numerous new publications will analyze his fascinating life and his influential thought. The fact remains, however, that anyone seeking to acquire an accurate understanding of the long-term effects of Luther’s reforming efforts cannot confine attention to the early decades of the Reformation or to the events of Luther’s lifetime. Some of the most distinctive and durable features of Lutheranism, the ecclesiastical tradition he founded, had not yet been fully worked out by the time of his death, and Luther himself was not the only significant force in the formation of the religious identity of his followers. There is a need for resources that facilitate the acquisition of a wider perspective, and so, in this book, I have brought together primary source documents from the first two and a half centuries of Lutheran history, illustrating how it evolved from its start in the Reformation up to the next major period of revolutionary change in Europe: the Enlightenment. It is my hope that both theologians and historians will welcome the broader scope of this volume. For those who are interested primarily in issues of religious thought, the book covers not only the theology of Luther but also the further clarification of the confessional stance of Lutheranism achieved by the consensus reached in the Formula of Concord of 1577 and the important debates about doctrine and ethics that took place between Orthodox Lutherans, Catholics, Calvinists, and Lutheran Pietists during the seventeenth century. The wider focus of this document collection also fits with a trend among his-

torians of early modern Europe toward study of the long-term transformations of society that took place between 1500 and 1750. It is common for historians today to speak of a process of “confessionalization,” which involved a gradual shift of attention within Protestant movements from the goal of removing burdensome religious and moral strictures toward the reassertion of social discipline and the enforcement of conformity to certain norms of belief. Some of the documents in this book are also relevant to the investigation of this process. Unfortunately, historians and theologians who analyze the extended evolution of early modern religious movements often diverge considerably in the kind of documents they study. Some historians see little enduring significance in the subtle theological debates among Lutheran clergy and focus instead on changes in social structures and popular attitudes. Some theologians concentrate attention on the development of ideas with little awareness of or interest in the social circumstances that exerted pressures on those who contributed to the formulation of Lutheran doctrine. To bridge the gap between these discrepant preoccupations, each of which offers only a partial picture of Lutheranism, this anthology provides a wide range of documents that show what was happening simultaneously in the development of thought, ecclesiastical institutions, and popular piety. The documents in this anthology fall into the following general categories: 1. texts providing biographical information about influential Lutheran leaders in their own words or those of their contemporaries; 2. documents presenting firsthand accounts of major events and trends in the institutional development of the Lutheran tradition; 3. significant statements of theological beliefs,

xvi

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

including both official confessional documents and excerpts from influential treatises or books by individual theologians; 4. primary source materials illustrating features of popular religious life, including information about the experiences and perceptions of the “common” people and the ways they participated in the Lutheran churches through worship, personal devotion, and the administration of church discipline; and 5. texts describing how outsiders viewed the Lutheran tradition in its various stages of development and how the Lutherans viewed other religious groups with whom they coexisted. I had two general criteria for the selection of texts. First, I sought to highlight developments that promoted cohesiveness among Lutherans and a common sense of identity across the centuries. Second, I wanted to acknowledge the presence of significant diversity within Lutheranism, in any given period and across the successive stages of its development. Certain theological topics will appear repeatedly throughout the chapters of this volume, revealing a perennial Lutheran preoccupation with issues such as the authority of the Bible, the proper distinction between law and gospel, the benefits of the saving work of Christ, the relation of faith and good works, the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper, and the appropriate roles of clergy and laity. Readers will perceive much continuity in the treatment of these themes by writers across the centuries but will also see that these same issues have been perennial causes of sometimes mild and sometimes fierce conflicts among Lutherans. In the current day, when dealing with diversity in both church and society has become so central an issue, it is interesting for historian and theologian alike to observe how Lutherans have wrestled with this issue in the past both among themselves and in their relations with other Christian church traditions. There is a basic chronological order to the organization of the chapters of this volume, although there is some overlap of time periods from chapter to chapter because of an additional thematic division. Some chapters are quite clearly theological in focus, while others are more oriented toward the description of historical events and the evolution of religious institutions. Although the complexity of historical development will be discerned more richly by reading these chapters together, anyone who is looking more exclusively for texts related to religious ideas or the

role of religion in social life can fairly easily discern which chapters are most pertinent to his or her interests and focus just on those. A focus on primary source materials is essential for the work of historical analysis, but often such materials are opaque and fragmentary until they have been interpreted and integrated by secondary sources. Therefore, each chapter in this volume begins with an essay intended to provide necessary background information and explanations of how all of the primary source documents on a particular topic relate to each other. Read together, these nine essays also provide a concise overview of the history of Lutheranism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment for those who are approaching the topic with little prior knowledge. Because so many different kinds of material are included and so broad a period of time is covered in one volume, it has been necessary, more often than not, to provide excerpts rather than complete documents. There is, of course, a danger that selectivity of this sort will distort the reader’s impressions of the available historical evidence. Nevertheless, there is a justifiable trade-off in the adoption of this method. For general readers and for most students, many excerpted documents make it possible to gain an appreciation of multiple facets of the history of Lutheranism without being overwhelmed by less important details. For those who are inspired to read the complete texts (and have the skills to do so in the original languages), references to where the full documents can be found are provided with each selection, and a bibliography of secondary sources has been supplied at the end of the volume to facilitate further research. Chapter one, which concerns Martin Luther and the early decades of the Lutheran movement, contains texts that are, with a few exceptions, available in the fifty-five-volume American edition of Luther’s Works (jointly published by Fortress Press and Concordia Publishing House). This chapter has the greatest overlap with already existing anthologies about the Reformation and Luther’s theological writings, but I have tried to organize the material in a different way. The chapter more or less condenses the whole corpus of the American edition of Luther’s works in order to show the full range of challenges that contributed to the development of his religious ideas and the reforms he proposed for church and society. A few of the best-known Luther texts, such as the “Ninety-Five Theses against Indulgences” and the three reform treatises of 1520, have been excluded or very minimally excerpted because they are so widely

PREFACE

available in other document collections. In their place, the reader will find several lesser-known texts that cover some of the same topics. In addition to primary source materials revealing Luther’s personal development and the gradual emergence of his reform proposals, several documents reveal the perspectives of his many opponents. Chapters two and three direct attention to the many individuals besides Luther himself who were responsible for the successful development of his reform movement. I have included texts that show how Luther’s close associates, such as Philip Melanchthon, Johann Bugenhagen, Nikolaus von Amsdorf, Justus Jonas, Johannes Brenz, and Urbanus Rhegius contributed to the implementation of reform proposals in various localities in Germany. Supporters of Luther, ranging from well-educated scholars to simple laymen and women, used a wide range of genres to disseminate evangelical ideas and refute criticisms of Luther’s intentions or the implications of his beliefs. In the chapter on the dissemination of reform ideas, the reader will be able to see interesting contrasts between the subtleties of formal academic theology, the simpler messages contained in widely circulated pamphlet literature (Flugschriften), and the crude visual propaganda produced to leave an impression in the minds of even the illiterate. The chapter on the implementation of reform proposals consists primarily of excerpts from a variety of church orders (Kirchenordnungen). By providing English translations of some of the more interesting passages from these generally neglected resources, I wish both to draw attention to the fact that Lutheranism was embodied in several independent territorial churches and to give readers a feel for the kinds of issues that came up in local parishes during the formative period of Lutheranism. Chapter four sets the stage for study of the developments that took place after Luther’s death by reviewing a hundred years of political events from the Schmalkald War to the Thirty Years’ War. The documents reveal an often-troubled social context that needs to be kept in mind in order to understand the attitudes of Lutherans and their religious rivals during the Late Reformation and the Age of Orthodoxy. Chapter five shows how these political struggles exposed differences of opinion and reforming strategy among Luther’s followers and prompted a series of intense theological debates that were finally resolved by the creation of a new, more elaborate Lutheran confession: the Formula of Concord. The next two chapters cover roughly the same time period but show two very different aspects of

xvii

Lutheranism. Chapter six concentrates on the scholarly Lutherans who continued the process of clarifying and defending true doctrine on into the seventeenth century, and chapter seven focuses on practical religious writings from the same period that offered guidance to a wider audience about the implications of Lutheran teachings for conduct in daily life. The juxtaposing of texts from seventeenthcentury dogmatic theologians and devotional writers reveals the diversity of orientations that coexisted within Lutheranism during the Age of Orthodoxy. This should also raise questions about some of the caricaturing that still prevails in the all-too-brief summaries historians often provide concerning postReformation religious life. The eighth chapter shows how tensions developing within Lutheranism during the Age of Orthodoxy led to the Pietist reform movement. The chronological cut-off point for this collection is the deaths of Johann Albrecht Bengel, the Württemberg Pietist, in 1752, and of his Orthodox critic, Valentin Löscher, in 1749. During the period of Pietism, advances in philosophy and science were also creating the first steps toward the development of the Enlightenment. The second volume of this documentary history will pick up the story again with the Enlightenment and show how that intellectual movement had a longstanding impact on the further evolution of Lutheranism. Students in a course I taught for several years at St. Olaf College, The Lutheran Heritage, were exposed to ever-expanding versions of this book during the years it was in preparation. Much of this material was then published by Fortress Press in 2002 as Documents from the History of Lutheranism 1517–1750. However, this first volume of the broader project to create a documentary history of five centuries of Lutheranism is different in several respects. A few documents have been dropped and others have been added. Some reviewers of the old version wished for more attention to the role of women in the development of Lutheranism, and I have made an effort to honor that request by including some new texts by or about women. The most significant change has been the addition of a chapter on the spread of Lutheranism into the Scandinavian kingdoms and the states of the Baltic. Readers will see the influence of Germany on these regions but also the local circumstances that produced different features in Scandinavian Lutheranism. Many of the documents in this volume, except for those in the first chapter, have never been available before in English translation. In a few cases,

xviii

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

nineteenth-century translations already existed, but I replaced them with new versions because their style was too archaic to appeal to students of the current generation. In all, there are ninety-four new English translations. I tried, as a general rule, to stick closely to the actual wording and syntax of the original texts, but there were many times when I felt it was necessary to subdivide long sentences and follow the spirit rather than the letter in order to make the text more readable. I am grateful for the willingness of

several of my colleagues at St. Olaf College to give me advice on matters of translation. In particular, I wish to thank Karl Fink and William Poehlmann for reviewing some of my German translations, Anne Groton and James May for helping me with difficult Latin passages, and Solveig Zempel for offering suggestions about the translations from Norwegian and Danish. I take full responsibility, however, for any defects that remain in the final versions.

Abbreviations and Short Titles

Arndt.WC Arndt, Johann. Sechs Bücher von wahren Christenthum. Halle: Gebauer, 1760. BC

The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.

CR

Corpus Reformatorum Philippi Melanthonis Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia. 28 vols. Edited by Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider and Heinrich Ernst Bindseil. Halle and Braunschweig: Schwetschke, 1834–60.

ELW

Evangelical Lutheran Worship

LBW

Lutheran Book of Worship

LCC

Library of Christian Classics

LW

Luther’s Works. 55 vols. Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehmann. Philadelphia: Fortress; St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–86.

Richter

Richter, Aemilius. Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des sechszehnten Jahrhunderts. 2 vols. Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1967.

Spener.TB Spener, Philip Jacob. Theologische Bedencken. Halle: Wäysen-Haus, 1707. WA

Luther, Martin. Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. [Schriften.] 73 vols. Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1883–2009.

WABr

Luther, Martin. Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Briefwechsel. 18 vols. Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1930–85.

Walch

Walch, Johann Georg. Dr. Martin Luthers Sämmtliche Schriften. 23 vols. St. Louis: Concordia, 1880–1910.

The Life of Martin Luther: A Chronology

CHILDHOOD AND EARLY EDUCATION (1483–1505) 1483 Born to Hans and Margaret Luther in Eisleben, where his father is a copper smelter master 1484 The family moves to Mansfeld; Luther first attends school there in 1492 1497 Sent away to school in Magdeburg at age thirteen 1498 Transfers to St. George’s School in Eisenach; lives in the home of Ursula Cotta 1501 Enters University of Erfurt to study liberal arts 1502 Is awarded baccalaureate degree with class rank of thirteen out of fifty-seven students 1505 Completes work in trivium and quadrivium for master’s degree; ranks two out of seventeen July 2: Caught in thunderstorm in Stotternheim; makes vow to become a monk

MONASTIC PERIOD (1505–12) 1505 July 17: Joins the Reformed Congregation of Augustinian Hermits in Erfurt 1506 After the probationary period as a novice, takes his monastic vows in September 1507 Is ordained as a priest and celebrates his first mass on May 2 1508 At age twenty-five is sent to the University of Wittenberg to lecture on moral philosophy 1509 Wittenberg awards him the Biblical Baccalaureate and Erfurt the Master of the Sentences degree 1510 Makes forty-day journey to Rome to help settle a dispute between two branches of his order 1511 Transfers to the Augustinian cloister in Wittenberg and continues his studies

xxii

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR (1512–17) 1512 Earns his doctorate of theology from Wittenberg and joins the theological faculty at age twenty-eight 1513 Lectures on the Psalms 1515 Lectures on Paul’s Letter to the Romans 1516 Lectures on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians

THE APPEALS FOR CHURCH REFORM (1517–21) 1517 September 4: disputation against Scholastic Theology—critique of synergistic theology October 31: posts the “Ninety-Five Theses against Indulgences” and sends copy to Archbishop Albrecht. 1518 April: defends his theology at plenary meeting of the Augustinian Order in Heidelberg August: publishes “Explanation of the Ninety-Five Theses”; charged with heresy by the archbishop October: is summoned to Augsburg for interrogation by Cardinal Cajetan 1519 June–July: Leipzig Debate—Luther and Karlstadt versus Dominican theologian Johannes Eck October: coronation of new emperor, Charles V, a lifelong opponent of Luther 1520 June 24: papal bull Exsurge Domine gives Luther sixty days to recant or be excommunicated August: “Appeal to the German Nobility,” reform proposals and critique of hierarchical polity October: “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church,” a critique of Catholic view of sacraments November: “The Freedom of a Christian,” explanation of relation of grace, faith, and good works December: burns the papal bull and books of canon law in a public ceremony 1521 January: The Diet of Worms—is given a final hearing before emperor and refuses to recant. Decet Romanum Pontificem—papal excommunication decree goes into effect May 3: is “kidnapped” and hidden away in Wartburg Castle near Eisenach

CONTROVERSIES IN THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCHES (1521–29) 1521 December: writes “On Monastic Vows,” a strong critique of monasticism Translates the whole New Testament into German in eleven weeks 1522 March: returns to Wittenberg to calm turmoil when Karlstadt pushes for rapid changes Preaches the Invocavit sermons calling for moderation, patience, and love December: publishes “Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed” on politics

THE LIFE OF MARTIN LUTHER: A CHRONOLOGY

xxiii

1523 Publishes “Formula Missae”—worship reforms, including greater role of the sermon “That Jesus Was Born a Jew” calls for compassion toward Jews, hoping for their conversion 1524 Writings on the Lord’s Supper defend the real presence of Christ versus more radical view of Karlstadt 1525 The Peasants’ Revolt—“Admonition to Peace” criticizes the princes, warns the peasants May: “Against the Robbing and Murdering Horde of Peasants” calls for suppression of revolt May: his prince, Elector Friedrich, dies, succeeded by his brother Johann June: marries Katharina von Bora, a former Cistercian nun December: publishes “On the Bondage of the Will”; in contrast to Erasmus, argues salvation is act of God alone 1526 Writes “The Sacrament of the Body and Blood Christ—Against the Fanatics,” which attacks the Swiss reformers Writes “The German Mass,” a book of liturgical reform calling for worship in German 1527 In this year or the next, writes the famous hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” Collapses under a burden of anxiety—temptation to despair and blasphemy 1528 The first “Visitation” in Saxony gathers information on the state of religious life 1529 May: publishes the Small Catechism to correct the weaknesses revealed by the Visitation October: Marburg Colloquy at which he rejects Zwingli’s views about the Lord’s Supper

EFFORTS AT RECONCILIATION AND POLEMICS AGAINST VARIOUS ENEMIES (1530–46) 1530 Writes in support of public education for both girls and boys Stops preaching for a while in disgust over people’s laxity and neglect of the poor April: The Diet of Augsburg, at which Catholics and Lutherans try to end religious division June: Philip Melanchthon submits the Augsburg Confession as summary of Lutheran beliefs 1531 Hope for reconciliation fails; Lutheran princes form Schmalkald League for self-protection Faced by threat of Catholic suppression, he gives more support to resistance by force 1532 Elector Johann of Saxony dies and is succeeded by his son, Johann Friedrich Is frequently ill with dizziness, hypertension, a weak heart, leg sores, and kidney stones The Elector gives him the Augustinian cloister and its lands as his private residence Serves as dean of the theological faculty of the university 1534 Publishes his German translation of the Old Testament Speaks out against radical reformers, especially the fanatical Anabaptists in Münster 1535 Lectures on Genesis—continues until 1545 Participates in various doctrinal disputations at the University of Wittenberg Is bluntly critical of Catholic Church when visited by papal ambassador Vergerio

xxiv

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

1536 Writes the Schmalkald Articles as a personal summary of his beliefs The Wittenberg Concord seems to heal divisions between German and Swiss reformers 1537 The Antinomian Controversy versus Johann Agricola—he defends preaching of both law and gospel 1539 Plans for a Catholic council prompt him to write “On the Councils and the Church” 1540 Supports the bigamy of Duke Philip of Hesse as alternative to divorce 1541 Writes “Against Hans Wurst,” a crude polemic against Duke Heinrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel Colloquy of Regensburg: Melanchthon and Catholic theologians agree on a view of justification Flatly rejects the conciliatory language worked out in the Regensburg document 1542 Daughter, Magdalena, dies after a painful illness; he is heartbroken Drafts his will, stating “I desire a good hour of passing on to God. . . . Nothing more is in me.” 1543 “On the Jews and Their Lies” advocates action against Jews who reject Christianity 1545 Writes “On the Papacy at Rome, an Institution of the Devil” 1546 Travels to Eisleben to mediate dispute between the Counts of Mansfeld February 18: writes his final words: “We are beggars, that is true”; dies at age sixty-two February 22: Buried in the Castle Church in Wittenberg

A Chronology of Lutheran History (1517–1750)

THE REFORMATION 1517

October 31: Martin Luther posts the Ninety-Five Theses; Archbishop Albrecht sends a copy to Rome

1518

October: Luther is interrogated by Cardinal Cajetan in Augsburg November: Pope Leo issues bull “Cum postquam” clarifying teachings on indulgences

1519

June: Charles V is elected Holy Roman Emperor after death of Maximilian July: Luther defends himself versus Johannes Eck at Leipzig Debate

1520

June: promulgation of the bull “Exsurge Domine” threatening Luther with excommunication

1521

January: Luther’s excommunication is formally pronounced in Rome January–May: meeting of the Diet of Worms April: Luther’s final defense May: Charles V publishes the Edict of Worms declaring Luther an outlaw

1523

King Gustav Vasa of Sweden appoints a Lutheran sympathizer, Laurentius Andreae, as chancellor

1524–25 The Peasants’ War: Luther condemns violent revolution 1526

Olaus Petri leads disputation of evangelical preachers with Catholic clergy in Sweden Hans Tausen is appointed court chaplain and begins spread of Lutheranism to Denmark Diet of Speyer lets German princes deal with religious issues until a general council is convened Formation of the League of Torgau, an alliance of the pro-Luther princes (Saxony, Hesse)

xxvi 1527

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM Marburg University is founded as first Lutheran university by Philip of Hesse Charles V’s imperial army sacks Rome; destruction of relics by some Lutheran knights Ordinance of Odense: Lutheranism tolerated in Denmark, church cuts ties with Rome Västeras Diet in Sweden exiles Catholic bishops and secularizes church properties

1529

League of Speyer: “Protestant” princes reject efforts to annul decisions of the Diet of Speyer Marburg Colloquy: conflict between Luther and Ulrich Zwingli over the Lord’s Supper Örebro Synod led by Laurentius Andreae introduces changes in worship in Sweden

1530

Diet of Augsburg: Catholic leaders reject the Lutheran Augsburg Confession

1530

Confession of Copenhagen: Danish church drafts its own Protestant confession

1531

Lutheran princes in Germany form the Schmalkald League to protect their interests Laurentius Petri becomes first Lutheran archbishop of Uppsala in Sweden

1532

Johann Friedrich succeeds his father as Elector of Saxony

1533

Peace of Nürnberg (Nuremberg): temporary truce between Catholics and Protestants Danish Civil War ends: Catholic bishops ousted; church properties seized by King Christian III

1534–35 Anabaptist revolution in Münster enhances suspicions of more radical Protestants 1536

Lutheran reforms in Sweden delayed; Petri brothers resist king’s effort to control the church New church order establishes Lutheranism in Denmark Wittenberg Concord: agreement between Lutherans and south German reformers on the sacraments

1539

Lutheran practices introduced into territories of Electoral Brandenburg and Albertine Saxony Örebro Diet gives king full supremacy over Swedish church and introduces a reformed church order

1540–41 Colloquies of Hagenau, Worms, and Regensburg: continuing Catholic/Protestant dialogues 1541

Early Lutheranism in Hungary: clergy create a confession of faith based on Augsburg Confession

1544

Founding of a Lutheran university in Königsberg

1544–47 Council of Trent: internal reform of the Catholic Church begins; discussion of justification

THE LATE REFORMATION PERIOD 1546

Death of Luther; beginning of the Schmalkald War: emperor attacks Lutheran territories

1547

Lutheran princes defeated at Mühlberg; Charles V makes Duke Moritz the Elector of Saxony

1548

Emperor imposes the Augsburg Interim; partial recatholicization of worship and doctrine Lutheran resistance to the Augsburg Interim; Melanchthon’s counterproposal: Leipzig Interim

1549–77 Philippist versus Gnesio-Lutheran controversies over doctrine and church practices 1550

Beginning of Jesuit recatholicization efforts in the Holy Roman Empire Completion of the establishment of the Lutheran Church in Iceland

A CHRONOLOGY OF LUTHERAN HISTORY (1517–1750) 1551–52 Second Meeting of the Council of Trent: rejection of Lutheran views of the sacraments 1552

Second Schmalkald War: Duke Moritz rejoins Lutheran princes to resist the emperor

1555

The Peace of Augsburg: legal recognition of Lutheranism as a religious option

1558

Founding of a Lutheran university in Jena Death of Charles V; Ferdinand I becomes Holy Roman Emperor

1560–74 Crypto-Calvinist controversy in Saxony 1561

Electoral Palatinate (Kurpfalz) becomes a Calvinist territory

1561–63 Third Meeting of the Council of Trent 1564

Maximilian II crowned Holy Roman Emperor; milder policy toward Protestants

1566

Martin Chemnitz publishes the major Lutheran critique of the Council of Trent

1568

Lutheranism introduced in territory of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel

1570

Consensus of Sandomierz: compromise agreement of Polish Protestants

1571

New Lutheran church order enacted in Sweden

1574

The Swabian Concord: Jakob Andreae attempts to heal Philippist versus Gnesio-Lutheran divisions The Swabian-Saxon Concord: Martin Chemnitz brings reconciliation efforts to north Germany

1575

Founding of a Lutheran university in Helmstedt

1576

Rudolf II crowned Holy Roman Emperor

1576

Niels Hemmingsen disciplined for teaching Crypto-Calvinism in Denmark

1577

Lutheran doctrinal consensus reached in the Formula of Concord; Denmark refused to endorse it.

THE AGE OF ORTHODOXY 1580

The Book of Concord assembles the confessional documents of Lutheranism

1583

Papacy stops effort of Archbishop of Cologne to protestantize his lands

1592

Dispute between Catholic and Protestant claimants to the Duchy of Jülich-Cleves

1593

Uppsala convocation requires subscription to Augsburg Confession in Sweden

1601

Calvinism introduced into formerly Lutheran territory of Hesse

1605

Earliest edition of Johann Arndt’s influential devotional guide True Christianity

1606

Johann Gerhard publishes the Latin version of his Sacred Meditations

1607

Controversial recatholicization of the imperial city of Donauwörth after religious clashes

1608

Formation of the Protestant Union after conflicts at the Diet of Regensburg

1610

Johann Gerhard publishes Loci theologici, the most influential Orthodox systematic theology

1612

Matthias I succeeds Rudolf II as Holy Roman Emperor; stricter Catholicism influenced by Jesuits

1613

Elector of Brandenburg converts to Calvinism

xxvii

xxviii

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

1618–24 The Thirty Years’ War begins with defenestration of Prague (The Bohemian Phase) 1619

Ferdinand II elected Holy Roman Emperor after death of Matthias I

1625–29 Danish Phase of the Thirty Years’ War—King Christian IV supports German Protestants 1630–35 Swedish Lutherans lead Protestant resurgence in third phase of the Thirty Years’ War 1632

King Gustavus Adolphus II of Sweden dies in the battle of Lützen near Leipzig Johann Gerhard publishes Confessio Catholica, a comprehensive apology for Lutheranism

1635–48 French support Protestants; the war ends with the Peace of Westphalia 1645

Georg Calixtus attacked by Orthodox Lutherans for his “syncretistic” ecumenical theology Colloquy of Thorn fails to unify the Protestants of Poland

1647

Beginning of Paul Gerhardt’s productive years as a Lutheran hymn writer

1653

Heinrich Müller becomes professor at Rostock, starts career as influential devotional writer

1666

Icelandic poet Hallgrímur Pétursson writes fifty hymns on passion of Christ

1670

Christian Scriver begins publication of his most influential devotional writings

PERIOD OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN PIETISM AND ORTHODOXY 1670

Philip Jacob Spener forms conventicles (small group meetings) in Frankfurt

1675

First publication of Spener’s Pietist manifesto, Pia Desideria

1685

Johann Quenstedt’s “Didactic and Polemical Theology,” a major expression of high Orthodoxy

1686

Spener becomes court preacher for Elector of Saxony in Dresden

1687

Conversion or religious awakening of August Hermann Francke in Leipzig

1691

Spener becomes head of the consistory in Berlin

1692

August Hermann Francke becomes pastor in Glaucha and then professor at University of Halle

1695

Beginning of Francke’s charitable institutions and educational enterprises in Halle

1699

Gottfried Arnold publishes “Impartial History of Church and Heresy,” a Pietist critique of dogmatism

1703

Death of Bishop Thomas Kingo, Orthodox Danish hymn writer

1705

First Lutheran missionaries, educated at Halle, are sent to India, sponsored by Danish king

1713

Death of David Hollaz, the last great systematic theologian of the Age of Orthodoxy

1722

Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf, a Lutheran Pietist, founds Herrnhut colony for Moravian refugees

1730

Strong support for Pietism in Denmark under King Christian VI

1736–48 Zinzendorf banished from Saxony 1737

Zinzendorf accepts ordination as a Moravian bishop Erik Pontoppidan published famous clarification of Luther’s catechism in Denmark

1739

Bishop Hans Adolph Brorson publishes pietistic Danish hymnbook

A CHRONOLOGY OF LUTHERAN HISTORY (1517–1750) 1740

Friedrich II, King of Prussia, favors rationalism; decline of Pietist influence at Halle

1742

Johann Albrecht Bengel’s Gnomon of the New Testament sets principles of textual criticism

1744

Bengel writes critique of Zinzendorf and Moravian piety

1749

Death of Valentin Löscher, leading Orthodox Lutheran critic of Pietism

1752

Death of Johann Albrecht Bengel, noted biblical scholar and Pietist leader in southern Germany

xxix

1. Crises and Controversies during Martin Luther’s Lifetime (1483–1546)

The Lutheran church is one of the few branches of Christianity commonly identified by the name of its founder. This was not as Martin Luther wished; he did not set out to create a new church. Soon after his reform efforts had produced a separate organization outside of the Roman Catholic Church, he even stated: “I ask that men make no reference to my name; let them call themselves Christians, not Lutherans. What is Luther? After all, the teaching is not mine” (doc. #18). Nevertheless, Luther’s personality was so forceful and his ideas were so innovative for his era that the early development of this religious movement cannot be understood without a careful study of how this one individual responded to a series of crises and controversies during his lifetime.Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483, in Eisleben, the chief town of the territories ruled by the counts of Mansfeld. His pious parents, Hans and Margarete, presented him for baptism at their parish church on the following day and named him after Martin of Tours, the saint who is traditionally commemorated on that date. Although his ancestors were simple peasant farmers, Luther’s ambitious father spent his life working in the copper mining industry, for which that region was especially noted. Within a year of Martin’s birth, Hans moved the family to the town of Mansfeld, where he became a respected owner of mining shafts and smelting furnaces. Hans Luther, who apparently had never attended school himself, wished a better life for his son and sent Martin to schools in Mansfeld, Magdeburg, and Eisenach. In 1501 at the age of seventeen, Martin matriculated at the highly respected University of Erfurt, where

he earned his baccalaureate in the liberal arts and his master’s degree in four years. After graduating second in a class of seventeen, Luther followed his father’s advice and began to study for an advanced degree in law. On July 2, 1505, while he was returning to Erfurt from a visit to his parents, an incident took place that drastically redirected his life. Caught in a thunderstorm near the village of Stotternheim, Luther was terrified by the possibility of sudden death and prayed for help to Saint Anne, the patron saint of miners. Attempting to strike a kind of bargain with God, he also vowed that he would become a monk. To the great disappointment of his father, Luther followed through on this impetuous promise, abandoned his plan to become a lawyer, and entered the monastery of the Augustinian Hermits in Erfurt within two weeks. He took his monastic vows in the fall of 1506 and committed himself wholeheartedly to the challenging regimen of monastic life. In addition, he prepared to become a priest and was ordained, at the age of twenty-three, on April 3, 1507. Luther developed a reputation as an exemplary monk, but severe fears and doubts about the state of his spiritual life repeatedly tormented him. His response to the thunderstorm was only one example of his perpetual anxiety about death and the prospect of facing the judgment of God. His decision to become a monk was predicated on the commonly held belief that this mode of life offered a safer path to salvation, yet all his ascetic practices and devotional activities failed to assure him that he was measuring up to the standards of holiness demanded by

2

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

a just God. When he celebrated his first mass, he was overwhelmed by a sense of how unworthy he was to make Christ present in the Eucharist. He was also tortured by the thought that his decision to devote his life to serving God as a monk and a priest was in fact a violation of the fourth commandment that called for obedience to one’s parents. Frequent recourse to the sacrament of confession brought no lasting relief to his troubled mind. It even seemed to have the effect of intensifying his consciousness of moral imperfections. Despite these symptoms of almost morbid sensitivity, Luther impressed his superior, Johannes von Staupitz, by his dedication and his intellectual gifts. In 1508, he was sent to the recently established University of Wittenberg in the duchy of Electoral Saxony to spend a year lecturing on Aristotelian ethics. At Wittenberg and Erfurt, he continued his studies toward a doctorate in theology and received the degrees that qualified him to lecture on the Bible and the standard medieval text for the study of doctrine, Peter Lombard’s Book of the Sentences. During the winter of 1510, Luther was sent to Rome to participate in negotiations prompted by a dispute between two branches of his religious order. In addition to defending the stricter standards commended by the Observant Augustinians, he took advantage of the opportunity to perform meritorious acts of piety at the holy places typically visited by pilgrims and to say mass in some of Rome’s most famous churches for the sake of his relatives in purgatory. Shortly after his return, he was sent once again to Wittenberg, which would remain his home for the rest of his life. In 1512, at the age of twenty-eight, Luther received his doctor’s degree and in the following year began his work as professor of biblical theology at the University of Wittenberg. He would continue in this role throughout all the tumultuous events of the following years and serve, in addition, as regular preacher at the city church. Luther’s intense involvement in the study of the Bible for the sake of his lectures on Psalms (1513–15), Romans (1515–16), Galatians (1516–17), and Hebrews (1517–18) was both an enlightening and a disturbing experience for him. He continued to suffer his spiritual trials (Anfechtungen) as he struggled with the passages that spoke of the righteousness (justitia) of God revealed in both the law and the gospel. His despair over his own lack of righteousness drove him to feel anger toward God for setting such unattainable standards of holiness (doc. #5). As he studied the letters of the apostle Paul, however, he gradually developed a different understanding of

how God relates to sinful humanity. Struck by the phrase, “He who through faith is righteous shall live” (Rom 1:17), Luther came to believe that the righteousness of God is revealed not in God justly giving sinners what they deserve but in setting things right by offering the gift of mercy and forgiveness through Christ. His personal spiritual crisis was resolved when he reached the conclusion that those who trust in God’s saving activity and live by faith find favor with God even though the influence of sin persists in their daily lives. The focus of Luther’s attention shifted from what God expects of humanity to how God has graciously rescued sinners who cannot save themselves.

Fig. 1.1. Portrait of Martin Luther (1528) by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Although Luther in later life sometimes spoke of a moment of breakthrough, seemingly around the time he began to lecture on Psalms for a second time in 1518 (doc. #5), there is evidence that he was on his way to his so-called Reformation discovery over a period of several years. It gradually dawned on him that there were discrepancies between the presuppositions of the scholastic theology he had been taught and the primary themes that caught his attention in the psalms and in the letters of Paul. In his lectures on Romans, Luther emphasized the depth of human sinfulness and disputed the common late-medieval claim that a person can, by his or her own power, love God above all things. He began to speak of the

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

Christian as a sinner who is, nevertheless, at the same time righteous through faith by God’s imputation of Christ’s righteousness (doc. #1). By September 1517, the foolishness of the “pig-theologians” so agitated Luther that he arranged for a public debate about the scholastics’ teachings concerning human nature and the process of salvation. In his Disputation against Scholastic Theology (doc. #2), he contended that the nominalist theologians of his day were deceived by the philosophy of Aristotle and simply wrong in their estimates of human ability to avoid sin or prepare for the reception of God’s grace. Despite the bluntness of Luther’s critique, this challenge to prevailing opinion did not get him into any immediate trouble. Quite the opposite was the case with his effort in the following month to stimulate discussion about the church’s practice of offering indulgences for the remission of the penalty of sins. This issue more than any other stirred up the controversies that led to the eventual formation of a separate Lutheran church. In 1517, Pope Leo X had issued a bull authorizing an indulgence campaign to raise money for the building of a new church in Rome dedicated to St. Peter (doc #3). Those who made a donation to the church for this cause were promised the benefits of the treasury of merit, which the pope as holder of the keys of the kingdom felt authorized to dispense for the sake of both the living and the dead in purgatory. Archbishop Albrecht (Albert) of Mainz was persuaded to allow the indulgence preachers to circulate in Germany by being offered a share of the revenue, which he welcomed to help pay off the debts he had incurred when he had gained a papal dispensation allowing him to serve simultaneously as bishop of more than one diocese. When Luther became aware of how the Dominican friar Johann Tetzel was conducting the indulgence campaign in the villages near Wittenberg, he reached the conclusion that the sale of indulgences was detrimental to the encouragement of true Christian piety (doc. #4). As a professor, Luther’s first response was to call for an academic debate about this practice. He prepared ninety-five theses in Latin for this purpose and also brought them to the attention of Archbishop Albrecht in a letter he sent on October 31, 1517 (doc. #6). The archbishop and other church leaders became especially concerned when they learned of the circulation of the theses in German translation—printed in Nürnberg (Nuremberg), Leipzig, and Basel—among a wider lay audience. They suspected Luther of heresy and called for a more thorough investigation of his beliefs. Pope Leo X ordered the head of the Augustinian

3

order to make inquiries about this young monk, so Luther was asked to travel to Heidelberg in April 1518 to conduct a disputation for his monastic colleagues. The theses he prepared for this occasion (doc. #8) did not directly address the indulgence controversy. They focused instead on some of the same issues he had raised earlier in his Disputation against Scholastic Theology (doc. #2). In the next few months, Sylvester Prieras and several other theologians published defenses of church practice in response to the Ninety-Five Theses, prompting Luther in turn to elaborate on the reasons why he questioned the motives of the pope and doubted the pope’s authority to offer indulgences (docs. #7, 9, and 10). In October 1518, Luther journeyed to Augsburg for an interview with Cardinal Cajetan (doc. #11). He was asked to declare his loyalty to the pope, but he asserted his belief that the popes were not infallible teachers of theology and morals. He would not acknowledge that their decrees were as authoritative as the Bible. In July 1519, Luther addressed similar issues in a public debate in Leipzig with the Dominican theologian Johannes Eck (doc. #13). Informed of Luther’s stubborn defiance, Pope Leo X repeated his defense of the papal right to offer indulgence in the bull Cum Postquam and, finally, in June 1520 in the bull Exsurge Domine threatened Luther with excommunication if he failed to recant within sixty days (docs. #12 and 14). This ultimatum did not reach Luther until December 1520. In the meantime, he had boldly pressed forward with his efforts to reform the church by publishing three major treatises addressing the deeper issues that had surfaced in the debates of the past three years. In his Appeal to the German Nobility, published in August 1520, Luther attacked the hierarchical polity of the church and presented a long list of abuses he wanted to see corrected (doc. #15). Frustrated by the response he was getting from the pope and the clergy, Luther proclaimed “the priesthood of all believers” and justified the involvement of the laity in efforts to reform the church. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (October 1520) thoroughly addressed issues of sacramental practice, and The Freedom of a Christian (November 1520) clarified Luther’s objections to the synergistic theology of the scholastics and explained the role of faith and good works in the Christian life (doc. #31). In April 1521, the emperor, Charles V, offered Luther a final hearing at the Diet of Worms. Refusing to violate his conscience by denying what he firmly believed to be a correct interpretation of Christian teachings, Luther defied the threats of both

4

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Thus, at the age of thirty-seven, he was declared guilty of treason and excommunicated from the church (docs. #16 and 17). Luther, however, escaped the usual fate of heretics and outlaws as a result of the intervention of his prince, Elector Friedrich (Frederick) the Wise, who hid him away in the remote Wartburg castle near Eisenach. For the next year, Luther occupied himself with the task of preparing a German translation of the Bible.

cavit Sermons called for the use of persuasion rather than force to change people’s minds (docs. #18, 20, and 21). Continuing to stress the Bible as the foundation of the church’s teachings, he charged that the revelations claimed by the “prophets” were actually from Satan and condemned their indiscriminate iconoclasm (docs. #19 and 22). Having checked the influence of these radical reformers, Luther proceeded to introduce changes more slowly and cautiously. In 1523, he restored the custom of distributing both bread and wine at the Lord’s Supper but waited until 1526 to make German the language of the liturgy (docs. #75 and 76). Although he had rejected the value of monasticism as early as 1521, he continued to wear his monastic habit until 1524. Luther had spoken out against the requirement of clerical celibacy since 1520, but he did not marry until 1525, when at the age of fortytwo he wedded Katharina von Bora, a twenty-sixyear-old former nun.

Fig. 1.2. Portrait of Friedrich III (1463–1525), the Wise, Elector of Saxony by Lucas Cranach the elder.

Although the most powerful church leaders felt threatened by Luther’s reform proposals, many people in Saxony and other regions of Germany welcomed his new vision of church and society. While Luther was in hiding, individuals who believed they were acting in accordance with Luther’s wishes advocated a rapid reorganization of religious life. Luther’s university colleague, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, abruptly changed the mode of worship in the churches of Wittenberg. “Prophets” from the town of Zwickau, claiming direct guidance by the Holy Spirit, arrived in Wittenberg and began to strip the churches of religious artwork. Disturbed by this violence and the possible confusion generated by hasty change, Luther came out of hiding in 1522 and attempted to impose a measure of restraint on the reform process. He disassociated himself from the activities of the insurrectionists and in his Invo-

Fig. 1.3. Portait of Katharina von Bora (1529) by the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The problem of radical reformers who used force to implement religious and social change surfaced once again in the Peasants’ War, which affected several regions of Germany in 1524 and 1525. Extending the implications of Christian freedom about which Luther had often spoken, the leaders of the

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

peasants demanded greater political rights and economic privileges (doc. #23). Some of them, such as Thomas Müntzer, a former associate of Luther, viewed the uprising as a holy war ordained by God and appealed to the Bible to justify the use of force against oppressive landowners (docs. #24 and 25). Once again, Luther counseled restraint. In his Admonition to Peace, he acknowledged the legitimacy of some of the peasants’ complaints about tyrannical lords but completely rejected their violent tactics and their use of religious rhetoric to support their cause (doc. #26). When the strife continued and worsened, Luther abandoned his initial, moderate approach and called upon the ruling authorities to use every means necessary to punish the peasants (doc. #27). He feared for the future of his religious reform movement if it got the reputation of stimulating social revolution. His sober estimates of human nature also convinced him that chaos was a greater danger than tyranny. With Luther’s blessing, the princes suppressed the rebellion and put several thousand peasants to death. During this tumultuous period, Luther also engaged in a battle of words with one of the great intellectuals of his day, the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1469–1536). Although Erasmus had initially felt sympathy for some of the reforms Luther sought to introduce, he was offended by the reformer’s confrontational personality and increasingly disturbed by some of his theological teachings. For several years, Catholic church officials had urged Erasmus to speak out against Luther, but he had tried to avoid being drawn into a public debate. Finally, however, in 1524 he published his Diatribe on Free Will after reading what Luther had written about this issue. In Latin and German refutations of the papal bull Exsurge Domine, Luther had denied that the human will had the power to cooperate in any significant manner in the attainment of salvation (doc. #28). Erasmus claimed that Luther failed to recognize the complexity of this issue and could not reconcile his position with the presence in the Bible of many moral exhortations (doc. #29). In 1525, Luther vehemently responded to Erasmus in his lengthy treatise On the Bondage of the Will. He attacked the humanist for trying to avoid taking a clear stance on this important doctrinal issue, questioned his interpretation of many biblical passages, and argued that each individual’s salvation is solely determined by the hidden will of God (doc. #30). During the 1520s, the interpretation of the Lord’s Supper also became a topic of extended debate. Luther had rejected the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation but was alarmed by his encounters with

5

other reformers who went further and denied that Christ was really present “in, with, and under” the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper (docs. #31 and 32). This was one of several issues that had led to a falling out between Luther and his colleague Karlstadt in 1523. Efforts to promote cooperation between reformers in Germany and Switzerland were also stymied by this issue. Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich and Johann Oecolampadius in Basel argued for a figurative or symbolic interpretation of the words of institution. In their minds, it was impossible for Christ’s body to be present with the elements of the Lord’s Supper because he had ascended to heaven. It was also inconceivable to them that Christ’s body could be present in more than one place at the same time, which Luther’s view seemed to require (docs. #34 and 36). In several polemical treatises written during the 1520s, Luther attacked the arguments of these “fanatics” and castigated them for making reason the criterion for deciding what God could and could not make happen. He argued for a more literal interpretation of the eucharistic phrase “Take, eat, this is my body” and asserted that, by virtue of the union of Christ’s divine and human natures, it was possible for his body to exist in both circumscribed and ubiquitous modes (docs. #32, 33, and 35). A final meeting between Luther and Zwingli at the Marburg Colloquy in October of 1529 failed to produce an agreement on this issue, thus dashing any hopes that the German and Swiss reformers could form a united front to face their Catholic enemies. In the same year as the Marburg Colloquy, the second Diet of Speyer took place. The emperor, Charles V, had returned from a seven-year stay in Spain and, having emerged victorious from his war with France, was finally beginning to devote his attention to the religious divisions that had developed in the Holy Roman Empire. At the first Diet of Speyer of 1526, dealing with the threat of a Turkish invasion had seemed more urgent than enforcement of the Edict of Worms. In 1529, however, the emperor persuaded the majority of the estates to annul the recess of the preceding diet, thereby requiring the Lutherans to conform to Catholic theology and church practices (doc. #37). The Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, and the other princes who supported Luther’s reform movement sent a strong statement of protest to the emperor and made a secret agreement to form a “Protestant” union for their mutual defense (docs. #38 and 39). The use of the term Protestant to identify the churches that grew out of the sixteenth-century reform movements derives from this new development in 1529. Luther expressed reserva-

6

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

tions about the formation of such a union, especially if it included parties with divergent theological views (doc. #40). The need to raise money from the princes to finance a new war against the Turks prompted the emperor to summon the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, at which he gave the Protestants another opportunity to work toward a religious settlement. The Elector of Saxony asked Luther and his associates to prepare a document for this diet, summarizing the Lutheran position on various disputed issues (doc. #41). Luther’s closest colleague, Philip Melanchthon, carried out this assignment on their behalf and produced the so-called Augsburg Confession, which emphasized the similarities between Catholic and Lutheran beliefs more than the differences (doc. #42). Despite its conciliatory tone, the emperor and the Catholic estates pronounced this confession of faith unacceptable and demanded that the Lutherans return to the Catholic church by April 1531. Faced with new indications of the emperor’s readiness to crush the reform movement, the Lutheran princes took the additional step of banding together with Strassburg (Strasbourg), Ulm, and some other south German cities to form a defensive military alliance, the Schmalkald League. In this new and dangerous situation, Luther modified his opposition to armed resistance and argued that it was not sedition or rebellion for the princes to defend themselves against the “murderous and bloodthirsty papists” (doc. #43). The future looked grim, and Luther in his final years often felt that he was living through the troubles that the Bible associated with the end of the world (doc. #44). Already struggling with a number of chronic illnesses, he now confronted new quarrels and complicated problems that seemed at times to wear out his patience and impair his good judgment. There were encouraging moments of progress such as the Peace of Nürnberg of 1532, in which the emperor made temporary concessions to the Lutherans, and the Wittenberg Concord of 1536, an agreement between the south and north German reformers about the Lord’s Supper and the other sacraments (doc. #45), but Luther was angered and frustrated by controversies involving some of his closest theological and political allies. Influenced by the distinction Luther made between law and gospel (doc. #46), Johann Agricola, one of his colleagues in Wittenberg, began to argue that it was no longer necessary to preach the law to people who had been converted by the gospel. Beginning in 1537, Luther conducted several disputations on this question and stressed that as long as Christians lived in this world they should hear the preaching of the law in order to

prevent the rise of complacency (docs. #47 and 48). Luther worked to block Agricola’s appointment as rector of the University of Wittenberg and was permanently alienated from him because of this antinomian controversy. Shortly thereafter, in 1540, Luther faced the dilemma of deciding how to counsel the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, who felt caught in an unhappy marriage and was carrying on an affair with another woman. Considering bigamy preferable to adultery, Luther gave his approval to a second marriage between this influential ruler and his mistress, as long as it was kept secret. Later, however, he regretted this action when the arrangement came to the attention of the emperor and raised questions about the moral values of the reformers (doc. #49). Throughout all these troubled years, Luther maintained some hope for an eventual reconciliation between his reform movement and the Catholics. The pope repeatedly postponed the general council that Luther had long requested, but delegations of Catholic and Protestant theologians resumed discussions of disputed issues. In 1541, the most conciliatory participants at the Colloquy of Regensburg, including Philip Melanchthon, the representative of the Lutherans, thought they had produced a statement on the doctrine of justification that spoke of faith and works in a manner acceptable to all sides, but both Luther and the pope considered the formula too ambiguous and rejected it (docs. #50, 51, and 52). Luther’s deep mistrust of the church leaders in Rome reflected his growing conviction that the pope, the Turks, the Jews, and the radical reformers were all enemies of God, being used by Satan in a final battle against the true church of Christ (doc. #55). He condemned the Muslims for honoring Muhammad above Christ and argued that the true god of the Turks was the devil (doc. #53). Luther had expected that his efforts to reform the church would remove the obstacles that stood in the way of Jewish conversions to Christianity. When this did not take place, he became convinced that the Jews were hardened in their ways. In 1543, in his worst display of intemperance, Luther responded to rumors of Jewish proselytizing among Christians by recommending the destruction of their synagogues and the silencing of their rabbis (doc. #54). At the age of sixty-two, Luther described himself as “old, decrepit, [and] bereft of energy.” Nevertheless, he kept up a hectic schedule of teaching, preaching, and consulting with his associates in order to advance and stabilize the reform movement he had created. In the middle of the winter and despite his frail health, he traveled eighty miles to Eisleben, his

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

birthplace, to help settle a feud between the two counts of Mansfeld. There, on February 18, 1546, he died of an apparent heart attack. His body was returned to Wittenberg and buried in front of the pulpit in the Castle Church. THE CALL FOR REFORM 1. LUTHER: LECTURES ON ROMANS (1515–1516) Luther’s lectures on Romans were not published during his lifetime. They are known from his own handwritten manuscript and from a number of student notebooks. Luther dictated explanatory comments on words and phrases (glosses), which the students wrote into their copies of the biblical text. He occasionally added more extended discussions of passages (scholia) such as the following, which shows some of his early criticisms of scholastic theology. From LW 25:260–63, trans. J. A. O. Preus; cf. WA 56:274–75. Scholia on Romans 4:7, “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven.” . . . Therefore, act of sin (as it is called by the theologians) is more correctly sin in the sense of the work and fruit of sin, but sin itself is the passion, the tinder (fomes), and the concupiscence, or the inclination, toward evil and the difficulty of doing good....... Experience bears witness that in whatever good work we perform, this concupiscence toward evil remains, and no one is ever cleansed of it, not even the one-day-old infant. But the mercy of God is that this does remain and yet is not imputed as sin to those who call upon him and cry out for his deliverance. For such people easily avoid also the error of works, because they so zealously seek to be justified. Thus in ourselves we are sinners, and yet through faith we are righteous by God’s imputation. For we believe him who promises to free us, and in the meantime we strive that sin may not rule over us but that we may withstand it until he takes it from us. It is similar to the case of a sick man who believes the doctor who promises him a sure recovery and in the meantime obeys the doctor’s order in the hope of the promised recovery and abstains from those things that have been forbidden him, so that he may in no way hinder the promised return to health or increase this sickness until the doctor can fulfill his promise to him. Now is this sick man well? The fact is that he is both sick and well at the same time. He is sick in fact, but he is well because of the sure promise

7

of the doctor, whom he trusts and who has reckoned him as already cured, because he is sure that he will cure him; for he has already begun to cure him and no longer reckons to him a sickness unto death. In the same way Christ, our Samaritan, has brought his half-dead man into the inn to be cared for, and he has begun to heal him, having promised him the most complete cure unto eternal life, and he does not impute his sins, that is, his wicked desires, unto death, but in the meantime in the hope of the promised recovery he prohibits him from doing or omitting things by which his cure might be impeded and his sin, that is, his concupiscence, might be increased. Now, is he perfectly righteous? No, for he is at the same time both a sinner and a righteous man: a sinner in fact, but a righteous man by the sure imputation and promise of God that he will continue to deliver him from sin until he has completely cured him. And thus he is entirely healthy in hope, but in fact he is still a sinner; but he has the beginning of righteousness, so that he continues more and more always to seek it, yet he realizes that he is always unrighteous. But now if this sick man should like his sickness and refuse every cure for his disease, will he not die? Certainly, for thus it is with those who follow their lusts in this world. Or if a certain sick man does not see that he is sick but thinks he is well and thus rejects the doctor, this is the kind of operation that wants to be justified and made well by its own works. Since this is the case, either I have never understood, or else the scholastic theologians have not spoken sufficiently clearly about sin and grace, for they have been under the delusion that original sin, like actual sin, is entirely removed, as if these were items that can be entirely removed in the twinkling of an eye, as shadows before a light, although the ancient fathers Augustine and Ambrose spoke entirely differently and in the way Scripture does. But those men speak in the manner of Aristotle in his Ethics,1 when he bases sin and righteousness on works, both their performance and omission. But blessed Augustine says very clearly that “sin, or concupiscence, is forgiven in baptism, not in the sense that it no longer exists, but in the sense that it is not imputed.” [de nuptiis et concupiscentia 1.25] . . . For this reason it is plain insanity to say that man of his own powers can love God above all things and can perform the works of the Law according to the substance of the act, even if not according to the intentions of him who gave the commandment, because he is not in the state of grace.2 O fools, O pig-theologians (Sawtheologen)! By your line of reasoning grace was not necessary except because of

8

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

some new demand above and beyond the law. For if the law can be fulfilled by our powers, as they say, then grace is not necessary for the fulfilling of the law, but only for the fulfilling of some new exaction imposed by God above the law. Who can endure these sacrilegious notions? . . . All of these monstrosities have come from the fact that they did not know what sin is nor forgiveness. For they reduced sin to some very minute activity of the soul, and the same was true of righteousness. For they said that since the will has this synteresis, “it is inclined,” albeit weakly, “toward the good.” And this minute motion toward God (which man can perform by nature) they imagine to be an act of loving God above all things! But take a good look at man, entirely filled with evil lusts (notwithstanding that minute motion). The law commands him to be empty, so that he may be taken completely into God. Thus Isaiah in 41:23 laughs at them and says, “Do good or evil if you can!” This life, then, is a life of being healed from sin; it is not a life of sinlessness, with the cure completed and perfect health attained. The church is the inn and the infirmary for those who are sick and in need of being made well. But heaven is the palace of the healthy and the righteous....... 2. LUTHER: THE DISPUTATION AGAINST SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY (1517) Luther convinced many of his colleagues that there were discrepancies between the teachings of Paul and the scholastic theologians who made extensive use of Aristotelian philosophy. On May 18, 1517, Luther reported in a letter to Johann Lang, prior of the Erfurt monastery: “Our theology and St. Augustine are progressing well, and with God’s help rule at our University. Aristotle is gradually falling from his throne, and his final doom is only a matter of time” (LW 31:42; WABr 1:99). Luther publicly challenged scholasticism in the following set of theses, written for one of his students to defend on September 4, 1517, to complete the requirements of his bachelor of Bible degree. (The total document contains ninetyseven theses.) From LW 31:9–16, trans. Harold Grimm; cf. WA 1:221–28. 5. It is false to state that man’s inclination is free to choose between either of two opposites. Indeed, the inclination is not free, but captive. This is said in opposition to common opinion. 6. It is false to state that the will can by nature con-

form to correct precept. This is said in opposition to Scotus and Gabriel.3 7. As a matter of fact, without the grace of God the will produces an act that is perverse and evil. 8. It does not, however, follow that the will is by nature evil, that is, essentially evil, as the Manichaeans maintain.4 9. It is nevertheless innately and inevitably evil and corrupt. 10. One must concede that the will is not free to strive toward whatever is declared good. This in opposition to Scotus and Gabriel. . . . 17. Man is by nature unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God. . . . 20. An act of friendship is done, not according to nature, but according to prevenient grace. This in opposition to Gabriel. 21. No act is done according to nature that is not an act of concupiscence against God. 22. Every act of concupiscence against God is evil and a fornication of the spirit. . . . 29. The best and infallible preparation for grace and the sole disposition toward grace is the eternal election and predestination of God. 30. On the part of man, however, nothing precedes grace except indisposition and even rebellion against grace. . . . 39. We are not masters of our actions, from beginning to end, but servants. This in opposition to the philosophers. 40. We do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds but, having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds. This in opposition to the philosophers. 41. Virtually the entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace. This in opposition to the scholastics. . . . 44. Indeed, no one can become a theologian unless he becomes one without Aristotle. . . . 50. Briefly, the whole Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light. This in opposition to the scholastics. . . . In these statements we wanted to say and believe we have said nothing that is not in agreement with the Catholic Church and the teachers of the church. 3. POPE LEO X’S INDULGENCE BULL (1517) This excerpt notes the particular reasons for the beginning of a new indulgence campaign. The lengthy papal bull goes on to specify in great detail

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

which sins can and cannot be covered by the indulgence. From Walch 15:232–43, trans. Eric Lund. Bishop Leo, a servant of the servants of God, to all Christian believers who will read this letter: salvation and apostolic greetings! After we, despite our unworthiness, succeeded by divine grace to the apostolic sovereignty, in addition to the other things that we constantly made it our concern to achieve and strove diligently to accomplish and that we longed for from the ground of our heart for the sake of those of lower degree, we were also attentive to the salvation of Christ-believing souls and the completion of the building of the cathedral of the prince of the apostles in the city [of Rome]. Although it is a good shepherd’s chief duty to make the flock entrusted to him blessed, as well as to build the heavenly court, it was also considered highly necessary to rebuild the church that is the head of all churches and the throne of the Apostolic See. Pope Julius II, of blessed memory, had always thought that he might accomplish both, and for that reason he bestowed a plenary indulgence and many spiritual gifts to stimulate Christian believers to do works of piety and to offer a helping hand to the building. We follow, then, in the footsteps of our remembered predecessor, and it is plentifully known by all Christians that St. Peter was made Prince of the Apostles by our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. The power to bind and loose souls was given over to him through divine grace, by these words: “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church. I will give you the keys of the kingdom, and whatever you bind on earth will also be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will also be loosed in heaven” [Matt 16:18–19]. And so we, despite our unworthiness, have become a successor to the selfsame possessor of the heavenly keys, and sit in his place in the holy church of God. Therefore although we are empowered by the divinely commanded apostolic office to care for all churches throughout the entire world, such that the churches as houses of God are not only erected but also where necessary repaired, we consider ourselves especially obligated to exert greater care and diligence for the cathedral of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, which has been mostly demolished and needs to be rebuilt and enlarged in a suitable fashion. . . . Moreover, since the church, the holy mother, has so many necessary costs to bear and does not have the resources for the completion of such a building, and since the building cannot be brought to its wished

9

end without the holy and ample contributions of Christian believers, we have out of concern for the salvation of Christ-believing souls . . . concluded in a fatherly manner that we will, trusting in the grace of almighty God and saints Peter and Paul, his apostles and the merits of all the saints and with good knowledge, forethought, and fullness of apostolic power, announce an indulgence for the full forgiveness of all sins for all Christian believers, both male and female, from whatever class, degree, rank, order, office, or dignity they may be and for the monks of all orders and other seculars in all lands and islands who repent and confess within one year of the announcement of our present letter. . . . This indulgence shall be as extensive as the indulgence announced in a holy year, and they will attain as much indulgence for the forgiveness of sins as if they fasted every day and visited all churches in Rome and other cities that Christians are accustomed to visit for their prayers. . . . Since the salvation of souls is promoted the more they receive the help of others and some may not be able to procure this assistance, we also permit the benefits of the treasury of the church, the holy mother, to be granted to the souls in purgatory who have departed from this world united through love with Christ and who have merited during their lifetimes that such help might come to them. Because we want sympathetically to help such souls as much as we can, out of divine grace and the fullness of apostolic power we declare that if some parents, friends, or other Christians contribute alms to the commissioners for the work of this building out of mercy for the souls in purgatory, the plenary indulgence shall be an aid to these souls for their deliverance from the penalties required by divine justice....... 4. LUTHER’S MEMORY OF THE INDULGENCE CONTROVERSY (1541) Luther offered these recollections in 1541 in the context of his polemical treatise, Against Hans Wurst. From LW 41:231–33, trans. Eric Gritsch; cf. WA 51:538. . . . It happened in the year 1517 that a preaching monk called Johann Tetzel, a great ranter, made his appearance. He had previously been rescued in Innsbruck by Duke Friedrich from a sack—for Maximilian had condemned him to be drowned in the river Inn (presumably on account of his great virtue)5—and Duke Friedrich reminded him of it when he began to slander us Wittenbergers; he also freely admitted it himself. This same Tetzel now

10

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

went around with indulgences, selling grace for money, as dearly or as cheaply as he could, to the best of his ability. At that time I was a preacher here in the monastery and a fledgling doctor fervent and enthusiastic for Holy Scripture. Now when many people from Wittenberg went to Jüterbog and Zerbst for indulgences, and I (as truly as my Lord Christ redeemed me) did not know what the indulgences were, as in fact no one knew, I began to preach very gently that one could probably do something better and more reliable than acquiring indulgences. I had also preached before in the same way against indulgences at the castle and had thus gained the disfavor of Duke Friedrich because he was very fond of his religious foundation.6 Now I—to point out the true cause of the Lutheran rumpus—let everything take its course. However, I heard what dreadful and abominable articles Tetzel was preaching, and some of them I shall mention now; namely: That he had such grace and power from the pope that even if someone seduced the holy Virgin Mary and made her conceive, he could forgive him, provided he placed the necessary sum in the box. . . . Again, that if St. Peter were here now, he would not have greater grace or power than he [Tetzel] had....... Again, that if anyone put money in the box for a soul in purgatory, the soul would fly to heaven as soon as the coin clinked on the bottom. Again, that the grace from indulgences was the same grace as that by which a man is reconciled to God. Again, that it was not necessary to have remorse, sorrow, or repentance for sin, if one bought (I ought to say, acquired) an indulgence or a dispensation; indeed, he sold also for future sins.7 He did an abominable amount of this, and it was all for the sake of money. I did not know at that time who would get the money. Then a booklet appeared, magnificently ornamented with the coat of arms of the bishop of Magdeburg, in which the sellers of indulgences were advised to preach some of these articles. It became quite evident that Bishop Albrecht had hired this Tetzel because he was a great ranter; for he was elected bishop of Mainz with the agreement that he was himself to buy (I mean acquire) the pallium at Rome. . . . Thus the bishop devised this scheme, hoping to pay the Fuggers (for they had advanced the money for the pallium) from the purse of the common man. And he sent this great fleecer of men’s pockets into the provinces; he fleeced them so thoroughly that a pile of money began to come clinking and clat-

tering into the boxes. He did not forget himself in this either. And in addition the pope had a finger in the pie as well, because one half was to go toward the building of St. Peter’s Church in Rome. Thus these fellows went about their work joyfully and full of hope, rattling their boxes under men’s purses and fleecing them. But, as I say, I did not know that at the time. . . . Then I wrote a letter with the Theses to the bishop of Magdeburg, admonishing and beseeching him to stop Tetzel and prevent this stupid thing from being preached, lest it give rise to public discontent—this was a proper thing for him to do as archbishop. I can still lay my hands on that letter, but I never received an answer. . . .

Fig. 1.4. Sketch of Martin Luther from the German translation of The Babylonian Captivity of the Church by artist Hans Baldung Grien (d. 1545) depicting the Reformer as an Augustinian monk expounding on the Bible.

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

5. LUTHER’S MEMORY OF A MOMENT OF INSIGHT (PREFACE TO LATIN WRITINGS, 1545) From LW 34:329–38, trans. Lewis Spitz Sr.; cf. WA 54:179–87. . . . When in the year 1517 indulgences were sold (I wanted to say promoted) in these regions for most shameful gain—I was then a preacher, a young doctor of theology, so to speak—and I began to dissuade the people and to urge them not to listen to the clamors of the indulgence hawkers; they had better things to do. I certainly thought that in this case I should have a protector in the pope, on whose trustworthiness I then leaned strongly, for in his decrees he most clearly damned the immoderation of the quaestors, as he called the indulgence preachers. Soon afterward I wrote two letters [doc. #6], one to Albrecht, the archbishop of Mainz, who got half of the money from the indulgences, the pope the other half—something I did not know at the time—the other to the ordinary (as they call them) Jerome, the bishop of Brandenburg. I begged them to stop the shameless blasphemy of the quaestors. But the poor little brother was despised. Despised, I published the Theses and at the same time a German Sermon on Indulgences [doc. #7], shortly thereafter also the Explanations [doc. #9], in which, to the pope’s honor, I developed the idea that indulgences should indeed not be condemned, but that good works of love should be preferred to them. This was demolishing heaven and consuming the earth with fire. I am accused by the pope, am cited to Rome, and the whole papacy rises up against me alone. All this happened in the year 1518, when Maximilian held the diet at Augsburg. In it, Cardinal Cajetan served as the pope’s Lateran legate. The most illustrious Duke Friedrich of Saxony, Elector Prince, approached him on my behalf and brought it about that I was not compelled to go to Rome, but that he himself should summon me to examine and compose the matter. Soon the diet adjourned. The Germans in the meantime, all tired of suffering the pillagings, traffickings, and endless impostures of Roman rascals, awaited with bated breath the outcome of so great a matter, which no one before, neither bishop nor theologian, had dared to touch. In any case that popular breeze favored me, because those practices and “Romanizations,” with which they had filled and tired the whole earth, were already hateful to all. So I came to Augsburg, afoot and poor, supplied

11

with food and letters of commendation from Prince Friedrich to the senate and to certain good men. I was there three days before I went to the cardinal, though he cited me day by day through a certain orator [Urbanus of Serralonga], for those excellent men forbade and dissuaded me most strenuously, not to go to the cardinal without a safe conduct from the emperor. The orator was rather troublesome to me, urging that if I should only revoke, everything would be all right [doc. #11]! But as great as the wrong, so long is the detour to its correction. . . . Maximilian [the emperor] died in the following year, 1519, in February, and according to the law of the empire Duke Friedrich was made deputy. Thereupon the storm ceased to rage a bit and gradually contempt of excommunication or papal thunderbolts arose. For when Eck and Caraccioli [a papal legate] brought a bull from Rome condemning Luther and revealed it, the former here, the latter there to Duke Friedrich, who was at Cologne at the time together with other princes in order to meet Charles who had been recently elected [emperor], Friedrich was most indignant. He reproved that papal rascal with great courage and constancy, because in his absence he and Eck had disturbed his and his brother Johann’s dominion. He jarred them so magnificently with incredible insight, caught on to the devices of the Roman Curia and knew how to deal with them in a becoming manner, for he had a keen nose and smelled more and farther than the Romanists could hope or fear. . . . The gospel advanced happily under the shadow of that prince and was widely propagated. His authority influenced very many, for since he was a very wise and most keen-sighted prince, he could incur the suspicion only among the hateful that he wanted to nourish and protect heresy and heretics. This did the papacy great harm. That same year the Leipzig debate was held, to which Eck had challenged us two, Karlstadt and me [doc. #13]. But I could not, in spite of all my letters, get a safe conduct from Duke Georg [of Albertine Saxony]. Accordingly, I came to Leipzig not as a prospective debater, but as a spectator under the safe conduct granted to Karlstadt. Who stood in my way I do not know, for till then Duke Georg was not against me. This I know for certain. Here Eck came to me in my lodgings and said he had heard that I refused to debate. I replied, “How can I debate, since I cannot get a safe conduct from Duke Georg?” “If I cannot debate with you,” he said, “neither do I want to with Karlstadt, for I have come here on your account. What if I obtain a safe con-

12

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

duct for you? Would you then debate with me?” “Obtain,” said I, “and it shall be.” He left and soon a safe conduct was given me too and the opportunity to debate. . . . Meanwhile, I had already during that year returned to interpret the Psalter anew. I had confidence in the fact that I was more skillful, after I had lectured in the university on St. Paul’s Epistles to the Romans, to the Galatians, and the one to the Hebrews. I had indeed been captivated with an extraordinary ardor for understanding Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. But up till then it was not the cold blood about the heart, but a single word in chapter 1[:17], “In it the righteousness of God is revealed,” that had stood in my way. For I hated that word “righteousness of God,” which, according to the use and custom of all the teachers, I had been taught to understand philosophically regarding the formal or active righteousness, as they called it, with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner. Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, “As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!” Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at that place, most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted. At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, “In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’” There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.” Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me. Thereupon I ran through the Scriptures from memory. I also found in other terms an analogy, as, the

work of God, that is, what God does in us, the power of God, with which he makes us strong, the wisdom of God, with which he makes us wise, the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.

Fig. 1.5. Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz. Engraving by Dürer, 1519.

And I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word “righteousness of God.” Thus that place in Paul was for me truly the gate of paradise. Later I read Augustine’s The Spirit and the Letter, where contrary to hope I found that he too interpreted God’s righteousness in a similar way, as the righteousness with which God clothes us when he justifies us. Although this was heretofore said imperfectly and he did not explain all things concerning imputation clearly, it nevertheless was pleasing that God’s righteousness with which we are justified was taught. . . . I relate these things, good reader, so that, if you are a reader of my puny works, you may keep in mind, that, as I said above, I was all alone and one of those who, as Augustine says of himself, have become proficient by writing and teaching. I was not one of those who from nothing suddenly become the topmost, though they are nothing, neither have labored, nor been tempted, nor become experienced, but have with one look at the Scriptures exhausted their entire spirit. To this point, to the years 1520 and 1521, the indulgence matter proceeded. Upon that followed

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

the Sacramentarian and the Anabaptist affairs (cf. doc. #33, 35 and 36). . . . 6. LUTHER’S LETTER TO ARCHBISHOP ALBRECHT (OCTOBER 31, 1517) From The Annotated Luther Luther, vol. 1, The Roots of Ref Reform orm, ed. and trans. Timothy Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 51–55. Cf. LW 48:46–49 and WABr 1:110–11. . . . Under your most distinguished [name and] title, papal indulgences are being disseminated among the people for the construction of St. Peter’s [in Rome]. In these matters, I do not so much find fault with the cries of the preachers, which I have not heard, but I do bewail the people’s completely false understanding, gleaned from these fellows, which they spread everywhere among common folk. For example, these poor souls believe: if they were to purchase these letters of indulgence they would then be assured of their salvation; likewise, that souls immediately leap from purgatory when they have thrown a contribution into the chest; and then that the graces [of indulgences] are so great no sin is of such magnitude that it cannot be forgiven—even if (as they say) someone should rape the Mother of God, were this possible; likewise, that through these indulgences a person is freed from every penalty and guilt. O great God! In this way, excellent Father, souls committed to your care are being directed to death. A most severe reckoning has fallen on you above all others and is indeed growing. For that reason, I could no longer keep silent about these things. For a human being does not attain security about salvation through any episcopal function since a person does not even become secure through the infused grace of God. But instead the Apostle [Paul] orders us constantly to “work out our salvation in fear and trembling” [Phil 2:12-13]. “It is [even] hard for the righteous to be saved” [1 Pet 4:18]. Furthermore, “the way is so narrow that leads to life,” that the Lord through the prophets Amos and Zechariah calls those that will be saved “a brand plucked out of the fire.” The Lord, too, announces the difficulty of salvation everywhere. How then can the [indulgence preachers] make the people secure and unafraid through these false tales and promises linked to indulgences, given that indulgences confer upon souls nothing of benefit for salvation or holiness but only remove external penalty, once customarily imposed by the [penitential] canons?

13

Furthermore, works of godliness and love are infinitely better than indulgences, and yet [the indulgence preachers] do not preach such with the same kind of pomp and effort. On the contrary, they remain silent about those works for the sake of preaching indulgences, even though it is the first and sole duty of all bishops that the people learn the gospel and the love of Christ. For Christ nowhere commanded indulgences to be preached. Therefore, what a horror, what a danger to a bishop if – while the gospel is being silenced – he only permits the clamoring of indulgences among his people and is more concerned with them than the gospel! Did not Christ say to them, “You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel” [Matt 23:24]? Added to this, my Most Reverend Father in the Lord, is the fact that in that [Summary] Instruction for the indulgence commissioners, published under Your Fatherly name, it is stated (surely without the consent or knowledge of your Reverend Father) that one of the principal graces [of this Peter’s Indulgence] is that inestimable gift of God by which a human being is reconciled to God and all penalties of purgatory are blotted out. Likewise, [it stated] that contrition is not necessary for those who purchase souls [from purgatory] or acquire confessional privileges. But what can I do, Most Excellent Prelate and Most Illustrious Sovereign, except beseech you, through our Lord Jesus Christ that you may deign to turn your fatherly eye toward [this matter] and completely withdraw this little book and impose upon the preachers of indulgences another form of preaching? Otherwise, perhaps, someone may arise who by publishing pamphlets may refute those [preachers] and that booklet [the Summary Instruction] – to the greatest disgrace for Your Most Illustrious Highness – something that I indeed would strongly hate to have happen, and yet fear that it may happen in the future unless things are quickly remedied. I beg Your Most Illustrious Grace to deign to accept in a princely and episcopal, that is, in the kindest way this faithful service of my humble self, just as I, too, with a most faithful and devoted heart am presenting these things to you, Reverend Father. For I, too, am part of your flock. May the Lord Jesus protect you forever, Most Reverent Father! Amen. If it pleases the Reverend Father, he could examine my disputation [theses], so that he may understand how dubious a thing this opinion about indulgences is, an opinion that those preachers disseminate with such complete certainty. Your unworthy son, Martin Luther

14

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Augustinian, called as Doctor of Sacred Theology 7. LUTHER’S SERMON ON INDULGENCE AND GRACE (MARCH, 1518) From WA 1:243, trans. Eric Lund. First, you should know that some modern teachers such as the Master of the Sentences [Peter Lombard], St. Thomas [Aquinas], and their followers suppose penance to have three parts, namely contrition, confession, and satisfaction. Although it will be discovered that their view of this differentiation is hardly or not at all based on Holy Scripture or on the ancient holy Christian teachers, we will let that rest for now and speak according to their way. Second, they say that the indulgence removes not the first or second part, that is contrition or confession, but the third part, namely satisfaction. Third, satisfaction is further divided into three parts: praying, fasting, and almsgiving. Praying includes all kinds of work that pertain to the soul, such as reading, meditating, hearing God’s word, preaching, teaching, and the like. Fasting includes all kinds of work for the mortification of one’s flesh, such as vigils, labors, a hard bed, matters of clothing, and so on. Almsgiving encompasses all kinds of good works of love and mercy toward one’s neighbors. Fourth, it is doubtless in all of their minds that the indulgence takes the place of the same works of satisfaction that are owed or imposed because of sins; so that if the indulgence were to take the place of all of these works, no good work would remain for us to do. Fifth, for many there has been an important and still unresolved issue whether the indulgence also removes something more than such imposed good works, namely whether the indulgence also removes the suffering that God’s righteousness demands for sins. . . . Ninth, I say, even if the Christian church would today decide and declare that the indulgence removes more than the works of satisfaction, it would still be a thousand times better if no Christian would buy or desire the indulgence but would rather do the works and endure the suffering. For the indulgence is and cannot be anything other than a release from good works and wholesome suffering that one should rather welcome than avoid (in spite of the fact that some modern preachers have invented two kinds of suffering: remedial and satisfactory, that is, some suffering for satisfaction and some for improvement). But we have more freedom to scorn the likes of such

babble (God be praised) than they have to invent it. For all suffering—yes, everything God imposes—is beneficial and salutary to Christians. . . . Thirteenth, it is a great error for anyone to think that he can make satisfaction for his own sins since God always freely forgives them out of his priceless grace and desires nothing more than that a person live rightly thereafter. Christianity actually does demand something. Therefore it can and also should remit the same and impose nothing difficult or unbearable. Fourteenth, the indulgence is allowed for the sake of imperfect and indolent Christians who do not want to be bold in good works or are insufferable. The indulgence helps no one improve but tolerates and allows for imperfection. Therefore one should not speak against the indulgence, but one should also not speak in favor of it. . . . Seventeenth, the indulgences are not commanded and also not advised. Rather, it is counted among those things that are permitted and allowed. Therefore it is not a work of obedience and also not meritorious but, instead, a flight from obedience. Therefore, while no one should prevent anyone from buying the same, still one should draw all Christians away from the indulgence and stir them up and strengthen them for the good works and suffering that they remit. Eighteenth, whether souls are drawn out of purgatory through the indulgence, I do not know. I do not yet believe it, despite the fact that some modern doctors say so, because they cannot prove it, and the church has not yet established it. Therefore to be more secure, it is much better that you pray for them yourself and do your work, for this is more valuable and certain. . . . Twentieth, some may now rebuke me as a heretic, for such truth is very damaging to their treasury. I do not pay much attention to their bawling since that can only be done by some darkened minds that never got a whiff of Scripture, never read the Christian teachers, never understood their own teachers, but prefer to rot in their riddled and ripped up opinions. If they had understood these, they would know they ought to defame no man unheard and unvanquished. Still, may God give them and us right understanding. Amen.

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

8. LUTHER: THE HEIDELBERG DISPUTATION (MAY, 1518) From The Annotated Luther Luther, vol. 1, The Roots of Ref Reform orm, ed. Timothy Wengert, trans. Suzanne Hequet (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 80–120. Cf. LW 31:39–70 and WA 1:354–74. Thesis 3 Although the works of human beings always seem attractive and good, it is nevertheless probable that they are mortal sins. Human works appear attractive outwardly, but within they are filthy, as Christ says concerning the Pharisees in Matthew 23[:27]. They appear to the doer and to others good and beautiful, yet God does not judge according to appearances but searches “the minds and hearts” [Ps 7:9]. For without grace and faith it is impossible to have a pure heart. Acts 15[:9]: “cleansing their hearts by faith.” The thesis is proven in the following way: If the works of the righteous are sins, as thesis 7 of this disputation states, this is much more the case concerning the works of those who are not righteous. But the righteous speak in behalf of their works in the following way: “Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you” [Ps 143:2]. Second, the Apostle speaks in Galatians 3[:10], “For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse.” But the works of human beings are works of the law, and the curse will not be placed upon venial sins. Therefore they are mortal sins. . . .

15

Thesis 16 The person who believes that one can obtain grace “by doing what is in oneself” adds sin to sin and thus becomes doubly guilty. On the basis of what has been said, the following is clear: People “doing what is in them” sin and seek their own things in everything. But if they should suppose that through sin they become worthy of, or apt for, grace, they would add haughty arrogance to their sin and not believe that sin is sin and evil is evil, which is an exceedingly great sin. As Jeremiah 2[:13] says, “For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water,” that is, through sin they are far from me and yet they presume to do good by their own ability. Now you ask, “What then shall we do? Shall we be idle because we can do nothing but sin?” I would reply, By no means. But, having heard this, fall down and pray for grace and place your hope in Christ in whom is our salvation, life, and resurrection. For this reason, we are so instructed—for this reason the law makes us aware of sin so that, having recognized our sin, we may seek and obtain grace. Thus, God “gives grace to the humble” [1 Pet 5:5], and “all who humble themselves will be exalted” [Matt 23:12]. The law humbles, grace exalts. The law effects fear and wrath, grace effects hope and mercy. “Through the law comes knowledge of sin” [Rom 3:20]; through knowledge of sin, however, comes humility, and through humility grace is acquired. Thus an action which is alien to God’s nature results in a deed proper to his very nature: God makes a person a sinner so that he may make him righteous.

Thesis 13 Free will, after [the fall into] sin, exists in name only, and when “it does what is within it,” it commits a mortal sin. The first part is clear, for the will is captive and subject to sin. Not that it is nothing but that it is not free except to do evil. According to John 8[:34, 36], “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. . . . So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” Hence St. Augustine says in his book The Spirit and the Letter, “Free will without grace has the power to do nothing but sin”; and in the second book of Against Julian, “You call the will free, but in fact it is an enslaved will,” and in many other places. . . .

Thesis 25 That person is not righteous who works much, but who without work believes much in Christ. For the righteousness of God is not acquired by means of acts frequently repeated, as Aristotle taught, but it is imparted by faith, for “the one who is righteous will live by faith” (Rom 1[:17]), and “for one believes with the heart and so is justified” (Rom 10[:10]). Therefore I wish to have the words “without work” understood in the following manner: Not that the righteous person does nothing, but that one’s works do not do righteousness and instead that one’s righteousness does works.For grace and faith are infused without our works. After they have been infused, works follow. Thus, Romans 3[:20] states,

16

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

“No human being will be justified in His sight by deeds prescribed by the law,” and, “For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law” (Rom 3[:28]), that is, works contribute nothing to justification. Thus, because people know that works done by such faith are not their own, but God’s, therefore they do not seek to become justified or glorified through such works but seek God. Their justification by faith in Christ suffices for them, that is, Christ is their wisdom, righteousness, etc., as 1 Corinthians 1[:30] has it, but they may be Christ’s action and instrument.

second part is clear from the same sources, for faith justifies. “And the law (says St. Augustine) commands what faith obtains.” For through faith Christ is in us, indeed, one with us. Christ is righteous, fulfilling all the commands of God, wherefore we also fulfill everything through him as long as he has been made ours through faith. 9. LUTHER’S EXPLANATION OF THE NINETY-FIVE THESES (AUGUST, 1518) Luther wrote this conciliatory treatise over several months in response to what he considered to be misinterpretations of the original theses by his opponents. At this time, he had still not completely rejected belief in purgatory, the treasury of merits, or the special authority of the pope. From LW 31:154–231, trans. Carl Folkemer. Thesis 25

Fig. 1.6. Castle Church in Wittenberg.

Thesis 26 The law says, “Do this,” and it is never done. Grace says, “Believe in this One,” and everything has already been done. The first part is clear from what has been stated by the Apostle and his interpreter, St. Augustine, in many places. And it has been stated often enough above that the law works wrath and keeps all people under the curse. The

That power that the pope has in general over purgatory corresponds to the power that any bishop or curate has in a particular way in his own diocese or parish. . . . I doubt and dispute whether the popes have the power of jurisdiction over purgatory. As much as I have read and perceive up to this moment, I hold fast to the negative position. I am prepared, however, to maintain the affirmative after the church has decided upon it. Meanwhile, I speak here concerning the power of energies, not of laws—the power of working, not of commanding—so that the meaning is this: The pope has absolutely no authority over purgatory, nor does any other bishop. If, however, he does have some authority, he certainly has only the same kind in which his subordinates also share. Moreover, this is an authority by which the pope and any Christian who so wishes can intercede, pray for, fast, etc., on behalf of departed souls—the pope in a general way, the bishops in a particular way, and the Christian in an individual way. Therefore it is evident that the thesis is absolutely true. For just as the pope, at one time and with the whole church, may intercede for souls (as is done on All Souls’ Day), so every bishop who wishes may do it with his own diocese, also the curate in his own parish (as is done at funerals and anniversaries), and any Christian who wishes in his own private devotion. Either one denies that such aid is an intercession or else concedes that each and every prelate, along with his subordinates, can intercede for souls. . . .

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

Thesis 28 It is certain that when money clinks in the money chest, greed and avarice can be increased; but when the church intercedes, the result is in the hands of God alone. It is strange that my opponents do not preach the most precious gospel of Christ with as great a desire and loud wailing as they do other things. The fact that they seem to think more of profit than of piety makes me suspicious of this business. Perhaps, however, they may be justifiably excused by the fact that they do not know the gospel of Christ. Therefore, since indulgences possess no piety, no merit, and are not a command of Christ, but only something that is permitted, even though it may be a pious work that redeems people, it certainly appears that profit rather than piety is increased by indulgences. For these indulgences are promoted so extensively and exclusively that the gospel is treated as an inferior thing and is hardly mentioned. . . . Thesis 41 Papal indulgences must be preached with caution, lest people erroneously think that they are preferable to other good works of love. I would say this to people: Look, brothers, you ought to know that there are three types of good works that can be done by expending money. The first and foremost consists of giving to the poor or lending to a neighbor who is in need and in general of coming to the aid of anyone who suffers, whatever may be his need. This work ought to be done with such earnestness that even the building of churches must be interrupted and the taking of offerings for the purchase of holy vessels and for the decoration of churches be discontinued. After this has been done and there is no longer anyone who is in need, then should follow the second type, namely contributing to the building of our churches and hospitals in our country, then to buildings of public service. However, after this has been done, then, finally, if you so desire, you may give, in the third place, for the purchase of indulgences. The first type of good work has been commanded by Christ; there is no divine command for the last type. If you should say, “With that type of preaching very little money would be collected through indulgences,” I answer, I believe that. But what is so strange about that, since popes by means of indulgences do not seek money but the salvation of souls, as is evident in those indulgences that they bestow

17

at the consecration of churches and altars? So they do not wish through their indulgences to hinder the better things but rather to promote charity. I say very frankly that whoever teaches people otherwise and reverses this order is not a teacher but a seducer of people, unless people because of their sins at times do not deserve to hear the truth rightly preached. Thesis 62 The true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God. The gospel of God is something that is not very well known to a large part of the church. Therefore I must speak of it at greater length. Christ has left nothing to the world except the gospel. Also he has handed down to those who have been called to be his servants no such things as minae, talents, riches, and denarii, in order to show by these terms that speak of temporal treasures that the gospel is the true treasure. And Paul says that he himself lays up treasures for his children [2 Cor 12:14]. Christ speaks of the gospel as a treasure that is hidden in a field [Matt 13:44]. And because it is hidden, it is at the same time also neglected. Moreover, according to the apostle in Romans 1[:3–6], the gospel is a preaching of the incarnate Son of God, given to us without any merit on our part for salvation and peace. It is a work of salvation, a word of grace, a word of comfort, a word of joy, a voice of the bridegroom and the bride, a good word, a word of peace. Isaiah says, chapter 52[:7], “How beautiful . . . are the feet of those who bring good tidings, who publish peace, who preach good tidings.” But the law is a word of destruction, a word of wrath, a word of sadness, a word of grief, a voice of the judge and the defendant, a word of restlessness, a word of curse. For according to the apostle, “The law is the power of sin” [cf. 1 Cor 15:56], and “the law brings wrath” [Rom 4:15]; it is a law of death [Rom 7:5, 13]. Through the law we have nothing except an evil conscience, a restless heart, a troubled breath because of our sins, which the law points out but does not take away. And we ourselves cannot take it away. Therefore for those of us who are held captive, who are overwhelmed by sadness and in dire despair, the light of the gospel comes and says, “Fear not” [Isa 35:4], “comfort, comfort my people” [Isa 40:1], “encourage the fainthearted” [1 Thess 5:14], “behold your God” [Isa 40:9], “behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” [John 1:29]. Behold that one who alone fulfills the law for

18

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

you, whom God has made to be your righteousness, sanctification, wisdom, and redemption, for all those who believe in him [1 Cor 1:30]. When the sinful conscience hears this sweetest messenger, it comes to life again, shouts for joy while leaping about full of confidence, and no longer fears death, the types of punishment associated with death, or hell. Therefore those who are still afraid of punishments have not yet heard Christ or the voice of the gospel, but only the voice of Moses. Therefore the true glory of God springs from this gospel. At the same time we are taught that the law is fulfilled not by our works but by the grace of God, who pities us in Christ, and that it shall be fulfilled not through works but through faith, not by anything we offer God but by all we receive from Christ and partake of in him. “From his fullness have we all received” [John 1:16], and we are partakers of his merits. I have spoken of this more extensively on other occasions. LUTHER ON TRIAL 10. PRIERAS’S DIALOGUE CONCERNING THE POWER OF THE POPE (DECEMBER, 1517) Sylvester Mazzolini, also known as Prieras (1456–1523) was a Dominican theologian at the papal court who was commissioned by Pope Leo X to respond to Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses. From Dialog Dialogus us de potestate papae papae, in Dokumente zur Causa Lutheri Lutheri, vol. 1, ed. Peter Fabisch and Erwin Iserloh (Münster: Aschendorff, 1988), 1:52–56, trans. Eric Lund.

when it does its best to discern the truth is not able to err. On first glance it may appear fallible, and while in the process of inquiring about the truth, it may err to some degree, but in the end it will be able to discern the truth through the Holy Spirit. Similarly, neither the Roman Church nor its Supreme Pontiff, when acting in his official capacity as pope, is able to err when he does his best to discern the truth. The Third Fundamental Proposition: Whoever does not accept the doctrine of the Roman Church and of the Roman pontiff as the infallible rule of faith from which sacred Scripture draws its strength and authority is a heretic. The Fourth Fundamental Proposition: The Roman Church is able to decide something concerning faith and morals by action as well as by word. Nor are these different except that words are more adaptable than actions. By this reasoning, custom obtains the strength of law because the will of a ruler is expressed either by permission given to others or practically by things done. Consequently, in the same way that a person is a heretic who thinks wrongly about the truth of Scripture, so also that person is a heretic who thinks wrongly about the teachings and actions of the church concerning faith and morals. The Corollary: Whoever says concerning indulgences that the Roman Church is not able to do what in fact she does is a heretic. Act now, Martin, and report your conclusions out in the open.

The First Fundamental Proposition: The universal church is essentially the assembly in divine worship of all believers in Christ. Indeed for all practical purposes the universal church is the Roman Church, the head of all churches, and its Supreme Pontiff. The Roman Church is to be found, by representation, in the college of cardinals but is, in effect, the highest Pontiff, who is head of the church, although in a different sense than Christ is head. The Second Fundamental Proposition: Just as the universal church is not able to err in determining faith or morals, so also a true council

11. PROCEEDINGS AT AUGSBURG (LUTHER’S INTERVIEW WITH CARDINAL CAJETAN, OCTOBER, 1518) Luther published this account after his return from three days of discussion with the cardinal at the Diet of Augsburg. From The Annotated Luther Luther, vol. 1, The Roots of Ref Reform orm, ed. Timothy Wengert, trans. Suzanne Hequet (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 133, 157–65. Cf. LW 31:263, 284–85 and WA 2:6–26. . . . I, with a notary and witnesses who had been brought to the meeting, testified formally and per-

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

sonally by reading in the presence of the most reverend legate the following: Principally, I, Brother Martin Luther, Augustinian, declare publicly that I cherish and follow the holy Roman Church in all my words and actions—present, past, and future. If I have said or shall say anything contrary to this, I wish it to be considered as not having been said. The most reverend cardinal Cajetan by command of the pope has asserted, proposed, and urged that with respect to the earlier disputation which I held on indulgences, I do these three things: first, to come to my senses and recant my error; second, to pledge not to repeat it in the future; and third, to promise to abstain from all things which might disturb the church. . . . Today I declare publicly that I am not conscious of having said anything contrary to Holy Scripture, the church fathers, the papal decretals, or right reason. All that I have said today seems to me to have been sensible, true, and catholic. . . . . . . Jurists may emphasize their traditions, whereas we theologians preserve the purity of Scripture. We do this particularly because in our time we see evil flatterers appear, who elevate the pope over the councils. The consequence is that one council is condemned by another until nothing certain remains for us. And finally, one man, the pope, can crush all things underfoot, since he is at the same time both above the council and within it. He is above it since he can condemn it, within it since he accepts authority from the council as from a higher power, by means of which he becomes higher than the council. There are also those who brazenly state in public that the pope cannot err and is above Scripture. If these monstrous claims were admitted, Scripture would perish and consequently the church also, and nothing would remain in the church but the word of humans. These flatterers actually seek to arouse hatred for the church, and then its ruin and destruction. For this reason, dear reader, I declare before you that I cherish and follow the church in all things. I resist only those who in the name of the Roman Church strive to erect a Babylon for us. And they wish that whatever occurs to them—if only they could move the tongue enough to mention the Roman Church—be accepted as the interpretation of the Roman Church, as if Holy Scripture no longer existed (according to which [as Augustine says] we must judge all things), but against which the Roman Church certainly never teaches or acts. . . .

19

12. PAPAL BULL CUM POSTQUAM (ON INDULGENCES, NOVEMBER 9, 1518) From Walch 25:626–31, trans. Eric Lund. It has come to our attention that some monks in Germany who are ordained for the preaching of the word of God have imprinted errors on many hearts through public sermons about the indulgences that we and preceding Roman popes have dispensed from time immemorial. This was difficult and distressing to learn. . . . So that no one will be able to plead ignorance of the doctrine of the Roman Church concerning such indulgences and their efficacy or make excuses under the pretext of ignorance or seek the aid of fabricated protestations, and so that those who try to do so may be judged guilty of notorious lying and justifiably condemned, we have decided that you should be informed by our representatives among you that the Roman Church, which all other churches are bound to follow as their mother, has handed down that the Roman pontiff is the successor of Peter, bearer of the keys, and the vicar of Jesus Christ on earth. By the power of the keys that are able to open the kingdom of heaven and remove impediments in the faithful of Christ (namely the guilt and punishment owed for actual sins, the guilt remedied by the sacrament of penance, and the temporal punishment due for actual sins according to divine justice remedied by the indulgence of the church), [the pontiff] can for reasonable causes grant indulgences from the superabundant merits of Christ and the saints to the same faithful of Christ. Through the bond of love, they are members of Christ’s body whether they be in this life or in purgatory; thus, the pontiff by apostolic authority dispenses the treasury of the merits of Jesus Christ and the saints by granting the indulgence to both the living and the dead. He has been accustomed to confer the same indulgence by means of absolution or to transfer it by means of suffrage. And therefore all who have truly attained such indulgences, be they living or dead, are freed from temporal punishments that are owed by divine justice for their actual sins, to the amount equivalent to the distributed and acquired indulgence. We determine by apostolic authority and in accordance with these present writings that this ought to be preached and all should uphold it or else bear the penalty of a sentence of excommunication, which cannot be absolved (except in cases when death immediately threatens) by anyone other than the Roman pontiff.......

20

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

13. LUTHER’S LETTER TO SPALATIN ON THE LEIPZIG DEBATE (JULY 20, 1519) Johannes Eck (1486–1543) was a theologian from the University of Ingolstadt who wrote an early critical response to Luther’s theses. After this debate at Leipzig, he traveled to Rome and helped draft the papal bull Exsurge Domine (doc. #14). From LW 31:320–23, trans. Harold Grimm; cf. WABr 1:420–24. . . . Eck and Karlstadt at first debated for seven days over the freedom of the will. With God’s help Karlstadt advanced his arguments and explanations excellently and in great abundance from books that he had brought with him. Then when Karlstadt had also been given the opportunity of rebuttal, Eck refused to debate unless the books were left at home. Andreas [Karlstadt] had used the books to demonstrate to Eck’s face that he had correctly quoted the words of Scripture and the church fathers, that he had not done violence to them as Eck was now shown to have done. This marked the beginning of another uproar until at length it was decided to Eck’s advantage that the books should be left at home. . . . The next week, Eck debated with me, at first very acrimoniously, concerning the primacy of the papacy. His proof rested on the words, “You are Peter” [Matt 16:18], “Feed my sheep, . . . follow me” [John 21:17, 22], and “strengthen your brethren” [Luke 22:32], adding to these passages many quotations from the church fathers. What I answered you will soon see. Then, coming to the last point, he rested his case entirely on the Council of Konstanz, which had condemned Huss’s article alleging that papal authority derived from the emperor instead of from God.8 Then Eck stamped about with much ado as though he were in an arena, holding up the Bohemian before me and publicly accusing me of the heresy and support of the Bohemian heretics, for he is a sophist, no less impudent than rash. These accusations tickled the Leipzig audience more than the debate itself. In rebuttal I brought up the Greek Christians during the past thousand years and also the ancient church fathers, who had not been under the authority of the Roman pontiff, although I did not deny the primacy of honor due the pope.9 Finally we also debated the authority of a council. I publicly acknowledged that some articles had been wrongly condemned [by the Council of Konstanz], articles that had been taught in plain and clear words by Paul, Augustine, and even Christ himself. At this

point the adder swelled up, exaggerated my crime, and nearly went insane in his adulation of the Leipzig audience. Then I proved by the words of the council itself that not all the articles that it condemned were actually heretical and erroneous. So Eck’s proof had accomplished nothing. There the matter rested.

Fig. 1.7. The title page of Exsurge Domine, published in Rome in 1520.

The third week Eck and I debated penance, purgatory, indulgences, and the power of a priest to grant absolution, for Eck did not like to debate with Karlstadt and asked me to debate alone with him. The debate over indulgences fell completely flat, for Eck agreed with me in nearly all respects, and his former defense of indulgences came to appear like mockery and derision, whereas I had hoped that this would be the main topic of the debate. He finally acknowledged his position in public sermons so that even the common people could see that he was not concerned with indulgences. He also is supposed to have said that if I had not questioned the power of the pope, he would readily have agreed with me in all matters. . . . He conceded one thing in the disputation hall but taught the people the opposite in church. When confronted by Karlstadt with the reason for his change-

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

ableness, the man answered without blinking an eye that it was not necessary to teach the people that which was debatable. . . . 14. PAPAL BULL EXSURGE DOMINE (THE THREAT OF EXCOMMUNICATION, JUNE 15, 1520) From Bullarum diplomatum et privileg privilegium ium sanctorum romanorum pontificum taurinensis editio editio, vol. 5 (Turin: Franco & Dalmazzo, 1860), 748–57 (cf. Walch 25:1426–57), trans. Eric Lund. . . . Rise up, Lord, and judge your cause. Be mindful of the slander that the foolish spread about all day long [Ps 74:22]. Incline your ear to our prayers. Foxes have arisen and have attempted to ruin the vineyard [Song 2:15], whose winepress you alone have trodden [Isa 63:3]. When you ascended to your Father in heaven, you commended the care, management, and administration of this vineyard to Peter as its head and as your representative and also to his successors, as the church triumphant. A wild boar of the woods has attempted to destroy this vineyard, and a wild beast wishes to devour it [Ps 80:13]. Rise up, Peter, and in accordance with the pastoral care entrusted to you by God, attend to this cause of the holy Roman Church, the mother of all churches, the mistress of the faith, which you by God’s command have sanctified with your blood and against which, as you have said before [2 Pet 2:1], teachers of lies have arisen, introducing pernicious sects. . . . Rise up, we also pray, Paul, who by your teaching and likewise your martyrdom enlightened this church. . . . Finally, rise up, all you saints and the whole remaining universal church. . . . Rise up, I say, and, together with the most blessed apostles, make intercession that almighty God, after purging all errors from his flock and driving out all heresies from the domain of the faithful, might deign to preserve the peace and unity of his holy church. . . . We can scarcely mention the reports and rumors brought to us by trustworthy and reputable sources without feeling anguish and pain. Unfortunately, with our own eyes we have also seen and read about many and various errors that have been stirred up and disseminated recently by certain thoughtless teachers in the renowned nation of Germany. Some of these errors have already been condemned by councils and the decrees of our predecessors and clearly replicate the heresies of the Greeks and the Bohemians. Others are truly heretical or false or scandalous ideas that offend the ears of the pious yet seduce the

21

simpleminded. These are spread about by false caretakers of the faith, who have an arrogant desire for worldly honor and, in opposition to the teachings of the apostle Paul [1 Thess 2:7], want to be wiser than is appropriate. . . . Therefore, by reason of the pastoral office laid upon us by divine grace, we can in no way tolerate or ignore the poisonous virus of these errors any longer without marring the Christian religion or doing injury to the orthodox faith. We have drawn up a list of some of these errors [41 in toto], which are as follows: . . . 5. That the threefold division of penance into contrition, confession, and satisfaction is not based on either holy Scripture or the writings of the ancient and holy Christian teachers. . . . 10. That no sins are remitted unless, when the priest pronounces absolution, a person believes that they are remitted. . . . 13. That in the sacrament of penance or the remission of guilt, the pope or the bishop does no more than the lowliest priest, and furthermore, that where there is no priest, any Christian whatsoever could do the same—even a woman or a child. . . . 15. That they are greatly in error who approach the Eucharist relying on the fact that they have confessed, are not conscious of any mortal sin, and have performed their prayers and preparations: all these eat and drink to their own judgment. But if they believe and are confident that they will find grace there, this faith alone makes them pure and worthy. 16. That the church has apparently determined by a general council that the laity should receive communion in both kinds; so, the Bohemians, who commune in both kinds, are not heretics—but schismatics. 17. That the treasures of the church from which the pope grants indulgences are not the merits of Christ and the saints. . . . 19. That even those indulgences that are sincerely attained have no power for the remission of the penalties that are owed for actual sins according to divine justice. . . . 25. That the Roman pontiff, successor of Peter, is not the vicar of Christ over all churches throughout the whole world, ordained as such by Christ himself in blessed Peter. 26. That the word of Christ to Peter: “Whatever you loose on earth,” etc. [Matt 16:19], applies only to what Peter himself bound. . . . 28. That if the pope, together with a large part of the church, holds this or that opinion—and even one that is not an error, it is still neither a sin nor heresy

22

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

to hold a contrary view, especially on matters that are not necessary for salvation, up to the time when a universal council will have condemned one view and approved the other. . . . 31. That in every good work a righteous person sins. . . . 35. That, on account of the most secret vice of pride, no one can be certain of not sinning mortally all the time. 36. That free will after sin is a thing in name only, and that when it does the best it can, it sins mortally. 37. That purgatory cannot be proved from the sacred Scriptures that are in the canon. . . . Since these errors, and many others, are found in the writings or pamphlets of Martin Luther, . . . we condemn, reject, and denounce these pamphlets and all the writings and sermons of this Martin, whether they appear in Latin or any other form. . . . Pertaining to this same Martin: good God!, what haven’t we let pass, what haven’t we done, what fatherly love did we not exercise in order that we might call him back from these kinds of errors? After we had cited him, wanting to deal with him most gently, we appealed to him through many treatises by our legates and admonished him by our writings to depart from his errors. . . . But he dared to show contempt for our citation and each and every one of our appeals, enduring a censure with a hardened heart for more than a year and remaining defiant until the present day. . . . Therefore, we solemnly appeal to this same Martin and his associates, his protectors and supporters, . . . to stop disturbing the peace, unity, and truth of the church for which the Savior fervently prayed to the Father [John 17:11] . . . and to abstain entirely from proclaiming such pernicious errors. . . . If love of righteousness and virtue will not draw him back and the hope of pardon will not bring him again to repentance, then fear of the pain of punishment might influence him. Therefore, we order him and his accomplices . . . to desist from preaching, publishing, or asserting his errors within sixty days (three periods of twenty days) of the affixing of this bull at the places mentioned below. . . . This same Martin is to retract his errors and such assertions entirely, and this revocation should be transmitted to us within another sixty days in the form of a legal, public document sealed by the hands of two prelates. Or, if he wishes, he should come to us under a safeconduct, which we will now grant, to inform us in person. This would be preferable in order to leave no doubt of his true obedience. If, however, this Martin, his supporters, accom-

plices, associates, and protectors should act contrary to these orders and fail to fulfill each and every one of these conditions within the stipulated period of time, we shall, in keeping with the teachings of the apostle, who advises that we should shun a heretic after a first and second admonition [Titus 3:10], declare this Martin, his supporters, adherents, accomplices, and protectors . . . to be notorious and obstinate heretics. . . . We shall seize and subject each and every one of them to legal penalties. . . .

Fig. 1.8. This historiated title page border of Luther’s On Good Works features the crest of the printer, Melchior Lotter, the Younger, at the foot. It has been attributed to Lucas Cranach, the Elder, or to his workshop.

15. LUTHER: APPEAL TO THE GERMAN NOBILITY (AUGUST, 1520) The following excerpt summarizes some of Luther’s major reform proposals. From LW 44:115–217, trans. Charles M. Jacobs, rev. James Atkinson. Cf. The Annotated Luther Luther, vol. 1, The Roots of Ref Reform orm, 376–465, and WA 6:404–69. . . . The Romanists have very cleverly built three walls around themselves. Hitherto they have protected themselves by these walls in such a way that

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

no one has been able to reform them. As a result, the whole of Christendom has fallen abominably. . . . Let us begin by attacking the first wall. It is pure invention that pope, bishop, priests, and monks are called the spiritual estate while princes, lords, artisans, and farmers are called the temporal estate. This is indeed a piece of deceit and hypocrisy. Yet no one need be intimidated by it, and for this reason: all Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them except that of office. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12[:12–13] that we are all one body, yet every member has its own work by which it serves the other. . . . Therefore, just as those who are now called “spiritual,” that is, priests, bishops, or popes, are neither different from other Christians nor superior to them, except that they are charged with the administration of the word of God and the sacraments, which is their work and office, so it is with the temporal authorities. They bear the sword and rod in their hand to punish the wicked and protect the good. A cobbler, a smith, a peasant—each has the work and office of his trade, and yet they are all alike consecrated priests and bishops. . . . The second wall is still more loosely built and less substantial. The Romanists want to be the only masters of Holy Scripture, although they never learn a thing from the Bible all their life long. They assume the sole authority for themselves, and quite unashamed they play about with words before our very eyes, trying to persuade us that the pope cannot err in matters of faith, regardless of whether he is righteous or wicked. . . . They cannot produce a single letter [of Scripture] to maintain that the interpretation of Scripture or the confirmation of its interpretation belongs to the pope alone. They themselves have usurped this power. . . . We ought not to allow the spirit of freedom (as Paul calls him [2 Cor 3:17]) to be frightened off by the fabrications of the popes, but we ought to march boldly forward and test all that they do or leave undone by our believing understanding of the Scriptures. We must compel the Romanists to follow not their own interpretation but the better one. . . . The third wall falls of itself when the first two are down. When the pope acts contrary to the Scriptures, it is our duty to stand by the Scriptures, to reprove him and constrain him. . . . The Romanists have no basis in Scripture for their claim that the pope alone has the right to call or confirm a council. This is just their own ruling, and it is only valid as long as it is not harmful to Christendom or contrary to the laws of God. Now when the pope

23

deserves punishment, this ruling no longer obtains, for not to punish him by authority of a council is harmful to Christendom. . . . Therefore, when necessity demands it, and the pope is an offense to Christendom, the first man who is able should, as a true member of the whole body, do what he can to bring about a truly free council. No one can do this so well as the temporal authorities, especially since they are also fellow-Christians, fellow-priests, fellow-members of the spiritual estate, fellow-lords over all things. . . . Now, although I am too insignificant a man to make propositions for the improvement of this dreadful state of affairs, nevertheless I shall sing my fool’s song through to the end and say, so far as I am able, what could and should be done, either by the temporal authority or by a general council. . . . 9. The pope should have no authority over the emperor, except the right to anoint and crown him at the altar just as a bishop crowns a king. . . . 12. Pilgrimages to Rome should either be abolished or else no one should be allowed to make such a pilgrimage for reasons of curiosity or his own pious devotion, unless it is first acknowledged by his parish priest, his town authorities, or his overlord that he has a good and sufficient reason for doing so. . . . 13. . . . It is the bittersweet truth that the further building of mendicant houses should not be permitted. God help us, there are already too many of them. . . . My advice is to join together ten of these houses or as many as need be and make them a single institution for which adequate provision is made so that begging will not be necessary. . . . The pope must also be forbidden to found or endorse any more of these orders; in fact he must be ordered to abolish some and reduce the number of others. Inasmuch as faith in Christ, which alone is the chief possession, exists without any kind of orders, there is no little danger that men will be easily led astray to live according to many and varied works and ways rather than to pay heed to faith. . . . 14. . . . The Roman See has interfered and out of its own wanton wickedness made a universal commandment forbidding priests to marry. . . . My advice is, restore freedom to everybody and leave every man free to marry or not to marry. . . . 18. All festivals should be abolished, and Sunday alone retained. If it were desired, however, to retain the festivals of Our Lady and of the major saints, they should be transferred to Sunday, or observed only by a morning mass, after which all the rest of the day should be a working day. Here is the reason: since the feast days are abused by drinking, loafing, and all

24

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

manner of sin, we anger God more on holy days than we do on other days. . . . 20. . . . Although the canonization of saints may have been a good thing in former days, it is certainly never good practice now. Like many other things that were good in former times, feast days, church holdings, and ornaments now are scandalous and offensive. For it is evident that through the canonization of saints neither God’s glory nor the improvement of Christians is sought, but only money and reputation. . . . 22. It is also to be feared that the many masses that were endowed in ecclesiastical foundations and monasteries are not only of little use but arouse the great wrath of God. It would therefore be profitable not to endow any more of these masses, but rather to abolish many that are already endowed. It is obvious that these masses are regarded only as sacrifices and good works, even though they are sacraments just like baptism and penance, which profit only those who receive them and no one else. But now the custom of saying masses for the living and the dead has crept in, and all hopes are built upon them. . . . 25. The universities, too, need a good, thorough reformation. . . . What are they but places where loose living is practiced, where little is taught of the Holy Scriptures and Christian faith, and where the blind, heathen teacher Aristotle rules far more than Christ? . . . Above all, the foremost reading for everybody, both in the universities and in the schools, should be Holy Scripture—and for the younger boys, the Gospels. And would to God that every town had a girls’ school as well, where the girls would be taught the gospel for an hour every day either in German or in Latin. . . . 16. LUTHER’S ANSWER AT THE DIET OF WORMS (APRIL 18, 1521) From LW 32:109–13, trans. Roger Hornsby; cf. WA 7:814–57. . . . Most Serene Emperor, Most Illustrious Princes, concerning those questions proposed to me yesterday on behalf of Your Serene Majesty, whether I acknowledge as mine the books enumerated and published in my name and whether I wished to persevere in their defense or to retract them, I have given to the first question my full and complete answer, in which I still persist and shall persist forever. These books are mine and they have been published in my name by me, unless in the meantime, either through the craft or the mistaken wisdom of

my emulators, something in them has been changed or wrongly cut out. For plainly I cannot acknowledge anything except what is mine alone and what has been written by me alone, to the exclusion of all interpretations of anyone at all. In replying to the second question, I ask that Your Most Serene Majesty and Your Lordships may deign to note that my books are not all of the same kind. For there are some in which I have discussed religious faith and morals simply and evangelically, so that even my enemies themselves are compelled to admit that these are useful, harmless, and clearly worthy to be read by Christians. Even the bull, although harsh and cruel, admits that some of my books are inoffensive, and yet allows these also to be condemned with a judgment that is utterly monstrous. Thus, if I should begin to disavow them, I ask you, what would I be doing? Would not I, alone of all men, be condemning the very truth upon which friends and enemies equally agree, striving alone against the harmonious confession of all? Another group of my books attacks the papacy and the affairs of the papists as those who both by their doctrines and very wicked examples have laid waste the Christian world with evil that affects the spirit and the body. For no one can deny or conceal this fact, when the experience of all and the complaints of everyone witness that through the decrees of the pope and the doctrines of men the consciences of the faithful have been most miserably entangled, tortured, and torn to pieces. Also, property and possessions, especially in this illustrious nation of Germany, have been devoured by an unbelievable tyranny and are being devoured to this time without letup and by unworthy means. [Yet the papists] by their decrees warn that the papal laws and doctrines that are contrary to the gospel or the opinions of the fathers are to be regarded as erroneous and reprehensible. If, therefore, I should have retracted these writings, I should have done nothing other than to have added strength to this [papal] tyranny and I should have opened not only windows but doors to such great godlessness....... I have written a third sort of book against some private and (as they say) distinguished individuals—those, namely, who strive to preserve the Roman tyranny and to destroy the godliness taught by me. Against these I confess I have been more violent than my religion or profession demands. But then, I do not set myself up as a saint; neither am I disputing about my life, but about the teachings of Christ. It is not proper for me to retract these works, because by this retraction it would again happen that tyranny

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

and godlessness would, with my patronage, rule and rage among the people of God more violently than ever before. . . . Since then Your Serene Majesty and Your Lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in this manner, neither horned nor toothed: Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise, here I stand, may God help me, Amen. 17. THE EDICT OF WORMS (MAY 26, 1521) From Deutsche Reichstagsakten: Jüng Jünger eree Reihe Reihe, vol. 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962), 645–55, trans. Eric Lund. . . . Although, after the delivery of the papal bull and the last condemnation of Luther, we proclaimed this admonition in many places in the German nation . . . , Martin Luther has ignored it and has failed to correct and revoke his errors. He has not sought absolution from his Papal Holiness and a return to the grace of the holy Christian church. Not only that, he has spread abroad much evil fruit and the effect of his perverted heart and mind, like a madman attempting an apparent suppression of the holy church. Through many books in Latin and German, containing both new and old heresies and blasphemies, he has destroyed, overturned, and shown disrespect for the number, order, and practice of the seven sacraments upheld for so many years by the holy church. . . . He not only deprecates the priestly office but also prompts the worldly laypeople to wash their hands in priestly blood. He uses slanderous and shameful words to speak of the foremost priest of our Christian faith, the successor of St. Peter and the true vicar of Christ on earth, and attacks him with many unprecedented hostile writings and insults. He also affirms from the heathen poets that there is no free will, believing that all things stand fast by a certain fixed law. He writes that having a mass celebrated for someone brings no benefit, and he overturns the custom of fasting and prayer that has been established by the holy church and maintained until now. Most notably, he scorns the authority of the holy fathers who have been honored by the church.

25

He does away with obedience and authority altogether, and whatever he writes prompts nothing but revolt, division, war, manslaughter, robbery, arson, and the total degradation of the Christian faith. . . . Seeing how this matter has turned out and how Martin Luther perseveres with his manifestly heretical opinions . . . we have recourse to the following remedies against this severe, poisonous disease: First, to the praise of the Almighty and for the defense of the Christian faith and the proper honor of the Roman bishop, we, by the power of our imperial dignity and authority, . . . pronounce judgment and declare Martin Luther a member severed from the church of God, whom each and everyone should regard as an obstinate schismatic and an indisputable heretic. . . . We strictly order . . . that particularly after the expiration of the appointed twenty days, which end on the fourteenth day of the present month of May, you shall refuse to give the aforementioned Martin Luther lodging, food, or drink, or offer him any help, support, or assistance, by word or deed, either secretly or openly. Wherever you might happen to meet him, you shall take him prisoner, if you have sufficient force, and deliver him to us, or arrange to have this done, or at least let us know promptly where he may be captured. In the meantime, you shall keep him imprisoned until you receive further notice from us about what to do, according to the direction of the law. You shall receive suitable compensation for such holy work and for your effort and expense. . . . Furthermore, we order that no one shall buy, sell, read, keep, copy, print, or have printed any of the writings of the aforementioned Martin Luther, which have been condemned by Our Holy Father the Pope, or any other writings in German, Latin, or any other language that he has produced or will produce in the future, since they are evil and suspect and proceed from an evident, stiff-necked heretic. THE THREAT OF RADICAL REFORMERS 18. LUTHER: ADMONITION AGAINST INSURRECTION (MARCH, 1522) After hearing rumors about unrest, Luther made a secret visit to Wittenberg. He wrote this treatise shortly after his return to the Wartburg castle. From LW 45:65–71, trans. W. A. Lambert, rev. Walter Brandt; cf. WA 7:676–87.

26

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

. . . Those who read and rightly understand my teaching will not start an insurrection; they have not learned that from me. If some incite to insurrection, however, and make use of our name, what can we do about it? How much are the papists doing in the name of Christ that Christ has not only forbidden but that tends to destroy Christ? Must we keep our company so pure that among us there may not even be a stumbling St. Peter? Why, among the papists there are none but Judases and Judas-like deceit—still they are not willing to have their teachings ascribed to the devil. But, as I say, the devil thus tries in every way to find an occasion for slandering our teaching. If there were anything worse he could do, he would do it. But he is checkmated and, God willing, must take his punishment now that he has been reduced to such lame, futile, and rotten schemes. He will not and shall not succeed in stirring up the insurrection he so much desires. Therefore, I beseech all who would glory in the name of Christ to be guided by what St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians [6:3], that we give our opponents no occasion to find fault with our teaching. For we see how apt the papists are to ignore the log in their own eyes and how zealously they hunt and scratch to find a tiny speck in our eyes. We are not supposed to reproach them with the fact that among them there is hardly anything good, but if even a single one of us is not wholly spiritual and a perfect angel, our entire cause is supposed to be wrong. Then they rejoice, then they dance, then they sing as if they had won the victory. Therefore, we must guard against giving them any occasion for slander, of which they are full to overflowing. . . . Get busy now; spread the holy gospel, and help others spread it; teach, speak, write, and preach that man-made laws are nothing; urge people not to enter the priesthood, the monastery, or the convent, and hinder them from so doing; encourage those who have already entered to leave; give no more money for bulls, candles, bells, tablets, and churches; rather tell them that a Christian life consists of faith and love. Let us do this for two years, and you shall see what will become of pope, bishops, cardinals, priests, monks, nuns, bells, towers, masses, vigils, cowls, hoods, tonsures, monastic rules, statutes, and all the swarming vermin of the papal regime; they will all vanish like smoke. . . . There are some who, when they have read a page or two or have heard a sermon, go at it slam bang, and do no more than overwhelm others with reproach and find fault with them and their practices as being unevangelical, without stopping to consider

that many of them are plain and simple folk who would soon learn the truth if it were told them. This also I have taught no one to do, and St. Paul has strictly forbidden it [Rom 14:1–15:1; 1 Cor 4:5–6]. Their only motive in doing it is the desire to come up with something new and to be regarded as good Lutherans. But they are perverting the holy gospel to make it serve their own pride. You will never bring the gospel into the hearts of men in that way. You are much more apt to frighten them away from it, and then you will have to bear the awful responsibility of having driven them away from the truth. You fool, that’s not the way; listen, and take some advice.

Fig. 1.9. Martin Luther as Junker Jorg by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1522).

In the first place, I ask that men make no reference to my name; let them call themselves Christians, not Lutherans. What is Luther? After all, the teaching is not mine [John 7:16]. Neither was I crucified for anyone [1 Cor 1:13]. St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 3, would not allow the Christians to call themselves Pauline or Petrine but Christian. How then should I—poor, stinking maggot-fodder that I am—come to have men call the children of Christ by my wretched name? Not so, my dear friends; let us abolish all party names and call ourselves Christians, after him whose

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

teachings we hold. The papists deservedly have a party name, because they are not content with the teaching and name of Christ, but want to be papists as well. Let them be papists then, since the pope is their master. I neither am nor want to be anyone’s master. I hold, together with the universal church, the one universal teaching of Christ, who is our only master [Matt 23:8]. . . . 19. LUTHER: LETTER TO MELANCHTHON ON THE “PROPHETS” (JANUARY 13, 1522) From LW 48:365–67, trans. Gottfried Krodel; cf. WABr 2:424–27. . . . Now, let me deal with the “prophets.” Before I say anything else, I do not approve of your timidity, since you are stronger in spirit and learning than I. First of all, since they bear witness to themselves, one need not immediately accept them; according to John’s counsel, the spirits are to be tested. If you cannot test them, then you have the advice of Gamaliel that you postpone judgment. Thus far I hear nothing said or done by them that Satan could not also do or imitate. Yet find out for me whether they can prove [that they are called by God], for God has never sent anyone, not even the Son himself, unless he was called through men or attested by signs. In the old days the prophets had their authority from the law and the prophetic order, as we now receive authority through men. I definitely do not want the “prophets” to be accepted if they state that they were called by mere revelation, since God did not even wish to speak to Samuel except through the authority and knowledge of Eli. This is the first thing that belongs to teaching in public. In order to explore their individual spirit, too, you should inquire whether they have experienced spiritual distress and the divine birth, death, and hell. If you should hear that all [their experiences] are pleasant, quiet, devout (as they say), and spiritual, then don’t approve of them, even if they should say that they were caught up to the third heaven. The sign of the Son of Man is then missing, which is the only touchstone of Christians and a certain differentiator between the spirits. Do you want to know the place, time, and manner of [true] conversations with God? Listen: “Like a lion has he broken all my bones” [Isa 38:13]; “I am cast out from before your eyes” [Ps 31:22]; “My soul is filled with grief, and my life has approached hell” [Ps 88:3]. . . . Therefore, examine [them] and do not even listen if they speak of the

27

glorified Jesus, unless you have first heard of the crucified Jesus. . . . 20. LUTHER: LETTER TO ELECTOR FRIEDRICH OF SAXONY (MARCH 7 OR 8, 1522) From LW 48: 394–97, trans. Gottfried Krodel; cf. WABr 2:459–62. . . . Most Serene, Noble Sovereign and Most Gracious Lord: I have very carefully considered that it truly would be a burden for Your Electoral Grace if I would return to Wittenberg again without Your Electoral Grace’s wish and permission, particularly since it seems that this would cause great danger for Your Electoral Grace, the whole country, and all the people, but especially for myself, banned and condemned by papal and imperial law as I am, and expecting death at any moment. What should I do? There is urgent reason for my return, and God compels and calls me. Therefore it has to be this way and will be so; so let it be in the name of Jesus Christ, the Lord of life and death. . . . The first reason [for my return]: I am called by the whole congregation at Wittenberg in a letter filled with urgent begging and pleading. Since no one can deny that the [present] commotion has its origin in me, and since I must confess that I am a humble servant of the congregation to which God has sent me, I had no way of refusing [this call] without rejecting Christian love, trust, and obedience. . . . The second reason [for my return]: on account of my absence Satan has intruded into my fold at Wittenberg. The whole world shouts it abroad— and it certainly is true—that Satan has injured some [sheep] that I cannot heal with any writing. I have to deal with them personally via mouth and ear. My conscience will no longer allow me to yield or procrastinate. . . . The third reason [for my return]: I am rather afraid (and I worry that unfortunately I may be only too right) that there will be a real rebellion in the German territories, by which God will punish the German nation. For we see that this gospel is excellently received by the common people, but they receive it in a fleshly sense; that is, they know that it is true but do not want to use it correctly. Those who should calm such rebellion only aid it. They attempt to put out the light by force, not realizing that they are only embittering the hearts of men by this and stimulating them to revolt. They behave as if they wanted them-

28

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

selves, or at least their children, destroyed. No doubt God sends this as a punishment. . . . Now God has commanded, through Ezekiel, that we set ourselves before him as a wall of protection for the people [Ezek 13:5, 22:30]. Therefore I—and my friends—have considered it necessary to act upon this, to see whether we might turn away or defer God’s judgment. . . . 21. LUTHER: INVOCAVIT SERMONS 1 AND 2 (MARCH, 1522) From The Annotated Luther Luther, vol. 4, Pastor Pastoral al Writings ings, ed. Mary Jane Haemig, trans. Martin J. Lohrmann (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 14–46. Cf. LW 51:69–78 and WA 10/3, 1–20. FIRST SERMON ON INVOCAVIT SUNDAY . . . In the first place, we must know that we are the children of wrath and all our works, intentions, and thoughts are nothing at all. . . . Second, God has sent us the only-begotten Son that we may believe in him so that whoever trusts in him shall be free from sin and a child of God, as John declares in his first chapter, “To all who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” [ John 1:12]. . . . Third, we must also have love and through love we must do to one another as God has done to us through faith. For without love faith is nothing, as St. Paul says (1 Cor 2[13:1]): “If I had the tongues of angels and could speak of the highest things in faith, and have not love, I am nothing.” And here, dear friends, have you not grievously failed? I see no signs of love among you and I observe very well that you have not been grateful to God for his rich gifts and treasures. . . . For a faith without love is not enough—rather it is not faith at all, but a counterfeit of faith, just as a face seen in a mirror is not a real face, but merely the reflection of a face [1 Cor 13:12]....... Fourth, we also need patience. For whoever has faith trusts in God and shows love to their neighbor, practicing it day by day, will undoubtedly suffer persecution. For the devil never sleeps, but constantly gives believers plenty of trouble. But patience works and produces hope [Rom 5:4], which freely yields itself to God and realizes itself in God. Thus faith, by much affliction and persecution, ever increases, and is strengthened day by day. A heart thus blessed with virtues can never rest or restrain itself, but rather pours itself out again for the benefit and service of the brethren, just as God has done to it. What does a mother do to her child? First she gives

it milk, then gruel, then eggs and soft food, whereas if she turned about and gave it solid food, the child would never thrive [cf. 1 Cor 3:2; Heb 5:12-13]. So we should also deal with our brothers and sisters, have patience with them for a time, have patience with their weakness and help them bear it [Gal 6:2]; we should also give them milk-food, too [1 Pet 2:2; cf. Rom 14:1-3], as was done with us, until they, too, grow strong. In this way, we do not travel heavenward alone but bring those brothers and sisters who are not yet our friends with us. . . . Dear friend, if you have suckled long enough, do not at once cut off the breast, but let your neighbor be suckled as you were. If I had been here, I would not have gone so far as you have. The cause is good but there has been too much haste. For there are still brothers and sisters on the other side who belong to us and must still be won. . . . . . . Therefore all those have erred who have helped and consented to abolish the Mass; not that it was not a good thing, but that it was not done in an orderly way. You say it was right according to the Scriptures. I agree, but what becomes of order? For it was done in wantonness, with no regard for proper order and with offense to your neighbor. If, beforehand, you had called upon God in earnest prayer and had obtained the aid of the authorities, one could be certain that it had come from God. . . . . . . Take note of these two things, “must” and “free.” The “must” is that which necessity requires, and which must ever be unyielding; as, for instance, the faith, which I shall never permit anyone to take away from me, but must always keep in my heart and freely confess before everyone. But “free” is that in which I have choice, and may use or not, yet in such a way that it profit my neighbor and not me. Now do not make a “must” out of what is “free,” as you have done, so that you may not be called to account for those who were led astray by your loveless exercise of liberty. For if you entice people to eat meat on Fridays and they become troubled by it on their deathbed, thinking, “Woe is me, for I have eaten meat and I am lost!” until they can no longer stand it, then God will call you to account for that soul. I, too, would like to begin many things, in which but few would follow me, but what is the use? . . . . . . Let us, therefore, feed others also with the milk which we received, until they too become strong in faith. For there are many who are otherwise in accord with us and who would also gladly accept this thing, but they do not yet fully understand it—these we drive away. Therefore, let us show love to our

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

neighbors; if we do not do this, our work will not endure. SECOND SERMON ON MONDAY . . . In the things that are “musts” and are matters of necessity, such as believing in Christ, love still never uses force or undue pressure. Thus the Mass is an evil thing, and God is displeased with it, because it is performed as if it were a sacrifice and work of merit. Therefore it must be abolished. Here, there can be no question or doubt, any more than you should ask whether you should worship God. Here we are entirely agreed: the private Masses must be abolished. As I have said in my writings, I wish they would be abolished everywhere and only the common evangelical Mass be retained. Nevertheless, Christian love should not employ harshness here nor force the matter. However, it should be preached and taught with tongue and pen that to hold Mass in such a manner is sinful, even though no one should be dragged away from it by the hair; for it should be left to God, whose word should be allowed to work alone, without our work or interference. Why? Because it is not in my power or hand to mold human hearts as the potter molds the clay and fashion them at my pleasure [Ecclus. 33:13]. I can get no further than their ears; their hearts I cannot reach. And since I cannot pour faith into their hearts, I cannot, nor should I, force anyone to have faith. That is God’s work alone, who causes faith to live in the heart. . . . Once, when Paul came to the mighty city of Athens (Acts 17[:16-32]) he found in the temple many ancient altars, and he went from one to the other and looked at them all, but he did not kick down a single one of them with his foot. Rather he stood up in the middle of the marketplace and said they were nothing but idolatrous things and begged the people to forsake them; yet he did not destroy one of them by force. When the word took hold of their hearts, the people forsook them of their own accord and thus the thing fell of itself. Likewise, if I had seen people holding Mass, I would have preached to them and admonished them. Had they heeded my admonition, I would have won them; if not, I would nevertheless not have torn them from it by the hair or by using any force but would have let the word act and kept praying for them. For the Word created heaven and earth and all things [Ps 33:6], so that the Word must do this thing and not we poor sinners. In short, I will preach it, tell it, write it, but I will constrain no one by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take an example from me. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I taught, preached, and wrote God’s word

29

alone; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept [cf. Mark 4:26-29], or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the word did so much that the papacy weakened in such a way that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such damage upon it. I did nothing; the word did everything. Had I desired to proceed with violence, I could have brought great bloodshed upon Germany; indeed, even at Worms I could have started such trouble that even the emperor would not have been safe. But what would it have been? Mere fool’s play. I did nothing; I let the Word do its work. . . . 22. LUTHER: AGAINST THE HEAVENLY PROPHETS (FEBRUARY, 1525) From LW 40:91, 128, trans. Bernhard Erling; cf. WA 18:62–125. . . . I would release and free consciences and the soul from sin, which is a truly spiritual and evangelical pastoral function, while Karlstadt seeks to capture them with law and burden them with sin without good cause. And yet he does this not with a law of God, but with his own conceit and mischief, so that he is not only far from the gospel but also not even a Mosaic teacher. And yet he continually praises the “Word of God, the Word of God,” just as if it were therefore to become God’s Word as soon as one could say the Word of God. Usually those who make great ado in praising God’s Word do not have much to back them up, as unfortunately we have previously experienced under our papistical tyrants. However, to speak evangelically of images, I say and declare that no one is obligated to break violently images even of God, but everything is free, and one does not sin if he does not break them with violence. One is obligated, however, to destroy them with the Word of God, that is, not with the law in a Karlstadtian manner, but with the gospel. This means to instruct and enlighten the conscience that it is idolatry to worship them, or to trust in them, since one is to trust alone in Christ. Beyond this let the external matters take their course. God grant that they may be destroyed, become dilapidated, or that they remain. It is all the same and makes no difference, just as when the poison has been removed from a snake. Now I say this to keep the conscience free from mischievous laws and fictitious sins and not because I would defend images. Nor would I condemn those who have destroyed them, especially those who destroy divine and idolatrous images. But images for

30

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

memorial and witness, such as crucifixes and images of saints, are to be tolerated. . . . The pope commands what is to be done, Dr. Karlstadt what is not to be done. Thus through them Christian freedom is destroyed in two ways: on the one hand, when one commands, constrains, and compels what is to be done, which is nevertheless not commanded or required by God; on the other hand, when one forbids, prevents, and hinders one from doing that which is neither prohibited nor forbidden by God. For my conscience is ensnared and misled just as much when it must refrain from doing something, which it is not necessary to refrain from doing, as when it must do something, which it is not necessary to do. When men must refrain from doing that from which they need not refrain and are compelled to do what they need not do, Christian freedom perishes in either case. . . .

nity, and what is left over should be distributed to the poor who are present in our own village, in accordance with their needs as determined by the whole community. . . . The Third Article Third, it has been the custom until now for lords to hold us as their own property. This is pitiful, considering that Christ has redeemed and purchased us all by the shedding of his precious blood, both the lowly shepherd as well as the highest noble, excepting no one. We find in Scripture that we are free, and we wish to be so. However, God does not teach us that we should be so entirely free that we do not recognize any authority over us. We should live orderly lives and not in fleshly wantonness. We should love God as our Lord and apprehend him in our neighbor.......

THE PEASANTS’S REVOLT The Fourth Article 23. THE TWELVE ARTICLES OF THE PEASANTS (MARCH, 1525) From Heinrich Böhmer, Urkunden zur Geschichte des Bauernkrieg Bauernkrieges es (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1933), 4–10, trans. Eric Lund. The First Article First, it is our humble request and desire, the wish and intention of us all, that from now on we should have authority and power as a whole community to choose and select a pastor for ourselves. We should also have the authority to dismiss him if he should conduct himself improperly. . . . The Second Article Second, since the duty to tithe is established in the Old Testament and perfected in the New Testament, we are quite willing to pay the tithe of grain—as long as it is a fair amount. The tithe is given to God to be passed on to his servants, so it is appropriate that a pastor who preaches according to the Word of God should receive it. Yet, in the future we would like the church wardens appointed by our community to collect and receive this tithe. The pastor, chosen by our entire community, should be given a suitable and adequate living for himself and his family, in accordance with the determination of the whole commu-

Fourth, it has been the custom until now that no poor man has had permission to catch wild game or fowl, or fish in flowing water. This seems to us quite improper and unbrotherly. It is selfish and not in accordance with God’s Word. . . . The Fifth Article Fifth, we are also troubled about the cutting of wood because our lords have appropriated all the woods for themselves alone. . . . The Sixth Article Our sixth complaint concerns the hard burden of labor demanded of us [by our lords], which is increasing from day to day. . . . The Seventh Article Seventh, we will not allow the lords to overburden us any more in the future. The lords should devise an appropriate way for leaseholds to be possessed by the terms of an agreement between lord and peasant. . . . The Eighth Article Eighth, we are burdened because many of us have lands that cannot yield enough to pay the required

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

rent. The peasants suffer loss in this way and are ruined. We ask the lords to appoint honorable persons to inspect these lands and assign a fair rent. . . . The Ninth Article Ninth, we are burdened by the constant making of new laws concerning serious crimes. Punishments are not administered in accordance with the nature of the case, but sometimes out of spite and other times out of partiality. . . .

Fig. 1.10. Title page of The Twelve Articles of the Peasants, 1525.

The Tenth Article Tenth, we are troubled that certain individuals have claimed meadows and fields as their own that at one time belonged to the community. . . . The Eleventh Article Eleventh, we want the custom called Todfall10 [the servile death tax] to be totally abolished. . . .

31

Conclusion Twelfth, it is our conclusion and final intention, that if one or more of the articles set forth here should not be in conformity with the Word of God, which we do not believe to be the case, we will give it up once we are shown from the Word of God that it is improper. . . . 24. MÜNTZER’S LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF ALLSTEDT (APRIL 26 OR 27, 1525) Müntzer was an early supporter of Luther who put a greater stress on the guidance of the inner voice of God. He blamed Luther for allowing “spiritless, soft living” in Wittenberg. One month after he wrote this letter, he was captured and executed. From Thomas Müntzer, Schriften und Brief Briefee, ed. Günther Franz (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1968), 454–55, trans. Eric Lund. May the pure fear of God prevail, dear brothers. How long will you sleep; how long will you go on without acknowledging the will of God because, in your estimation, he has forsaken you? Alas, how many times have I told you how it must be, how God cannot reveal himself in any other way, and that you must remain undisturbed? If you fail to do so, then your heartbreaking sacrifice, your heart-wounding suffering is to no avail. You might then have to begin your suffering all over again. I will tell you this, that if you do not want to suffer according to God’s will, then you will have to be martyrs for the devil. So watch out, don’t be fainthearted or negligent and no longer flatter the perverted fools, the godless evildoers. Get going and fight the fight of the Lord! It is high time. Keep your brothers all at it, so that they do not scorn the divine witness, or else they will all perish. The entire lands of Germany, France, and Italy are awake; the master wants to play the game and the evildoers must be in it too. At Fulda, during Easter week, four abbeys were laid waste; the peasants in the Klettgau and the Hegau in the Black Forest have risen, three thousand strong, and the more time passes, the larger their number grow. My only worry is that the foolish people will consent to a false treaty, because they do not yet recognize the extent of the wrong that has been done. Even if there are only three of you who submit to God and seek his name and honor alone, you need not fear a hundred thousand. So go onward, onward, onward! Now is the time, since the evildoers have lost heart, like [scared] dogs! Arouse your brothers, so

32

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

that they may come to peace and bear witness to their commitment. It is extremely urgent! Go onward, onward, onward! Show no pity, even if Esau offers kind words to you, Genesis 33. Pay no heed to the cries of the godless. They will plead with you so amicably, weeping and begging like children. Show them no pity, as God commanded through Moses, Deuteronomy 7[:1–5], and has revealed the same to us. Arouse the villages and towns and especially the mine-workers and other good comrades who can do us some good. We must sleep no longer. . . . 25. MÜNTZER’S LETTER TO ALBRECHT OF MANSFELD (MAY 12, 1525) From Thomas Müntzer, Schriften und Brief Briefee, ed. Günther Franz (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1968), 469–70, trans. Eric Lund. To brother Albrecht von Mansfeld, written for his conversion. Let all who do evil fear and tremble, Romans 2[:9]. It disturbs me that you terribly misuse the epistle of Paul. You want to support the wicked authorities in whatever they do, just like the pope, who has made Peter and Paul into jailers. Do you think that the Lord God cannot stir up his simpleminded people to depose the tyrants in his wrath? Hosea 13[:11] and 8[:4]. Didn’t the mother of Christ speak through the Holy Spirit of you and your sort when she prophesied in Luke 1[:52]: “He has cast the mighty down from their thrones and raised up the lowly (whom you despise)”? Have you been unable to find in your Lutheran gruel and your Wittenberg soup what Ezekiel prophesied in his thirty-seventh chapter [verse 4]? You, in your Martinian peasant muck, have also been unable to taste what the same prophet goes on to say in the thirty-ninth chapter, how God commands all the birds of the air to consume the flesh of the princes, and how the dumb beasts are to drink the blood of the high and mighty, as Revelation chapters 18 and 19[:18] describe? Do you suppose that God is not more concerned about his people than he is about you tyrants? Under the name of Christ, you want to act like a pagan while using Paul as a cover-up. But your path will be blocked, that is for sure. If you will acknowledge Daniel 7[:27], according to which God has given power to the common man, and if you are willing to appear before us and retract your stance, then we will gladly accommodate you and accept you as our common brother. But if you do not, then we will not pay attention to your lame, weak tricks but will take up

the fight against you as against an archenemy of the Christian faith; that is for sure. From Frankenhausen on the Friday after Jubilate in the year 1525 Thomas Müntzer with the sword of Gideon. 26. LUTHER: ADMONITION TO PEACE (APRIL, 1525) From LW 46:19–43, trans. Charles M. Jacobs and Robert C. Schultz. Cf. The Annotated Luther Luther, vol. 5, Christian Lif Lifee in the World orld, 296–332 and WA 18:279–34. To the Princes and Lords We have no one on earth to thank for this disastrous rebellion, except you princes and lords and especially you blind bishops and mad priests and monks, whose hearts are hardened even to the present day. You do not cease to rant and rave against the holy gospel, even though you know that it is true and that you cannot refute it. In addition, as temporal rulers you do nothing but cheat and rob the people so that you may lead a life of luxury and extravagance. The poor common people cannot bear it any longer. The sword is already at your throats, but you think that you sit so firm in the saddle that no one can unhorse you. This false security and stubborn perversity will break your necks, as you will discover. . . . A great part of God’s wrath has already come, for God is sending many false teachers and prophets among us, so that through our error and blasphemy we may richly deserve hell and everlasting damnation. The rest of it is now here, for the peasants are banding together, and, unless our repentance moves God to prevent it, this must result in the ruin, destruction, and desolation of Germany by cruel murder and bloodshed. . . . To make your sin still greater and guarantee your merciless destruction, some of you are beginning to blame this affair on the gospel and say that it is the fruit of my teaching. Well, well, slander away, dear lords! You did not want to know what I taught or what the gospel is; now the one who will soon teach you is at the door, unless you change your ways. You, and everyone else, must bear witness that I have taught with all quietness, have striven earnestly against rebellion, and have energetically encouraged and exhorted people to obey and respect even you wild and dictatorial tyrants. This rebellion cannot be coming from me. Rather the murder-prophets, who

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

hate me as they hate you, have come among these people and have gone about among them for more than three years, and no one has resisted and fought against them except me. . . . If it is possible to give you advice, my lords, give way a little to the will and wrath of God. A cartload of hay must give way to a drunken man—how much more ought you to stop your raging and obstinate tyranny and not deal unreasonably with the peasants, as though they were drunk or out of their minds! Do not start a fight with them, for you do not know how it will end. Try kindness first, for you do not know what God will do to prevent the spark that will kindle all Germany and start a fire that no one can extinguish. . . . To the Peasants . . . You say that the rulers are wicked and intolerable, for they will not allow us to have the gospel; they oppress us too hard with the burdens they lay on our property, and they are ruining us in body and soul. I answer: The fact that the rulers are wicked and unjust does not excuse disorder and rebellion, for the punishing of wickedness is not the responsibility of everyone, but of the worldly rulers who bear the sword. Thus Paul says in Romans 13[:4] and Peter in 1 Peter [2:14], that the rulers are instituted by God for the punishment of the wicked. Then, too, there is the natural law of all the world, which says that no one may sit as judge in his own case or take his own revenge. The proverb is true, “Whoever hits back is in the wrong.” Or as it is said, “It takes two to start a fight.” The divine law agrees with this, and says, in Deuteronomy 32[:35], “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.” Now you cannot deny that your rebellion actually involves you in such a way that you make yourselves your own judges and avenge yourselves. You are quite unwilling to suffer any wrong. That is contrary not only to Christian law and the gospel, but also to natural law and all equity. . . . Be careful, therefore, with your liberty, that you do not run away from the rain and fall in the water. Beware of the illusion that you are winning freedom for your body when you are really losing your body, property, and soul for all eternity. God’s wrath is there; fear it, I advise you! The devil has sent false prophets among you; beware of them! . . . Listen, then, dear Christians, to your Christian law! Your Supreme Lord Christ, whose name you bear, says in Matthew [5:39–41], “Do not resist one who is evil. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go

33

with him two miles. If anyone wants to take your coat, let him have your cloak too. If anyone strikes you on one cheek, offer him the other too.” Do you hear this, O Christian association? How does your program stand in light of this law? You do not want to endure evil or suffering, but rather want to be free and experience only goodness and justice. However, Christ says that you should not resist evil or injustice but always yield, suffer, and let things be taken from us. If you will not bear this law, then lay aside the name of Christian and claim another name that accords with your actions, or else Christ himself will tear his name away from you, and that will be too hard for you. . . . I have never drawn a sword or desired revenge. I began neither conspiracy nor rebellion, but so far as I was able, I have helped the worldly rulers—even those who persecuted the gospel and me—to preserve their power and honor. I stopped with committing the matter to God and relying confidently at all times upon his hand. This is why God has not only preserved my life in spite of the pope and all the tyrants—and this many consider a really great miracle, as I myself must also confess— but he has made my gospel grow and spread. Now you interfere with what I am doing. You want to help the gospel and yet you do not see that what you are doing hinders and suppresses it most effectively. . . . I shall pray for you, that God may enlighten you and resist your undertaking and not let it succeed. For I see well that the devil, who has not been able to destroy me through the pope, now seeks to exterminate me and swallow me up by means of the bloodthirsty prophets of murder and spirits of rebellion that are among you. Well, let him swallow me! I will give him a bellyful, I know. And even if you win, you will hardly enjoy it. I beg you, humbly and kindly, to think things over so that I will not have to trust in and pray to God against you. . . . Admonition to Both Rulers and Peasants . . . As I see it, the worst thing about this completely miserable affair is that both sides will sustain irreparable damage; and I would gladly risk my life and even die if I could prevent that from happening....... I, therefore, sincerely advise you to choose certain counts and lords from among the nobility and certain councilmen from the cities and ask them to arbitrate and settle this dispute amicably. You lords, stop being so stubborn! You will finally have to stop being oppressive tyrants—whether you want to or not.

34

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Give these poor people room in which to live and air to breathe. You peasants, let yourselves be instructed and give up the excessive demands of your articles. In this way it may be possible to reach a solution of this dispute through human laws and agreements, if not through Christian means. If you do not follow this advice—God forbid!—I must let you come to blows. But I am innocent of your souls, your blood, or your property. The guilt is yours alone. I have told you that you are both wrong and that what you are fighting for is wrong. . . . 27. LUTHER: AGAINST THE ROBBING AND MURDERING HORDES OF PEASANTS (MAY, 1525) From LW 46:49–55, trans. Charles M. Jacobs and Robert C. Schultz; cf. WA 18:344–45. In my earlier book on this matter, I did not venture to judge the peasants, since they had offered to be corrected and to be instructed; and Christ in Matthew 7[:1] commands us not to judge. But before I could even inspect the situation, they forgot their promise and violently took matters into their own hands and are robbing and raging like mad dogs. All this now makes it clear that they are trying to deceive us and that the assertions they made in their Twelve Articles were nothing but lies presented under the name of the gospel. To put it briefly, they are doing the devil’s work. . . . The peasants have taken upon themselves the burden of three terrible sins against God and man; by this they have abundantly merited death in body and soul. In the first place, they have sworn to be true and faithful, submissive and obedient to their rulers, as Christ commands when he says, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” [Luke 20:25]. . . . In the second place, they are starting a rebellion and are violently robbing and plundering monasteries and castles that are not theirs; by this they have doubly deserved death in body and soul as highwaymen and murderers. . . . In the third place, they cloak this terrible and horrible sin with the gospel, call themselves “Christian brethren,” take oaths and submit to them, and compel people to go along with them in these abominations. Thus they become the worst blasphemers of God and slanderers of his holy name. Under the outward appearance of the gospel, they honor and serve the devil, thus deserving death in body and soul ten times over. I have never heard of a more hideous sin. I suspect that the devil feels that the Last Day is coming and therefore he undertakes such an

unheard-of act, as though saying to himself, “This is the end, therefore, it shall be the worst; I will stir up the dregs and knock out the bottom.” God will guard us against him! See what a mighty prince the devil is, how he has the world in his hands and can throw everything into confusion, when he can so quickly catch so many thousands of peasants, deceive them, blind them, harden them, and throw them into revolt, and do with them whatever his raging fury undertakes. . . . Now since the peasants have brought [the wrath] of God and man down upon themselves and are already many times guilty of death in body and soul, and since they submit to no court and wait for no verdict, but only rage on, I must instruct the temporal authorities on how they may act with a clear conscience in this matter. First, I will not oppose a ruler who, even though he does not tolerate the gospel, will smite and punish these peasants without first offering to submit the case to judgment. He is within his rights, since the peasants are not contending any longer for the gospel, but have become faithless, perjured, disobedient, rebellious murderers, robbers, and blasphemers, whom even a heathen ruler has the right and authority to punish. Indeed, it is his duty to punish such scoundrels, for this is why he bears the sword and is “the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer,” Romans 13[:4]. . . . Let whoever can stab, smite, slay. If you die in doing it, good for you! A more blessed death can never be yours, for you die while obeying the divine word and commandment in Romans 13[:1, 2], and in loving service of your neighbor, whom you are rescuing from the bonds of hell and of the devil. And so I beg everyone who can to flee from the peasants as from the devil himself; those who do not flee, I pray that God will enlighten and convert. As for those who are not to be converted, God grant that they may have neither fortune nor success. To this let every pious Christian say, “Amen!” for this prayer is right and good and pleases God; this I know. If anyone thinks this is too harsh, let him remember that rebellion is intolerable and that the destruction of the world is to be expected every hour.

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

THE CONFLICT WITH ERASMUS 28. LUTHER: DEFENSE AND EXPLANATION OF THE CONDEMNED ARTICLES (MARCH, 1521) Luther wrote Latin and German treatises in response to the charges against him listed in the papal bull Exsurge Domine (doc. #14). The following excerpt on free will is from the German treatise. From LW 32:92–94, trans. Charles Jacobs, rev. George Forell.

35

which is of no use. But if anyone wishes to retain these words, he ought to apply them to the newly created man, so as to understand by them the man who is without sin. He is truly free, as was Adam in Paradise, and it is of him that Scripture speaks when it deals with our freedom. But those who are involved in sins are not free but prisoners of the devil. Since they may become free through grace you can call them men of free will, just as you might call a man rich although he is a beggar because he can become rich. But it is neither right nor good to play tricks with words in matters of such great importance. . . .

The Thirty-Sixth Article

29. ERASMUS: DIATRIBE ON THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL (SEPTEMBER, 1524)

Since the fall of Adam, or after actual sin, free will exists only in name, and when it does what it can it commits sin. . . . St. Augustine says in his work On the Spirit and the Letter, chapter 4, “The free will, without God’s grace, can do nothing but sin.” What do you say now, pope? Is it freedom to be without power to do anything but evil? You might as well say that a lame man walks straight, though he can only limp and never walk straight. It is just as if I were to call the pope “most holy,” though St. Paul calls him a “man of sin and son of perdition” [2 Thess 2:3], and Christ calls him “the desolating sacrilege” [Matt 24:15], the head of all sin and destruction. The papists have so distorted the meaning of words that they have created a new language and confused everything, just like the builders of the tower of Babel. Now “white” is called “black,” and “black,” “white,” to the unspeakable damage of Christendom. . . . It is a profound and blind error to teach that the will is by nature free and can, without grace, turn to the spirit, seek grace, and desire it. Actually, the will tries to escape from grace and rages against it when it is present. Whose reason is not shocked to think that although spirit and flesh are the two greatest enemies, yet the flesh is supposed to desire and seek its enemy, the spirit? Surely, every man knows from his own experience how all his powers fight against grace in order to expel and destroy it. My opponents’ position suggests that when nobody can control a wild and ravenous beast with chains, you let it go free, and it will chain itself and go into captivity of its own accord. . . . For this reason I would wish that the words “free will” had never been invented. They are not found in Scripture and would better be called “self will,”

The following two excerpts reveal both the different temperaments of the two figures in this debate and the differences in their theological beliefs. From E. Gordon Rupp and Philip S. Watson, eds., Luther and Er Erasmus: asmus: Free Will and Salv Salvation ation, LCC 17 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), 46–47. . . . I have never sworn allegiance to the words of Luther. So that it should not seem unbecoming to anybody if at any point I differ publicly from him, as a man surely may differ from another man, nor should it seem a criminal offense to call in question any doctrine of his, still less if one engages in a temperate disputation with him for the purpose of eliciting truth. . . . To be sure, I know that I was not built for wrestling matches: there is surely nobody less practiced in this kind of thing than I, who have always had an inner temperamental horror of fighting and who have always preferred to sport in the wider plains of the Muses rather than to brandish a sword in a hand-to-hand fight. And, in fact, so far am I from delighting in “assertions” that I would readily take refuge in the opinion of the skeptics, wherever this is allowed by the inviolable authority of the Holy Scriptures and by the decrees of the church, to which I everywhere willingly submit my personal feelings, whether I grasp what it prescribes or not. . . . As far as I am concerned, I admit that many different views about free choice have been handed down from the ancients about which I have, as yet, no fixed conviction, except that I think there to be a certain power of free choice. For I have read the Assertion of Martin Luther, and read it without prejudice, except that I have assumed a certain favor toward him, as an investigator may toward an arraigned prisoner. And

36

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

yet, although he expounds his case in all its aspects with great ingenuity and fervor of spirit, I must say, quite frankly, that he has not persuaded me. . . . Even though I believe myself to have mastered Luther’s argument, yet I might well be mistaken, and for that reason I play the debater, not the judge; the inquirer, not the dogmatist, ready to learn from anyone if anything truer or more scholarly can be brought. Yet I would willingly persuade the man in the street that in this kind of discussion it is better not to enforce contentions that may the sooner harm Christian concord than advance true religion. For there are some secret places in the Holy Scriptures into which God has not wished us to penetrate more deeply and, if we try to do so, then the deeper we go, the darker and darker it becomes, by which we are led to acknowledge the unsearchable majesty of the divine wisdom, and the weakness of the human mind. . . . Therefore, in my judgment on this matter of free choice, having learned what is needful to know about this, if we are in the path of true religion, let us go on swiftly to better things, forgetful of the things that are behind, or if we are entangled in sins, let us strive with all our might and have recourse to the remedy of penitence that by all means we may entreat the mercy of the Lord without which no human will or endeavor is effective; and what is evil in us, let us impute to ourselves, and what is good, let us ascribe wholly to divine benevolence, to which we owe our very being, and for the rest, whatever befalls us in this life, whether it be joyful or sad, let us believe it to be sent by him for our salvation, and that no harm can come to us from a God who is by nature just, even if some things happen that seem to us amiss, for none ought to despair of the pardon of a God who is by nature most merciful. This, I say, was in my judgment sufficient for Christian godliness, nor should we through irreverent inquisitiveness rush into those things that are hidden, not to say superfluous: whether God foreknows anything contingently; whether our will accomplishes anything in things pertaining to eternal salvation; whether it simply suffers the action of grace; whether what we do, be it of good or ill, we do by necessity or rather suffer to be done to us. . . . When I hear that the merit of man is so utterly worthless that all things, even the works of godly men, are sins, when I hear that our will does nothing more than clay in the hands of a potter, when I hear all that we do or will referred to absolute necessity, my mind encounters many a stumbling block. First, why does one so often read that godly men, full of

good works, have wrought righteousness and walked in the presence of God, turning neither to the right nor to the left, if the deeds of even the most godly men are sins, and sin of such character that, did the mercy of God not intervene, it would have plunged into hell even him for whom Christ died? How is it that we hear so much about reward if there is no such thing as merit? With what impudence is the obedience of those who obey the divine commands praised, and the disobedience of those who do not obey condemned? Why is there so frequent mention of judgment in Holy Scriptures if there is no weighing of merits? Or are we compelled to be present at the Judgment Seat if nothing has happened through our own will, but all things have been done in us by sheer necessity? There is the further objection: What is the point of so many admonitions, so many precepts, so many threats, so many exhortations, so many expostulations, if of ourselves we do nothing, but God in accordance with his immutable will does everything in us, both to will and to perform the same? He wishes us to pray without ceasing, to watch, to fight, to contend for the prize of eternal life. Why does he wish anything to be unceasingly prayed for which he has already decreed either to give or not to give, and cannot change his decrees, since he is immutable? Why does he command us to seek with so many labors what he has decided freely to bestow? . . . But I know not how they are to appear consistent who so exaggerate the mercy of God to the godly that as regards others they almost make him cruel. Pious ears can admit the benevolence of one who imputes his own good to us, but it is difficult to explain how it can be a mark of his justice (for I will not speak of his mercy) to hand over others to eternal torments in whom he has not deigned to work good works, when they themselves are incapable of doing good, since they have no free choice or, if they have, it can do nothing but sin. . . . In my opinion free choice could have been so established as to avoid that confidence in our merits and the other dangers that Luther avoids, . . . and without losing those benefits that Luther admires....... Let us try to express our meaning in a parable. . . . A father lifts up a child who has fallen and has not yet strength to walk, however much it tries, and shows it an apple that lies over against it; the child longs to run, but on account of the weakness of its limbs it would have fallen had not its father held its hand and steadied its footsteps, so that led by its father it obtains the apple, which the father willingly puts in its hand as a reward for running. The child could not have stood up if the father had not lifted it, could not have

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

seen the apple had the father not shown it, could not advance unless the father had all the time assisted its feeble steps, could not grasp the apple had the father not put it into his hand. What, then, can the infant claim for itself? And yet it does something. . . . 30. LUTHER: THE BONDAGE OF THE WILL (DECEMBER, 1525) Luther’s response was four times the length of Erasmus’s original treatise. Luther always considered this one of the best books he ever wrote. From LW 33:19–140, trans. Philip Watson and Benjamin Drewery. Cf. The Annotated Luther Luther, vol. 2, Word and F Faith aith, and WA 18, 600-787. I want to begin by referring to some passages in your preface, in which you rather disparage our case and puff up your own. I note, first, that just as in other books you censure me for obstinate assertiveness, so in this book you say that you are so far from delighting in assertions that you would readily take refuge in the opinion of the Skeptics wherever this is allowed by the inviolable authority of the Holy Scriptures and the decrees of the church, to which you always willingly submit your personal feelings, whether you grasp what it prescribes or not. This [you say] is the frame of mind that pleases you. I take it (as it is only fair to do) that you say these things in a kindly and peace-loving spirit. But if anyone else were to say them, I should probably go for him in my usual manner, and I ought not to allow even you, excellent though your intentions are, to be led astray by this idea. For it is not the mark of a Christian mind to take no delight in assertions; on the contrary, a man must delight in assertions or he will be no Christian. . . . This is how a Christian will rather speak: So far am I from delighting in the opinion of the Skeptics that, whenever the infirmity of the flesh will permit, I will not only consistently adhere to and assert the sacred writings, everywhere and in all parts of them, but I will also wish to be as certain as possible in things that are not vital and that lie outside of Scripture. For what is more miserable than uncertainty? . . . I come now to the second passage, which is of a piece with this. Here you distinguish between Christian dogmas, pretending that there are some that it is necessary to know, and some that it is not, and you say that some are [meant to be] obscure and others quite plain. . . . It is true that for many people much remains abstruse, but this is not due to the obscurity of Scrip-

37

ture, but to the blindness or indolence of those who will not take the trouble to look at the very clearest truth. . . . It is, you say, irreverent, inquisitive, and superfluous to want to know whether our will does anything in matters pertaining to eternal salvation or whether it is simply passive under the action of grace. Yet now you contradict this by saying that Christian godliness means striving with all one’s powers and that without the mercy of God the will is not effective. Here you plainly assert that the will does something in matters pertaining to eternal salvation, when you represent it as striving, though you make it passive when you say it is ineffective apart from mercy. You do not, however, state precisely how this activity and passivity are to be understood, for you take good care to keep us in ignorance of what God’s mercy and our will can achieve, even while you are telling us what they actually do. Thus the prudence of yours makes you veer about, determined not to commit yourself to either side but to pass safely between Scylla and Charybdis; with the result that, finding yourself battered and buffeted by the waves in the midst of the sea, you assert everything you deny and deny everything you assert. . . . You make the power of free choice very slight and of a kind that is entirely ineffective apart from the grace of God. Do you not agree? Now I ask you, if the grace of God is absent or separated from it, what can that very slight power do of itself? It is ineffective, you say, and does nothing good. Then it cannot do what God or his grace wills, at any rate if we suppose the grace of God to be separated from it. But what the grace of God does not do is not good. Hence it follows that free choice without the grace of God is not free at all but immutably the captive and slave of evil, since it cannot of itself turn to the good....... But if we are unwilling to let this term go altogether—though that would be the safest and most God-fearing thing to do—let us at least teach men to use it honestly, so that free choice is allowed to man only with respect to what is beneath him and not what is above him. That is to say, a man should know that with regard to his faculties and possessions he has the right to use, to do, or to leave undone, according to his own free choice, though even this is controlled by the free choice of God alone, who acts in whatever way he pleases. On the other hand in relation to God, or in matters pertaining to salvation or damnation, a man has no free choice, but is a captive, subject and slave either of the will of God or the will of Satan. . . .

38

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

It is an evangelical word and the sweetest comfort in every way for miserable sinners, where Ezekiel [18:23, 32] says: “I desire not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn and live,” like Psalm [30:5]: “For his anger is but for a moment and his favor is for a lifetime.” But just as free choice is not proved by other words of mercy or promise or comfort, so neither is it proved by this one: “I desire not the death of a sinner,” etc. This word, therefore, “I desire not the death of a sinner,” has as you see no other object than the preaching and offering of divine mercy throughout the world, a mercy that only the afflicted and those tormented by the fear of death receive with joy and gratitude, because in them the law has already fulfilled its office and brought the knowledge of sin. Those, however, who have not yet experienced the office of the law and neither recognize sin nor feel death have no use for the mercy promised by that word. But why some are touched by the law and others are not, so that the former accept and the latter despise the offered grace, is another question and one not dealt with by Ezekiel in this passage. For he is here speaking of the preached and offered mercy of God, not of the hidden and awful will of God whereby he ordains by his own counsel which and what sort of persons he wills to be recipients and partakers of his preached and offered mercy. . . . Diatribe [Erasmus’s book], however, deceives herself in her ignorance by not making any distinction between God preached and God hidden, that is, between the Word of God and God himself. God does many things that he does not disclose to us in his Word; he also wills many things that he does not disclose himself as willing in his Word. Thus he does not will the death of a sinner, according to his word, but he wills it according to that inscrutable will of his. It is our business, however, to pay attention to the Word and leave that inscrutable will alone, for we must be guided by the Word and not by that inscrutable will. After all, who can direct himself by a will completely inscrutable and unknowable? It is enough to know simply that there is a certain inscrutable will in God, and as to what, why, and how far it wills, that is something we have no right whatever to inquire into, hanker after, care about, or meddle with, but only to fear and adore. It is therefore right to say, “If God does not desire our death, the fact that we perish must be imputed to our own will.” It is right, I mean, if you speak of God as preached; for he wills all men to be saved [1 Tim 2:4], seeing he comes with the word of salvation to all, and the fault is in the will that does

not admit him, as he says in Matthew 23[:37]: “How often would I have gathered your children, and you would not!” But why that majesty of his does not remove or change this defect of our will in all men, since it is not in man’s power to do so, or why he imputes this defect to man, when man cannot help having it, we have no right to inquire; and though you may do a lot of inquiring, you will never find out. . . . THE SACRAMENTARIAN CONTROVERSY 31. LUTHER: THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY OF THE CHURCH (OCTOBER, 1520) This long treatise addressed issues of theology and practice related to all of the seven traditional sacraments. This excerpt notes the three major problems that Luther associated with the medieval Catholic view of the Lord’s Supper. From LW 36:20–49, trans. A. T. W. Steinhaeuser, rev. Frederick Ahrens and Abdel Wentz. Cf. The Annotated Luther Luther, vol. 3, Church and Sacr Sacraaments ments, 9–129, and WA 6:497–573. . . . [The first captivity of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper: the withholding of the cup from the laity] Christ gave the whole sacrament to all his disciples. That Paul delivered both kinds is so certain that no one has ever had the temerity to say otherwise. Add to this that Matthew [26:27] reports that Christ did not say of the bread, “eat of it, all of you,” but of the cup, “drink of it all of you.” . . . The sacrament does not belong to the priests but to all men. The priests are not lords but servants in duty bound to administer both kinds to those who desire them, as often as they desire them. . . . [The second captivity of this sacrament: the doctrine of transubstantiation] . . . My one concern at present is to remove all scruples of conscience, so that no one may fear being called a heretic if he believes that real bread and real wine are present on the altar, and that everyone may feel at liberty to ponder, hold, and believe either one view or the other without endangering his salvation. However, I shall now set forth my own view. . . . What is true in regard to Christ is also true in regard to the sacrament. In order for the divine nature to dwell in him bodily [Col 2:9], it is not necessary for the human nature to be transubstantiated and the divine nature contained under the accidents of the human nature. Both natures are simply there in

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

their entirety, and it is truly said: “This man is God, this God is man.” Even though philosophy cannot grasp this, faith grasps it nonetheless. And the authority of God’s Word is greater than the capacity of our intellect to grasp it. In like manner, it is not necessary in the sacrament that the bread and the wine be transubstantiated and that Christ be contained under their accidents in order that the real body and real blood may be present. But both remain there at the same time, and it is truly said: “This bread is my body, this wine is my blood,” and vice versa. . . . [The third captivity of this sacrament: viewing the mass as a good work and a sacrifice] . . . What we call the mass is a promise of the forgiveness of sins made to us by God, and such a promise as has been confirmed by the death of the Son of God. . . . If the mass is a promise, as has been said, then access to it is to be gained not with any works, or powers, or merits of one’s own, but by faith alone. . . . By them we have been carried away out of our own land as into a Babylonian captivity and despoiled of all our precious possessions. This has been the fate of the mass: it has been converted by the teaching of godless men into a good work. They themselves call it an opus operatum, and by it they presume themselves to be all-powerful with God. . . . It is a manifest and wicked error to offer or apply the mass for sins, for satisfactions, for the dead, or for any needs whatsoever of one’s own or of others. . . . Each one can derive personal benefit from the mass only by his own personal faith. It is absolutely impossible to commune on behalf of anyone else. . . . 32. LUTHER: THE ADORATION OF THE SACRAMENT (APRIL, 1523) From LW 36:276–84, trans. Abdel Wentz; cf. WA 11:417–56. . . . In the first place, there have been some who have held that in the sacrament there is merely bread and wine, such as people otherwise eat and drink. They have taught nothing more than that the bread signifies the body and the wine signifies the blood of Christ, just as if one were to take a figure from the Old Testament and say: the bread from heaven that the Jews ate in the wilderness signifies the body of Christ or the gospel, but the bread from heaven is not the gospel or the body of Christ. . . . Now beware of such a view. Let go of reason and intellect; for they strive in vain to understand how flesh and blood can be present, and because they do not grasp it they refuse to believe it. Lay hold on the

39

word that Christ speaks: “Take, this is my body, this is my blood.” One must not do such violence to the words of God as to give to any word a meaning other than its natural one, unless there is clear and definite Scripture to do that. This is what is done by those who without any basis in Scripture take the word “is” and forcibly twist it to mean the same as the word “signifies.” They sneer at Christ’s statement: “This is my body,” and say it is equivalent to: “This signifies my body,” and so forth. But we should and will simply stick to the words of Christ—he will not deceive us—and repel this error with no other sword than the fact that Christ does not say: “This signifies my body,” but “This is my body.” . . . The second error involves the perversion also of the two phrases “my body” and “my blood.” Indeed, it gives the whole passage a different meaning. It does this by claiming that when Christ says: “This is my body,” he means: If you take this bread and wine, you will have a share in my body. Thus the sacrament is nothing else than a participation in the body of Christ, or, better, an incorporation into his spiritual body. To implement this process of incorporation he presumably instituted this bread and wine, as a sure sign that the spiritual incorporation is taking place and that the spiritual body is being realized. This is a clever sophistry. It is based on the fact that the Scriptures ascribe to Christ two kinds of body: one a natural body, which is born physically of Mary, just as all other men have bodies; the other a spiritual body, which is the whole Christian church, of which Christ is the head—just as husband and wife are one body and the husband is the head of the wife, of which Paul writes in Romans 12[:5] and in 1 Corinthians 12[:27] and in many other passages. . . . Since, therefore, the words of Christ “This is my body that is given for you” stand so clearly in the way and so directly contradict such an interpretation, we should by no means follow this understanding of the sacrament. For even Paul himself, after he has spoken in the tenth chapter [1 Cor 10:16] about the participation in the body, nevertheless in the eleventh chapter [1 Cor 11:23–24] comes back to the words and speaks just as Christ himself spoke, and says: “I have delivered to you what I have received, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and said: ‘Take and eat, this is my body that is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’” Here the words are plain and clear, that it is not the spiritual body of Christ that is present, but his natural body. . .

40

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Fig. 1.11. Luther (left) and Jan Hus (right) are depicted serving Holy Communion in both kinds in this illustration by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

33. LUTHER: THE SACRAMENT OF THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST— AGAINST THE FANATICS (1526) From LW 36:336–41, trans. Frederick Ahrens; cf. WA 19:471–523. . . . If anyone wishes to pursue a true course and not come to grief, let him beware of the clever idea, inspired by the devil in this matter everywhere, that he may suck the egg dry and leave us the shell, that is, remove the body and blood of Christ from the bread and wine, so that it remains no more than mere bread, such as the baker bakes. In accordance with this clever idea our opponents mock us at their pleasure, charging that we are eaters of flesh and drinkers of blood and that we worship a baked God. . . . Such are the tricks that the devil is playing against us nowadays everywhere. Now God is the sort of person who likes to do what is foolish and useless in the eyes of the world, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1[:23]: “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles.” And again: “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe in him” [1 Cor 1:21]. Well then, if anyone does not believe this, let

him believe accordingly that it is mere bread or a batch of bread. Anyone who has failed to grasp the faith may thenceforth believe whatever he likes; it makes no difference. Just as when someone is on the point of drowning, whether he drowns in a brook or in the middle of a stream, he is drowned just the same. So I say of these fanatics: if they let go of the word, let them believe whatever they like and squabble as long as they like. It has already happened that six or seven sects have arisen over the sacrament, but all of them under the delusion that Christ’s flesh and blood are not present. . . . Again, I preach the gospel of Christ, and with my bodily voice I bring Christ into your heart, so that you may form him within yourself. If now you truly believe, so that your heart lays hold of the word and holds fast within it that voice, tell me, what have you in your heart? You must answer that you have the true Christ, not that he sits in there, as one sits on a chair, but as he is at the right hand of the Father. How that comes about you cannot know, but your heart truly feels his presence, and through the experience of faith you know for a certainty that he is there....... But what happens when I bring Christ into the heart? Does it come about, as the fanatics imagine, that Christ descends on a ladder and climbs back up again? Christ still sits on the right hand of the Father and also in your heart, the one Christ who fills heaven and earth. I preach that he sits on the right hand of God and rules over all creatures, sin, death, life, world, devils, and angels; if you believe this, you already have him in your heart. Therefore your heart is in heaven, not in an apparition or dream, but truly. For where he is, there you are also. So he dwells and sits in your heart, yet he does not fall from the right hand of God. Christians experience and feel this clearly. But those people see none of these things, great as it is that Christ dwells thus in the heart and imparts himself completely in every heart and is distributed through the Word. Therefore, whoever can believe this does not find it difficult to believe also that his body and blood are in the sacrament. For if you try in this way to measure that wondrous sign with the measuring rod of thought and reason, you will at last reach the point where you must also say that Christ does not dwell in the hearts of the faithful.......

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

34. ZWINGLI: FRIENDLY EXEGESIS—THAT IS, EXPOSITION OF THE MATTER OF THE EUCHARIST TO MARTIN LUTHER (FEBRUARY, 1527) From Huldrych Zwingli: Writings Writings, vol. 2, ed. E. J. Furcha, trans. H. Wayne Preble (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick, 1984), 333–41. . . . We know that you would show him (Christ) in the bread, but Scripture does not support you. Prove, therefore, by unequivocal passages of Scripture that he is in the bread, as we do that he is in heaven. And that the human side of Christ (that we may not maintain anything not perfectly supported by Scripture) is so circumscribed or situated that it must be in one place only, we prove this: Christ himself has circumscribed his body in very many passages, not a few of which I have already cited, first by its going away or sitting at the right hand, and he has done it so thoroughly that no teacher could by any philosophy better show that it was circumscribed. Second, Christ has also made manifest where he is to be until the day of universal judgment, and has nowhere hinted that he should have his place anywhere else than where he has shown he will be. . . . Third, we prove that Christ’s body is finite and circumscribed because it even rose from the dead, as the angel said to the women, “You see Jesus the crucified. He is risen; he is not here” [Matt 28:6]. On this passage enough has been said above. Nor can we say that he is by turns sometimes everywhere, sometimes not, for the infinite cannot draw itself together so as not to be infinite and then spread itself out so as to be infinite again. Fourth, all the appearances by which he manifested himself after the resurrection prove our point. Raised from the dead, he determined to present himself in visible and tangible shape to his disciples, but he never appeared thus in different places at once, as we may see in the last chapter of Luke [24], in John 20, and in 1 Corinthians 15, where we read that all his appearances took place in a successive series. And what is written in the last chapter of John, how he stood upon the shore when the disciples had been drawing an empty net all night even unto the dawn, is a mark of circumscription. Fifth, passages like “Where I am, there shall my servant be also” point to the same conclusion. If they are where he is, in virtue of his humanity, namely, then, as they are circumscribed, so must he also be circumscribed....... He uses these words, “I go away, I leave the world, I shall now not be in the world.” So too the apostles: “He was parted from them”; “While they beheld, he

41

was taken up”; “A cloud received him out of their sights”; “He was received up into heaven”; “He sits at the right hand.” What will be sacred among us, my dear Luther, if we do violence to these words? . . . [To clarify the issues further, Zwingli makes a point by point contrast of his view and Luther’s:] LUTHER: We must believe that the body of Christ is eaten here. They that believe do thereby eat. ZWINGLI: . . . In saying we must believe that it is eaten here because the words say so, they sin twice: they bid us understand words wrongly that they have not understood, and without authorization they set up for our belief what we have nowhere been directed to believe. For we have nowhere been taught to believe that the body of Christ is to be eaten in a bodily sense, however much Christ must be eaten, that is, must have our trust put in him. Strange how they ekperdikizosi (“flutter away like partridges”) from what is taught in John 6 under the figurative form of eating the body. May the Lord give them knowledge of himself and of themselves. Amen. . . .

Fig. 1.12. Portrait of Ulich Zwingli by Hans Asper (1549).

42

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

35. LUTHER: CONFESSION CONCERNING CHRIST’S SUPPER (MARCH, 1528) From LW 37:206–23, trans. Robert H. Fischer; cf. WA 26:240–509. . . . Whoever will take a warning, let him beware of Zwingli and shun his books as the prince of hell’s poison. For the man is completely perverted and has entirely lost Christ. Other Sacramentarians settle on one error, but this man never publishes a book without spewing out new errors, more and more all the time. But anyone who rejects this warning may go his way, just so he knows that I warned him, and my conscience is clear. . . . If they prove conclusively that God’s power and wisdom extends no farther than the range of our sight, and that he is able to do no more than we can physically see and judge with our eyes or touch with our fingers, then you should join their side. Then I too will believe that God knows of no other way whereby Christ can be at the same time in heaven and his body in the Supper. Demand and insist on this. They are bound to do it. Their teachings cannot be established until they have made this clear and certain, for on this their teaching rests. . . . Again, since they do not prove that the right hand of God is a particular place in heaven, the mode of existence of which I have spoken also stands firm, that Christ’s body is everywhere because it is at the right hand of God, which is everywhere, although we do not know how that occurs. For we also do not know how it occurs that the right hand of God is everywhere. It is certainly not a mode by which we see with our eyes that an object is somewhere, as the fanatics regard the sacrament. But God no doubt has a mode by which it can be somewhere, and that’s the way it is until the fanatics prove the contrary. . . . My grounds, on which I rest in this matter, are as follows: The first is this article of our faith, that Jesus Christ is essential, natural, true, complete God and man in one person, undivided and inseparable. The second that the right hand of God is everywhere. The third, that the Word of God is not false or deceitful. The fourth, that God has and knows various ways to be present at a certain place, not only the single one of which the fanatics prattle, which the philosophers call “local.” . . . Because we prove from Scripture, however, that Christ’s body can exist in a given place in other modes than his corporeal one, we have by the same token sufficiently argued that the words “This is my body” ought to be believed as they read. For it is contrary to no article of faith, and moreover it is

scriptural, in that Christ’s body is held to have passed through the sealed stone and the closed door. Since we can point out a mode of existence other than the corporeal, circumscribed one, who will be so bold as to measure and span the power of God, as if he knows of no other modes? Yet the position of the fanatics cannot be maintained unless they can prove that the power of God can be measured and spanned, for their whole argument rests on the assertion that the body of Christ can exist in a given place only in a corporeal and circumscribed manner. . . . And now to come to my own position: Our faith maintains that Christ is God and man, and the two natures are one person, so that this person may not be divided in two; therefore, he can surely show himself in a corporeal, circumscribed manner at whatever place he will, as he did after the resurrection and will do on the Last Day. But above and beyond this mode he can also use the second, uncircumscribed mode, as we have proved from the gospel, that he did at the grave and the closed door. . . . The one body of Christ has a threefold existence, or all three modes of being at any given place. First, the circumscribed corporeal mode of presence, as when he walked bodily on earth, when he occupied and yielded space according to his size. . . . Second, the uncircumscribed, spiritual mode of presence according to which he neither occupies nor yields space but passes through everything created as he wills. . . . Third, since he is one person with God, the divine, heavenly mode, according to which all created things are indeed much more permeable and present to him than they are according to the second mode. 36. THE MARBURG COLLOQUY (1529) From Gr Great eat Debates of the Ref Reformation ormation, trans. Donald J. Ziegler (New York: Random House, 1969), 93–94, 97–98. OECOLAMPADIUS: Every body can only be in one place, confined within limits. LUTHER: Mathematical hairsplitting I will not listen to. God—this even the Aristotelians grant—can make a body be in one place alone or in several places at the same time or in no place at all, and he can make several be in one place at the same time. Therefore I wish to avoid distressing argumentation about whether the presence is real or not. This is no concern of mine. It is not arguments of this nature, based upon reason, but scriptural passages of clarity and certainty that are called for. Nevertheless, if

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

everybody wants this, I shall argue mathematics into the ground with you at the appointed time. I have already declared, however, that such argumentation will contribute nothing to this question. Here it is scriptural evidence that is needed. . . . ZWINGLI: We speak too of a “sacramental” presence of the body of Christ, and by this we mean that the body of Christ is “represented” in the Lord’s Supper. LUTHER: You seek to describe a continuous presence of Christ’s body in such a way as to remove the substance of the body from the bread, leaving us merely the empty form, even though the words of Christ read quite differently: “This is my body.” ZWINGLI: Oecolampadius and I further grant that God can of course make a body be in different places. But that he does this in the Lord’s Supper, this is what we want proved. The Holy Scriptures always show us Christ in one particular place, as in the manger, in the temple, in the desert, on the cross, in the tomb, at the right hand of the Father. For this reason, I believe that he must always be in one particular place. OSIANDER: With these references one can do no more than prove that Christ was in particular places at various times. That, however, he always and eternally is, indeed must be, in one particular place or certain spot, and that he cannot be nowhere or in many places in ways that are natural and unnatural, as you say— this will never be proved by these passages. ZWINGLI: I have proved that Christ was in one place. You prove in return that he is nowhere at all or in many places. LUTHER: You expressed your willingness at the outset to prove that this cannot be, and that our understanding was false. It is your obligation to do this and not to demand proof of us, for we are not obligated to you. ZWINGLI: It would be outrageous if we affirmed, taught, and defended such an important article and yet were neither able nor willing to point to a single passage of Scripture! LUTHER (raising the tablecloth): “This is my body!” Right here is our Scripture. You haven’t torn it away from us yet like you promised to do. We need none other. My esteemed lords, as long as the text of my Lord Jesus Christ is there—Hoc est corpus meum—then truly I cannot pass over it, but must confess and believe that Christ’s body is there. . . .

43

NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE EMPEROR 37. THE IMPERIAL PROPOSITION AT THE DIET OF SPEYER (MARCH 15, 1529) From The Augsburg Conf onfession ession, trans. M. Reu (Chicago: Wartburg, 1930), 32–33. . . . [Your] Imperial Majesty has not little grief and trouble due to the fact that in the German nation, during your reign, such evil, grave, perilous, and pernicious doctrines and errors in our holy faith have arisen and are not daily increasing more and more. Not only (though this is the most serious result) are the Christian and laudable laws, customs, and usages of the church, in consequence, brought into contempt and disgrace to the reproach and dishonor of God our Maker, but also to that of Your Imperial Majesty and the Empire. Worse still, the German nation, its estates, subjects, and allies are by these errors roused and inflamed to grievous and pitiful revolts, tumults, war, misery, and bloodshed; while the recesses of the Empire are regarded so lightly, or rather, in so many ways treated with such bold opposition and contempt, that Your Majesty is greatly displeased, and not minded (as becomes the Head of Christendom) to tolerate or permit them any longer....... 7. And whereas an article was included in the Recess of the Diet of Speyer in 1526, which states that “the Electors, Princes, and Estates of the Empire, and their ambassadors unanimously agreed and resolved, that while waiting for the Council, with our subjects, each one would so live, govern, and carry himself, in matters concerning the edict published by His Imperial Majesty at the Diet held at Worms, as he hopes and trusts to answer to God and His Imperial Majesty”; and whereas, from this article, as it has hitherto been understood, expounded, and explained according to their pleasure, by several of the Estates of the Holy Empire, great trouble and misunderstanding has arisen against our holy Christian faith, as also against the Magistrates through the disobedience of their subjects, and much other disadvantage, over which Your Imperial Majesty is greatly astonished; and to the end that in the future, this article may not be interpreted by every man according to his pleasure, and that the consequences, which in the past have proved so disastrous to our holy faith, may be averted, Your Majesty hereby repeals, revokes, and annuls the article contained in the Recess mentioned above, now as then and then

44

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

as now, all out of your own Imperial absolute power.......

Brandenburg, Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, the Landgrave of Hesse and the Prince of Anhalt)

38. THE PROTESTATION AT THE DIET OF SPEYER (APRIL 19, 1529)

39. THE SECRET AGREEMENT: THE PROTESTANT UNION (APRIL 22, 1529)

From The Augsburg Conf onfession ession, trans. M. Reu (Chicago: Wartburg, 1930), 489–90. . . . Although we know that our ancestors, brothers, and we have at all times exercised perfect, faithful, voluntary, and eager obedience in all matters in which we owed allegiance to the Roman Emperors—the deceased as well as the now reigning Emperor—and have always sought to further His Imperial Majesty’s and the Empire’s glory, prosperity, and welfare and have been so eager to do this that without boasting and without minimizing the services of any others we yield first place in this respect to no one, and although we are, with God’s help, henceforth till our dying day willing and ready to offer all due and possible obedience to His Imperial Roman Majesty, as our most gracious Lord, without sparing body or property, and to show all friendliness, favor, and impartiality to Your Royal Highness and Your Honors, our dearly beloved and gracious uncles, cousins, brothers-in-law, friends, and other Estates of the Holy Empire, yet, as Your Royal Highness and Your Honors know, these are matters that concern the glory of God and that affect the salvation of each and every one of us; here we must, by the command of God and for the sake of our consciences, by virtue of our baptism and his holy divine Word, acknowledge our Lord and God as the highest King and the Lord of lords, and we confidently trust that Your Royal Highness, Your Honors, and the other Estates will kindly, graciously, and benevolently hold us excused (as we petitioned before) if we do not agree with Your Royal Highness, Your Honors, and the Others in reference to the abovementioned article and if we do not obey the majority in this respect, because we are convinced that the former decree of Speyer, which states explicitly that it has been adopted unanimously and not only by a unanimous vote, cannot be properly and legally annulled except by a unanimous vote; furthermore, because in matters pertaining to the glory of God and the salvation of our souls, every man must himself give an answer to God for his conduct so that in this respect no man can conceal himself behind other people’s acts or behind majority resolutions; and for numerous other good and well-founded reasons. . . . (signed by the Elector of Saxony, Margrave of

From The Augsburg Conf onfession ession, trans. M. Reu (Chicago: Wartburg, 1930), 34–37. Articles of agreement discussed at a gracious and secret conference that was held today by the Elector of Saxony and Philip, Landgrave of Hesse and also the aforementioned three cities of Strassburg, Nürnberg, and Ulm, for the purpose of arriving at a definite understanding. . . . Since matters everywhere and especially at the present diet have taken such a turn that it has become highly doubtful that peace and unity in the Empire will be furthered, therefore at the above-mentioned meeting the problem shall be discussed how and in what form in case of emergency, which God may graciously prevent, the one shall offer help and assistance to any or all of the others if, on account of the divine Word, they should be attacked, violated, or molested. . . . In the event that the opposing party suddenly and unexpectedly attacks or invades the territory of the Elector, or the Landgrave, or both, then the cities, at their own expense, shall furnish the Elector and the Landgrave with . . . armed soldiers who may be used for defensive purposes as is necessary in the judgment of the assembled councilors. Similarly, if one or more of the abovementioned cities are attacked, then the said Elector and Landgrave shall, at their expense, furnish . . . mounted horsemen to be employed in the defense of the cities as noted above. . . . It is likewise agreed that this Christian, secret union shall be in force for six years, beginning at the time of its definite acceptance, and that at the end of the fifth year, a conference shall be held in reference to the further continued existence of this union. . . . 40. LUTHER: LETTER TO ELECTOR JOHANN OF SAXONY (MAY 22, 1529) From LW 49:224–26, trans. Gottfried Krodel; cf. WABr 5:76–77. . . . Master Philip has brought to me from the diet, among other [news], the word that supposedly a new alliance has come into being, in particular between my gracious lord, the Landgrave of Hesse, and some cities, which disturbed me not a little. . . .

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

First of all, it is certain that such an alliance is neither made by God nor by trust in God, but rather by human ambition and for the sole purpose of seeking human aid and depending upon it. [Such an alliance] does not have a good foundation, and in addition cannot bring forth any good fruit, in view of the fact that such an alliance is unnecessary. For the papistic crowd neither is in a position nor has the courage to do so much as even begin something [against us]—and God has already protected us against them with the wall of his might. The result of such an alliance is simply that the opponents are led also to make an alliance; perhaps, in addition, for the sake of defense and protection, they might do what they would otherwise have left undone. . . . Second, the worst thing is that in such an alliance we are forced to include those who work against God and the sacrament [of the altar] as wanton enemies of God and his Word. In so doing we are forced to load upon us, participate in, and fight for all their vice and blasphemy, so that certainly no more dangerous alliance could be made to blaspheme and impede the gospel and to condemn us, both soul and body. Unfortunately this is what the devil is after. 41. LETTER FROM ELECTOR JOHANN OF SAXONY TO LUTHER, JONAS, BUGENHAGEN, AND MELANCHTHON (MARCH 14, 1530) From WABr 5:264–65, trans. Eric Lund. . . . It is our gracious opinion that you should not be left unaware of an order we have received from His Imperial Majesty, our most gracious Lord, summoning us, together with the other Estates of the Holy Empire, to a diet in Augsburg on the eighth day of this coming April, where it is said that His Imperial Majesty intends to be present in person. We are sending the contents of this order to you in the enclosed transcript. Among the foremost matters that are to be discussed at this diet, one pertains to the division in our Christian religion, and it is expressly said that this important matter is to be discussed and resolved in the following manner. Namely, the viewpoints, opinions, and ideas among the Estates themselves are to be heard, understood, and considered with love and kindness; the divisions are to be reconciled and brought toward one united Christian truth; all things on either side that are not rightly explained or practiced are to be abolished; one single, true religion is to be accepted and adhered to by us all; and, since

45

we are all under one Christ, we are all to live in one communion, church, and unity and, finally, promote harmony and peace. Since this diet will perhaps take the place of a council or national assembly, we have thought it over and concluded that it is necessary for us to have all the articles causing divisions (those concerning both matters of faith and external church usages and ceremonies) gathered and written up in some form so that before the diet begins we may be firmly and thoroughly in agreement about the scope and form of discussion that we and the other Estates who have accepted pure doctrine can allow with good reason and in good conscience before God without causing troublesome annoyance. Since, however, the matters are to be taken up in such a way (we cannot interpret the aforementioned announcement of the diet otherwise), no one can more competently, thoroughly, or faithfully reflect on or offer advice about them than you. Thus, we hereby graciously ask you to do this and especially request that you will let all other matters and business rest and attend to this task so that you can finish between now and Oculi Sunday and come to us here at Torgau on that date. Considering that the time until the diet is very short and we must get going without delay, we leave the matter entirely to you....... 42. THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION (1530) Philip Melanchthon is the author of this confession, but it is based on Luther’s Schwabach Articles of 1529. Both Latin and German texts were prepared for presentation to the emperor at the Diet of Augsburg. The following translation is based on the German version. This document was the most important statement of Lutheran beliefs from Luther’s lifetime. It has continued to be a defining element of Lutheran identity worldwide to the present day. From BC 36–58. [I. Concerning God] In the first place, it is with one accord taught and held, following the decree of the Council of Nicaea, that there is one divine essence which is named God and truly is God. But there are three persons in the same one essence, equally powerful, equally eternal: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. All three are one divine essence, eternal, undivided, unending, of immeasurable power, wisdom,

46

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

and goodness, the creator and preserver of all visible and invisible things. What is understood by the word “person” is not a part nor a quality in another but that which exists by itself, as the fathers once used the word concerning this issue.

faith when we believe that Christ has suffered for us and that for his sake our sin is forgiven and righteousness and eternal life are given to us. For God will regard and reckon this faith as righteousness in his sight, as St. Paul says in Romans 3[:21–26] and 4[:5].

[II. Concerning Original Sin]

[V. Concerning the Office of Preaching]

Furthermore, it is taught among us that since the fall of Adam, all human beings who are born in the natural way are conceived and born in sin. This means that from birth they are full of evil lust and inclination and cannot by nature possess true fear of God and true faith in God. Moreover, this same innate disease and original sin is truly sin and condemns to God’s eternal wrath all who are not in turn born anew through baptism and the Holy Spirit. Rejected, then, are the Pelagians and others who do not regard original sin as sin in order to make human nature righteous through natural powers, thus insulting the suffering and merit of Christ.

To obtain such faith God instituted the office of preaching, giving the gospel and the sacraments. Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith, where and when he wills, in those who hear the gospel. It teaches that we have a gracious God, not through our merit but through Christ’s merit, when we so believe. Condemned are the Anabaptists and others who teach that we obtain the Holy Spirit without the external word of the gospel through our own preparation, thoughts, and works.

[III. Concerning the Son of God]

It is also taught that such faith should yield good fruit and good works and that a person must do such good works as God has commanded for God’s sake but not place trust in them as if thereby to earn grace before God. For we receive forgiveness of sin and righteousness through faith in Christ, as Christ himself says [Luke 17:10]: “When you have done all [things] . . . , say, ‘We are worthless slaves.’” The fathers also teach the same thing. For Ambrose says: “It is determined by God that whoever believes in Christ shall be saved and have forgiveness of sins, not through works but through faith alone, without merit.”

Likewise, it is taught that God the Son became a human being, born of the pure Virgin Mary, and that the two natures, the divine and the human, are so inseparably united in one person that there is one Christ. He is true God and true human being who truly “was born, suffered, was crucified, died, and was buried” in order both to be a sacrifice not only for original sin but also for all other sins and to conciliate God’s wrath. Moreover, the same Christ “descended into hell, truly rose from the dead on the third day, ascended into heaven, is sitting at the right hand of God” in order to rule and reign forever over all creatures, so that through the Holy Spirit he may make holy, purify, strengthen, and comfort all who believe in him, also distribute to them life and various gifts and benefits, and shield and protect them against the devil and sin. Finally, the same Lord Christ “will come” in full view of all “to judge the living and the dead” according to the Apostles’ Creed. Rejected are all heresies that are opposed to this article. [IV. Concerning Justification] Furthermore, it is taught that we cannot obtain forgiveness of sin and righteousness before God through our merit, work, or satisfactions, but that we receive forgiveness of sin and become righteous before God out of grace for Christ’s sake through

[VI. Concerning the New Obedience]

[VII. Concerning the Church] It is also taught that at all times there must be and remain one holy, Christian church. It is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel. For this is enough for the true unity of the Christian church that there the gospel is preached harmoniously according to a pure understanding and the sacraments are administered in conformity with the divine Word. It is not necessary for the true unity of the Christian church that uniform ceremonies, instituted by human beings, be observed everywhere. As Paul says in Ephesians 4[:4–5]: “There is one body

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” [IX. Concerning Baptism] Concerning baptism it is taught that it is necessary, that grace is offered through it, and that one should also baptize children, who through such baptism are entrusted to God and become pleasing to him. Rejected, therefore, are the Anabaptists, who teach that the baptism of children is not right. [X. Concerning the Lord’s Supper] Concerning the Lord’s Supper it is taught that the true body and blood of Christ are truly present under the form of bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper and are distributed and received there. Rejected, therefore, is also the contrary teaching. [XI. Concerning Confession] Concerning confession it is taught that private absolution should be retained and not abolished. However, it is not necessary to enumerate all misdeeds and sins, since it is not possible to do so. Psalm 19[:12]: “But who can detect their errors?” [XIII. Concerning the Use of Sacraments] Concerning the use of sacraments it is taught that the sacraments are instituted not only to be signs by which people may recognize Christians outwardly, but also as signs and testimonies of God’s will toward us in order thereby to awaken and strengthen our faith. That is why they also require faith and are rightly used when received in faith for the strengthening of faith. Rejected, therefore, are those who teach that the sacraments justify ex opere operato without faith and who do not teach that this faith should be added so that the forgiveness of sin (which is obtained through faith and not through work) may be offered there. [XIV. Concerning Church Government] Concerning church government it is taught that no one should publicly teach, preach, or administer the sacraments without a proper [public] call.

47

[XV. Concerning Church Regulations] Concerning church regulations made by human beings, it is taught to keep those that may be kept without sin and that serve to maintain peace and good order in the church, such as specific celebrations, festivals, and so forth. However, people are also instructed not to burden consciences with them as if such things were necessary for salvation. Moreover, it is taught that all rules and traditions made by human beings for the purpose of appeasing God and of earning grace are contrary to the gospel and the teaching concerning faith in Christ. That is why monastic vows and other traditions concerning distinctions of foods, days, and the like, through which people imagine they can earn grace and make satisfaction for sin, are good for nothing and contrary to the gospel. [XVI. Concerning Public Order and Secular Government] Concerning public order and secular government it is taught that all political authority, orderly government, laws, and good order in the world are created and instituted by God and that Christians may without sin exercise political authority; be princes and judges; pass sentences and administer justice according to imperial and other existing laws; punish evildoers with the sword; wage just wars; serve as soldiers; buy and sell; take required oaths; possess property; be married; and so forth. Condemned here are the Anabaptists, who teach that none of the things indicated above is Christian....... The gospel does not overthrow secular government, public order, and marriage but instead intends that a person keep all this as a true order of God and demonstrate in these walks of life Christian love and true good works according to each person’s calling. Christians, therefore, are obliged to be subject to political authority and to obey its commands and laws in all that may be done without sin. But if a command of the political authority cannot be followed without sin, one must obey God rather than any human beings (Acts 5[:29]). [XVIII. Concerning Free Will] Concerning free will it is taught that a human being has some measure of free will, so as to live an externally honorable life and to choose among the

48

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

things reason comprehends. However, without the grace, help, and operation of the Holy Spirit a human being cannot become pleasing to God, fear or believe in God with the whole heart, or expel innate evil lusts from the heart. Instead, this happens through the Holy Spirit, who is given through the Word of God. For Paul says (1 Cor 2[:14]): “Those who are natural do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit.” . . . Rejected here are those who teach that we can keep the commandments of God without grace and the Holy Spirit. For although we are by nature able to do the external works of the commandments, yet we cannot do the supreme commandments in the heart, namely, truly to fear, love, and believe in God. [XX.] Concerning Faith and Good Works Our people are falsely accused of prohibiting good works. But their writings concerning the Decalogue and other writings demonstrate that they have given good and useful account and admonition concerning proper Christian walks of life and works, about which little had been taught before our time. Instead, for the most part childish, unnecessary works—such as rosaries, the cult of the saints, joining religious orders, pilgrimages, appointed fasts, holy days, brotherhoods, and the like—were emphasized in all sermons. Our opponents also no longer praise such unnecessary works as highly as they once did. Moreover, they have also learned to speak now of faith, about which they did not preach at all in former times. Rather, they now teach that we do not become righteous before God by works alone, but they add faith in Christ, saying that faith and works make us righteous before God. Such talk may offer a little more comfort than the teaching that one should rely on works alone. Because at present the teaching concerning faith, which is the principal part of the Christian life, has not been emphasized for such a long time, as all must admit, but only a doctrine of works was preached everywhere, our people have taught as follows: In the first place, our works cannot reconcile us with God or obtain grace. Instead, this happens through faith alone when a person believes that our sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who alone is the mediator to reconcile the Father. Now all who imagine that they can accomplish this by works and can merit grace despise Christ and seek their own way to God contrary to the gospel. This teaching about faith is publicly and clearly treated in Paul at many places, especially in Ephesians 2[:8–9]: “For by grace you have been saved through

faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” That no new interpretation is introduced here can be demonstrated from Augustine, who diligently deals with this matter and also teaches that we obtain grace and become righteous before God through faith in Christ, and not through works. His whole book On the Spirit and the Letter proves it. Now although untested people despise this teaching completely, it is nevertheless the case that it is very comforting and beneficial for timid and terrified consciences. For the conscience cannot find rest and peace through works but by faith alone, when it concludes on its own with certainty that it has a gracious God for Christ’s sake, as Paul says (Rom 5[:1]): “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God.” In former times people did not emphasize this comfort in sermons but instead drove the poor consciences to their own works. As a result, all sorts of works were undertaken. For the conscience forced some into monasteries, in the hope of obtaining grace there through the monastic life. Some devised other works as a way of earning grace and making satisfaction for sins. Many of them discovered that a person could not obtain peace by such means. That is why it became necessary to preach this teaching concerning faith in Christ and diligently to emphasize it, so that each person may know that God’s grace is grasped by faith alone, without merit. . . . All who know that in Christ they have a gracious God call upon him and are not, like the heathen, without God. For the devil and the ungodly do not believe this article about the forgiveness of sin. That is why they are enemies of God, cannot call upon him, and cannot hope for anything good from him. Moreover, as has now been indicated, Scripture talks about faith but does not label it knowledge such as the devil and the ungodly have. For Hebrews 11[:1] teaches that faith is not only a matter of historical knowledge but a matter of having confidence in God to receive his promise. Augustine also reminds us that we should understand the word “faith” in Scripture to mean confidence in God—that God is gracious to us—and not merely such knowledge of these stories as the devils also have. Further, it is taught that good works should and must be done, not that a person relies on them to earn grace, but for God’s sake and to God’s praise. Faith alone always takes hold of grace and forgiveness of sin. Because the Holy Spirit is given through faith, the heart is also moved to do good works. For

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

before, because it lacks the Holy Spirit, the heart is too weak. Moreover, it is in the power of the devil who drives our poor human nature to many sins, as we observe in the philosophers who tried to live honestly and blamelessly, but then failed to do so and fell into many great, public sins. That is what happens to human beings when they are separated from true faith, are without the Holy Spirit, and govern themselves through their own human strength alone. That is why this teaching concerning faith is not to be censured for prohibiting good works. On the contrary, it should be praised for teaching the performance of good works and for offering help as to how they may be done. For without faith and without Christ human nature and human power are much too weak to do good works: such as to call on God, to have patience in suffering, to love the neighbor, to engage diligently in legitimate callings, to be obedient, to avoid evil lust, and so forth. Such lofty and genuine works cannot be done without the help of Christ, as he himself says in John 15[:5]: “Apart from me you can do nothing.” [XXI. Concerning the Cult of the Saints] Concerning the cult of the saints our people teach that the saints are to be remembered so that we may strengthen our faith when we see how they experienced grace and how they were helped by faith. Moreover, it is taught that each person, according to his or her calling, should take the saints’ good works as an example. For instance, His Imperial Majesty, in a salutary and righteous fashion, may follow the example of David in waging war against the Turk. For both hold a royal office that demands defense and protection of their subjects. However, it cannot be demonstrated from Scripture that a person should call upon the saints or seek help from them. “For there is only one single reconciler and mediator set up between God and humanity, Jesus Christ” (1 Tim 2[:5]). He is the only savior, the only high priest, the mercy seat, and intercessor before God (Rom 8[:34]). He alone has promised to hear our prayers. According to Scripture, in all our needs and concerns it is the highest worship to seek and call upon this same Jesus Christ with our whole heart. “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.” [1 John 2:1].

49

43. LUTHER’S WARNING TO HIS DEAR GERMAN PEOPLE (1531) From LW 47:18–20, trans. Martin Bertram; cf. WA 30/3:276f. . . . It is not fitting for me, a preacher, vested with the spiritual office, to wage war or to counsel war or incite it, but rather to dissuade from war and to direct to peace, as I have done until now with all diligence. All the world must bear witness to this. However, our enemies do not want to have peace, but war. If war should come now, I will surely hold my pen in check and keep silent and not intervene as I did in the last uprising [the Peasants’s Revolt of 1525]. I will let matters take their course, even though not a bishop, priest, or monk survives and I myself also perish. For their defiance and boasting are intolerable to God; their impenitent heart is carrying things too far. They were begged, they were admonished, they were implored for peace beyond all reasonable measure. They insist on forcing the issue with flesh and blood; so I, too, will force the issue with them through the Spirit and through God and henceforth set not one or two papists but the entire papacy against me, until the Judge in heaven intervenes with signs. I will not and cannot be afraid of such miserable enemies of God. I disdain their defiance, and I laugh at their wrath. They can do no more than deprive me of a sack of ailing flesh. But they shall soon discover of what I am able to deprive them. Furthermore, if war breaks out—which God forbid—I will not reprove those who defend themselves against the murderous and blood-thirsty papists, nor let anyone else rebuke them as being seditious, but I will accept their action and let it pass as self-defense. I will direct them in this matter to the law and to the jurists. For in such an instance, when the murderers and bloodhounds wish to wage war and to murder, it is in truth no insurrection to rise against them and defend oneself. Not that I wish to incite or spur anyone on to such self-defense, or to justify it, for that is not my office; much less does it devolve to me to pass judgment or sentence on him. A Christian knows very well what he is to do—namely, to render to God the things that are God’s and to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s [Matt 22:21], but not to render to the bloodhounds the things that are not theirs. I want to make a distinction between sedition and other acts and to deprive the bloodhounds of the pretext of boasting that they are warring against rebellious people and that they were justified according to both human and divine law; for so the little kitten is fond of grooming and adorning itself. Likewise,

50

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

I do not want to leave the conscience of the people burdened by the concern and worry that their selfdefense might be rebellious. For such a term would be too evil and too harsh in such a case. It should be given a different name, which I am sure the jurists can find for it. We must not let everything be considered rebellious that the bloodhounds designate as such. For in that way they want to silence the lips and tie the hands of the entire world, so that no one may either reprove them with preaching or defend himself with his fist, while they keep their mouth open and their hands free. Thus they want to frighten and ensnare all the world with the name “insurrection,” and at the same time comfort and reassure themselves. No, dear fellow, we must submit to you a different interpretation and definition of that term. To act contrary to law is not rebellion; otherwise every violation of the law would be rebellion. No, he is an insurrectionist who refuses to submit to government and law, who attacks and fights against them, and attempts to overthrow them with a view of making himself ruler and establishing the law, as Müntzer did; that is the true definition of a rebel. Alius est invasor, aliud transgressor. In accordance with this definition, selfdefense against the bloodhounds cannot be rebellious. For the papists are deliberately starting the war; they refuse to keep the peace, they do not let others rest who would like to live in peace. Thus the papists are much closer to the name and the quality that is termed rebellion. . . .

break and fall apart entirely. It is true that this same Roman Empire now under our Emperor Charles is coming up a bit and is becoming mightier than it has been for a long time, but I think that that shows it is the last phase, and that before God it is just as when a light or wisp of straw is burnt up and about to go out, then it gives forth a flame as if it was going to burn brightly and even at the same moment goes out—even so Christendom now goes with the light of the gospel.

THE ASSAULTS OF THE DEVIL

Fig. 1.13. Portrait of Johann Frederich (the Magnanimous) by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1531).

44. LUTHER’S LETTER TO DUKE JOHANN FRIEDRICH OF SAXONY (FEBRUARY/MARCH, 1530) From Luther’s Corr orrespondence espondence and Other Contempor porary ary Letters Letters, vol. 2, trans. Preserved Smith (Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1913), 516. The world runs and hastens so diligently to its end that it often occurs to me forcibly that the last days will break before we can completely turn the Holy Scriptures into German. For it is certain from the Holy Scriptures that we have no more temporal things to expect. All is done and fulfilled: the Roman Empire is at an end; the Turk has reached his highest point; the pomp of the papacy is falling away, and the world is cracking on all sides almost as if it would

45. THE WITTENBERG CONCORD (MAY, 1536) The South German reformers were torn between the views of Zwingli and Luther on the Lord’s Supper. Martin Bucer, however, continued to work to unify the Protestant position on this hotly disputed issue. In the following agreement resulting from negotiations in Wittenberg, the South Germans accepted two important points Luther had insisted on: the presence of Christ with the bread and the reception of Christ by all, worthy and unworthy alike. From Walch 27:2087–88, trans. Eric Lund.

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

On the Lord’s Supper

51

46. LUTHER: COMMENTARY ON GALATIANS 4:3 (1535)

The First Article We confess, in accordance with the words of Irenaeus, that there are two things in this holy sacrament: one heavenly and one earthly. Therefore we hold the belief and teach that with the bread and the wine the body and blood of Christ are truly and essentially present and are distributed and received. The Second Article And although they hold the belief that there is no transubstantiation and also do not believe that the body of Christ is locally present, that it is enclosed spatially in the bread or persistently united with it apart from the eating of the holy sacrament, they still confess and hold the belief that through sacramental union the bread is the body of Christ. They hold and believe that the body of Christ is truly present with the bread and is truly received. For apart from the use, when the bread is laid aside or enclosed in the monstrance or tabernacle or carried about and displayed in procession, the body of Christ is not present. The Third Article They hold the belief that it is the institution of this sacrament through Christ that makes it efficacious for Christianity, and it does not depend on the worthiness of the one who distributes or receives it. For, as Paul says, the unworthy also receive the sacrament. Thus, they also hold the belief that the body and blood of Christ are truly distributed to the unworthy and that where Christ the Lord’s words of institution are observed, the unworthy truly receive it. But, as Paul says, they receive it to their judgment for they misuse the holy sacrament because they receive it without true repentance and faith. Therefore, the holy sacrament is instituted to attest that all who repent and console themselves through faith in Jesus Christ the Lord receive the grace and benefits of Christ, are incorporated into Christ, and are washed through the blood of Christ. . . . Signed by Wolfgang Capito, Martin Bucer, Martin Luther, Justus Jonas, Johann Bugenhagen, Philip Melanchthon, et alia.

One of the hallmarks of Luther’s theology was the careful distinction he made between law and gospel, between commandments and promises. He developed this understanding especially from his favorite Pauline epistle, Galatians, on which he published commentaries in 1519 and 1535. Remarks such as the following inspired the antinomian position of Agricola. From LW 26:365–66, trans. Jaroslav Pelikan; cf. WA 40I:548–70. Galatians 4:3 If you permit the law to dominate in your conscience instead of grace, then when the time comes for you to conquer sin and death in the sight of God, the law is nothing but the dregs of all evils, heresies, and blasphemies; for all it does is to increase sin, accuse, frighten, threaten with death, and disclose God as a wrathful Judge who damns sinners. If you are wise, therefore, you will put Moses, that lisper and stammerer, far away with his law; and you will not let his terrors and threats affect you in any way at all. Here he should be as suspect to you as an excommunicated and condemned heretic, worse than the pope and the devil, and therefore not to be listened to at all. Apart from the matter of justification, on the other hand, we, like Paul, should think reverently of the law. We should endow it with the highest praises and call it holy, righteous, good, spiritual, divine, etc. Apart from our conscience we should make a god of it; but in our conscience it is truly a devil, for in the slightest trial it cannot encourage or comfort the conscience but does the very opposite, frightening and saddening it and depriving it of confidence in righteousness, of life, and of everything good. This is why Paul calls the law “weak and beggarly elements” later on (Gal 4:9). Therefore let us not permit it to dominate our conscience in any way, especially since it cost Christ so much to remove the tyranny of the law from the conscience. . . .

52

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

47. THE ANTINOMIAN THESES ON LAW AND GOSPEL REPORTED BY LUTHER AT THE FIRST DISPUTATION AGAINST THE ANTINOMIANS (DECEMBER, 1537) Ever since 1527 Johann Agricola had been upset with Melanchthon’s emphasis on the need for the law to arouse repentance prior to the declaration of God’s promise of forgiveness through the gospel. Johann Agricola extended Luther’s antithesis between law and gospel to the point that he spoke of the continued preaching of the law as unnecessary and even incompatible with the gospel. Luther considered this a misunderstanding of his position and called for a series of disputations on the topic. The following theses summarize the position attributed to Agricola. From WA 39/1:342–44 and Walch 20:1625, trans. Eric Lund. 1. Repentance should be learned not from the Ten Commandments or any law of Moses but through the gospel from consciousness of our violation of the Son. 2. For Christ says in the last chapter of Luke [24:26, 46–47]: Thus must Christ die and in this way enter into his glory so that repentance and forgiveness of sins might be preached in his name. 3. Christ also says in John [16:8] that the Spirit convicts the world of sin, not the law. 4. The last sermon of Christ teaches the same: Go, preach the gospel to all creatures. 5. When Paul says to the Philippians [2:5, 12]: “Have this mind among yourselves which also is in Christ Jesus” so that you work out your salvation in fear and trembling, he clearly establishes that repentance (which is called fear and trembling) should be taught from the remembrance of Christ, not from the law. 6. From the preaching of Paul and Barnabas it is also quite clear that the work of the law is in no way a part of justification [Rom 3:20–21; Acts 13:38–39]....... 14. Whoever improperly adds to the words of Christ and teaches that first the law and then the gospel should be taught contorts the words of Christ for they do not hold to the simple understanding of Christ’s words. 15. For just as one must uphold the simple sense of these words: “This is my body,” so must we also uphold the simple sense of these words: “Go and preach the gospel, baptizing, etc.” 16. The law merely exposes sin and to be sure

without the Holy Spirit; so that it exposes to damnation. 17. But now such a teaching is needed that not only damns with great power but also at the same time saves. The gospel is such a teaching that teaches together repentance and the forgiveness of sins. 18. For the gospel of Christ teaches the wrath of God from heaven and also justification before God, Romans 1:17. For it is a preaching of repentance conjoined with a promise that reason does not comprehend by nature but by divine revelation. Other Antinomian Theses 1. The law is not worthy of being called the Word of God. . . . 4. The Ten Commandments belong in the town hall, not the pulpit. . . . 6. We should not prepare people for the gospel through the preaching of the law. God, whose work it is, must do that. 7. In the gospel, one should not deal with the violation of the law but with the violation of the Son. 8. To hear the Word and live according to it is the result of the law. 9. To hear the Word and feel it in the heart is the actual essence of the gospel; that is our method. 48. LUTHER: THIRD DISPUTATION AGAINST THE ANTINOMIANS (SEPTEMBER 6, 1538) In the latter part of his life, Luther increasingly expressed disappointment at the lack of moral discipline among people who claimed to be Christians. This feeling was especially stimulated by the information gathered from a systematic visitation of the parishes in Saxony. In 1529, he wrote, “Now that the gospel has been restored, they have mastered the fine art of abusing liberty.” This concern surfaced in his response to Agricola’s view of the law. From WA 39/1:571–74, trans. Eric Lund. It is true that at the start of this movement we began to teach the gospel vigorously and make use of these words that the Antinomians now use. But the situation at that time was very different from what it is today. Then the world was terrified to such a degree that the pope or the angry look of a single priest caused the whole of Olympus to tremble, not to mention earth and hell, over which that man of sin had usurped all power to himself. When consciences were so oppressed, terrified, miserable, anxious, and

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

afflicted, there was no need to inculcate or teach the law. Rather, the need then was to present the other part of the teaching of Christ where he commands us to preach the remission of sin in his name, so that those who were already terrified enough might learn not to despair but to flee to the grace and mercy promised in Christ. Now, however, when the times are very dissimilar from those under the pope, our Antinomians, sweet theologians that they are, retain our words, our doctrine, the joyful promise concerning Christ, but, what is worse, wish to preach this alone. They do not observe that people are other than they were under that hangman pope and have become secure, harsh, wicked violators—yes, even Epicureans who respect neither God nor men. They affirm and comfort such people by their doctrine. In those days we were so terrified that we trembled even at the sound of a leaf falling from a tree. On account of which, I tell you, we also initially taught repentance from love of righteousness, that is, from the gospel, because people in that period were exceedingly crushed and were almost brought to despair. Moreover, they were already twisting round and round in the middle of hell so that unless you wanted them to utterly perish, it was necessary to lead them quickly back from the depths. But now, our Antinomians, not wanting to follow unless they can sing sweet songs, pay no attention to the fact that these times are much more perverse than they were before. They make people secure who are of themselves already so secure that they fall away from grace. So, this is how I respond to their argument that penitence should be taught by or should begin with love of righteousness: this is right for those who are and were afflicted and crushed as we were in that time under the pope, when we fled from the monstrous terrors and fears that worthless man inspired. I know how much anxious sweat that brought about for me, and I escaped it only little by little. Even today I cannot look at my Lord Jesus with as cheerful a face as he would like after having been inculcated with that pestilent doctrine, which depicted a God who was angry with us and a judgmental Christ. All the demagogues were mute concerning faith in Christ and the gratuitous remission of sins on account of Christ, and there was pure silence about this in the writings of all the canonists and schoolmen, although they were disposed by profession to heal consciences.

53

Fig. 1.14. Portrait of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, by Hans Krell (1534).

Now these Antinomians want us to continue preaching forever the speeches appropriate to a despondent age. To do that is certainly not to divide the word of God rightly [2 Tim 2:15] but to tear it apart and scatter it and, thus, to destroy souls. Our sound judgment has been and will continue to be this: if you see the afflicted and crushed, preach grace as much as you can. But do not do the same to the secure, the slothful, the fornicators, the adulterers, and blasphemers. If you will not do this, you will be answerable for their shameful conduct. There are two types of people in the world: the poor and infirmed, that is, the pious ones or those desiring to be pious, and the rich and healthy, that is, those impious and secure, worthless fellows. Therefore, people remain the same at all times, but it is proper when the word of God is rightly divided that not all things be taught to all without discrimination. The healthy have no need of a physician. . . . 49. LUTHER: LETTER ON PHILIP OF HESSE’S BIGAMY (JUNE 10, 1540) This letter to Elector Johann Friedrich of Saxony expresses Luther’s afterthoughts about the controversial bigamy of his important political supporter, Philip of Hesse. From WABr 9:133–34, trans. Eric Lund. Most illustrious, noble Elector, gracious Lord! I hear that Your Grace has been unjustly tormented by the court of Dresden [Albertine Saxony] concerning the case of the Landgrave [Philip of Hesse]. Your Grace wishes to know what opinion to express to the clever men of Meissen. . . . This is the situation: Martin Bucer brought a letter and reported that the Landgrave was not able to stay

54

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

chaste, due to some deficiencies in his wife. He has lived until now in a way that is not good but would like to be Evangelical and at one with the foremost leaders of the church. He has declared before God and his conscience that he would not be able to avoid such vice in the future unless he were allowed to take another wife. We were deeply alarmed at this narration and at the obvious scandal that would result. We pleaded with his Grace not to do as he wished, but we were told again that he would not agree to this. He said that if we would not allow it, he would disregard us and obtain what he wanted from the Emperor or Pope. So that this would not happen, we humbly requested that if his Grace would not or could not, in good conscience and before God (as he said), do otherwise, he should at least keep it a secret, because, although he felt compelled by necessity, this act was not defensible before the world and the imperial laws. This, then, is what he said he would do. For our part, we agreed to help him before God and exculpate him as much as possible by noting examples such as Abraham [Genesis 16]. This all happened as though in the confessional, and no one can blame us, as if we acted voluntarily or willingly or with pleasure or joy. It was hard enough for our hearts, but because we could not prevent it; we thought we should set free his conscience as best we could. . . . But if I had known that the Landgrave had been satisfying his desires for a long time and could well satisfy them with others, as I have now just learned that he did with the woman of Eschwege, certainly no angel could have induced me to give such advice. I was taking into consideration the unavoidable necessity and his weakness and the perilous state of his conscience, as Bucer has explained it to us. Much less would I have advised that there should be a public marriage, to which a young princess and young countess would come. He did not tell us about this fact, which cannot be tolerated and is insufferable to the whole empire. Nevertheless, I understood and hoped, as long as he was inclined in the common way to gratify the weakness of the flesh with sin and shame, that he would perhaps take some honorable maiden in secret marriage. Even though this would have seemed illegitimate before the world, it would have overridden the great need of his conscience. Such has happened many times to other great lords. In a similar fashion, I advised certain priests in the lands of Duke Georg [of Albertine Saxony] and the [Catholic] bishops to marry their cooks secretly. This was my confessional advice. I would much rather have kept silence if the need had not forced it,

but I could not do that. The men at Dresden speak as though I had taught the same for thirteen years, and yet they give us to understand what a friendly heart they have toward us and what great desire they have for love and unity. They act as if there were no scandal nor sin in their lives that are ten times worse before God than anything I ever advised, but the world must confidently fret about the splinter in its neighbor’s eye and forget the beam in its own eye. If I must defend all I have said or done in former years, especially at the beginning, I must ask the pope to do the same, for if they defend their former deeds (I will keep silent about their present ones) they would belong to the devil more than to God. I am not ashamed of my advice, even if it should come to the attention of the whole world, but due to the aversion it aroused, I would, rather, if possible, have kept it secret. 50. THE REGENSBURG BOOK OF 1541 This theological document, prepared primarily by the South German reformer Martin Bucer and the Catholic theologian Johannes Gropper, formed the basis for the negotiations at the Colloquy of Regensburg. Attempting to honor Protestant preoccupation with justifying faith and Catholic concern for the works of faith, it presented the controversial formula of “double justification.” From CR 4:199–201, trans. Eric Lund; cf. Walch 17:594–97. Chapter Five: On Justification . . . It is steadfast and sound doctrine that the sinner is justified by a living and efficacious faith, for through such we are made acceptable to God and accepted on account of Christ. We call this living faith a movement of the Holy Spirit by which those who truly repent of their old life are directed to God and truly grasp the mercy that is promised in Christ so that they truly feel that they have forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God on account of the merits of Christ, accept the grace and benefits of God, and cry to God: Abba, dear Father. Nevertheless, this is obtained by no one unless at the same time love is poured in and heals a person’s will so that after the will has been made well, as Augustine says, it begins to fulfill the law. This living faith grasps the mercy of God and believes that the righteousness that is in Christ is imputed to us gratuitously and at the same time receives the promise of the Holy Spirit

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

and love. This faith that justifies is the same faith that is active through love. However, it is true that by this faith we are justified (that is, made acceptable and reconciled to God) because this same faith grasps the mercy and righteousness that is imputed to us on account of Christ and his merits, not on account of our worthiness or the perfection of righteousness that has been initiated in us by Christ. Although the person who is reckoned righteous through Christ receives a righteousness within, as St. Paul says: “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified” [1 Cor 6:11] and for this reason the old fathers have used the word “justified” for the reception of this righteousness that we have within us; nevertheless the faithful soul should not rest on this but only on the righteousness of Christ that is given to us and without which there neither is nor can be any righteousness. And thus we are justified or reckoned so through faith in Christ, which is made acceptable to God through his merits, not on account of our own worthiness or works. Yet on account of the righteousness within us, we are said to be righteous because we do good works, according to 1 John 3:7: “Whoever does right, is righteous.” And although the reborn should always grow in the fear of God, repentance, humility, and other virtues, since their renewal is not yet perfected and great weakness clings to them, nevertheless one should teach that those who are truly penitent should believe and have no doubt that they are always acceptable and pleasing to God on account of Christ the mediator. For Christ is the propitiator, the high priest and intercessor for us whom the Father has sent to us and along with him, all good things. Even though certainty is not perfect in the midst of this weakness, and there are many weak and anxious consciences that often wrestle with grave doubt, still no one should be excluded from the grace of God because of this weakness. Rather, such people should be diligently admonished to set the promises of Christ bravely against their doubts and with steady prayer to ask for an increase of their faith. As the apostle prays, “Lord, increase our faith” [Luke 17:5]. All Christians ought to learn that grace and new birth are not given to us so that we should remain idle in this beginning stage, but that we should grow in all things through Christ who is our head. Therefore, one should teach people to be diligent and to strengthen themselves with good works, internal and external, as God has commanded and recommended. For such, God has clearly and openly promised, in many places in the Gospels, a reward through Christ, namely, benefits for body and soul in this life accord-

55

ing to his divine will and a reward in heaven after this life. Therefore, although the inheritance of eternal life is due to the reborn on account of the promise, as soon as they are reborn in Christ, God will no less abundantly reward good works that are good, not in their essence or as they come from us, but insofar as they are done in faith and are from the Holy Spirit that dwells in us and acts together with the free will as coworker. The blessedness of those who do more and greater works will be fuller and greater because through such exercises faith and love increases in them. Therefore, whoever says “we are justified by faith alone” should also convey the teaching of repentance, fear of God, the judgment of God, and good works so that the summary of our preaching is complete. As Christ says: “Preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins in my name” [Luke 24:47]. Furthermore, this way of speaking should not be understood in any way other than as it was previously stated. 51. MELANCHTHON’S REPLY CONCERNING THE BOOK AND THE ARTICLES ACCEPTED AND REJECTED DURING THE COLLOQUY (1541) Philip Melanchthon was temperamentally more conciliatory than Luther, but even he had some reservations about the compromise represented by the Regensburg Book. He prepared this reply on behalf of the Protestant princes. From Gr Great eat Debates of the Ref Reformation ormation, trans. Donald J. Ziegler (New York: Random House, 1969), 152–60. Unquestionably, Your Imperial Majesty’s intentions in publishing the book were benevolent and kindly, for we have indeed noted its author’s attempts to moderate and correct several abuses. And if those on the other side were to show themselves reasonable, then a way toward settlement would be achieved. Therefore we express our most humble appreciation to Your Imperial Majesty for this disposition and willingness to put an end to strife and misunderstanding in the church through discussion by learned men and by peaceful means, as befits the church of Christ. . . . We have considered the articles on which agreement has been reported, such as those on original sin, justification, church discipline, and several others. These articles require further elaboration in several places, which we intend to point out subsequently. Yet if we want to maintain an honest and

56

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

at the same time a respectable and reasonable disposition toward the matter, whatever shortcomings those places might still have, we know that we cannot condemn the views and judgments of the disputants. It was most certainly our intention, however, that sound, uncorrupted teaching, the grace of Christ, and the justification of faith be extended throughout the church. Therefore, since this teaching is treated with some brevity in the articles presented in the book, a more detailed exposition of these articles might be added that truly contributes to the salvation of souls and to Christian unity, thereby avoiding the doubts and fresh controversies that might arise from the brevity. For we interpret these articles in the sense that they are found in our confession and apology. Moreover, we have not wanted to confuse anything, because neither God nor the church would be served by articles that are puzzling and questionable in nature. They might be stretched by opponents into misconceptions and absurdities, quite like putting one oversized shoe on either foot. For this reason we have taken great pains wherever possible to achieve clear and accurate understanding of our views, which we have no doubt are in accord with the judgment and belief of the universal church. So if we are indeed to effect a reconciliation, we request in view of the importance of this matter that the articles be further explained and clarified. . . . Points That Require Further Comment . . . In the article on justification, where it speaks of an efficacious faith, it is our understanding that some have turned this around to mean that an efficacious faith is a workable faith and consequently to understand by this article that man is justified by faith along with works. For it is the common view of several on the other side that Paul’s statement that we are justified by faith is to be taken as if he had intended to say we are made ready for justification, that is, for love, through faith. At this point we become acceptable to God and are justified before him—not through faith for the sake of Christ. If this article is to be corrupted and perverted in such a manner then we must of necessity oppose it. For when our representatives stated here that we acquire piety and blessedness through a living and efficacious faith, they intended to be understood as speaking, not about faith that is mere knowledge of history, but about the kind of faith that is trust, that helps us for the sake of Christ to grasp the mercy of God and that lifts up frightened souls. It was in this sense that our representatives spoke of the efficacy of faith, through which

faith itself is a burning stimulus from the Holy Spirit to take heart by abandoning oneself to Christ and acquire life. As declared in the subsequent passage about faith in the book’s article on justification, and in the words of the prophet, the just shall live by faith. Therefore, in order to avoid fresh disputes arising from the dual meaning, either this declaration should be appended or else the word (efficacious) should be deleted. . . . 52. LETTER FROM LUTHER AND BUGENHAGEN TO ELECTOR JOHANN FRIEDRICH (MAY 10 OR 11, 1541) From WABr 9:406–9, trans. Eric Lund. Grace and peace in Christ. Illustrious, noble Prince, gracious Lord! We have received the writing Your Gracious Lord sent and have diligently read it all. First of all, you have rightly judged that the document of agreement is a diffuse and patched-together thing. For we have also observed from the writing that Master Philip sent us how it has gone, namely, that Master Philip first set forth a right document, noting how we are justified by faith alone without works. They could not tolerate this and have presented another, that faith is active through love. This Master Philip also rejected. Finally they harmonized and glued both of these documents together. Thus this detailed and pieced-together document has come about according to which they are right and we are also right. Now if Doctor Eck will confess (as he will not do) that they were previously not so learned, then might such an agreement superficially endure for a while. But if he boasts (as he most certainly will) and stands on the statement in Galatians 5: “Faith is active,” saying that they have always taught this, then the agreement is like Christ said in Matthew 9: “No one sews a new piece of cloth on an old cloak because the tear will be made worse.” For with such false, dissimilar people there can be no other agreement, since they will cry that they have retained the correct view. In opposition to this our side says that they have protected well against them with their new patch and clarification that is in the document, and they especially make clear that they have given up nothing from their confession. Thus, we are further divided than before and their false, roguish stratagem that they have masterfully hidden in their document will come to light, as we intend. That will soon happen when they come to another article that flows forth from and is grounded

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

in this chief article. Our side has sniffed this out and has simply confessed already that where no agreement can take place in other articles, so it must also be with this document because they observe falsehood within it. Thus, we must and will return to our original, pure document or form that is expressed in Romans 3: “We are justified without merit,” and in the same place, “We hold that one is justified through faith without the works of the law.” That is our document and form with which we will remain, and which is short and clear. The devil, Eck, the archbishop of Mainz, and Duke Heinrich may storm against it and will not stand for it, but we will see who will win. The saying in Galatians 5 does not speak about justification but about the life of the justified. There is much difference between being and acting, as the boys in school learn: the active and the passive verb. It is exact to speak of them differently (which Eck and his part cannot allow or understand). It is one thing to ask through what means one is justified before God; it is entirely another question to ask what the justified do or cause to happen. Becoming and doing are two different things; becoming a tree and bearing fruit are two different things. . . . But the papist trick is this (it can be found in the following articles) that one will be or is justified, not only through faith but also through works, or through love and grace, what they call inherent (which is much the same thing). That is all false and where they have that, they have it entirely and completely, and we have nothing of the sort. For nothing is worthy before God but only and merely his dear son, Jesus Christ, who is entirely pure and holy in himself, whom God sees and in whom he is well pleased, Luke 3[:22]. Now the Son is grasped and taken hold of in the heart, not through works but only through faith without all works. Then God says, “The heart is holy, and my son will dwell therein through faith.” . . . 53. LUTHER: ON WAR AGAINST THE TURK (APRIL 1529) From The Annotated Luther Luther, vol. 5, Christian Lif Lifee in the World orld, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand, trans. John D. Roth (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 342–89. Cf. LW 46:170–77 and WA 30/2: 107–48. . . . Since the Turk is the rod of the wrath of the Lord our God and the servant of the raging devil, the first thing to be done is to smite the Devil, his lord, and take the rod out of God’s hand, so that the

57

Turk may be found only, in his own strength, all by himself, without the Devil’s help and without God’s hand. . . . For if the Turk’s god, the Devil, is not defeated first, there is reason to fear that the Turk will not be easy to beat. . . . I have some parts of Muhammad’s Qu’ran, which in Germany might be called a book of sermons or doctrines like the papal decretals. When I have time I must translate it into German so that everyone may see what a foul and shameful book it is. In the first place, Muhammad greatly praises Christ and Mary as being the only ones without sin. But he believes that Christ was nothing more than a holy prophet, like Jeremiah or Jonah, and denies that he is God’s Son and true God. Furthermore, he does not believe that Christ is the Savior of the world who died for our sins, but that he preached to his own time and completed his work before his death, just like any other prophet. But the other hand, Muhammad highly exalts and praises himself and boasts that he has talked with God and the angels, and that since Christ’s office of prophet is now complete, he has been commanded to bring the world to his faith, and whoever is not willing, to coerce or punish them with the sword. There is much glorification of the sword in it. Therefore, the Turks think that their Muhammad is much higher and greater than Christ – that Christ’s office has come to an end and Muhammad’s office is still in force. From this anyone can easily see that Muhammad is a destroyer of our Lord Christ and his kingdom, for whoever denies the articles concerning Christ – that he is the Son of God, that he died for us and still lives and reigns at the right hand of God – what has he left of Christ? Father, Son, Holy Ghost, baptism, the sacrament, gospel, faith, and all Christian doctrine and life are gone, and instead of Christ there is nothing left other than Muhammad with his doctrine of works and especially of the sword. That is the chief doctrine of the Turkish faith in which all abominations, all errors, all devils are piled up in one heap....... 54. LUTHER: ON THE JEWS AND THEIR LIES (1543) In 1523 Luther had written a treatise, That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, in which he said, “I hope that if one deals in a kindly way with the Jews and instructs them carefully from Holy Scripture, many of them will become genuine Christians.” Twenty years later, Luther was irritated by their failure to

58

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

accept his interpretation of Scripture and wrote the following treatise in a very different tone. From The Annotated Luther Luther, vol. 5, Christian Lif Lifee in the World orld, ed. and trans. Hans J. Hillerbrand (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 455–608. Cf. LW 47:137–272 and WA 53:417–552. . . . Grace and peace in the Lord. Dear sir and good friend, I have received a treatise in which a Jew engages in a dialog with a Christian. He dares to pervert the Scripture passages that we cite concerning our Lord Christ and Mary his mother, and interpret them quite differently. With this argument he thinks he can destroy the basis of our faith. This is my reply to you and to him. . . . They have failed to learn any lesson from the terrible distress that has been theirs for over fourteen hundred years in exile. Nor will there be any end or definite conclusion of this, as they suppose. Their ardent cries and laments to God did not help. If these blows do not help, it is reasonable to assume that our talking and explaining will help even less. Therefore, a Christian should be content and not argue with Jews. But if you have to argue or want to talk with them, do not say any more than this: “Listen, Jew, are you aware that Jerusalem and your sovereignty, together with your temple and priesthood, have been destroyed for over 1,460 years?” For this year, which we Christians write as the year 1542 since the birth of Christ, is exactly 1,468 years, going on fifteen hundred years, since Vespasian (9-70 CE) and Titus (39-81 CE) destroyed Jerusalem and expelled the Jews from the city. Let the Jews bite on this nut and dispute this question as long as they wish. For such ruthless wrath of God is sufficient evidence that the Jews assuredly have erred and gone astray. Even a child can comprehend this. For one dare not regard God as so cruel that he would punish his own people so long, so terribly, so unmercifully, and in addition keep silent, comforting them neither with words nor with deeds, and fixing no time limit and no end of it. Who would have faith, hope, or love toward such a God? Therefore this work of wrath is proof that the Jews, surely rejected by God, are no longer his people, and neither is he any longer their God. . . . They were never able to tolerate a prophet and always persecuted God’s word and declined to give ear to God. That is the complaint and lament of all the prophets. And as their fathers did, so they still do today, nor will they ever mend their ways. If Isaiah, Jeremiah, or other prophets went about among them today and proclaimed what they proclaimed in

their day, or declared that the Jews’ present circumcision and hope for the Messiah are futile, they would again have to die at their hands as happened then. Let those who are endowed with reason, to say nothing of Christian understanding, note how arbitrarily they pervert and twist the prophets’ books with their confounded glosses, in violation of their own conscience (on which I can perhaps say more later). For now that they can no longer stone or kill the prophets physically or person-ally, they torment them spiritually, mutilate, strangle, and maltreat their beautiful verses so that the human heart is vexed and pained. For this forces us to see how, because of God’s wrath, they are wholly delivered into the Devil’s hands. In brief, they are a prophet-murdering people; since they can no longer murder the living ones, they must murder and torment the ones that are dead. . . . What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing, and blasphemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God, we must practice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengeance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice: First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no one will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. . . . Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead, they might be lodged under a roof or a barn, like the gypsies. . . . Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, and cursing, and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. . . . Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let them stay

CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546)

at home. I have heard it is said that a rich Jew is now traveling across the country with twelve horses—his ambition is to become a Kokhba—devouring princes, lords, lands, and people with his usury, so that the great lords view it with jealous eyes. . . . Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping. . . . Whenever a Jew is sincerely converted, he should be handed one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred florins, as personal circumstances may suggest. . . . Seventh, I recommend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen 3[:19]). For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces, while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. . . . 55. LUTHER’S SERMON FOR THE FEAST OF THE HOLY ANGELS (SEPTEMBER, 1544) This sermon illustrates Luther’s apocalyptic state of mind and the combination of discouragement and confidence that characterized his final years. From WA 49:583, trans. Eric Lund. Text: Revelation 12:7–12 “. . . But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!” . . . The devil, especially in this last time, prepares new heretics and rotten spirits in surprising ways; for he wants at all times to possess the heavenly realm and to be lord in Christendom. He does not ask much of the Turks or the papists since they are already his. However, he does struggle through them against the church, because he wants to sit and rule in the pure, holy Temple of God.

59

Now, how should we act toward him? We can cheerfully ponder this, especially when the Word of God guides us, even though we have no hope for peace. Imagine that we are his soldiers who must be situated in the field; yes, always standing on guard so that when one battle stops we can go quickly on to another. For we are called through Christ and already enrolled—through baptism—in the army that fights under Christ against the devil. . . . Christ is the God who is a prince of war or a proper duke who leads his regiment in the strife, not above in heaven among the holy angels, where no struggle is needed, but here on earth in the midst of his church. Yes, even though he sits at the right hand of the Father, he himself is at the head of his army against the enemy that no human power or weapon can resist, to steer and defend them through the Word he has given them. Such strife arises because the Christians hear, believe, and preach the Word of this Lord. The devil cannot suffer this to take place in the world. Therefore, he sets himself against them with all his power, through both lies and murder in order to eradicate it. Therefore, Christ must gather his church as a counterforce and fight against the hellish army of the dragon, the pope, the Turks, the Jews, the rotten spirits, so that faith and the confession of Christ will remain pure. For he is God’s Son, born of a virgin, our Lord and Savior, who saved and made us holy through his blood, as our confession says. Satan wants to rip this confession entirely out of the hearts and mouths of all people and seeks in every way, now in Baptism, now in the sacrament, now in the text of the gospel to falsify the faith and seduce people. . . . This text gives us, as I have said, both the teaching and the consolation that Christ, God’s Son, truly is with his church that possesses and believes his Word and through it wants to prove his power against the devil, so that through its belief and confession it will be preserved and will be victorious over the devil, as he said in Matthew 16:18, “that the gates of hell shall not overpower the church,” which stands, believes, and confesses on this ground that he is the living Son of God. . . .

2. The Dissemination of the Reform Message

Martin Luther’s attention shifted continuously from one issue to another, but his response to each crisis consistently reflected his enduring concern for certain theological beliefs that he viewed as crucial components of the Christian message. The theological preoccupation of the Lutheran movement can be summarized, most simply, by the four “solas”—sola scriptura (scripture alone), sola gratia (grace alone), sola fide (faith alone), and solus Christus (Christ alone)—by the clear differentiation between law and gospel, and by an emphasis on the importance of both word and sacrament as well as Christ’s presence “in, with, and under” the bread and the wine of the Lord’s Supper. In their reorientation of Christian living, the early Lutherans also stressed the priesthood of all believers and a broader notion of vocation, which viewed faithful engagement in all worldly occupations as service to God. While vigorously defending these ideas against opponents he thought were delaying or misdirecting the reform of the church, Luther also worked steadily to make them understandable to every level of society, from the educated elites who could provide future religious or political leadership to the much larger number of simple believers who were unlikely to grasp the subtleties of most theological disputes. Luther became well known throughout all of Europe primarily as a result of the publication of his writings. He traveled occasionally to participate in negotiations or to serve as a mediator in disputes, but for the most part he spent his whole life in Wittenberg, continuing to carry out his ordinary duties as preacher and university professor. In both of these roles, he worked to promote greater familiarity with the contents of the Bible.

Luther thought that neglect of the Bible had caused the church’s decline and that reform of the church could only take place if the Bible were more widely distributed and studied with greater care. One of Luther’s most memorable contributions to this process was his effort to make the Bible available in the vernacular language of the German people. His translation of the New Testament first appeared in 1524, and he completed his version of the Old Testament by 1534. For the rest of his life, he worked with others on a comprehensive revision of this monumental work. To equip pastors for their work in the church, Luther also regularly lectured on individual books of the Bible in the theological faculty of the university. Before the indulgence controversy, he had lectured on Psalms, Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews. In later years, he presented a decade-long series of lectures on Genesis, worked through several other Old Testament books, and focused once again on Galatians, the letter of Paul that had so powerfully influenced his understanding of justification by grace through faith. During these same years, Luther also filled in several times as pastor of the city church while Johann Bugenhagen (1485–1558) was absent for extended periods to help set up Lutheran churches in other territories. When his health was good, Luther would often preach as many as seventy times a year. Luther’s lectures and sermons emphasized similar themes (docs. #56 and 57), but stylistically they were often quite different. In the lectures, Luther analyzed each biblical verse at great length. In most of his sermons, he presented a briefer exposition of his text and ended with practical suggestions for daily living.

62

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Even among the sermons, there is considerable stylistic variety. Some, such as the Invocavit Sermons of 1522 (see doc. #21, cf. doc. #7), directly addressed a particular topic or problem and reflected on it with the help of a variety of biblical texts. His later sermons more frequently concentrated on the interpretation of the biblical passage assigned by the lectionary for a specific day of the church calendar. Luther’s best-known published sermon collection, the Church Postil (doc. #56), bears only slight resemblance to the sermons that Luther actually preached, without a written text, to an assembled congregation. These sermons, published between 1522 and 1525 were carefully prepared expositions of the biblical text that were designed to provide guidance for other preachers. Luther recognized that these sermons were generally too lengthy to serve as exact models for preaching, but he still remarked in 1527 that this postil was the best book he had ever written.1 Although the lectures and sermons can now be studied in written form, it is important to remember that they were initially communicated orally. The overall literacy rate in the Holy Roman Empire may have been as low as 5 percent, and at most only 30 percent of the population in the urban areas was able to read. Luther was well aware of this fact and therefore emphasized the great value of the effectively crafted and well-delivered sermon. Noting that Christ himself wrote nothing, Luther stated in 1521 that the gospel should be seen first and foremost as “a proclamation that is spread not by pen but by word of mouth.”2 In addition to encouraging simple believers to attend worship services where the gospel was preached, Luther advocated the development of short summaries of basic beliefs that even the illiterate could be expected to memorize. Most notable among these were his two catechisms. Luther had preached sermons on the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the sacraments, and when the first systematic visitation of the parishes in Saxony in 1528 revealed widespread ignorance of Christian teachings among both rural clergy and the common people, he reorganized the contents of these sermons as the Large Catechism, primarily for the instruction of pastors. At the same time, he prepared a shorter version, the Small Catechism, for laypeople and published it as an illustrated booklet in 1529 (doc. #58). Luther hoped that families would voluntarily review the contents of the Small Catechism in their homes, but since this ideal never became a widespread reality, the Lutheran churches also instituted scheduled occasions when the congregation would hear its

contents reviewed. Pastors read the catechism aloud from the pulpit and preached series of sermons on its sections. In many schools, teachers required students to recite it weekly as part of their regular lessons, and children were expected to have memorized it before their first communion. Hymns provided another way for people to share in the recitation of basic teachings. Luther advocated congregational singing as a way to involve the laity along with the clergy in the act of worship. He also recognized the power of rhymed phrases and rhythmic melodies to move people’s hearts and to help them remember what they had been taught. The first Lutheran hymnal, the Eight Song Book, was published in 1524. It contained four hymns by Luther, three by Paul Speratus, and one by an unnamed composer. Another hymnal arranged to follow the liturgical calendar appeared in 1529 and was reissued in revised form at least five more times before Luther’s death. Luther wrote over thirty hymns. Some were German paraphrases of well-known Latin canticles, while others were new compositions, often based on the psalms (doc. #59: a and b). Luther also versified parts of the catechism, such as the Ten Commandments and the Apostles’ Creed (doc. #59: c and d). Luther, Speratus, and many other Lutheran hymn writers repeatedly stressed the sinner’s need for God’s grace and consoled believers with the promise of salvation through Christ (doc. #59: e). As decisive as his own voice was during the formative period of the Lutheran church, Luther also required the assistance of many coworkers in the task of disseminating the reform message. Many others preached sermons and produced catechisms or hymns. Some of Luther’s associates were also better equipped than he was to achieve certain goals. Luther’s more theologically sophisticated writings were almost all prompted by specific controversies. The task of providing a more systematic summary of his teachings was left to Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), his colleague at the university in Wittenberg. Melanchthon had come to the university in 1518 to teach Greek. Although he quickly developed a reputation as an exceptional scholar, he never attained a doctorate and had little formal training in theology. Nevertheless, he became the master interpreter of Luther’s theology. Melanchthon’s superior philological skills were valuable to Luther as he worked on the translation of the Bible. Melanchthon also represented Luther at many of the diets and colloquies with other religious parties that Luther could not attend because of his outlaw status or his precarious health. The

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

Augsburg Confession, which became the official summary of Lutheran teaching (see doc. #42), faithfully represents Luther’s viewpoint, but Melanchthon was the actual author of the document. Melanchthon also prepared the more elaborate Apology for the Augsburg Confession (doc. #60) as a rebuttal to the Catholic arguments that convinced the emperor to reject this confession at the diet in 1530. Melanchthon published the first Lutheran systematic theology in Latin in 1521. The Loci Communes, often translated as Commonplaces or Fundamental Theological Themes, carefully defined the central concepts of Lutheran doctrine and defended them, one by one, with extensive support from biblical exegesis. Melanchthon revised and expanded this dogmatic summary several times during his career, and other coworkers made it available in a German edition (doc. #61). The evolution of this major work also reveals that Melanchthon was an independent thinker. In later editions, he began to explicate topics such as good works, free will, or the Lord’s Supper in ways that were uncharacteristic of Luther (doc. #62). This would later provoke the controversies discussed in volume 1, chapter 5. While Melanchthon defended Lutheran teachings against attacks by highly educated critics, other writers directed their efforts to the persuasion of simple laypeople. They wrote numerous short pamphlets (Flugschriften) in German, which were often made attractive by decoration with woodcuts and could be purchased relatively inexpensively (for the equivalent of the cost of a chicken or a third of an artisan’s daily wage).3 It is estimated that more than four thousand different broadsheets were printed in the early decades of the Reformation and that their influence extended beyond a literate audience because they were frequently read aloud to an assembled group.4 One of the most prolific and influential of these pamphleteers was Johann Eberlin von Günzburg (1455–1534), a Franciscan friar from southern Germany who left his order after reading Luther’s reform treatises of 1520. Eberlin published a series of pamphlets called The Fifteen Comrades, which attacked corruption in the Catholic church. Other pamphlets, such as A Beautiful Mirror of the Christian Life, assembled numerous biblical quotes to support a simpler mode of piety in keeping with the central themes of Luther’s teachings (doc. #63). Katharina Schütz Zell (1485–1555), is notable as one of the first women to publish writings explicating Lutheran theology. The wife of Strassburg’s first Protestant pastor, she boldly defended clerical marriage against its Catholic opponents and made a special effort to provide messages

63

of consolation and guidance to women (doc. #64). Luther himself also provided practical advice for daily living in pamphlets and in many of his sermons for lay people. He frequently touched on topics such as marriage, sexual relations, and the struggle to understand suffering and death (doc. #65 and 66). Even laypeople, though theologically untrained, were sometimes audacious defenders of Luther’s cause. Their writings appeared in many forms such as letters, dialogues, poems, and polemical satires. Again, a woman, Argula von Grumbach (ca. 1490–ca. 1564), played an important role in this effort. The wife of a minor court official, she was prompted to write four pamphlets by the arrest of a young instructor at the University of Ingolstadt for the possession of Lutheran writings. In her letter to the Duke of Bavaria, published in 1523, she argued that Luther’s teachings were consistent with the Bible and that rulers ought to honor the Bible more than the judgments of the corrupt clergy (doc. #67). Erasmus Alber (1500–1553), a schoolteacher in Hesse, provides an example of a more satirical piece. His letter from Lucifer to Luther, published in 1524, fits into a genre that dates from the fourteenth century. Many writers portrayed the pope as an instrument of the devil (doc. #68). Lutherans had no monopoly on satirical propaganda. Catholics and Protestants published attacks on each other that were often both vicious and entertaining. The crudeness of some of these writings may, in fact, have enhanced their appeal among simple people. Thomas Murner (1475–1537), a Franciscan friar, was the premier Catholic satirist. In 1522, he published a long poem called “The Great Lutheran Fool,” which associated the Lutheran movement with all sorts of nonsensical and destructive activities. Murner portrays himself in the poem as an exorcist of many fools who had been placed in the body of the Great Fool by the devil (doc. #69). Johannes Cochlaeus (1479–1552) portrayed Luther as an inconsistent and increasingly dangerous teacher in a 1529 treatise titled The Seven-Headed Luther (doc. #70). Later, he also wrote a lengthy biography of Luther that once again made reference to this image. Woodcuts accompanying these writings enhanced their impact. Even those who could not read could be strongly influenced by the associations communicated by visual images. Lutherans also participated in the production of such visual propaganda. Andreas Osiander (1496–1552), an important Lutheran reformer in Nürnberg, published a series of woodcuts in 1527 that portrayed the popes as immoral and power-hungry enemies of God (doc. #71). In 1545,

64

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Luther himself commissioned an even cruder set of images that also associated the pope with the devil and encouraged the simple people, by the portrayal of scatological gestures, to relinquish any residual respect they had for the leaders of the church in Rome (doc. #72). The character and motivations of Luther were issues in much of this literature as frequently as questions about the truth or effects of his teachings. Catholics often portrayed Luther as a degenerate schemer, so Luther’s defenders were intent on refuting this caricature. Once again, this task was undertaken by both lay Lutherans and influential pastors or theologians. For example, Haug Marschalck (1491–1535), an army paymaster in Augsburg, published a pamphlet in 1522 that memorably associated positive qualities with each of the letters of Luther’s name (doc. #73). Johannes Mathesius (1504–65), a pastor in Bohemia, preached and published a famous set of sermons that reviewed all the details of Luther’s life and praised his accomplishments (doc. #74). Mathesius refrained from placing Luther explicitly in the same category as the prophets and apostles but left the impression that Luther deserved close to the same recognition. While acknowledging that Luther did not claim direct messages from God, Mathesius credited him with prophetic insights. Luther did not perform miracles like the apostles, but Mathesius considered it a divine miracle that Luther had been so successful in introducing so many reforms into the churches of Germany. The biographies of Luther presented by Cochlaeus and Mathesius could hardly have been more dissimilar. Each author, however, had a long-standing influence on how Catholics and Lutherans evaluated the man and his message. LUTHER’S SERMONS AND LECTURES 56. CHURCH POSTIL (1522): SERMON FOR THE SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS ON GALATIANS 4:1–7 A postil is a book of sermons on the Gospel and Epistle texts assigned for each Sunday and festival in the church year. Luther began work on this postil while in hiding at the Wartburg castle; hence it is also referred to at times as the Wartburg Postil. Later, Veit Dietrich published another Luther postil known as the House Postil. This latter collection, intended to be read in homes, was mostly based on Gospel ser-

mons Luther had preached in his own home between 1532 and 1534. From WA 10/1:1, 324–48, trans. Eric Lund. . . . You should know that there is one way to speak when teaching about good works and another when teaching about justification; just as someone’s nature or person is one thing and someone’s actions or works are another. Justification relates to the person and not to the works. It is the person, not the work, that is justified and saved, or sentenced and condemned. So, it can be concluded that no one is justified by works; you must first be justified by other means. As Moses says in Genesis 4[:4–5], “God looked with favor upon Abel and his offering.” First, he looked with favor on Abel the person and then on his offering. First the person was pious, just, and acceptable and then also his offering. The sacrifice was accepted because of the person, and not the person because of the sacrifice. “But on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor.” God did not have favor toward Cain the person and therefore also not his offering. From this text it can be determined that it is not possible for any work to be good in God’s sight unless beforehand the person is good and acceptable. On the other hand, it is not possible for any work to be evil in God’s sight unless the person is already evil and unacceptable. We have said enough now and can conclude that there are two kinds of good works; some come before and others come after justification. The ones that come before appear to be good but are useless; the others are truly good. . . . So then you ask: “What shall I do? How does my person become good and acceptable? How will I obtain justification? The gospel answers: “You must hear Christ, have faith in him, utterly deny yourself, and believe that you will be changed from a Cain to an Abel, and then present your offerings.” This faith is preached apart from all your work or merit, so it will also be given out of grace apart from any of your merits. This same faith justifies the person and is also justification itself. Because of it God remits and forgives all sins, the entire Adam and Cain in our nature, according to the will of Christ his beloved Son, whose name is synonymous with faith. He also gives his Holy Spirit, who changes the person into a new creature that has a different reason and will, now inclined to the good. This person performs purely good works, and what is done is good. Therefore, nothing else is necessary for justification besides hearing and believing in Jesus Christ as our Savior. But both of these are not natural to us; they are works of grace. Whoever proposes to attain justification by works only hinders the gospel, faith, grace,

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

Christ, God, and everything. On the other hand, good works belong to nothing but justification (for none but the justified do good, and all that is done when one is justified is good without distinction of works). The order of salvation is first, before all things, to hear the Word of God. Thereafter comes faith and then works. This is how one is saved. Whoever reverses or changes this order is certainly not of God. . . . Now, look at the common way of thinking and acting among the people. They are accustomed to saying, “I still want to become pious. Yes, one must be pious.” But if one asks them what a person must do in order to become pious, they begin to say, “One must pray, fast, go to church, abstain from sin, etc.” This one runs off to the Carthusians, that one joins another monastic order. One becomes a priest, another puts on a hair shirt. This one whips himself, that one tortures himself in another way. See, that is to act just like Cain and to do Cain’s work. The person remains unchanged, and there is no justification because there is only an outward change, a change of work, clothing, place, or demeanor. They are really apes who adopt the demeanor of the saints but are still not holy. Not thinking about faith, they rush forth with only their [supposed] good works, torturing themselves to get to heaven. . . . So, you may say, “If it is true that we are justified not by works, but by hearing and believing that Christ gave himself for us, what need and use do the commandments have? Why has God made such hard demands? To answer that, we come now to this epistle lesson that tells us why the commandments are given. The Galatians first learned the Christian faith from Paul but were afterwards turned around by certain false teachers so that they fell back on their works and imagined that they must become righteous through the works of the law. In our lesson, Paul calls them back from their works to faith, and with many strong words proves that there are the two kinds of works of the law. He concludes that the works preceding justification or faith have no value and make us only servants. However, faith makes us children or sons of God and truly good works must follow from that. One must note Paul’s customary use of words when he distinguishes between the servant and the child. The sanctimonious, about whom he has much to say, he calls servants. The believer in Christ, who is and will be justified by faith alone without works, he calls a child. All this is because the sanctimonious one does not serve in the same way as the child who is heir to his own inheritance. The service of the sanctimonious is like that of a day-

65

laborer who works on another’s property. Although the works of the two seem alike or of the same sort, they are differentiated by the spirit of each doer, by conscience and faith. . . . The apostle wants to say, and this is true, that without faith, the law with all its works makes us merely servants. Only faith can make us children. Neither the law, nor the works of the law, nor human nature can give us this faith; only the gospel brings it. For the hearer, this gospel is a word of grace, and the Word is accompanied by the Holy Spirit when preached and quietly heard. Acts 10 proves this, for Cornelius and his family receive the Holy Spirit through listening to St. Peter. The law was not given except to show man that without grace he has the mind of the servant, not the child. Without faith and trust, he serves God unwillingly. If they were to confess further, they would have to admit that they would rather be without the law, and they do not live under it willingly. What they do is a faithless thing, done out of compulsion, and through the law they are not able to make any progress. They should learn from the law that they are like servants and not like children. Therefore, to change from the condition of servant to that of a child, they must regard their efforts as worthless, for it is only through faith and the grace of God that they may attain their rightful place in life. . . . Now, if, unfortunately, Cain . . . does not learn to see himself this way through the law but remains impenitent and blind in his works, not acknowledging his inner wickedness, then he will maliciously judge the whole world in general and despise sinners as the Pharisee did in the Gospel [Luke 18:11–13], thinking himself to be pious, unlike other people. . . . But those who will be like Abel and become children learn to know themselves by the law and recognize that their hearts are averse to the law. Relinquishing their overconfidence, letting go both hand and foot, they become as nothing in their own eyes through this knowledge. Then the gospel comes. There God gives grace to the humble, and they grasp the testament and believe. In and with this faith they receive the Holy Spirit, who gives them a new heart that delights in the law, hates sin, and does what is good freely and cheerfully. There are no more works of the law but now the heart of the law. This is the time when the father decides that the heir should no longer be a servant nor under a guardian. . . . Paul says that after Christ has come and been recognized, the person is no longer a servant. As we have said, one cannot be both a child and a servant at the same time because the mind of each is so dif-

66

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ferent. The child is willing and free; the servant is unwilling and constrained. The child goes forth in faith; the servant in works. Once more, we see here that no one can acquire anything related to salvation by works before God. Before works are done, salvation must be obtained and possessed so that the works that follow are done freely for the honor of God and for the benefit of the neighbor. . . .

Fig. 2.1. Title page of Luther’s Bible, 1534.

57. LECTURE ON GALATIANS 4 (1535) Paul’s letters to the Romans and Galatians were of utmost importance in the formation of Luther’s theology. The reformer completed an early commentary on Galatians in 1519. The following excerpt is from the later lectures, which he delivered orally at the university in 1531 and which were transcribed and prepared for publication in 1535 by George Rörer. See another excerpt from this lecture in volume 1, chapter 1 (doc. #46). From LW 26:359–91, trans. Jaroslav Pelikan.

Chapter 4 1. I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no better than a slave, though he is the owner of all the estate; 2. but he is under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. . . . Ordinary people are caught more easily by analogies and illustrations than by difficult and subtle discussions; they would rather look at a well-drawn picture than a well-written book. Therefore after the analogy of the human testament and about the prison [Galatians 3] and the custodian, [Paul] also cites this very familiar one about the heir, in order to convince them. . . . 3. So with us; when we were children, we were slaves to the elements of this world. . . . We were indeed heirs, having the promise of a future inheritance to be granted through Abraham’s offspring, Christ, who was to bless all nations. But because the time had not yet fully come, Moses, our guardian, manager, and custodian, came and held us confined and captive, to prevent us from taking the upper hand and gaining control and possession of our inheritance. Meanwhile, however, just as an heir is nourished by the hope of his coming freedom, so Moses nourished us with hope in the promise to be revealed in due time, namely, when Christ came. Before his coming it was the time of the law; when he came, this was finished, and the time of grace is at hand. . . . . . . The law was dominant over us and oppressed us with harsh slavery as serfs and captives. In the first place, it was a political restraint upon uncivilized and carnal men to keep them from rushing headlong into all sorts of crimes. The law threatens transgressors with punishment; and if they were not afraid of this, they would do nothing but commit evil. Those who are restrained by the law this way are dominated by the law. In the second place, the law accused, terrified, killed, and condemned us before God spiritually or theologically. This was the chief dominion of the law over us. Therefore just as an heir who is subject to guardians is whipped and forced to obey their rules and to carry out their orders carefully, so consciences before Christ are oppressed by the harsh tyranny of the law; that is, they are accused, terrified, and condemned by the law. Now this dominion, or rather tyranny, of the law is not permanent but is supposed to last only until the time of grace. Therefore, the function of the law is indeed to denounce and to increase sin, but for the purpose of righteousness; and to kill, but for the purpose

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

of life. For the law is the custodian until Christ comes....... I am not saying this with the intention that the law should be held in contempt. Paul does not intend this either, but that it should be held in esteem. But because Paul is dealing here with the issue of justification—a discussion of justification is something vastly different from a discussion of the law—necessity demands that he speak of the law as something very contemptible. When we are dealing with this argument, we cannot speak of it in sufficiently vile and odious terms either. For here the conscience should consider and know nothing except Christ alone. Therefore we should make every effort that in the question of justification we reject the law from view as far as possible and embrace nothing except the promise of Christ. . . . 4. But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5. to redeem those who were under the law. . . . This passage testifies that when the time of the law was completed, Christ did not establish a new law to follow the old law of Moses but abrogated it and redeemed those who were being oppressed by it. Therefore it is a very wicked error when the monks and sophists portray Christ as a new lawgiver after Moses, not unlike the error of the Turks, who proclaim that their Muhammad is the new lawgiver after Christ. Those who portray Christ this way do him a supreme injury. He did not come to abrogate the old law with the purpose of establishing a new one; but, as Paul says here, he was sent into the world by the Father to redeem those who were being held captive under the law. These words portray Christ truly and accurately. . . . We adults, who are imbued with the noxious doctrine of the papists, which we absorbed into our very bones and marrow, acquired an opinion of Christ altogether different from the one that Paul sets forth here. No matter how much we declared with our mouths that Christ had redeemed us from the tyranny and slavery of the law, actually we felt in our hearts that he was a lawgiver, a tyrant, and a judge more fearful than Moses himself. Even today, in the great light of the truth, we cannot completely banish this wicked opinion from our minds. So stubbornly do things to which we have been accustomed since youth cling to us! You young people, who are still unspoiled and have never been infected by this wicked notion, have less difficulty in teaching purely about Christ than we adults have in banishing these blasphemous illusions about him from our minds, yet you have not altogether escaped the wiles of the

67

devil. For even if you have not yet been imbued with this wicked idea of Christ as a lawgiver, you still have the same source of this idea in you, namely, the flesh, the reason, and the wickedness of our nature, which cannot think of Christ in any other way than as a lawgiver. Therefore you must contend with all your might, in order that you may learn to acknowledge and regard Christ as Paul portrays him in this passage....... But in what manner or way has Christ redeemed us? The manner was as follows: He was born under the law. When Christ came, he found us all captive under guardians and trustees, that is, confined and constrained under the law. What did he do? He himself is Lord of the law; therefore the Law has no jurisdiction over him and cannot accuse him, because he is the Son of God. He who was not under the law subjected himself voluntarily to the law. The law did everything to him that it did to us. It accused us and terrified us. It subjected us to sin, death, and the wrath of God; and it condemned us with its judgment. And it had a right to do all this, for we have all sinned. But Christ “committed no sin, and no guile was found on his lips” [1 Pet 2:22]. Therefore he owed nothing to the law. And yet against him—so holy, righteous, and blessed—the law raged as much as it does against us accursed and condemned sinners and even more fiercely. It accused him of blasphemy and sedition; it found him guilty in the sight of God of all the sins of the entire world; finally it so saddened and frightened him that he sweat blood [Luke 22:44]; and eventually it sentenced him to death, even death on a cross [Phil 2:8]. This was truly a remarkable duel, when the law, a creature, came into conflict with the Creator, exceeding its every jurisdiction to vex the Son of God with the same tyranny with which it vexed us, the sons of wrath [Eph 2:3]. Because the law has sinned so horribly and wickedly against its God, it is summoned to court and accused. Here Christ says: “Lady Law, you empress, you cruel and powerful tyrant over the whole human race, what did I commit that you accused, intimidated, and condemned me in my innocence?” Here the law, which once condemned and killed all men, has nothing with which to defend and to cleanse itself. Therefore it is condemned and killed in turn, so that it loses its jurisdiction not only over Christ—whom it attacked and killed without any right anyway—but also over all who believe in him. . . . Therefore the law is guilty of stealing, of sacrilege, and of the murder of the Son of God. It loses its rights and deserves to be damned. Whenever Christ is

68

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

present or is at least named, it is forced to yield and to flee this name as the devil flees the cross. Therefore we believers are free of the law through Christ, who “triumphed over it in him” [Col 2:15]. This glorious triumph, accomplished for us through Christ, is grasped not by works but by faith alone. Therefore faith alone justifies. . . . 7. So through God you are no longer a slave but a son. . . . To be a slave, according to what Paul says here, means to be sentenced and imprisoned under the law, under the wrath of God, and under death; it means to acknowledge God not as God or as Father but as a tormentor, an enemy, a tyrant. This is truly to live in slavery and in a Babylonian captivity and to be cruelly tormented in it. For the more someone performs works under the law, the more he is oppressed by its slavery. That slavery, he says, has ended; it does not strain and oppress us any longer. . . . Therefore do not let Moses—much less the pope—enter the bridegroom’s chamber to lie there, that is, to reign over the conscience that Christ has delivered from the law to make it free of any slavery. Let the slaves remain in the valley with the ass, and let Isaac ascend the mountain along with Abraham, his father. That is, let the law have its dominion over the flesh and the old self; let this be under the law; let this permit the burden to be laid upon it; let this permit itself to be disciplined and vexed by the law; let the law prescribe to this what it should do and accomplish, how it should deal with other men. But let the law not pollute the chamber in which Christ alone should take his rest and sleep; that is, let it not disturb the conscience, which should live only with Christ, its Bridegroom, in the realm of freedom and sonship. ... COMMUNAL AFFIRMATIONS OF THE GOSPEL MESSAGE 58. LUTHER’S SMALL CATECHISM (1529) In the preface to this document, Luther wrote: “The deplorable conditions that I recently encountered when I was a visitor [to the congregations of Electoral Saxony] constrained me to prepare this brief and simple catechism or statement of Christian teachings. Good God, what wretchedness I beheld! The common people, especially those who live in the country, have no knowledge whatever of Christian teaching, and unfortunately many pastors are quite incompetent and unfitted for teaching.” He summa-

rized Christian beliefs first in a series of five charts and soon after in the following handbook form. BC 351–63. Cf. Annotated Luther vol. 4 Pastor Pastoral al Writings Writings, 232–52 and WA 30I: 239–425. The Ten Commandments . . . The First [Commandment] You are to have no other gods. What is this? Answer: We are to fear, love, and trust God above all things. The Second [Commandment] You are not to misuse the name of your God. What is this? Answer: We are to fear and love God, so that we do not curse, swear, practice magic, lie, or deceive using God’s name, but instead use that very name in every time of need to call on, pray to, praise, and give thanks to God. The Third [Commandment] You are to hallow the day of rest. What is this? Answer: We are to fear and love God, so that we do not despise preaching or God’s Word, but instead keep that Word holy and gladly hear and learn it. The Fourth [Commandment] You are to honor your father and your mother. What is this? Answer: We are to fear and love God, so that we neither despise nor anger our parents and others in authority, but instead honor, serve, obey, love, and respect them. The Fifth [Commandment] You are not to kill. What is this? Answer: We are to fear and love God, so that we neither endanger nor harm the lives of our neighbors, but instead help and support them in all of life’s needs.

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

The Sixth [Commandment] You are not to commit adultery. What is this? Answer: We are to fear and love God, so that we lead pure and decent lives in word and deed, and each of us loves and honors his or her spouse. The Seventh [Commandment] You are not to steal. What is this? Answer: We are to fear and love God, so that we neither take our neighbors’ money or property nor acquire them by using shoddy merchandise or crooked deals, but instead help them to improve and protect their property and income. The Eighth [Commandment] You are not to bear false witness against your neighbor. What is this? Answer: We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations. Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light.

69

a jealous God. Against those who hate me I visit the sin of the fathers on the children up to the third and fourth generation. But I do good to those who love me and keep my commandments to the thousandth generation.” What is this? Answer: God threatens to punish all who break these commandments. Therefore we are to fear his wrath and not disobey these commandments. However, God promises grace and every good thing to all those who keep these commandments. Therefore we also are to love and trust him and gladly act according to his commands. The Creed: In a very simple way in which the head of a house is to present it to the household The First Article: On Creation

You are not to covet your neighbor’s house. What is this? Answer: We are to fear and love God, so that we do not try to trick our neighbors out of their inheritance or property or try to get it for ourselves by claiming to have a legal right to it and the like, but instead be of help and service to them in keeping what is theirs.

I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. What is this? Answer: I believe that God has created me together with all that exists. God has given me and still preserves my body and soul: eyes, ears, and all limbs and senses; reason and all mental faculties. In addition, God daily and abundantly provides shoes and clothing, food and drink, house and farm, spouse and children, fields, livestock, and all property—along with all the necessities and nourishment for this body and life. God protects me against all danger and shields and preserves me from all evil. And all this is done out of pure, fatherly, and divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness of mine at all! For all of this I owe it to God to thank and praise, serve and obey him. This is most certainly true.

The Tenth [Commandment]

The Second Article: On Redemption

You are not to covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female servant, cattle, or whatever is his. What is this? Answer: We are to fear and love God, so that we do not entice, force, or steal away from our neighbors their spouses, household workers, or livestock, but instead urge them to stay and fulfill their responsibilities to our neighbors. What then does God say about all these commandments? Answer: God says the following: “I, the Lord your God, am

And [I believe] in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended into hell. On the third day he rose [again]; he ascended into heaven, seated at the right hand of God, the almighty Father, from where he will come to judge the living and the dead. What is this? Answer: I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father in eternity, and also a true human being,

The Ninth [Commandment]

70

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord. He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned human being. He has purchased and freed me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death. He has done all this in order that I may belong to him, live under him in his kingdom, and serve him in eternal righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as he is risen from the dead and lives and rules eternally. This is most certainly true. The Third Article: On Being Made Holy I believe in the Holy Spirit, one holy Christian church, the community of the saints, forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the flesh, and eternal life. Amen. What is this? Answer: I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith. Daily in this Christian church the Holy Spirit abundantly forgives all sins—mine and those of all believers. On the Last Day the Holy Spirit will raise me and all the dead and will give to me and all believers in Christ eternal life. This is most certainly true. The Lord’s Prayer: In a very simple way in which the head of a house is to present it to the household Our Father, you who are in heaven. What is this? Answer: With these words God wants to entice us, so that we come to believe he is truly our Father and we are truly his children, in order that we may ask him boldly and with complete confidence, just as loving children ask their loving father. The First Petition May your name be hallowed. What is this? Answer: It is true that God’s name is holy in itself, but we ask in this prayer that it may also become holy in and among us. How does this come about? Answer:

Whenever the Word of God is taught clearly and purely and we, as God’s children, also live holy lives according to it. To this end help us, dear Father in heaven! However, whoever teaches and lives otherwise than the Word of God teaches profanes the name of God among us. Preserve us from this, heavenly Father! The Second Petition May your kingdom come. What is this? Answer: In fact, God’s kingdom comes on its own without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come to us. How does this come about? Answer: Whenever our heavenly Father gives us his Holy Spirit, so that through his grace we believe his Holy Word and live godly lives here in time and hereafter in eternity. The Third Petition May your will come about on earth as in heaven. What is this? Answer: In fact, God’s good and gracious will comes about without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come about in and among us. How does this come about? Answer: Whenever God breaks and hinders every evil scheme and will—as are present in the will of the devil, the world, and our flesh—that would not allow us to hallow God’s name and would prevent the coming of his kingdom, and instead whenever God strengthens us and keeps us steadfast in his Word and in faith until the end of our lives. This is his gracious and good will. The Fourth Petition Give us today our daily bread. What is this? Answer: In fact, God gives daily bread without our prayer, even to all evil people, but we ask in this prayer that God cause us to recognize what our daily bread is and to receive it with thanksgiving. What then does “daily bread” mean? Answer: Everything included in the necessities and nourishment for our bodies, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, farm, fields, livestock, money, property, an upright spouse, upright children, upright members of the household, upright and faithful rulers,

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

good government, good weather, peace, health, decency, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like. The Fifth Petition And remit our debts, as we remit what our debtors owe. What is this? Answer: We ask in this prayer that our heavenly Father would not regard our sins nor deny these petitions on their account, for we are worthy of nothing for which we ask, nor have we earned it. Instead we ask that God would give us all things by grace, for we daily sin much and indeed deserve only punishment. So, on the other hand, we, too, truly want to forgive heartily and to do good gladly to those who sin against us. The Sixth Petition And lead us not into temptation. What is this? Answer: It is true that God tempts no one, but we ask in this prayer that God would preserve and keep us, so that the devil, the world, and our flesh may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice, and that, although we may be attacked by them, we may finally prevail and gain the victory. The Seventh Petition But deliver us from evil. What is this? Answer: We ask in this prayer, as in a summary, that our Father in heaven may deliver us from all kinds of evil—affecting body or soul, property or reputation—and at last, when our final hour comes, may grant us a blessed end and take us by grace from this valley of tears to himself in heaven. Amen. What is this? Answer: That I should be certain that such petitions are acceptable to and heard by our Father in heaven, for he himself commanded us to pray like this and has promised to hear us. “Amen, amen” means “Yes, yes, it is going to come about just like this.” [The section on the Sacrament of Holy Baptism has been omitted.]

71

How Simple People Are to Be Taught to Confess What is confession? Answer: Confession consists of two parts. One is that we confess our sins. The other is that we receive the absolution, that is, forgiveness, from the confessor as from God himself and by no means doubt but firmly believe that our sins are thereby forgiven before God in heaven. Which sins is a person to confess? Before God one is to acknowledge the guilt for all sins, even those of which we are not aware, as we do in the Lord’s Prayer. However, before the confessor we are to confess only those sins of which we have knowledge and which trouble us. Which sins are these? Here reflect on your walk of life in light of the Ten Commandments: whether you are father, mother, son, daughter, master, mistress, servant; whether you have been disobedient, unfaithful, lazy; whether you have harmed anyone by word or deed; whether you have stolen, neglected, wasted, or injured anything. Please provide me with a brief form of confession! Answer: You are to say to the confessor: “Honorable, dear sir, I ask you to listen to my confession and declare to me forgiveness for God’s sake.” “Proceed.” “I, a poor sinner, confess before God that I am guilty of all my sins. In particular I confess in your presence that although I am a manservant, maidservant, etc., I unfortunately serve my master unfaithfully, for in this and that instance I did not do what they told me; I made them angry and caused them to curse; I neglected to do my duty and allowed harm to occur. I have also spoken and acted impudently. I have quarreled with my equals; I have grumbled about and sworn at my mistress, etc. I am sorry for all this and ask for grace. I want to do better.” A master or mistress may say the following: “In particular I confess to you that I have not faithfully cared for my child, the members of my household, my spouse to the glory of God. I have cursed, set a bad example with indecent words and deeds, done harm to my neighbors, spoken evil of them, overcharged them, and sold them inferior goods and short-changed them,” and whatever else he or she has done against the commands of God and their walk of life, etc. However, if some individuals do not find themselves burdened by these or greater sins, they are not to worry, nor are they to search for or invent further sins and thereby turn confession into torture. Instead

72

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

mention one or two that you are aware of in the following way: “In particular I confess that I cursed once, likewise that one time I was inconsiderate in my speech, one time I neglected this or that, etc.” Let that be enough. If you are aware of no sins at all (which is really quite unlikely), then do not mention any in particular, but instead receive forgiveness on the basis of the general confession, which you make to God in the presence of the confessor. Thereupon the confessor is to say: “God be gracious to you and strengthen your faith. Amen.” Let the confessor say [further]: “Do you also believe that my forgiveness is God’s forgiveness?” [Answer:] “Yes, dear sir.” Thereupon he may say: “‘Let it be done for you according to your faith.’ And I by the command of our Lord Jesus Christ forgive you your sin in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Go in peace.” A confessor, by using additional passages of Scripture, will in fact be able to comfort and encourage to faith those whose consciences are heavily burdened or who are distressed and under attack. This is only to be an ordinary form of confession for simple people.

the forgiveness of sins” show us that forgiveness of sin, life, and salvation are given to us in the sacrament through these words, because where there is forgiveness of sin, there is also life and salvation. How can bodily eating and drinking do such a great thing? Answer: Eating and drinking certainly do not do it, but rather the words that are recorded: “given for you” and “shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” These words, when accompanied by the physical eating and drinking, are the essential thing in the sacrament, and whoever believes these very words has what they declare and state, namely, “forgiveness of sins.” Who, then, receives this sacrament worthily? Answer: Fasting and bodily preparation are in fact a fine external discipline, but a person who has faith in these words, “given for you” and “shed for you for the forgiveness of sins,” is really worthy and well prepared. However, a person who does not believe these words or doubts them is unworthy and unprepared, because the words “for you” require truly believing hearts. [Following sections concern morning and evening prayers, grace at table, and a table of duties for different groups in society.] 59. EARLY LUTHERAN HYMNS (1523–1529)

The Sacrament of the Altar: In a simple way in which the head of a house is to present it to the household What is the Sacrament of the Altar? Answer: It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ himself for us Christians to eat and to drink. Where is this written? Answer: The holy evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and St. Paul write thus: “Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night in which he was betrayed, took the bread, gave thanks, and broke it and gave it to his disciples and said, ‘Take; eat; this is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ “In the same way he also took the cup after the supper, gave thanks, and gave it to them and said, ‘Take, and drink of it, all of you. This cup is the New Testament in my blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’” What is the benefit of such eating and drinking? Answer: The words “given for you” and “shed for you for

The following four hymns were written by Martin Luther. The first one is inspired by Psalm 130, but the sentiments also seem to echo Luther’s personal religious experience. The second one is the most familiar of Luther’s hymns. For this one and several others, he also wrote the hymn tune. The third and fourth selections are less well known but clearly illustrate Luther’s desire to use hymns as teaching tools. a. Aus tief tiefer er N Not ot schr schrei ei ich zu dir (1523) LBW 295, trans. Gracia Grindal 1. Out of the depths I cry to you; O Father, hear me calling. Incline your ear to my distress In spite of my rebelling. Do not regard my sinful deeds. Send me the grace my spirit needs; Without it I am nothing. 2. All things you send are full of grace; You crown our lives with favor. All our good works are done in vain

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

Without our Lord and Savior. We praise the God who gives us faith And saves us from the grip of death; Our lives are in his keeping. 3. It is in God that we shall hope, And not in our own merit. We rest our fears in his good Word And trust his Holy Spirit. His promise keeps us strong and sure; We trust the holy signature Inscribed upon our temples. 4. My soul is waiting for the Lord As one who longs for morning; No watcher waits with greater hope Than I for his returning. I hope as Israel in the Lord; He sends redemption through his Word. We praise him for his mercy. b. Ein ffeste este Burg ist unser Gott (1527/28) LBW 229 1. A mighty fortress is our God, A sword and shield victorious; He breaks the cruel oppressor’s rod And wins salvation glorious. The old evil foe, Sworn to work us woe, With dread craft and might He arms himself to fight. On earth he has no equal. 2. No strength of ours can match his might! We would be lost, rejected. But now a champion comes to fight, Whom God himself elected. Ask who this may be: Lord of hosts is he! Jesus Christ, our Lord, God’s only Son, adored. He holds the field victorious. 3. Though hordes of devils fill the land, All threat’ning to devour us, We tremble not, unmoved we stand; They cannot overpow’r us. This world’s prince may rage, In fierce war engage. He is doomed to fail; God’s judgment must prevail! One little word subdues him.

4. God’s Word forever shall abide, No thanks to foes, who fear it; For God himself fights by our side With weapons of the Spirit. If they take our house, Goods, fame, child, or spouse, Wrench our life away, They cannot win the day. The Kingdom’s ours forever! c. Mensch, willst du leben seliglich [Hymn on the Ten Commandments] LW 53:281, trans. George McDonald 1. Man, wouldst thou live all blissfully And dwell with God eternally, Thou shalt observe the Ten Commands Written by God with his hands. Kyrioleis 2. Thy God and Lord I am alway; No other god shall make thee stray; Thy heart must ever trust in me; Mine own kingdom shalt thou be. Kyrioleis 3. My name to honor thou shalt heed And call on me in time of need. Thou shalt hallow the sabbath day So in thee I work alway. Kyrioleis 4. Father and mother thou shalt hold In honor next to me, thy Lord. None kill nor yield to anger wild, And keep thy wedlock undefiled. Kyrioleis 5. From any one to steal beware; ’Gainst none thou shalt false witness bear; Thy neighbor’s wife thou shall not eye— Let his be his willingly. Kyrioleis d. Wir glauben all an einen Gott (1524) [Hymn version of the Creed] LW 53:272–73, trans. George McDonald 1. In one true God we all believe, Maker of the earth and heaven; Who us as children to receive, Hath himself as Father given. Now and henceforth he will feed us,

73

74

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Soul and body will surround us, ’Gainst mischances he will heed us, Nought shall meet us that shall wound us. He watches o’er us, cares, defends; And ev’rything is in his hands. 2. And we believe in Jesus Christ, His own God, our Lord and Master Who besides the Father highest Reigns in equal might and glory. Born of Mary, virgin mother By the Spirit’s operation He was made our elder brother That the lost might find salvation; Slain on the cross by wicked men And raised by God to life again. 3. We all confess the Holy Ghost With the Father and the Savior Who the fearful comforts most And the meek doth crown with favor. All of Christendom he even In one heart and spirit keepeth. Here all sins shall be forgiven; Wake too shall the flesh that sleepeth. After these suff’rings there shall be Life for us eternally. e. Es ist das Heil uns kommen (1524) Paul Speratus (1484–1551), the author of this hymn, which appeared in the first Lutheran hymnbook, was the dominant figure in the formation of the Lutheran church in Prussia. The original German version has fourteen verses. From Ev Evang angelical elical Luther Lutheran an Hymnal of the Ev Evang angelielical Luther Lutheran an Joint Synod of Ohio Ohio, trans. Henry Mills (Columbus: Lutheran Book Concern, 1888). 1. To us salvation now has come, God’s wondrous grace revealing; Works never can avert our doom, They have no power of healing. Faith looks to God’s beloved Son, Who has for us deliv’rance won, He is our great Redeemer! 2. What God’s most holy precept claims No child of Adam renders; But from the throne dread vengeance flames, And speaks the curse in thunders. The flesh ne’er prompts those pure desires That ’bove all else the law requires Relief by law is hopeless!

5. But all the law must be fulfilled, Or we must sink despairing; Then came the Son—so God had willed— Our human nature sharing, Who for us all the law obeyed, And thus his Father’s vengeance stayed, Which over us impended. 13. Now to the God of matchless grace, To Father, Son and Spirit, We lift our highest songs of praise, All praise his favors merit. All he has said he will perform, And save us by his mighty arm— His worthy name be hallowed! PHILIP MELANCHTHON’S SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY 60. THE APOLOGY OF THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION: ON GOOD WORKS (1530) Melanchthon wrote this defense of each of the articles of the confession (see doc. #42) as a reply to the Roman Confutation, which the Catholic theologians presented at the Diet of Augsburg. It was published in 1531 and was included in the Book of Concord (see vol. 1, ch. 5) as an official statement of Lutheran beliefs. This excerpt relates topically to the other selection from Melanchthon’s 1559 Loci and to Luther’s postil sermon and Galatians lecture. From BC 237. . . . The opponents also include some passages to support their condemnation, and it is worthwhile to examine several of them. They quote from Peter [2 Pet 1:10], “be all the more eager to confirm your call.” Now here you see, dear reader, that our opponents have not wasted any effort in learning logic, for they have learned the art of inferring whatever they like from the Scriptures. “Make your calling sure through good works.” Therefore works merit the forgiveness of sins! This is a very good way of arguing, since one could argue this way about a person who stood under the sentence of death and who was then pardoned. “The judge commands that from now on you stop stealing what belongs to another. Therefore, through this you have merited the pardon of the penalty, because you from now on will refrain from taking what belongs to another.” To argue this way is to make a cause out of an effect. Peter is talking about the works that follow the forgiveness of sins and teaches why they should be done, namely, in

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

order to confirm their calling, that is, so that they do not fall from their calling by sinning again. Do good works to persevere in your calling and to keep from losing the gifts of your calling, which were given beforehand, not on account of the works that follow, and which are now retained by faith. Faith does not remain in those who lose the Holy Spirit and reject repentance. As we said above, faith exists in repentance.

75

61. OUTLINE OF THE 1521, 1555, AND 1559 VERSIONS OF THE LOCI COMMUNES The later editions of the Loci are at least four times as long as the original Latin version. The early German versions were translations by George Spalatin and Justus Jonas, but Melanchthon also prepared his own German text after 1535. This document was the starting point for the development of the other systematic theologies examined in chapter 6 of this volume. From Melanchthons Werke erke, ed. Hans Engelland, vol. 2 part 1 (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1952), 1–2, trans. Eric Lund. Outline of the 1521 Latin Edition

Fig. 2.2. Portrait of Philip Melanchthon by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1537).

They add other passages that are no more relevant. Finally, they say that our position was condemned a thousand years ago during the time of Augustine. This, too, is patently false. For the church of Christ has always held that the forgiveness of sins takes place freely. In point of fact, the Pelagians were condemned for contending that grace was given on account of our works. Besides, we have sufficiently shown above that we maintain that good works must necessarily follow faith. For we do not abolish the law, Paul says [Rom 3:31], but we establish it, because when we receive the Holy Spirit by faith the fulfillment of the law necessarily follows, through which love, patience, chastity, and other fruits of the Spirit continually grow.

Locus 1—Of Human Powers or Free Choice Locus 2—Of Sin What Sin Is Whence Original Sin Comes The Power and Results of Sin Locus 3—Of the Law Of Divine Laws Of Counsels Of Monastic Vows Of Ceremonies Of Human Laws Locus 4—Of the Gospel What the Gospel Is Of the Power of the Law Of the Power of the Gospel Locus 5—Of Grace Locus 6—Of Justification and Faith Of Efficacious Faith Of Charity and Hope Locus 7—Of the Difference between the Old and New Testaments Of the Abrogation of the Law Of the Old and New Man Of Mortal and Daily Sin Locus 8—Of Signs Of Baptism Of Repentance Of Private Confession Of Participation in the Lord’s Supper Locus 9—Of Love Locus 10—Of Magistrates Locus 11—Of Offense or Scandal

76

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Outline of the 1555 German Edition Locus 1—Of God Locus 2—Of the Three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Locus 3—Of the Article that God Created All Other Things Locus 4—Of the Origin of Sin Locus 5—Of Human Powers or Free Choice Locus 6—Of Original Sin Locus 7—Of Divine Law Locus 8—Of the Distinction of Commandment and Counsel Locus 9—Of the Gospel Locus 10—How Man Obtains Forgiveness of Sins and Is Justified before God Locus 11—Of the Word “Faith” Locus 12—Of the Word “Grace” Locus 13—Of the Word “Justification” and “To Be Justified” Locus 14—Of Good Works Locus 15—Of Eternal Predestination and Reprobation Locus 16—Of the Difference between the Old and New Testament Locus 17—Of Christian Freedom Locus 18—Of the Spirit and the Letter Locus 19—Of the Sacraments Locus 20—Of Baptism Locus 21—Of the Baptism of Children Locus 22—Of the Supper of Christ the Lord Locus 23—Distinction between Ceremonies, Sacraments, and Sacrifices Locus 24—Of Repentance Locus 25—Of Sin against the Holy Spirit Locus 26—Of Confession Locus 27—Of Satisfaction Locus 28—Of the Power of the Church or of the Keys Locus 29—Of the Church Locus 30—Of the Kingdom of Christ Locus 31—Of the Resurrection of the Dead Locus 32—Of Bearing Tribulation and the Cross Locus 33—Of Prayer Locus 34—Of Human Precepts in the Church Locus 35—Of Offense or Scandal Locus 36—Of Worldly Authority

Outline of the 1559 Latin Edition Locus 1—Of God Of the Three Persons of the Godhead Of the Son Of the Holy Spirit Locus 2—Of Creation Locus 3—Of the Cause of Sin and concerning Contingency Locus 4—Of Human Powers or Free Choice Locus 5—Of Sin Of Original Sin Of Actual Sins Locus 6—Of the Divine Law Of the Division of the Law Locus 7—Exposition of the Ten Commandments The Decalogue Of the First Commandment Of the Second Commandment Of the Third Commandment Of the Fourth Commandment Of the Fifth Commandment Of the Sixth Commandment Of the Seventh Commandment Of the Eighth Commandment Of the Ninth and Tenth Commandments Locus 8—Of Natural Law Locus 9—Of the Use of Law Locus 10—Of the Difference between Counsels and Precepts Of Vengeance or Redress Of Poverty Of Chastity Locus 11—Of the Gospel For What Reason There Is the Promise of the Gospel Locus 12—Of Grace and Justification Of the Word “Faith” Of the Word “Grace” Of Good Works Which Works Must Be Done? How Can Good Works Be Done? How Do Good Works Please God? Of Rewards Of Differences between Sins Of the Arguments of the Adversaries Locus 13—Of the Difference between the Old and New Testament Locus 14—Of the Difference between Mortal and Venial Sins

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

Locus 15—Of the Church Against the Donatists Of the Signs That Point Out the Church Locus 16—Of the Sacraments Of the Number of Sacraments Confirmation Unction Baptism The Signs [of Baptism] Of the Baptism of John and the Apostles Of the Baptism of Infants Of the Lord’s Supper Of Sacrifice Of Eucharistic Sacrifice Locus 17—Of Repentance Of Contrition Of Faith Of Confession Of Satisfaction Locus 18—Of Predestination Locus 19—Of the Kingdom of Christ Locus 20—Of the Resurrection of the Dead Locus 21—Of the Spirit and the Letter Locus 22—Of Calamities, the Cross, and True Consolations Locus 23—Of the Invocation of God or Prayer Locus 24—Of Civil Magistrates and the Dignity of Governmental Matters Locus 25—Of Human Ceremonies in the Church Locus 26—Of the Mortification of the Flesh Locus 27—Of Offense or Scandal Locus 28—Of Christian Liberty 62. THE LOCI COMMUNES (1559): WHY SHOULD GOOD WORKS BE DONE? Although Melanchthon defended the doctrine of justification by grace alone, he was also concerned that people might take the moral life less seriously after hearing preaching about freedom from the law. Thus, in the later editions of the Loci, he increasingly discussed the “necessity” of good works. Language of this sort provoked the Majoristic controversy discussed in chapter 5 of this volume. In the 1559 version of the Loci, written after that controversy had already begun, Melanchthon takes care to articulate the sense in which good works might be said to be “necessary.” From Melanchthons Werke erke, ed. Hans Engelland, vol. 2, part 1 (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1952), 404–9, trans. Eric Lund.

77

For What Reasons Should Good Works Be Done? There are multiple reasons: necessity, worthiness, and rewards. Regarding the first, there are many kinds of necessity. There are the necessities of command, of debt, of retaining faith, and of avoiding punishment. For although it is something else to speak of compulsion, there nevertheless remains the eternal and immutable order of God that the creature ought to conform to the will of God. This immutable order is the necessity of command and the necessity of debt, as Paul says [Rom 8:12], “We are debtors to God, not to the flesh.” And Christ says [John 13:34], “This is my command that you love one another.” Also 1 Thessalonians 4[:3–7]: “This is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from fornication, that each possess his vessel, that is the body, in sanctification and honor, not in the passions of lust like the people who do not know God, and that no one injure or defraud a brother in business, because God is an avenger in all these things. For God did not call us to uncleanness but to sanctification.” . . . There is [also] the necessity of retaining our faith, because the Holy Spirit is driven out and disturbed when we commit sins against conscience. As it clearly says in 1 John 3[:7–8], “Let no one deceive you; he who commits sin is of the devil,” And Romans 8[:13], “If you put to death the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit, you will live; if you live according to the flesh, you will die.” . . . Thus David banished faith and the Holy Spirit when he seized another man’s wife, and indeed he troubled the Holy Spirit in many ways, first in his heart from which he was driven into adultery, and thereafter in many of the saints, for his scandal caused some to sorrow and brought about an occasion for destruction for others. . . . The necessity of avoiding punishment ought [also] to move our minds, since we see the whole history of the world filled with the most sad events, which certainly are the punishment of sins. But the blindness of men is so great that they think the cause of all these things is accidental. This insanity must be abolished....... We should also resist that cool quibbling by which the benefits that come from fear of punishment are disparaged. The response of the pious is simple for they know that there are many causes and reasons for the same action. They know that things should be done more for the sake of God than because of punishments. But they also know that God wants his will and his wrath to be recognized in punish-

78

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ments and wants present and future punishments to be feared....... The worship of idols brought in by Solomon was the cause of the tearing apart of the kingdom of Israel. This disassembling brought about religious discord and unending wars. God wants us to consider these examples so that we might fear his wrath and consider our own salvation and that of others. . . . The next cause is worthiness. Here again I remind you that we should not attribute any worthiness to our virtues, as if because of them a person has the remission of sins because they satisfy the law of God, or as if they are the prize of eternal life. But faith should shine forth that causes us to be pleasing to God because of the Son of God, as it was said above. But afterwards, because of this same Mediator, our worship is also pleasing to God who does not will that the whole human race perish. Therefore he also wants there to be the church in which he is acknowledged, invoked, and honored, whose obedience he accepts for the sake of his Son; and those works by which God judges that he is treated with honor he calls sacrifices. . . . As for rewards, they are given to us freely for the sake of the Son of God in order for us to be certain concerning the remission of sins and reconciliation. They should be received by faith. Again, they would be uncertain matters if they depended on the condition of our merits, but, afterwards, in those who have been reconciled, good works do merit spiritual and physical rewards in this life and after this life, since, as we have said, they are pleasing by faith for the sake of the Mediator. As the parable of the talents clearly shows [Matt 25:29], “To those who have more shall be given”; also in 1 Timothy 4[:8] it says, “Godliness holds promises for the present life and the life to come.” . . . Individuals cannot keep their faith without practicing it; and doctrine cannot shine brightly or be preserved in the administration of either the church or the government without these spiritual gifts. . . . GUIDANCE FOR DAILY LIVING 63. EBERLIN VON GÜNZBURG: A BEAUTIFUL MIRROR OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE (1524) Johann Eberlin von Günzburg spent three years in Wittenberg after leaving the Franciscan Order. He is especially remembered for his ability to express the basic points of Lutheran theology in terms that even

the uneducated laity could understand. This pamphlet sets forth a simple form of piety while also emphasizing the burdensome nature of Catholic rules and regulations. From Johann Eberlin von Günzburg, Sämtliche Schriften Schriften, vol. 3, ed. Ludwig Enders (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1902), 99–106, trans. Eric Lund. Christ says in Matthew, the first chapter [1:21], “You shall call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins.” John, chapter 1[:29]: “He was called the Lamb of God who took upon himself the sin of the world.” Paul says to the Galatians in chapter 2[:16]: “No one is made righteous by the works of the law.” Further, he says to the Romans in the third chapter [3:23–24]: “All people are sinners and lack that which finds favor with God but are justified without merit by his grace through the salvation that has taken place through Christ whom God has placed on the mercy seat, through their faith in his blood.” Luke 22[:20]: “This is the cup, the new covenant in my blood, which was shed for you.” It follows from this that no angelic or human work (even the totally faultless) can take away the least daily sin. No penance should be accepted from the priest or undertaken by oneself in order to blot out sin before God since all of that repudiates the blood of Christ and sets one’s own works in the place of Christ’s. Only the merits of Christ make us righteous before the angry God, without all of our prior cooperation, as Isaiah says in chapter 64[:6], “All our righteousness is an abomination to God.” Therefore, we can neither acquire grace through it nor make ourselves worthy by it. Not we, but God makes us righteous—without all our forethought or preparation, according to Ephesians, chapter 1[:4–6], and in the first Epistle of John, chapter 4[:9–10]. . . . In Matthew 6[:7] we have: “When you pray you should not use much babbling as the heathen do, who think they will be heard by many words. You should not be like them.” It follows that rosaries, recitations of the psalter, crown prayers, weeklong devotions, etc. should not be called prayers when they are just so much babbling. One supposes God’s grace to be obtained more this way than with short prayers. But Christ knew well that the human heart cannot remain two or three hours raised up to God, yet he respected the setting of words in order so that the heart might relate earnestly to God. Therefore he alone rightly teaches how to pray, for prayer is none other than a raising of the mind to God. As soon as the heart falls away, so also does the prayer.

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

Christ says in John, chapter 4[:21–23]: “Neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. God is a spirit, so whoever would worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.” Paul also says in the first Epistle to Timothy, chapter 2[:8]: “I desire that men should pray in all places.” He is also against the attributing of special holiness to the temple or churches above other places. Concerning prayer, you have a long text in the seventh chapter of Acts and Matthew, chapter 6[:5]. “When you pray do not as the hypocrites (who seek praise of men by public prayer), but when you pray, go into your bedroom and close yourself up and pray to the Father.” It follows that pilgrimages to this or that place, as if God or his saints would be more gracious there, are not right. It is also not necessary for one to run daily to the church for forgiveness as if prayer within sacred walls is more pleasing to God. Christ knows well who prays well, as he has taught you. So one should not spend a long time in church with sermons, sacraments, or the common commandments as if the Christians had to do certain things on holy days to avoid offense. On workdays, remain at home at your work, for you have nothing you need to do in the church. . . . We have in Matthew 15[:11]: “What goes into the mouth cannot make people impure.” Paul in 1 Timothy 4[:3]: From the devil comes the teaching of abstinence from foods. No one should judge you in matters of food and drink. It follows that no monk or religious prelate may command, on penalty of mortal sin, that you avoid this or that food on a certain day, such as eggs, butter, meat, etc. The devil speaks through whoever does this, and those who believe and follow them are separated from faith and are followers of the devil. First Timothy 4[:3]. But until the error of this seduction is uprooted, the enlightened strong Christians should patiently bear with the weak a long time, also help them and avoid offense. Romans 4 and 1 Corinthians 8 and 10. Christ says in Matthew 9 [19:10-12?]: Not everyone can abstain from marriage; only those to whom it is given. Paul in First Timothy 4[:3]: “To forbid marriage is a teaching of the devil.” First Corinthians 7[:9]: “It is better to marry than to burn with passion.” It follows that priests, monks, nuns, etc. who live with such great burning of their flesh and teach that chastity alone is pleasing to God are all separated from faith and are followers of the devil’s teaching. If they want to be holy, they must marry, since they cannot abstain. And to remark further of fasts and

79

commandments of the church, prayers, the hearing of the mass, festivals as they are now practiced, nothing about this is written in the Holy Bible in which God reveals everything that pleases him. It follows that one also is not bound by them nor is God’s wrath turned from us by them. Faith in Christ makes us righteous before God and inclines us to love of the neighbor, so that one makes oneself useful for the betterment of the neighbor, each in his proper estate. In Ephesians 5[:22] we have it that a wife should obey her husband, as the community is subjected to Christ. So should a husband love his wife as Christ the community. Children should hold their elders in honor. The elders should raise up their children in the teachings and discipline of the Lord. The servant should serve his temporal master as Christ, with fear and trembling. The master should be friendly toward his servant and consider that he also has a master in heaven, as Christ says. Beware of false prophets, etc. It follows that Christians should judge teachings, everyone for himself, according to what he hears from others, and according to the measurement of the Holy Bible. We have in Deuteronomy, chapter 11[:19]: “You shall teach the law of the Lord to your children.” It follows that parents are responsible for teaching their children the fear of God and his commandments, as Abraham did in Genesis, chapter 18. A father is his children’s bishop and preacher. Paul in Romans, chapter 13[:1], and in 1 Corinthians, chapter 7: Christian teaching does not annul temporal duty toward earthly lords, irrespective of whether they demand something just or unjust of us, issuing in good or ill. Christ says in Matthew 5[:40]: “Whoever takes your coat from you, do not quarrel with him, but let him also have your cloak.” Therefore a Christian customarily honors taxes, tithes, and festival offerings, so long as such are demanded by the authorities and community. Let no one decide something only according to his own opinion. . . . Christ is our life, John 14[:6]. Christ is the only mediator between God and us, 1 Timothy 2[:5]. Christ is our advocate, 1 John 2[:1]. Christ is our consolation and sweetness, Romans 5[:1] and 8[:39?]. No saint will take away this honor from Christ, nor should anyone attribute such honor to a saint. As long as Christ is held to honor, all the saints rejoice. If one places this honor entirely or in part on a saint, the saint himself would be angry and all the saints above us, if they knew what we were doing. You

80

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

cannot give Christ too much honor, but if you place too much honor on a saint by a hair’s breadth, you have insulted Christ and the saints, and your ignorance or good intention will not excuse you. God and the saints should not be insulted. Praise God, that he has so highly honored his saints and has shown them such grace and mercy and the saints themselves go and ask God with a right confidence, that he also will bestow such grace and mercy on you. That is the right way to honor the saints. Do not do good works in order to acquire God’s favor, to do penance for your sins; this you may not do, for Christ alone has done that. But believe that Christ has made the Father gracious toward you, who holds you in his fatherly protection now and forever. Think earnestly about that so that there may grow within you a reciprocal love for God as toward a best friend for whom you are inclined to do everything to please. Now works follow from this as you wish God’s love for your neighbors, friends, and foes. Now right contrition also follows, for whatever you have done against the loving God. Faithful one, you please God well through Christ and also all you do and abstain from doing when you do not trust in yourself. Stand at rest until your heart is fortified in trust, for what one does without such trust in God is sin. This distinction is made in Romans 13[:8]. A Christian child is accustomed to seek all things from Christ, to pray to God [for] life, joy, peace, healing, nourishment, wisdom, hope, redemption, and protection from all evil. In short, the Christian is taught to think of Christ as the best, most trustworthy, friendliest friend who is more friendly, loving, and trustworthy than all angels, saints, etc. When one then seeks all things from Christ, all misplaced reverence for the saints will soon be discarded. All love and suffering, however small it is, which God gives you, receive as a fatherly gift to you from your loving God. Then you will have peace and joy. And let God rule the world as he pleases. Stand still and ask God for grace for you and others so you may have peace. Speak of God’s word with respect. 64. KATHARINA SCHÜTZ ZELL: LETTER TO THE SUFFERING WOMEN OF THE COMMUNITY OF KENTZINGEN (1524) One hundred and fifty men fled the town of Kentzingen, near Freiburg im Breisgau, after Roman Catholic soldiers attempted to suppress their support of Protestantism. Katharina Zell housed some of

them as refugees in Strassburg and then wrote this published letter of encouragement to their wives. From Church Mother: The Writings of a Pr Protestant otestant Ref Reformer ormer in Sixteenth-Century Germany Germany, ed. and trans. Elsie McKee, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 50–56. . . . All of us, I, and those who are united with me in Christ, know and consider well with compassionate hearts the great distress that you suffer for Christ’s sake. And yet we also rejoice with you because of it, with inward feelings of happiness when, because of this suffering, we hear and sense your God-given faith that you demonstrate in this trial. With all of you I also ask God day and night that He may increase that same faith, as also Christ’s disciples prayed: “Lord, increase our faith.” By that faith I also exhort you with friendly request and exhortation, as your fellow sister in Christ Jesus, that you not let the invincible word of God go out of your heart, but always meditate on that word that you have had with you for so long and heard with all earnestness and faithfulness. And may you also receive these sufferings with great patience and thankfulness, as special fatherly gifts sent from God, which He does not give to any but His best loved children. . . . . . . Abraham believed and knew that his heir [Isaac] was invisibly kept safe for him and that God could also bring him back to life [cf. Gen 22:1–19]. So I beg you, loyal believing women, also to do this: take on you the manly, Abraham-like courage while you too are in distress and while you are abused with all kinds of insult and suffering. When you may meet with imprisonment in towers, chains, drowning, banishment, and such like things, when your husbands and you yourselves may be killed, meditate then on strong Abraham, father of us all, struggle after him as a good child should follow his father in a faith like his father’s. . . . . . . Do you not think that Abraham also suffered when God told him to kill his only son? When He told Abraham to do it himself!—to kill the son in whom also the blessing of human beings was promised. Yes, indeed, he was very grieved for he was also flesh and blood like all of us, but he knew (as the scripture says) that God could bring his son back to life. And so you also, when your husbands are killed, do you not know that Christ said, “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, though he is already dead, yet he will live.” . . . So also to you, believing women beloved by God, Christ says, “Whoever does not want to leave father and mother, wife, husband, and child, and all that he has, for my

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

sake and the Gospel’s, that one is not worthy of me. Whoever, however, for my sake leaves father and mother, wife, husband, and child, farm and field, to that one I will return them a hundredfold here and in the age to come eternal life.” [cf. Matt 10:37, 19:29] Dear Christian women, if you know and do this, then you also are blessed, as Christ said. Trample your flesh under foot, lift up your spirit, and speak comfortingly to your husbands and also to yourselves the words that Christ Himself has said: “Do not fear those who can kill the body; I will show you one who can kill your body and soul and cast them in hell.” And shortly after that He says, “Therefore whoever confesses me before this adulterous and wicked generation, that one I will also confess before my Father” [Luke 12:4–5, 8–9]. . . . As I have said before, God wants to discipline us and tear us away from the desires of this world so that we may learn to desire only Him. . . . His rod is temporal torment here, but His mercy is the eternal inheritance that He will not take from us, as He has sworn to our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. . . . It has pleased God to leave you for a little, and also to test you a little, as sad widows without husbands, as He comfortingly shows in the prophet Isaiah in the fifty-fourth chapter, which place may well be applied to this and like matters. He says thus: “Fear not, for you will not be shamed.” And do not be sad with thoughts of your widowhood, for the One who made you, that One will protect you, the Lord of Hosts is His name and the Holy One of Israel is your redeemer. He is God of all the earth. . . . Dear sisters, even though sometimes your faith may be discouraged and the flesh may fight against the spirit, do not therefore be frightened away. It is a holy struggle, it must be thus: faith that is not tempted is not faith. . . . 65. LUTHER: ON MARRIAGE AND SEXUALITY Luther praised marriage in his sermons, although he was also realistic about its difficulties. He also frankly discussed sexual relations and valued marriage as a way to constrain human lust. Luther was initially reluctant to marry himself but later developed a deeply loving relationship with his wife, Katharina von Bora. He was aware of biblical stories of women who prophesied but did not favor letting women preach because of various comments by Paul found in the New Testament.

81

SERMON ON MARRIAGE FROM 1519 From The Annotated Luther Luther, vol. 5, Christian Lif Lifee in the World orld, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand, trans. Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 17–32. Cf. LW 44: 8-11 and WA II 166-71. . . . A woman is created to be a companionable partner to the man in everything, particularly to bear children. And that still remains, except that since the fall marriage has been blended with wicked lust. And now [i.e., after the fall] the desire of the man for the woman, and vice versa, is sought after not only for companionship and children, the purposes for which marriage was instituted, but also is now strongly sought after due to wicked lust. God makes distinctions between the different kinds of love, and shows that the love of a man and woman is (or should be) the greatest and purest of all loves. For God says, “A man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife” [Gen 2:24], and the wife does the same, as we see happening around us every day. Now there are three kinds of love: false love, natural love, and married love. False love is that which seeks [things] for selfish reasons, as a man loves money, possessions, honor, and women taken outside of marriage against God’s command. Natural love is that between father and child, brother and sister, friend and relative, and similar relationships. But over and above all these is married love, that is, a bride’s love, which glows like a fire and desires nothing but the husband. She says, “I want nothing that is yours; I want neither your gold nor your silver; neither this or that. I only want you. I want you entirely, or not at all.” All other kinds of love seek something other than the loved one: this kind [of love] wants only to have the beloved’s own self completely. If Adam had not fallen, the love of bride and groom would have been the loveliest thing. Now this love is not pure either, for admittedly a married partner desires to have the other, yet each seeks to satisfy his desire with the other, and it is this desire which now falsifies this [perfect] kind of love. Therefore, the married state is now no longer pure and free from sin. . . . . . . The doctors have found three good and useful things about the married estate, by means of which the sin of lust, which flows beneath the surface, is counteracted and ceases to be a cause of damnation. First, [the doctors say] that it is a sacrament. . . . Second, [the doctors say] that marriage is a pact of fidelity. The whole basis and essence of marriage is that each gives himself or herself to the other, and they promise to remain faithful to each other and

82

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

not give themselves to any other. Because they bind and surrender themselves to each other, the way is barred to the body of anyone else so that they must content themselves in the marriage bed with their one companion. In this way God sees to it that the flesh is subdued so as not to rage wherever and however it pleases, and allows within such fidelity more than enough occasion than is necessary for the begetting of children. But, of course, a man has to control himself and not make a filthy sow’s sty of his marriage....... Third, [the doctors say] that marriage produces offspring, for that is the end and chief purpose of marriage. . . . They can do no better work and do nothing more valuable either for God, for Christendom, for the entire world, for themselves, and for their children than to bring up their children well. . . . For bringing up their children properly is their shortest road to heaven. In fact, heaven itself could not be made nearer or achieved more easily than by doing this work. It is also their appointed work. Where parents are not conscientious about this, it is as if everything were the wrong way around, like fire that will not burn or water that is not wet. . . . A SERMON ON MARRIAGE (JANUARY 15, 1525) From WA 17/1, trans. Eric Lund. . . . And although another wife may be more beautiful, better, more eloquent, smarter, wiser and or healthier than your wife, you shall not love her as much as your own body. No, no, but you shall love your own wife as your own body. And if she cannot always match up to you, bear with her patiently, as you would with your own body and do as the vine dresser does with his weak vines. (For the Holy Spirit calls a wife “a vine” in Psalm 128:3.) If he wants to tie up what is otherwise weak, like a woman, so that it will support and bear fruit, the vine dresser does not bind it with a massive iron wagon chain or a coarse hemp rope but with a fine flexible string. So, men should govern wives not with rough clubs, threshing sticks, or extended knives, but rather with friendly words, friendly gestures and with all gentleness “so that they does not become timid,” as St. Peter says in his first epistle 3:6–7, or so terrified that they afterwards do not know what to do. Therefore, men should rule wives with reason and not unreason, and “bestow honor on the feminine sex as the weakest vessel since she is an heir of the grace of life.” . . .

Fig. 2.3. The original revised title page from Martin Luther’s Ein Sermon von dem Elichen standt vorendert und corrigiret durch D. Martin Luther Augustiner zu Wittenbergk (Wittenburg: Rhau-Grunenberg, 1519).

66. MARTIN LUTHER: A SERMON ON PREPARING TO DIE (1519) From The Annotated Luther Luther, vol. 4, Pastor Pastoral al Writings ings, ed., Mary Jane Haemig, trans. Anne Marie Johnson (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 290–305. Cf. LW 42:99–115; and WA 2:685–97. First, since death marks a farewell from this world and all its activities, it is necessary that we regulate his temporal goods properly as we wish to have them ordered, lest after his death there be occasion for squabbles, quarrels, or other misunderstanding among his surviving friends. This pertains to the physical or external departure from this world and to the surrender of our possessions. Second, we must also take leave spiritually. That is, we must cheerfully and sincerely forgive, for God’s sake, all men who have offended us. At the same time we must also, for God’s sake, earnestly seek the forgiveness of all the people whom we undoubtedly

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

have greatly offended by setting them a bad example or by bestowing too few of the kindnesses demanded by the law of Christian brotherly love. This is necessary lest the soul remain burdened by its actions here on earth. Third, since everyone must depart, we must turn our eyes to God, to whom the path of death leads and directs us. Here we find the beginning of the narrow gate and of the straight path to life [Matt 7:14]. All must joyfully venture forth on this path, for though the gate is quite narrow, the path is not long. Just as an infant is born with peril and pain from the small abode of its mother’s womb into this immense heaven and earth, that is, into this world, so man departs this life through the narrow gate of death. And although the heavens and the earth in which we dwell at present seem large and wide to us, they are nevertheless much narrower and smaller than the mother’s womb in comparison to the future heaven. Therefore, the death of the dear saints is called a new birth, and their feast day is known in Latin as natale, that is, the day of their birth. . . . Fourth, such preparation and readiness for this journey are accomplished first of all by providing ourselves with a sincere confession (of at least the greatest sins and those which by diligent search can be recalled by our memory), with the holy Christian sacrament of the Holy and True Body of Christ, and with the Unction. If these can be had, one should devoutly desire them and receive them with great confidence. If they cannot be had, our longing and yearning for them should nevertheless be a comfort and we should not be too dismayed by this circumstance. . . . Sixth, . . . we should familiarize ourselves with death during our lifetime, inviting death into our presence when it is still at a distance and not on the move. At the time of dying, however, this is hazardous and useless, for then death looms large of its own accord. In that hour, we must put the thought of death out of mind and refuse to see it, as we shall hear. The power and might of death are rooting in the fearfulness of our nature and in our untimely and undue viewing and contemplating of it. . . . Eighth, hell also looms large because of undue scrutiny and stern thought devoted to it at the wrong time. This is increased immeasurably by our ignorance of God’s counsel. The evil spirit prods the soul so that it burdens itself with all kinds of useless presumptions, especially with the most dangerous undertaking of delving into the mystery of God’s will to ascertain whether one is “chosen” or not. . . . In brief, the devil is determined to blast God’s love

83

from a man’s mind and to arouse thoughts of God’s wrath....... Those who surmount this temptation have vanquished sin, hell, and death all in one. . . . Twelfth, . . . gaze at the heavenly picture of Christ, who descended into hell [1 Pet 3:19] for your sake and was forsaken by God as one eternally damned when he spoke the words on the cross, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!”—“My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” [Matt 27:46]. In that picture your hell is defeated and your uncertain election is made certain. If you concern yourself solely with that and believe that it was done for you, you will surely be preserved in this same faith. Never, therefore, let this be erased from your vision. Seek yourself only in Christ and not in yourself and you will find yourself in him eternally. . . . Eighteenth, in the hour of their death, Christians should not worry that they are alone. They can be certain, as the sacraments point out, that a great many eyes are upon them: first, the eyes of god and of Christ himself, for the Christian believes his word and clings to his sacraments; then also the eyes of the dear angels, of the saints and of all Christians. As the Sacrament of the Altar indicates, there is no doubt that all of these, as one body, run to Christians as one of their own, help them overcome sin, death, and hell, and bear all things with them. In that hour the work of love and the communion of saints are seriously and mightily active. . . . PAMPHLET LITERATURE: DEFENSES OF LUTHER’S REFORMATION 67. VON GRUMBACH: A CHRISTIAN WRITING OF AN HONORABLE NOBLE WOMAN (1523) Argula von Grumbach was the daughter of a minor noble who was influenced by a friend in Nürnberg to read Luther’s writings. She exchanged letters with Luther and visited with him in Coburg in 1530. When Arsacius Seehofer, a young teacher, was arrested in Ingolstadt for his support of Luther, Argula protested against his punishment in this letter. From Ref Reformatorische ormatorische Verkündig erkündigung ung und Lebensordnung dnung, ed. Robert Stupperich (Bremen: Schünemann, 1963), 289–98, trans. Eric Lund. To the Enlightened, High-Born Sovereign Prince and Lord, Wilhelm, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Upper and Lower Bavaria— My Gracious Lord:

84

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Fig. 2.4. Portrait medal of Argula von Grumbach, ca. 1520.

I heartily wish grace and peace from God through his Holy Spirit for Your Princely Grace, now and forever. Highborn Prince, Gracious Lord, it has come to pass that now on the eve of our dear lady’s birth [September 7], the University of Ingolstadt has, without holding any disputation, forced a young man named Arsacius Seehofer to renounce the holy gospel and Word of God by threatening after long imprisonment to put him to death by burning. Every Christian should take that to heart. Moreover, some boast that this has happened at the very bidding of your Princely Grace. Now, a citizen of Nürnberg has sent me a document that scornfully described how this transpired. I answered as best I could, being of the opinion that the truth about your Gracious Lord was not rightly reported in this case. I know your Princely Grace is so Christian that you would not encroach on God’s authority. For no person has the power to forbid the Word of God and to manipulate it. The Word of God alone should and must govern all things. They may call it “Luther’s word,” but it is not “Lutheran”; rather, it is God’s Word. We have read in John 7[:7]: “The Lord revealed to them their evil, therefore they became an enemy to you.” This is also happening now to Luther. The disciple is not above the master; what happened to all apostles has also happened to all those who have confessed Christ, be it Luther or Melanchthon or whoever. And even if it were possible that the devil proclaimed the holy gospel out of hell, it would still be and remain the Word of God. Paul also says to the Galatians [1:8]: “If an angel should come from heaven and teach

you another gospel, so should he be cursed.” They have excluded nothing; he [Arsacius Seehofer] had to renounce the writings entirely, whether Luther’s or Melanchthon’s, or go into the fire. Did Martin write the entire Bible or simply translate it into German according to the plain text? Your Princely Grace may judge for himself whether it doesn’t amount to renouncing God and his Word, if I renounce evangelical, apostolic, or prophetic writings! . . . I also implore your Princely Grace by God’s will to never believe their words but to test them before the Spirit according to divine Scripture, as John says in chapter 4 of his first epistle: “Whoever confesses Christ is from God” [1 John 4:2]. It is especially necessary to exercise judgment in the midst of such tyranny, for whoever does not accept those who are Christ’s cannot be a Christian. It is not enough for us to say, “I believe what my elders have believed.” We must believe in God, not our elders. If our elders determine right belief, then the Jewish way would be best, but Christ says in Matthew 10[:32–33]: “Whoever confesses me before people, I will confess before my Father. Whoever does not confess me I will also not confess.” And Luke 9[:26]: “Whoever is ashamed of me and my word, I will also be ashamed of them when I come in my majesty.” Such words should at all times stand before my eyes, because my God himself has spoken them. . . . You should make sure that your authority is not misused, since you have the rule of the gospel just as we do. It does not teach the prohibiting of God’s Word or that one should obey such a prohibition; rather it teaches that one should sooner lose body and life. If one wants to be a Christian as we do, then we have the command in chapters 4 and 5 of Acts [e.g., 5:29] to obey God rather than people. If, through God’s help, Your Princely Grace abides by this same Word of God, then the land and people will partake of good fortune and prosperity. Where this does not happen, God will not let it go unpunished. In the divine biblical writings we find that God punished and still threatens to punish us with plagues, for what he spoke to Jerusalem and the land of Jordan he spoke unto all peoples. Now God says he will give us into the hands of our enemies and subject us to a foreign lord with harsh servitude, estrange us from our fatherland, slay us with the sword, so that no one remains who can bury us, giving our bodies as food to the birds and wild animals and making a great people into a small one. He can suddenly kill us and our cattle through death and pestilence, turn our earth into an infertile desert, send hunger upon us and such anguish that the father devours the son and

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

the son the father, and children die in the arms and at the breasts of their mothers, as we read in 2 Chronicles 2 and 36, Isaiah 30 and 36, Baruch 2, Ezekiel 5 and 7, Hosea 14, and many other places in the Bible. God has said this, not Luther, and the Word of God is a yea without any nay! “Heaven and earth he says will pass away but my Word will never pass away” [Matt 24:35]. . . . What does God say in Matthew 7[:15]?: “Protect yourself from false prophets who are clothed in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are rapacious wolves.” I think God has uncovered some of them: they are priests, monks, and nuns. What prince, indeed, would build robberhouses in the best cities and most beautiful places, if the Empire allowed him to do so? Which count or lord has ever acquired such freedom from your Grace or your Grace’s ancestors? The Lord speaks and calls them robbers, for example, in Isaiah 3[:12,14], “They have robbed my people and women rule over them.” God says this; if I said it, it would be called Lutheran. Thus they must let it remain. O God, what sodomitical purity and avaricious poverty! They have the appetite of the flesh just as we do, but they have covered it up with the shame-hiding cowl. It does not help before God. If it helped, we would all wear cowls. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7[:9]: “Every man should have a wife. Every woman should have a husband. For it is better to marry than to suffer from lust.” . . . The pope has followed the counsel of the devil, has forbidden priests to take wives, but has permitted sleeping with loose women in exchange for money. O Prince, take notice of this lest you be ruined by this. The sword of punishment belongs to you and not to the clergy. It is their task to proclaim the Word of God. Would to God that your eyes would be opened and you would take in hand the sword that God has given you. Matthew 20[:25–28]: “The princes of this world should rule over the people, but it should not be so with you; whichever of you is the greatest should be the least and the servant of all the others, just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.” We are guilty due to our sins; all that is called spiritual has been turned around. Princes [of the church] and prelates have the money, the seculars are left with only the sack. Your Princely Grace, help us all and take counsel so that God may not send his wrath upon us as we just now noted. . . . I have not been able to refrain from writing to your Princely Grace as my brother in Christ. May the Spirit of God judge this, for I mean well. God is my

85

witness that I have joy when Your Princely Grace is fortunate and suffer when Your Princely Grace has misfortune. I cannot forget that after the death of my father and mother, when I was robbed of both within five days, I was commended to Your Princely Grace as my supreme guardian, and at the time I became Your Princely Grace’s mother’s lady of the bedchamber. I was consoled in my grief by Your Princely Grace with these words: I should not cry because he would be not only my prince but also my father. My husband has also experienced this kindness, and our child has been raised and nurtured in Your Princely Grace’s service. This has obligated me not a little to write to Your Princely Grace to show my thankfulness in part for the benefits I received. It is with me as with St. Peter: “Silver and gold have I none” [Acts 3:6], but to be sure I have love toward God and Your Princely Grace as my neighbor. For the Lord says in Luke 9[:25], “What use is it for a person to gain the whole world and lose his soul? With what will he buy it again?” Out of Christian duty, I could not keep silent. I have written a letter to the university, a copy of which I am now sending to Your Princely Grace, so that if they falsely slander me, Your Princely Grace might be informed of the truth. What I have written I know by God’s grace to be justified, for it is not my word but God’s word. Would that Your Princely Grace takes it to heart that God will indeed demand an account of you for the souls under your charge. Would that Your Princely Grace did not put faith in and give authority to the money-grubbers for one sees that they struggle against God out of avarice and hence without power. We would all like to abide by God’s Word, but the priests, monks, procurators, advocates, and jurists cannot stand for this. The Lord says: “What you want others to do to you, you should also do to them” [Matt 7:12]. This law carries a sure judgment. Do not let it happen that generation after generation carries on a process without being able to obtain a judgment. . . . 68. ALBER: DECLARATION OF WAR FROM LUCIFER TO LUTHER (1524) This satirical letter of challenge (Fehdschrift) was published in Speyer shortly after the Diet of Nürnberg, at which the cardinal legates persuaded Emperor Charles V to enforce the Edict of Worms. At the time it was written, Erasmus Alber was a schoolteacher in Oberursel in Hesse. Later, from 1528 to 1539, he served as a Lutheran pastor in

86

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Sprendlinger. After that, his often harsh polemics forced him to move frequently and to seek refuge occasionally in Wittenberg. Alber also wrote at least twenty-three hymns and published a Lutheran retelling of Aesop’s fables. From Flugschriften lugschriftenaus aus den ersten Jahr Jahren en der Ref Reforormation mation, vol. 3, ed. Otto Clemen (Nieuwkoop: de Graaf, 1967), 364–67, trans. Eric Lund. We, Lucifer, a lord and possessor of eternal darkness, powerful ruler, and master of the whole world, also of all treasures and kingdoms that are in it, etc., send you, Martin Luther, this announcement of our wrath and disfavor. Our dear, trusted representatives in Rome, the legates Laurentius Campegius and Matthias Lang of Salzburg, both cardinals, together with all our officers who are gathered in Regensburg, have humbly reported and forwarded their message about how you, without reasonable cause, make use of fierce writing and preaching again and again against us, to the detriment of us all and our yearly revenues and income. And they report to us that if your disposition and intention strengthen daily, increase and guide you completely, you yourself might very well intend to drive out and eradicate our servants and officers. We also have found out for ourselves by the inspection of our registers and soul books, how many in seven years, through your writing, teaching, and preaching, have been turned away from us and directed in another way toward Christ (who sometime previously also powerfully deprived us of our kingdom). This is entirely unsuitable and improper because you have now violated and betrayed the vow and obligation that you originally made to us as a monk. And in doing this, your unmanly, evil, spiteful, and obstinate mind is revealed and used against us and our servants, and you are able still more to be harmful and detrimental to our kingdom. So, you give preference to the Bible and Gospel books that, by our command and bidding, have not been used much for some hundred years. We, and our appointed councils that we have authorized to assemble in many places and especially most recently at Konstanz, have also earnestly forbidden the basing of preaching and disputing on them. At that time [the Council of Konstanz, 1415], we horribly punished and had burned two criminals and transgressors of this command, Jan Huss and Jerome of Prague (who also in your manner dared to fight against us). Besides that, you inspire monks and nuns in the cloisters to run away to take wives and husbands. They had been honoring us, and not a little, with the sin by which we overcame the people and the five cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. You contend

for and deprive us also of the priests and monks, our trusted servants, who hear confessions. They no longer perform so conveniently and boldly the adultery, whoring, and seducing of virgins that they had many opportunities to practice in the past, and they also no longer want to abuse people with our ban. You not only apply yourself against us and our servants in these and the other matters mentioned above, but also against all other evil tricks and stratagems for which we and our servants are daily reviled, disgraced, and scorned by many. Because now (as we have sufficiently ascertained) you have no regard for our amicable requesting, have despised the offering of a great gift and riches, and will not let your hard head be softened through friendly or earnest admonitions, our adherents have not hesitated or abhorred the power and might that we have among worldly princes, in addition to our bishops. So we, with our counselors, after sufficient consideration of all your abuse and harm directed against us, have fully decided to persecute you, and your adherents, helpers, and helper’s helpers with true severity. We announce therefore to you and notify your adherents by virtue of this open letter, our enmity, hostility, and disapproval, on behalf of ourselves, our pope, cardinals, bishops, and our other servants and officers who are in our power and service and others who belong to us in other ways. We also intend for you and your crowd and adherents, burning, beheading, drowning, robbing, and deprivation of the body, property, and possessions of you and your children. Moreover, we will do whatever we can and want to advance our horrible undertaking and uphold our devilish honor, as a true war order is capable and accustomed to do, and will not feel guilty for responding to you and your adherents either within or outside the law. We have also earnestly commanded and given full power to all of our servants and officers and especially those who are now assembled at Regensburg, to attack you and all your adherents or protectors further, in our name and for our sake, and to carry out the deed that we have announced here with even greater exuberance. In witness thereof, our hellish seal is pressed to the end of this letter that is sent out from our city of eternal damnation on the last day of September in the year 1524.

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

SATIRICAL PROPAGANDA 69. MURNER: THE GREAT LUTHERAN FOOL (1522) Thomas Murner’s 4,772-line satirical poem against Lutheranism has a meandering and farcical plot. In the early section excerpted here, Murner (portraying himself as a cat-monk because another Lutheran satirist had previously mocked his name by comparing it to murmawen, the old German verb “to meow”) converses with the Great Fool, who represents various Lutheran sympathizers who had criticized Catholic theology and practice, including Eberlin von Günzburg. In a later section, Murner converses with Luther himself, who explicitly admits to all the malevolent and disruptive intentions that the poet thought the Lutherans clandestinely supported. By the end of the poem, all the little fools have been exorcised from the Great Fool, and Luther has died and fallen into a toilet. From Satirische Feldzüg eldzügee wider die Ref Reformation ormation, ed. Arnold Berger (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967), 44–63, trans. Eric Lund.

87

have hidden themselves within me, and many who wish not to be named have buried themselves inside of me. They are all hidden in me and lie there without a care. O God, if they only knew how hard it is to be exorcised, they would be on their guard. . . . I cannot defend myself against this horrible exorcism. The words are too strong: O narrabo, narrabis, narrabitis! Each one breaks my heart. . . .

How the Great Lutheran Fool Must Be Exorcised . . . As soon as I saw the great, haughty fool draw near, I began to flee into a corner where I hid myself and made the sign of the holy cross, although blessing oneself before a fool is like trying to stand stiff as the wind blows. I expressly shouted out three names: “Narrabo, narrabis, narrabitis.” As soon as I uttered these names and said “Luthery,” my heart and mind were strengthened. I called out, “O God, protect me from this great fool who has come sliding in on a sled.” Soon it occurred to my mind that I am a foolexorcist and have exorcised fools before, though not so great a fool as the one who came sliding in on the snow. . . . At first, when I began the exorcism, I spit in my hands and set about to consider how I might exorcise the fool. “Stand still and do not lift a limb! You must answer me and not move from your place. Tell me who made you, who your father and mother are, why you were made and why you are so huge. . . . The Fool Tells Why He Is So Large and Swollen . . . I must tell you, text and gloss, why I am so huge. I am not swollen up for no reason. Many fools

Fig. 2.5. Title page of The Great Lutheran Fool by Thomas Muner (1522).

The Great Fool Warns the Exorcist of the Fools in His Body . . . I was born a poor fool, as were all my ancestors. Therefore you must soon exorcise me. But those who sit within me have great intelligence and foolish wits. If you want to exorcise them and do not speak the words as you should or recite your blessings deliberately, you will be harmed by them. . . .

88

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

The Fools That Sit in the Great Fool’s Head Fools sit in my head whom the devil has allowed in. They plague me so much that I am almost dying. . . . In the head that one uses for thinking sit the learned fools who stand in the pulpit to preach. They will not let go of Luther for they are too partial to him because he speaks of nothing but the gospel and the truth for all the world. . . . The first thing they preach to you is about how one should harm the pope and how one should understand the words “Peter, feed my sheep” [John 21:15]. From these words it is to be decided whether Christ set up a pope. They propose to do away with the pope, the shepherd of Christendom, and intend to cause his downfall. This would harm the other sheep, for when the shepherd is struck down, no one else can lead the sheep. After this, they raise the issue of why the pope deprives you of the body of Christ in both kinds, the flesh and the blood, wanting you to understand that this is done mischievously by a hateful clergy who do not want to permit this and have manipulated you by lies to deprive you of it in an unchristian way. Believe me that no one wants to begrudge you the sacrament. . . . I wish someone would punish these fools with exorcism so that I may sleep more restfully. Yes, I and everyone. They have the greatest guilt. . . .

70. COCHLAEUS: THE SEVEN-HEADED LUTHER (1529/1549) In a 1529 treatise and in the woodcut that accompanied it, Johannes Cochlaeus portrayed Luther as degenerating from doctor to fanatic to the equivalent of Barabbas the murderer/insurrectionist (Luke 23:19) released by Pilate instead of Jesus. He commented more generally on this image in the following excerpt from his 1549 commentary on the life of Luther. From Commentaria Ioannis Cochlaei de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri (Franz Behem, 1549), 197, trans. Eric Lund.

The Fools That Sit in the Great Fool’s Pockets . . . Fools sit in my pockets who are waiting for goods and money. . . . They have their own gospel about redirecting donations and completely ripping up cloisters. This they preach with great zeal. . . . God will not allow anyone to steal and rob. Why then do you want to take from me what I possess with full right and by true title? They have devised a cloak of pretense that the common people do not understand. They make it out to be a Christian teaching although it is a lie. . . . The Fools That Sit in the Great Fool’s Belly . . . O dear cousin, you want to know why my belly is so swollen? You would be surprised to know what fools sit together in there and how many would like to remain there. If you would drive them out of me, you would be doing me a service. I cannot bear them any longer. I am hoping that you will figure out how to exorcise them from me. . . .

Fig. 2.6. This 1529 print depicts and names Luther as a seven-headed monster.

Once Africa brought forth many monstrosities, but now Germany has spawned more marvelous monstrosities. For what is more monstrous than so many heads, so contrary and dissimilar among themselves, residing in one cowl. What, compared to these, is two-faced Janus, three-headed Geryon, triple-throated Cerberus? They are fables of the poets and laughable figments. But the seven-headed cowl, nay rather, that cowled dragon of ours, confounds Germany truly and seriously with its seven heads,

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

and breathes on it and corrupts it lethally with very bad poison. Who previously has seen, I ask, such a portent anywhere? Indeed, it is astonishing, a mystery full of majesty, sublime and venerable above all sense and intellect that there are three in one God and these three are one; one in substance, three in persons. But in one cowl of one Luther there are seven and these seven are not only one in substance but also one in person. Assuredly, this is an amazing theology, previously unheard of by Jews, Gentiles, and Christians. Of the multitude of those believers in old Christianity, the heart was one and the soul was one. However, in this new gospel of Luther one heart and one flesh are cut up into many hearts and heads, so that not only do different ones think many different things but one [Luther] also arrogates many heads and attitudes to himself. Indeed, we who unwillingly and gravely with weariness and nausea have read the books of Luther, have briefly drawn out the seven. And if one wishes to find more things in these writings, be they monstrosities or heads, let him only search or review a little more diligently, and he will discover beyond a doubt many more amazing things and these indeed so absurd, impious, and blasphemous that a pious and God-fearing man could not endure to express them with the tongue or think and reflect on them with the mind. . . . 71. OSIANDER: WONDROUS PROPHECY OF THE PAPACY (1527) Andreas Osiander discovered a book in the libraries of Nürnberg that contained illustrations representing various popes. This book was written to convey prophetic messages about the good and bad popes of the past and the future and was sympathetic toward the Spiritual Franciscans, who had been at odds with the papacy in the fourteenth century. In Osiander’s republication of a set of thirty woodcuts based on this book, he ignored some of the details originally associated with the pictures and substituted his own brief commentaries to express Lutheran views about the popes. From Andreas Osiander, Schriften und Brief Briefee April 1525 bis Ende 1527 1527, ed. Gerhard Müller (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1977), 403–83, trans. Eric Lund.

89

Fig. 2.7. Woodcut 5.

Woodcut 5 The pope has already abandoned God’s law and still cannot rule without law. Therefore, he must make a new law and that from what is suggested to him by Satan. Therefore, Satan speaks with him from a bush as God spoke with Moses. He also follows that word and makes laws and forbids food and marriage and many other things that holy Paul clearly teaches to be of the devil (1 Tim 4:1–3). [Editor’s note: The woodcut originally portrayed Pope Benedict XI (1303–4) and associated him with the devil for opposing the Spiritual Franciscans. The fig tree also alluded to the story that he was allegedly killed by eating a poisoned fig.]

90

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Fig. 2.9. Woodcut 9.

Fig. 2.8. Woodcut 8.

Woodcut 8

Woodcut 9

Here the pope sits to judge, thrusts poor Righteousness away from him with his left hand, and wants to give gifts to the rich Unrighteousness. Satan, who hangs on his right hand in the shape of a snake, entices him. [Editor’s note: The woodcut originally portrayed Pope Nicholas IV (1288–92). It censured him for abandoning his “old bride,” the Franciscan Order, in order to seek election as pope.]

Now that the pope has made devilish laws, it follows that he also must use the keys according to the same law that the devil taught him. Therefore the Holy Spirit must languish. And since he imposes the law at risk of mortal sin and entangles the conscience with it, so faith and the gospel must also decline. Therefore the sword of false teaching goes out of his mouth and with it he wounds Christ the Lamb, that is the Word and eternal truth of God. His law and teaching cannot bear to have God’s Word nearby, or it will be weakened and wounded by it. With the switch he strikes and torments the conscience that should be consoled and healed. [Editor’s note: The woodcut originally portrayed Pope John XXII (1316–34) and was meant to characterize him as an enemy of Christ, the lamb, and the Franciscan Spirituals, the dove. The dragon with the tiara to the pope’s left depicted the antipope Nicholas V.]

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

91

72. LUTHER: DEPICTION OF THE PAPACY (1545) In 1545, around the time he wrote a treatise titled Against the Roman Papacy, an Institution of the Devil, Luther also attacked the pope through the publication of a set of visual caricatures. Lucas Cranach the Elder executed the woodcuts, and Luther provided the accompanying text. From WA 54:346–73. See woodcuts in Hartmann Grisar, Luthers Kampfbilder Kampfbilder, 4 vols. (Freiburg: Herder, 1921–23), trans. Eric Lund.

Fig. 2.10. Woodcut 10.

Woodcut 10 So that one may see who the monk is, he stands in his cassock and has his sign, the rose in his hand. I believe he is Luther. But because Isaiah says in 40[:6], “All flesh is as grass,” he stands with his sickle and cuts down, not grass but flesh and all that is fleshly, for he preaches against that. And when it is uprooted [Matt 15:13], he will strike the fire iron and rekindle the fire of Christian love, which has been extinguished. [Editor’s note: The woodcut may have referred at one time to Pope Celestine V, who was a Benedictine monk but later founded the Celestine Order. He served as pope for six months in 1294 and then abdicated.]

Fig. 2.11. Example of visual scatological polemic: the pope worshiped as an earthly god. The image by Lucas Cranach the Elder appeared in Luther’s 1545 treatise Against the Roman Papacy, an Institution of the Devil.

Luther’s Comments: The pope has treated the kingdom of God just as his crown is here being treated. But if that makes you doubt or despair, note that God has promised a consolation through the Spirit. Revelation 18[:6, “Render to her as she has rendered”].

92

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Fig. 2.12. The Papal Belvedere by Lucas Cranach the Elder in the 1545 publication of Luther’s Depiction of the Papacy. It features a papal bull complete with fire and brimstone, fresh from the hand of Pope Paul III, meeting German peasants with farts, fresh from their “belvedere.” [Belvedere refers to a building in the Vatican, but also means “beautiful view.”]

Luther’s Comments: Don’t frighten us with your ban, and don’t be such an angry man. Or else we will defend ourselves against you and show you a pretty view. EVALUATIONS OF LUTHER 73. MARSCHALCK: ON LUTHER’S NAME (1523) Haug Marschalck participated as a soldier in various imperial campaigns against peasant rebels, the French, and the Turks. Although he was not well educated, he published six pamphlets between 1521 and 1525. From Adolf Laube, Sigrid Loos, and Annerose Schneider, eds., Flugschriften der frühen Ref Reformationsormationsbeweg bewegung ung, vol. 2. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1983), 563–66, trans. Eric Lund. It is a wonder that no one can gain their spurs

without referring to the Christian Doctor Luther with anger, scolding, blasphemy, and abuse. But all of this is a certain sign of the truth of the belief that is upheld daily by this renowned doctor, for Christ also had to bear with many false names. The scribes taught in the schools that he had a devil in him and did wonders through the power of the devil. They said he was a perverter of people and accused him of being an evildoer [Matt 12:24; John 7:12, 18:30]. He was put to judgment with thieves and put to death. When he called to his father at his death, they said he was calling for Elijah [Matt 27:38, 46, 47]. Christ and his apostles suffered and still suffer from many such insults that the cross proclaims. That is God’s Word and the holy gospel. And now in these last times, the most learned Christian Doctor Martin Luther is incessantly insulted and persecuted not by Christians and the learned but by the heathen and ignorant tyrants who rule the people under the name of the gentle Christ. First of all, they have thought about deciphering his name (as if his art and teaching were the same as his body and life to them). They say he is not the enlightener (Lauterer) but the darkener (Trüber). He darkens the Christian faith that had long been clear without any dissensions or contradictions until Luther now came along, pretending to understand it. He tore apart the bond of the Christian church, made things dark, and shattered all order. And where there is no order, there can be no peace. Paul spoke out against this in 1 Corinthians 14[:40]: “All things should be done according to an order,” [supposedly] as the Roman Church ordered it. The unlearned one constantly shouts from the pulpit “heretic,” and whoever seeks the true foundation is despised and scorned. Whoever upsets this order or speaks against it, he says, should have his tongue taken out. O, you avenger of all perverters, has Christ taught you that when he says [Matt 5:44], “Pray for your enemies, do good to those who do evil to you?” Secondly they say he is a rascal (Lotter). Those who believe in him and the Scriptures are good-fornothing and villainous, have fallen away from the old belief, followed their seducer, and have brought other people away from a good, old, long-established belief with empty, rascally babble that the devil speaks through them. Lastly, they say he is a lurker or secret scoundrel (Laurer) who never offers much to the priests but wishes to oppose them. They say that because he is disobedient and fails to respect the ban, he must be a lurker. More could be said about what envious tongues speak, but I will keep silent. . . .

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

It is not surprising that they should so vehemently misuse Luther’s name and treat it so flippantly (as we have noted above). What else would you expect from those who crucify God’s Son daily with their sacrifices and forget his testament and promise? I will give a new signification to this name “Luther” (but this will be worth nothing to the unbelievers who are not moved by any word or sign). This name “Luther” is written in German with six letters, which are L.U.T.H.E.R. That signifies L Pure (Lautere) evangelical teaching U Overflowing (Überflüssige) grace of the Holy Spirit T True (Treulicher), faithful servant of Christ H Elijah (Heliam) [cf. 1 Kings 18] E Enoch (Jude 14, 15), who revealed the Antichrist R Rabbi, that is, he who has become master over all profaners of Scripture. Now see if these six significations do not make this Luther understandable. What teacher in four hundred years has made the Scriptures as clear as day as our Luther has, so that the common man can also understand? . . . What teacher has completed so many writings, disputations, and sermons and has fought and overcome so many enemies? This would not be possible without a special grace from the Holy Spirit. Have any doctors in our times learned, as our Luther has, that they should distribute the Word of God and the holy sacrament and not seek their own needs, praise, and honor? . . . Hasn’t the common rumor circulated for a long time that Enoch and Elijah will destroy the Antichrist, who is concealed under the robe of the pope? And still the antichristian regiment in Rome and the pope’s apostles are in training. . . . Enough has been played out on this name “Luther.” I know well that the unbelieving heathen will joke about and ridicule all that our Luther writes and what is written about him. But do not be discouraged because they cannot suppress his teachings or triumph over his name. It will be rectified, for the scolding and blasphemy has gone too far. God give us all his grace. Amen. 74. MATHESIUS: A COMMEMORATIVE SERMON (1566) Johannes Mathesius’s book of biographical sermons about Luther was the first important account of the reformer’s life published by one of his followers. This excerpt from the last of the sermons was first

93

delivered in 1564 in the form of a funeral sermon on the anniversary of Luther’s death. From Historien von des Ehrwirdig Ehrwirdigen en Mannes Gottes D. Martin Luthers (Nürnberg: Gerlach, 1583), 167–83, trans. Eric Lund. On this, the eighteenth day of February, eighteen years ago [1546], our dear, honorable master and father, Doctor Martin Luther from Eisleben went to his blessed rest, called by the Eternal Mediator in whom he put his trust.

Fig. 2.13. Johannes Mathesius (1504–65) as depicted in 1669 printing of Bibliotheca chalcographica by Theodore de Bry (1528–98).

Because we remember the day of his Christian departure, we also want on this anniversary of that day to hold a Christian remembrance of his funeral and his teaching and to thank God from our hearts that this dear teacher awakened us, rescued us from the teaching of the Antichrist, restored pure, holy teaching, and brought it into our church. In the name of Jesus Christ, we ask the eternal Father that he might never let us forget this Christian man and his teaching and that he might preserve our descendants and graciously protect them from all heresy and falsification of the gospel. . . . Help us, eternal Son of God, who awakened this man through your Spirit, entrusted your word to

94

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

him, and worked many wonders through him in the power of your word, that we may be reckoned as obedient and thankful disciples and children of your true servant and may praise you in him and his teachings forever and ever. Amen. . . . Now it is reported to us in the Bible that the true prophets and apostles of the Son of God are called without means and sent out and that what they teach they have heard themselves from the head of the church, the eternal Son of God. Therefore prophets and apostles steadily apply themselves to their calling and teach nothing that was not reported to them by Christ or his Spirit. . . . Just as prophets and apostles only ground their teachings on what they have heard from the mouth of God’s Son, so all ordained church workers preach, write, and dedicate themselves to nothing besides the writings of the prophets and apostles that are the only rule and measure and the only ground and support of all truth that should be taught and believed in Christendom. . . . I mention this to you in the beginning so that you might differentiate between messengers of God and know what actually belongs to and is necessary to make one a prophet, apostle, bishop, or true doctor....... God called forth ordained Levites and priests at the foundation of his house who were born into this office, raised up, and publicly established in it. Through the prophets and apostles, with prayer and the laying on of hands, he also selected, ordained, and established witnesses and messengers whom he adorned and confirmed with the gifts and spirit of this office that they might understand, rightly and blessedly clarify, and interpret the writings of the prophets and apostles. They help to make the people blessed through the word of the prophets and apostles, which is actually the voice of the Son of God, when they call the people to repentance and remembrance of their sins, direct them to Christ’s blood and sacrifice, and exhort them to good works and new obedience. Now our dear master and father, Doctor Martin, belongs to this latter group. He did not himself see or hear God and his Son as had the old prophets and apostles. He also often prayed heartily that God would not let an angel speak with him or give him any visions or dreams. He was content and satisfied to have the word of the prophets and apostles and to stand as a called servant of the church and Christian brother according to God’s Word. Moreover, he had all the qualities and characteristics that belong to a true and Christian Doctor of Holy Scripture, a wit-

ness of Christianity, a blessed servant of the church, and messenger of the Lord Christ. Matters related to his calling have been reported at length this year [in these sermons]. He was baptized, learned the catechism from his parents, and was then sent to school, but against the wishes of his parents he entered the cloister and became a priest. He submitted himself in obedience to his vicar and the entire order (just as God wondrously led his other saints, placing Moses in the Egyptian school and Daniel in the Babylonian school). At the recommendation of his entire order, his superior appointed him to be first a Reader of the Fathers and then a Doctor of Theology, which also took place with the knowledge, will, and recommendation of his prince. . . . We have heard, furthermore, how he attained his doctorate. He was legitimately called, selected, and chosen to be a doctor, and as the public record of his matriculation at Wittenberg gives evidence, he was made and approved as a doctor and teacher of theology and as preacher and interpreter of God’s Word. Now we have no more certain writing or teaching from God than what was written down by the prophets and apostles from the mouth of Jesus Christ through the Spirit of God. Therefore his calling and commission required his teaching and testifying to the Word of God. This Word preceded and followed him his whole life long. Therefore, he abandoned the teachings of the sophists, the heathens, the Jews, the Papists, the Turks, and all heretics and enthusiasts and applied himself only to the theology and Word of God. As he often said, “I have started out with the spoken Word of God, which the prophets and apostles wrote down and to which all of Christianity is a witness. I stand and rest on this Word with which I began and which has brought me so far. I will carry it forth to the end with God’s help as I have sworn an oath and have publicly pledged my poor soul to our God to do.” The call, mark well, is true. The teaching is also certain, for our doctor placed and grounded his actions and arguments only on the Scriptures. With this, he attacked the papacy, purified many churches, planted pure religion, consoled and made many hearts joyful and blessed, that they might accept his teachings and commit their body and blood to it. . . . Doctor Luther has preached the teachings that the Son of God brought forth from the bosom of the Father and that was declared and written down through his Spirit in the prophets and apostles and that he strengthened from the beginning with greater miracles according to the prophecy of Moses (Deut 13:5, 10). Because this doctor brought forth no

THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE

new teaching but only the established teachings of the old patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, the wellgrounded and confirmed Word needed no new miraculous signs. . . . O Lord Christ, thank you for the confirmed Word of the prophets and apostles and protect us from wondrous signs, visions, and dreams, for the day of signs and wonders that was to follow the preaching of the gospel is past and God’s Word has been proclaimed and sounded forth in all the world. . . . But should anyone want to see the power, victory, and miracles of Christ among us, then I can point out some to honor Doctor Luther’s teachings. Let this, dear friends, be [considered] a great and unheard of miracle that a little David attacked such a great Goliath, such a giant, and came away unscathed. In this sense, Doctor Martin’s teachings are adorned and confirmed with a miracle. . . .

95

That the great leaders of the world let Doctor Luther come before them, heard his confession and that of his followers, and finally came to Wittenberg and allowed cities and schools to abide by his teachings, let this also be [considered] an uncommon sign and miracle through which God wanted to certify and honor the teachings of this man. . . . I admonish you this day, dear friends, to remain constant by this man’s teachings, witness, true prophecy, and interpretation of Scripture. Persevere until the end, thanking God who sent us this chosen instrument in the last days and sustained him in his calling, against the gates of hell [Matt 16:18], for twenty-nine years in this land. Do not be diverted or led astray by the rogues and troublemakers who would like to suppress and destroy this man’s reputation, position, and confession.

3. The Implementation of Reform Proposals

Luther’s excommunication in 1521 marked an important turning point in his efforts to reform the Catholic church. Although he had been very harsh in his evaluations of “Romanist” church leaders, his hope initially had been to implement changes by working within the institutional structures that they controlled. The judgment rendered at the Diet of Worms thwarted this plan. The future of Luther’s reform efforts now depended on more local efforts to reorganize religious life within those territories of the Holy Roman Empire whose secular rulers were willing to carry out independent initiatives under his guidance. The major treatises of 1520 had laid out an extensive list of proposals for the reform of church polity, worship, and theology (docs. #15 and 31). Luther and his associates were now forced to think in new ways about what strategy to use to accomplish these goals. Luther claimed neither special expertise nor interest in dealing with the details of organizational planning, but early efforts in Wittenberg to make rapid and radical changes alerted him to certain dangers that he clearly wanted to avoid (doc. #20). When he came out of hiding in 1522, Luther formulated several guidelines that would have a lasting impact on the development of the Evangelical or Lutheran churches. First of all, Luther paid serious attention to the problem of “the weaker brethren,” that is, people who found it difficult to change their way of thinking about beliefs or church practices. Convinced that forcing change upon them would create unnecessary anxiety, confusion, and potentially a backlash against his reform movement, Luther looked to the New Testament for advice about how to deal with this

matter. In his letter to the Romans, Paul urged the strong to be patient and even to make temporary concessions to the weak. Paul and Peter compared the process of spiritual development to feeding different kinds of food to a child as it matures. Thus, Luther favored persuasion rather than force and gradual rather than abrupt change (doc. #21). Second, Luther insisted that the reform process be carried out in an orderly manner. His longstanding convictions about the depths of human sinfulness inclined him to favor the installation of extensive restraints on human behavior. The chaos and destruction produced by more radical reformers in the early 1520s gave him additional incentives to stress the need for called and ordained ministers of the gospel, well-established patterns of worship, and some kind of coordination of the work of the church with the important restraining activities carried out by the secular authorities in society. Here again, Luther found guidance from the New Testament letters of Paul, who insisted that “all things should be done decently and in order” (1 Cor 14:40) and instructed Christians to maintain peace and unity by submitting to divinely ordained or regularly appointed governing authorities (for example, Rom 13:1–2). Third, Luther’s experiences of oppressive or burdensome methods of control by Catholic church leaders encouraged him to strike a balance between order and freedom. In his mind, there were too many rules and practices in the church structures of his day that were treated as obligatory although they were not based on commandments in the Bible. In his reforming efforts, Luther wanted there to be clearer distinctions between necessary beliefs or practices

98

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

and other expressions of religious life that should be considered optional even though they might be commendable. For example, Luther insisted on agreement about the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper and took a strong stand on the question of how the Supper should be celebrated, but he was inclined to treat more detailed matters of worship, such as the use of vestments and candles or incense, as matters of indifference (doc. #75). Similarly, he showed little interest in requiring uniformity in matters such as the number of religious holy days to be observed and was prepared to let each of the territorial churches reach its own decision about how ceremonies such as marriages should be conducted (docs. #75, 76, 77, and 83). The Augsburg Confession made Luther’s intended course of action into a general principle when it stated that it was sufficient for the unity of the church that the gospel be preached and the sacraments administered in accordance with the divine Word. Beyond that, ceremonies need not always be observed in the same manner in every place (doc. #42). Luther’s efforts to change the way worship was conducted provide a clear illustration of these principles in action. Since public worship services in a church building are the most frequent and communal expression of religious practice, it is also not surprising that Luther directed his attention to this matter almost immediately after his return to Wittenberg. He published a new order for worship, the Formula Missae, in December 1523 (doc. #75). Clearly intending to differentiate between his approach and the measures taken by Karlstadt and the other radicals in 1521, Luther stated his wish to purify and simplify the liturgy rather than to abolish it altogether. He raised no objection to traditional parts of the Mass, such as the Gloria, the Benedictus, the Sanctus, or the Agnus Dei, because they were based on words from the Bible. Luther made no immediate issue of the use of Latin as the language of worship, although he suggested that the vernacular might be used in the future. The major changes consisted of a new emphasis on the necessity of regular preaching from biblical texts and revision of the canon of the Mass, or the words used for the institution of the Lord’s Supper. Luther had previously objected to the claim that the priest was making an offering to God in the Eucharist on behalf of the people (doc. #31) and now acted to delete everything that “smack[ed] and savor[ed] of sacrifice.” He also made the administration of both the bread and the wine to the laity an essential feature of the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

Luther highly valued both word and sacrament and advocated frequent communion. However, he discontinued the practice of private masses and insisted that the Lord’s Supper should not be celebrated on any occasion where there were no people present who wished to commune. Luther also called for careful scrutiny of those who came to receive the Lord’s Supper. They should be able to articulate their basic knowledge of the faith and be aware of the full significance of the sacrament. He recommended private confession prior to communion because it allowed the minister to conduct an examination of the beliefs and manner of life of communicants. Similar measures to ensure proper respect for the sacrament would become a standard part of the procedures developed in all of the Lutheran territorial churches (docs. #80 and 81). In 1522 and 1523, new liturgies incorporating more innovative reforms were being put to use in other localities outside of Wittenberg. When some of Luther’s associates expressed concern that this proliferation of divergent models might create a new kind of confusion, Luther published an order of worship using the German language. The Deutsche Messe, which appeared in 1526, manifested elements of both continuity and change (doc. #76). Instead of completely substituting German for Latin, Luther expressed his wish that both of these languages, and even Greek and Hebrew, be used for worship on appropriate occasions. He called for flexibility in order to meet the needs and interests of the educated and the exceptionally devout as well as the unlearned lay folk who made up the majority of most congregations. Implementing his belief in the priesthood of all believers, he not only made provisions for changing the language of worship but also encouraged active participation by the laity through the introduction of congregational singing as a substitute for or supplement to the music provided by a trained choir. To fill in the vacuum created by the abolition of daily private masses, Luther developed a new form of weekday worship: a regular communal gathering for Scripture reading and prayer, modeled after the monastic services of Matins and Vespers. The evening service on Saturday also served the special purpose of preparing people for participation in the Lord’s Supper on the following day (cf. doc. #81). To foster the religious development of the young, Luther called for these services in larger towns to be tied closely to the daily schedule of the schools, and he supported the involvement of schoolboys in worship as readers of Scripture or as singers (doc. #76).

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORM PROPOSALS

During the period when he was reflecting on the reform of worship, Luther also addressed other issues such as the need to establish Christian schools for both boys and girls and to develop new regulations for the administration of the financial affairs in parishes (doc. #92). In 1523, he consulted with the congregation of Leisnig, a city located between Leipzig and Dresden, as it set up a common chest from which payments were dispensed to support church workers and schoolteachers, to maintain church property, and to provide care for the poor and elderly (doc. #91). By 1525, Luther was convinced of the need for broader and more systematic attention to the reorganization of religious life, especially after receiving reports that in some parishes the laity had stopped providing financial support for their pastors and were neglecting other church obligations. In the past, bishops had traditionally ordered visitations of all parishes within a diocese whenever the need was felt to evaluate the state of religious life. Luther’s reform movement had not yet settled on a formal leadership structure so he had to look to the already-established leaders in society for the initiation of such a complicated strategy. He asked his prince, the Elector of Saxony, to appoint visitors to find out what was actually taking place in the church congregations throughout his realm. Luther and Melanchthon prepared a series of articles to guide the visitors as they carried out their task, and the procedure was fully implemented in 1528 (doc. #77). This visitation was initially envisioned as a onetime process of assessment to prepare for the thorough reorganization of the church in Saxony, but the conducting of visitations soon became routine practice within the Lutheran territorial churches (doc. #87). The articles of visitation that called for the visitors to make inquiries about what the people believed, how worship was conducted, and how the work of the church was administered in the parishes also became the model for the many church orders that established formal policies to regulate all aspects of religious life in the various Lutheran territories and cities. Luther received invaluable assistance from a number of his associates when he faced the task of expanding and stabilizing the reform movement. Philip Melanchthon collaborated with him as extensively on matters of church administration as he did in the task of articulating a biblically based theology. Melanchthon was also celebrated as the Praeceptor Germaniae (Teacher of Germany) for his contributions to the reform of educational institutions. Among Luther’s other coworkers in Wittenberg,

99

two in particular were extensively involved in traveling beyond Saxony to help establish other territorial churches. Justus Jonas (1493–1555), like Luther, had first studied law but under the influence of Erasmus had shifted his interests to the study of the Bible and theology. He served as dean of the theology faculty at the University of Wittenberg for ten years, starting in 1523, and participated in the important religious negotiations at the Marburg Colloquy in 1529 and the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 (docs. #36 and 42). Jonas translated many of Luther’s and Melanchthon’s Latin writings into German so that they would be accessible to a wider audience, and he assisted them in translating the Bible. Jonas worked on new church orders for Anhalt, Zerbst, and Ducal Saxony in the 1530s and moved to Halle in 1541, where he served as superintendent and also rewrote its church order (docs. #80 and 89). Johann Bugenhagen (1485–1558), called Dr. Pomeranus by his contemporaries because he came from Pomerania, was a priest who became attracted to Luther’s teachings in 1520 and moved to Wittenberg in 1521. He lectured at the university and began his long tenure as pastor of the city church in 1523, the same year in which he received his doctorate in theology. Over several decades, he was the most active and influential organizer of Lutheran churches in northern Germany. He visited and prepared church orders for the Hanseatic cities of Hamburg, Braunschweig, and Lübeck and the duchy of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (docs. #82 and 88). Later, he helped establish the Lutheran church in Pomerania, served as general superintendent of the church in Electoral Saxony, and was called to Copenhagen by King Christian III to reform the churches of Denmark and Norway. In southern Germany, Johannes Brenz (1499–1570) was of comparable importance. He introduced Lutheranism to the imperial city of Schwäbisch-Hall, where he served for many years as a preacher. He was also a crucial contributor to the organization of the Lutheran churches in Nürnberg and the Duchy of Württemberg (docs. #79 and 81). There are several common characteristics of the church orders prepared by the reformers to regulate the life of the territorial churches. The documents varied in length and degree of detail, but almost all were divided into three parts. The first section usually concerned Credenda, or what ought to be believed. It described the doctrines that were considered normative for the churches and often specified what local church workers ought to do to ensure that the people understood and accepted these teachings. The second section, concerning Agenda, or what

100

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ought to be done, described the liturgy the churches would follow and set forth other regulations for the celebration of church rites. The third section, Administranda, focused on how the churches ought to be organized. It outlined the duties and qualifications of church workers, clarified how the church should relate to civil government, and related the ministry of the churches to other work such as educating the young and caring for the poor. Regarding matters of belief, Luther discovered from the initial visitation in Electoral Saxony that the level of doctrinal knowledge in the parishes was far lower than he had expected, not only among the laypeople but even at times among the clergy. To address this problem, he prepared the Large and Small Catechisms (doc. #58). Until the Book of Concord created a fuller summary of Lutheran beliefs in 1580 (see chapter five of this volume), Luther’s catechisms were the most common standard used to specify the essential elements of Christian belief. The church orders frequently summarized the topics covered by the catechisms and set up procedures for teaching the catechism to all age groups within the congregations (doc. #78). The church orders stated the theological principles that determined how the churches celebrated the sacraments and other church rites, but they also explicitly addressed a variety of problems that might be faced in ordinary parish life. For example, they often outlined the obligations of baptismal sponsors and clarified the responsibilities of a midwife in cases when a newborn infant was unlikely to live long enough to be brought to a church for the usual baptismal rite (doc. #79). They offered advice to pastors on how to conduct the rite of confession in cases when parishioners seemed insufficiently repentant of their sins or deeply burdened by their sense of guilt (doc. #80). The church orders sometimes specified how often church services ought to be held and the frequency with which the Lord’s Supper should be celebrated. They also described the procedures to be followed by clergy to prepare people for worthy reception of the sacrament (doc. #81). Such documents indicated how other rites such as confirmation, marriage, ordination, and funerals ought to be conducted and instructed clergy on how to respond to traditional expressions of piety such as the venerating of religious images or the ringing of church bells to avert harm during periods of bad weather (docs. #80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, and 86). Although Luther asserted the priesthood of all believers in response to the medieval dichotomy that

accented the differences between the roles of priests and laity, his model of a reformed church still gave the clergy a prominent role as officeholders who would ensure that the Word was correctly preached and the sacraments correctly celebrated. Likewise, the church orders carefully specified the qualifications and duties of the clergy and also other church workers who would assist them in their ministry. The leading pastor in large cities was called a superintendent (Superattendent) and was often assisted by other clergy who were called chaplains or deacons. Rural parishes were served by only one pastor or by a deacon who was sent out from the city to conduct services and catechetical instruction (doc. #78). Usually, each parish also had a paid sexton (Küster), who maintained the church building, rang the church bell to announce services, and sometimes helped teach the catechism to children (doc. #88). Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which derived the authority of priests from the bishops who ordained them, Luther showed little concern for the development of an Evangelical episcopacy. Once his movement was severed from the old diocesan structure of the Catholic church, he seemed content to let the princes step into the traditional role of the bishops and preside over the organizing of church districts that corresponded to the boundaries of the territories they ruled. The princes in turn usually allowed the overall church affairs of their realms to be administered by a leading member of the clergy, who was most commonly called a general superintendent. In actual fact, this church official had many of the responsibilities claimed by an archbishop in the past. Later on, however, he would also be accountable in many Lutheran territories to a consistory, a small council of church and civic leaders that proposed corrections for problems discovered during church visitations and made recommendations to the secular ruler about appointments to church positions. In the 1540s, Luther participated on two occasions in the ordination of a “bishop” in small principalities outside of Saxony. This term was also used in several north German territories for a while as the title for the officials who were elsewhere called general superintendents. However, by the end of the sixteenth century, there were no longer any Lutheran bishops in Germany. Only the Lutheran churches in Scandinavia retained a formal episcopacy, but even in those territories the monarch claimed ultimate authority over church legislation. Neglect of accepted church practice came to be considered a civil crime as well as a spiritual offense. Therefore, Lutheran pastors were obligated as

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORM PROPOSALS

holders of a state office to supervise both the religious and moral conduct of their parishioners. Most of the Lutheran churches set up local consistories, or small commissions of pastors and lawyers, which, like the ecclesiastical courts of the past, could propose punishments for individuals who had committed serious moral offenses or were discovered to hold unacceptable religious beliefs (doc. #89). Church and state officials also jointly regulated a system of publicly supported schools. Training in doctrine and church practice constituted a major part of the education given to young people, and this type of religious instruction was valued for several reasons. Texts such as the catechism were used both to teach what ought to be believed and to encourage the maintenance of order and discipline in society (doc. #90). In Lutheran areas, the civil community and the church community were viewed as coextensive. Thus, leaders of the church and the civil government also cooperated to ensure that proper attention was given to both the spiritual and physical needs of the poor and the needy. The Lutheran clergy visited the sick regularly as part of their pastoral care, and the lay leaders in Lutheran parishes collected and administered funds to meet the bodily needs of those who were unable to earn an income to support themselves (doc. #91). The common chest legislation, which the town of Leisnig had developed in consultation with Luther, became a model for the social welfare ordinances contained in many of the church orders (doc. #89). RECOMMENDATIONS BY LUTHER AND MELANCHTHON 75. LUTHER: FORMULA OF MASS FOR THE CHURCH AT WITTENBERG (FORMULA MISSAE) (1523) In 1523, Luther abolished the practice of holding Masses every day. He retained weekday services but focused them on preaching. When the Lord’s Supper was celebrated, he instructed the clergy to give both the bread and the wine to the laity. He said that the words of institution should be sung so that people could hear them; in the past, the priest had recited the words silently. From LW 53:19–60, trans. Paul Zeller Strodach, rev. Ulrich Leupold. . . . We first assert: It is not now nor ever has been our intention to abolish the liturgical service of

101

God completely, but rather to purify the one that is now in use from the wretched accretions that corrupt it and to point out an evangelical use. We cannot deny that the Mass, that is, the communion of bread and wine, is a rite divinely instituted by Christ himself and that it was observed first by Christ and then by the apostles, quite simply and evangelically without any additions. But in the course of time so many human inventions were added to it that nothing except the names of the Mass and communion have come down to us. . . . We will set forth the rite according to which we think that it should be used. First, we approve and retain the introits for the Lord’s days and the festivals of Christ, such as Easter, Pentecost, and the Nativity, although we prefer the Psalms, from which they were taken as of old. . . . Second, we accept the Kyrie eleison in the form in which it has been used until now, with the various melodies for different seasons, together with the Angelic Hymn, Gloria in Excelsis, which follows it. However, the bishop may decide to omit the latter as often as he wishes. . . . Third, the prayer or collect that follows, if it is evangelical (and those for Sunday usually are), should be retained in its accepted form, but there should be only one. After this the epistle is read. Certainly the time has not yet come to attempt revision here, as nothing unevangelical is read, except that those parts from the Epistles of Paul in which faith is taught are read only rarely, while the exhortations to morality are most frequently read. . . . If in the future the vernacular be used in the Mass (which Christ may grant), one must see to it that Epistles and Gospels chosen from the best and most weighty parts of these writings be read in the Mass....... [Fourth and Fifth: include the gradual and Alleluia; omit the sequences or proses.] Sixth, the Gospel lesson follows, for which we neither prohibit nor prescribe candles or incense. Let these things be free. Seventh, the custom of singing the Nicene Creed does not displease us, yet this matter should also be left in the hands of the bishop. . . . Eighth, that utter abomination follows that forces all that precedes in the Mass into its service and is, therefore, called the offertory. From here on almost everything smacks and savors of sacrifice. . . . Let us, therefore, repudiate everything that smacks of sacrifice, together with the entire canon, and retain only that which is pure and holy, and so order our Mass.

102

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

I. After the Creed or after the sermon let bread and wine be made ready for blessing in the customary manner. I have not yet decided whether or not water should be mixed with the wine. I rather incline, however, to favor pure wine without water....... II. The bread and wine having been pre-pared, one may proceed as follows: The Lord be with you. Response: and with thy spirit. Lift up your hearts. Response: Let us lift them to the Lord. It is truly meet and right, just and salutary for us to give thanks to Thee always and everywhere, Holy Lord, Father Almighty, Eternal God, through Christ our Lord. . . . III. Then: . . . Who the day before he suffered took bread and, when he had given thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take, eat; this is my body, which is given for you. After the same manner also the cup. . . . IV. The blessing ended, let the choir sing the Sanctus. And while the Benedictus is being sung, let the bread and cup be elevated according to the customary rite for the benefit of the weak in faith, who might be offended if such an obvious change in the rite of the Mass were suddenly made. . . . V. After this, the Lord’s Prayer shall be read. . . . VI. Then let him communicate himself, then the people; in the meanwhile let the Agnus Dei be sung....... Thus we think about the Mass. But in all these matters we will want to beware lest we make binding what should be free, or make sinners of those who may do some things differently or omit others. All that matters is that the words of institution should be kept intact and everything should be done by faith....... We have passed over the matter of vestments. But we think about these as we do about other forms. We permit them to be used in freedom, as long as people refrain from ostentation and pomp. . . . The Communion of the People So far we have dealt with the Mass and the function of the minister or bishop. Now we shall speak of the proper manner of communicating to the people, for whom the Lord’s Supper was primarily instituted and given this name. . . . Here one should follow the same usage as with

Baptism, namely, that the bishop be informed of those who want to commune. They should request in person to receive the Lord’s Supper so that he may be able to know both their names and manner of life. And let him not admit the applicants unless they can give a reason for their faith and can answer questions about what the Lord’s Supper is, what its benefits are, and what they expect to derive from it. In other words, they should be able to repeat the words of institution from memory and to explain that they are coming because they are troubled by the consciousness of their sins, the fear of death, or some other evil, such as temptation of the flesh, the world, or the devil, and now hunger and thirst to receive the word and sign of grace and salvation from the Lord himself through the ministry of the bishop, so that they may be consoled and comforted. . . . But I think it enough for the applicants for communion to be examined or explored once a year. . . . Now concerning private confession before communion, I still think as I have held heretofore, namely, that it neither is necessary nor should be demanded. Nevertheless, it is useful and should not be despised. . . . I also wish that we had as many songs as possible in the vernacular that the people could sing during Mass, immediately after the gradual and also after the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei. . . . This is enough for now about the Mass and communion. What is left can be decided by actual practice, as long as the Word of God is diligently and faithfully preached in the church. . . . 76. LUTHER: THE GERMAN MASS (DEUTSCHE MESSE) (1526) At the end of 1523, Luther set up a plan to introduce German hymns into the service and composed his first hymn in August. He began work on a German liturgy in 1524. It was first used in Wittenberg at Christmas 1525 and the elector made it the required form in February 1526. It took a while to convince people to sing the new melodies. From The Annotated Luther Luther, vol. 3, Church and Sacr Sacraments aments, ed. Paul W. Robinson, trans. Dirk G. Lange (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 131–61. cf. From LW 53:61–90 and WA 19, 72–113. Before anything else, I would kindly request, also for God’s sake, that all those who see this order of service or desire to follow it: do not make it a rigid law or bind or entangle anyone’s conscience, but use it in Christian liberty as long, when, where, and how

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORM PROPOSALS

you find it to be practical and useful. For this is being published not as though we meant to lord it over anyone else, or to legislate for people, but because of the widespread demand for German Masses and liturgies and the general dissatisfaction and offense that has been caused by the great variety of new Masses, for everyone makes their own order of service. . . .

Fig. 3.1. The historiated title page of the 1526 printing of Martin Luther’s The German Mass and Order of the Liturgy.

Where the people are perplexed and offended by these differences in practice, we are certainly bound to restrict our freedom and seek, if possible, to help them improve rather than to offend them by what we do or leave undone. Seeing then that this external order, while it cannot affect our conscience before God yet can serve the neighbor, we should seek in love, as St. Paul teaches, to be of one mind and, as far as possible, observe the same ways and practices, just as all Christians have the same baptism and the same sacrament and no individual has received a special one of his own from God. . . . Now there are three kinds of liturgies or Mass. The first is the one in Latin that we published earlier under the title Formula Missae. It is not now my intention to abrogate or to change this service. And just as we have observed it up until now, so it remains

103

free for us to continue using it when or where we are pleased to do so or the situation moves us to use it. For under no circumstance would I want to discontinue the service in the Latin language, because young people are my primary concern. And if I could bring it to pass, and Greek and Hebrew were as familiar to us as the Latin and had as many fine melodies and songs, we would hold Mass, sing, and read on successive Sundays in all four languages, German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. . . . The second is the German Mass and Order of the Liturgy with which we are now concerned. It should be arranged for the sake of the simple laypeople. We must let these two orders be used publicly in the churches for all the people, among whom are many who do not believe or are not yet Christian. Most of them stand around and gape, hoping to see something new, just as if we were holding a service among the Turks or among the non-believers in a public square or out in a field. This is then not yet a well-ordered and confident congregation, in which Christians are ruled according to the proclamation of the Gospel; rather it is one where people are publicly drawn to faith and to Christianity. The third kind of service should be a truly Evangelical order and should not happen publicly on the town square for all sorts of people. But those who seriously want to be Christians and who profess the gospel with hand and mouth should sign-in with their names and meet alone in a house to pray, to read, to baptize, to receive the sacrament, and to do other Christian works. According to this order, those who do not lead Christian lives could be known, reproved, corrected, excluded, or excommunicated, according to the rule of Christ, Matthew 18[:15-17]. Here one could also solicit gifts to be willingly given and distributed to the poor, according to St. Paul’s example (2 Corinthians 9). Here would be no need of elaborate or excessive singing. Here one could practice a brief and beautiful order for baptism and the sacrament and center everything on the Word, prayer, and love. Here one could have a good, short catechism on the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. Basically, if one had the kind of people and persons who seriously wanted to be Christians, the regulations and practices would soon be ready. But as yet I neither can nor desire to begin such a congregation or assembly or to make rules for it. For I have not yet the people or persons for it, nor do I see many who want it. But if I should be requested to do it and could not refuse with a good conscience, I should gladly do my part and help as best I can. In the

104

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

meanwhile the two above-mentioned orders of service must suffice. . . . CONCERNING THE LITURGY Since the preaching and teaching of God’s Word is the most important part of the liturgy we have arranged for sermons and readings as follows: For the holy day or Sunday we retain the customary Epistles and Gospels and have three sermons. At five or six o’clock in the morning a few psalms are chanted for Morning Prayer.A sermon follows on the Epistle of the day, chiefly for the sake of the servants so that they too may be cared for and hear God’s Word, since they cannot be present at other sermons. After this an antiphon and alternately the Te Deum or the Benedictus with the Lord’s Prayer, collects, and Benedicamus Domino. At the Mass, at eight or nine o’clock, the sermon is on the Gospel for the day. At Evening Prayer in the afternoon, the sermon before the Magnificat takes up the Old Testament chapter by chapter. For the Epistles and Gospels we have retained the customary pattern according to the church year, because we do not find anything especially reprehensible in this use. And the present situation in Wittenberg is such that many are here who must learn to preach in places where this manner of dividing up the Gospels and Epistles is still being observed and may continue in force. Since in this matter we can be of service to others without loss to ourselves, we leave it, but have no objection to others who take up the complete books of the evangelists. . . . This we think provides sufficient preaching and teaching for the laypeople. For those who desire more, they will find enough on other days. Namely, on Monday and Tuesday mornings we have a German lesson on the Ten Commandments, the Creed, Lord’s Prayer, baptism, and sacrament, so that these two days preserve and deepen the understanding of the catechism. On Wednesday morning [there is] again a German reading, for which the evangelist Matthew has been appointed so that the day shall be his very own, seeing that he is an excellent evangelist for the congregation to learn, with the good sermon of Christ on the Mount, which strongly urges the exercise of love and good works. But the evangelist John, who so powerfully teaches faith, has his own day too, on Saturday afternoon at Evening Prayer. So two of the evangelists have their own days for instruction. Thursday and Friday mornings have the weekday lessons from the Epistles and the rest of the New Testament assigned to them. Thus enough readings and sermons have been appointed to give the Word of God free course

among us, not to mention the university lectures for scholars. This is what we do to train the schoolboys in the Bible. Every day of the week they chant a few psalms in Latin before the lesson, as has been customary at Morning Prayer up until now. For as we stated above, we want to keep the youth well versed in the Latin Bible. After the psalms, two or three boys in turn read a chapter from the Latin New Testament, depending on the length. Another one then reads the same chapter in German to familiarize them with it and for the benefit of any laity who might be present and listening. Then they proceed with an antiphon to the German reading as mentioned above. After the reading the whole congregation sings a German hymn, the Lord’s Prayer is said silently, and the pastor or chaplain reads a collect and closes with the Benedicamus Domino as usual. Likewise at Evening Prayer they sing a few of the vesper psalms in Latin with an antiphon, as has been the case, followed by a hymn if one is available. Again two or three boys in turn then read a chapter from the Latin Old Testament or half a one, depending on length. Another one reads the same chapter in German. The Magnificat follows in Latin with an antiphon or hymn, the Lord’s Prayer said silently, and the collects with the Benedicamus. This is the daily service throughout the week in cities where there are schools. ON SUNDAY FOR THE LAITY Here we retain the vestments, altar, and candles until they are used up or we are pleased to make a change. But we do not oppose anyone who would do otherwise. However, in the true Mass of authentic Christians, the altar should not remain where it is, and the priest should always face the people as Christ doubtlessly did in the Last Supper. But let that wait for its own time. . . . To begin the service we sing a hymn or a German Psalm in the First Tone. . . . Then follows the Kyrie eleison in the same tone,...... He [the priest] should read the Epistle facing the people, but the collect facing the altar. After the Epistle a German hymn, either “Now Let Us Pray to the Holy Spirit” or any other, is sung with the whole choir. Then he reads the Gospel in the Fifth Tone, again facing the people. . . . After the Gospel the whole congregation sings the Creed in German: “In One True God We All Believe.” Then comes the sermon on the Gospel for the

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORM PROPOSALS

Sunday or festival day. And I think that if we had the German postil for the entire year, it would be best to appoint the sermon for the day to be read entirely or in part out of the book—not alone for the benefit of those preachers who can do nothing better,but also for the purpose of preventing the rise of enthusiasts and sects. If we observe the homilies read at Morning Prayer, we note a usage similar to this. For unless there is a spiritual understanding and the Spirit itself speaks through the preachers (whom I do not wish hereby to restrict, for the Spirit teaches better how to preach than all the postils and homilies), we will ultimately reach the point where everyone will preach his own ideas, and instead of the Gospel and its exposition we will again have sermons about fables. This is one of the reasons we retain the Epistles and Gospels as they are given in the postils—there are so few gifted preachers who are able to give a powerful and practical exposition of a whole evangelist or some other book of the Bible. A public paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer shall follow the sermon and an admonition for those who want to share in the Sacrament. . . . The liturgy of Holy Communion and consecration follows. . . . It seems to me that it would accord with the Lord’s Supper to administer the sacrament immediately after the consecration of the bread, before the cup is blessed, for both Luke and Paul say: He took the cup after supper, etc. [Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25]. Meanwhile, the German Sanctus or the hymn, “Let God Be Blest,” or the hymn of Jan Hus, “Jesus Christ, Our God and Savior,” could be sung. Then shall the cup be blessed and administered, while the remainder of these hymns are sung, or the German Agnus Dei. And that this happens in a decent and orderly manner, not men and women together, but the women after the men; they should also stand apart from each other in separate places. What should be done about private confession, I have written elsewhere, and my opinion can be found in the Little Prayer Book. We do not want to abolish the elevation, but retain it because it goes well with the German Sanctus and signifies that Christ has commanded us to remember him. For just as the sacrament is bodily elevated, yet Christ’s body and blood are not seen in it, so he is also remembered and elevated by the word of the sermon as well as confessed and adored in the reception of the sacrament. In all this, Christ is apprehended only by faith. For we cannot see how Christ gives his body and blood for us and even now daily shows and offers it before God assuring us of grace. The collect follows with the benediction:

105

We give thanks to you, Almighty God, that you have refreshed us with your salutary gift; and we beseech your mercy to strengthen us through the same in faith toward you, and in fervent love among us all; for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord’s face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace. . . . This is what I have to say concerning the daily liturgy and instruction in the Word of God, which serves primarily to train the young and challenge the uneducated. For those who itch for new things will soon be bored and tired with it all, as they were with the Latin service. There was singing and reading in the churches every day, and yet the churches remained deserted and empty. Already they do the same in the German service. Therefore, it is best to plan the liturgy in the interest of the young and those of the uneducated who may happen to come. With the others neither law nor order, neither scolding nor coaxing, will help. Allow them to leave those things in the liturgy alone which they refuse to do willingly and gladly. God is not pleased with unwilling services; they are futile and vain. But on the festivals, such as Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, St. Michael’s, Purification, and the like, we must continue to use Latin until we have enough German songs. This work is only beginning; therefore, not everything that is required is ready. At least one knows how to approach a common pattern in order that counsel and measure may be found for the many various orders. Lent, Palm Sunday, and Holy Week are to be retained, not to force anyone to fast, but to preserve the Passion story and the Gospels appointed for that season. This, however, does not include the Lenten veil, throwing of palms, veiling of pictures, and whatever other superstitious practices there might be; neither does it include chanting the four Passions, nor preaching on the Passion for eight hours on Good Friday. Holy Week should be like any other week except that the Passion history should be explained every day for an hour throughout the week or on as many days as may be desirable, and that the sacrament should be given to everyone who desires it. For among Christians everything in worship should center in the Word and sacrament. In short, this or any other order is to be used in such a way that whenever it becomes an abuse, it will be immediately abolished and replaced by another ......, An order is an external thing. No matter how

106

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

good it is, it can be abused. Then it is no longer an order, but a disorder. Therefore, no order is valid in itself—as the papal orders were held to be until now. But the life, value, power, and virtue of any order is in its proper use. Otherwise it is utterly worthless and good for nothing. God’s Spirit and grace be with us all. Amen

Luther wrote the preface to this document. Philip Melanchthon, drew up the instructions based on ideas derived from Luther. From LW 40:269–320, trans. Conrad Bergendoff.

or means. For Christ says in the last chapter of Luke [24:47] that we are to preach in his name repentance and forgiveness of sins. Many now talk only about the forgiveness of sins and say little or nothing about repentance. There neither is forgiveness of sins without repentance nor can forgiveness of sins be understood without repentance. It follows that if we preach the forgiveness of sins without repentance that the people imagine that they have already obtained the forgiveness of sins, becoming thereby secure and without compunction of conscience. This would be a greater error and sin than all the errors hitherto prevailing. . . . Therefore we have instructed and admonished pastors that it is their duty to preach the whole gospel and not one portion without the other. For God says in Deuteronomy 4[:2]: “You shall not add to the Word . . . nor take from it.”

Preface

The Ten Commandments

. . . Now that the gospel through the unspeakable grace and mercy of God has again come to us or in fact has appeared for the first time, and we have come to see how grievously the Christian church has been confused, scattered, and torn, we would like to have the true episcopal office and practice of visitation reestablished because of the pressing need. . . . We have respectfully appealed to the illustrious and noble prince and lord, Johann, Duke of Saxony, First Marshall and Elector of the Roman Empire, Landgrave of Thuringia, Margrave of Meissen, our most gracious lord and prince, constituted of God as our certain temporal sovereign, that out of Christian love (since he is not obligated to do so as a temporal sovereign) and by God’s will for the benefit of the gospel and the welfare of the wretched Christians in his territory, His Electoral grace might call and ordain to this office several competent persons. To this His Electoral Grace through the goodness of God has graciously consented. . . .

The preachers are to proclaim and explain the Ten Commandments often and earnestly, yet not only the commandments but also how God will punish those who do not keep them and how he often has inflicted temporal punishment. . . . So too they are to point out and condemn various specific vices, as adultery, drunkenness, envy, and hate, and how God has punished these, indicating that without doubt after this life he will punish still more severely if there is not improvement here. The people are thus to be urged and exhorted to fear God, to repent and show contrition, lest their ease and life of false security be punished. Therefore Paul says in Romans 3[:20]: “Through the law comes (only) knowledge of sin.” True repentance is nothing but the acknowledgment of sin. Then it is important that faith be preached. Whoever experiences grief and contrition over his sins should believe that his sins are forgiven, not on account of his merits, but on account of Christ. When the contrite and fearful conscience experiences peace, comfort, and joy on hearing that his sins are forgiven because of Christ, then faith is present—the faith that makes him righteous before God. ... These two are the first elements of Christian life: repentance or contrition and grief, and faith through which we receive the forgiveness of sins and are righteous before God. Both should grow and increase in us. The third element of Christian life is the doing of good works: to be chaste, to love and help the neighbor, to refrain from lying, from deceit,

77. MELANCHTHON: INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE VISITORS OF PARISH PASTORS IN ELECTORAL SAXONY (1528)

Contents of the Instructions The Doctrine In regard to doctrine we observe especially this defect that, while some preach about the faith by which we are to be justified, it is still not clearly enough explained how one shall attain to this faith, and almost all omit one aspect of the Christian faith without which no one can understand what faith is

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORM PROPOSALS

107

from stealing, from murder, from vengefulness, and avenging oneself, etc. Therefore again and again the Ten Commandments are to be assiduously taught, for all good works are therein comprehended. . . .

and sorrow for their sins and are terror-stricken in their consciences. Rough, fearless persons will not be admitted. . . .

The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord

. . . Holy days such as Sunday shall be observed and as many others as the respective pastors have been accustomed to observe. For the people must have certain set times to come together to hear the Word of God. Pastors should not make an issue of the fact that one observes a holy day and another does not. Let each one peacefully keep to his custom. Only do not do away with all holy days. It would be well if there were some uniformity. The days of Annunciation, Purification, Visitation of the Virgin Mary, St. John the Baptist, St. Michael’s, Apostles’ Day, Magdalene—these have already been discarded and could not conveniently be restored. We should keep especially Christmas, Circumcision, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, though leaving out the unchristian legends and songs associated with them. These days have been instituted because it is not possible to teach all parts of the gospel at one time. . . . Beyond such regulations, which were made for the sake of good order, are others, such as regular fasts and abstaining from meat on Fridays, which were instituted in the thought that they would be a special service to God, to appease God and secure his grace. Now Christ teaches in Matthew 15[:9] that it is futile to appease God by the observance of such regulations, for he says: “In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.” Paul also says in Colossians 2[:20] that no one shall submit to such regulations. We should not make such regulations and should not teach that it is sin to break them. Nor should one teach that it is a service to God to keep these rules. The people should be taught the difference between Church Order and secular government. Every secular authority is to be obeyed not because it sets up a new service to God but because it makes for orderly life in peace and love. Therefore it is to be obeyed in everything except when it commands what is contrary to the law of God, for example, if the government ordered us to disregard the gospel or some of its parts. . . . Memorial masses and other paid masses shall no longer be held. For if there were any value in memorial masses, vigils, and the like, it would be possible to atone for sin through works. But as St. John the Bap-

. . . Inasmuch, however, as no one is to be forced to believe, or driven by command or force from his unbelief, since God likes no forced service and wants only those who are his servants by their own free will, and in view of the fact that the people are confused and uncertain, it has been and still is impossible to establish a rule concerning persons to whom both kinds are to be offered and from whom they are to be withheld according to the teaching of Christ. . . . We have therefore recommended that the following method and instruction, based on God’s counsel, be tried until the Holy Spirit leads us to a better understanding. First, as indicated above, in every way and manner the doctrine itself shall be firmly held and positively preached and made known that according to the institution of Christ both kinds are to be used in the sacrament. This teaching shall be presented without compromise to everyone, including the weak and the obstinate. Second, where there are weak Christians, who as yet have not heard or been sufficiently instructed and strengthened by the word of the gospel, and so out of weakness and terror of conscience rather than obstinacy cannot receive both kinds, one may allow these to take communion in one kind for the time being and where they ask for it the pastor or preacher may so administer it. . . . Third, as for the obstinate who will neither learn nor practice this doctrine, one should simply offer them neither kind, but let them go. . . . The third article, and the most fundamental, is that one teach the reason for the use of the sacrament and how one shall be properly prepared. First, the pastor needs to instruct the people how great a sin it is to dishonor the sacrament and to misuse it. . . . Second, no one shall be admitted to the sacrament unless he has previously been to the pastor who shall inquire if he rightly understands the sacrament, or is in need of further counsel, etc. Also, it shall be taught that they alone are worthy to receive the sacrament who show true repentance

The Human Order of the Church

108

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

tist testified (John 1[:29]), Christ alone is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. . . . Some sing the Mass in German, some in Latin, either of which is permissible. It would be reasonable and useful if we used German where most of the people do not understand Latin. . . . On high festivals such as Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, or the like, it would be well to use some Latin hymns in the Mass, if they are in accordance with Scripture. For it is in poor taste to sing only one thing. . . . We rightly honor the saints when we recognize that they are held up before us as a mirror of the grace and mercy of God. . . . Honoring the saints, also, consists in exercising ourselves and increasing in faith and good works in a manner similar to what we see and hear they have done. . . . Marriage . . . Discipline is to be maintained in marriage, and patience and love are to be shown and practiced by the one to the other, as enjoined in Ephesians 5[:22–33.]. And they should be taught that they may not be divorced or desert each other, as Christ himself commands in Matthew 19[:6, 9]. . . . The Turks Some preachers clamor recklessly about the Turks, saying we should not oppose the Turks since Christians may not avenge themselves. This is seditious talk that should not be permitted or tolerated. For the government is given the power of the sword and commanded to punish all murder and pillage. Therefore it is obligated to wage war against those who start an unjust war and are responsible for pillage and murder. . . . But the Christian is forbidden to avenge what is not undertaken by the government or authorized by it. Scripture forbids Christians to exercise personal and individual vengeance, but commands government to execute it and calls it a service of God when done by the government. . . . Daily Worship in the Church Since the old ceremonies have been discarded altogether in many places of the land and little is read or sung in the churches, we have made the following arrangements as to what the procedure in churches

and schools should henceforth be, especially in cities and places where there are many people. First, in the daily Matins in the churches three Latin or German psalms may be sung. On days when there is no sermon a lesson may be read by the preacher. . . . He who reads the lesson shall then exhort the people to pray the Lord’s Prayer for some common need appropriate at the time, such as peace, the needful fruits of the earth, and especially for the grace of God, that he may protect and rule over us. Then the whole congregation may sing a German hymn and the preacher read a collect. At Vespers it would be excellent to sing three evening hymns in Latin, not German, on account of the school youth, to accustom them to the Latin. Then follows the simple antiphons, hymns and responses, and a lesson in German. . . . After the lesson the Lord’s Prayer should be said. . . . In small communities where there are no students it is not necessary to sing the daily offices. But it would be well to sing something when there is preaching. During the week there should be preaching on Wednesdays and Fridays. . . . On festival days there should be preaching at Matins and Vespers, on the gospel at Matins. Since the servants and young people come to church in the afternoon we recommend that on Sunday afternoons there be constant repetition, through preaching and exposition, of the Ten Commandments, the articles of the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. . . . If on Sundays we preach on the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Creed, one after the other, we should also diligently preach about marriage and the sacraments of Baptism and of the altar....... We have heard reports of unseemly preaching about the six weeks that the women observe following childbirth, so that women have been forced to go to work, without consideration of their weakness, with the result that some have become ill and are supposed to have died. Therefore we have deemed it necessary to advise the pastors to speak cautiously about these and similar customs, for the six weeks are ordained in the law of Moses, Leviticus 12[:4–8]. Though that law is superseded, still those things that not only the law but nature itself teaches are not superseded, namely, the natural and ethical truths that belong to the realm of nature and ethics. . . .

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORM PROPOSALS

The True Christian Ban It were well, too, if we did not entirely do away with the penalty of the ban in the true Christian sense described in Matthew 18[:17–18]. It consists in not admitting to the Lord’s Table those who, unwilling to mend their ways, live in open sin, such as adultery, habitual drunkenness, and the like. However, before taking such action, they are to be warned several times to mend their ways. Then, if they refuse, the ban may be proclaimed. . . . Many pastors quarrel with their people over unnecessary and childish things, as pealing of bells (Pacem ringing) and the like. In such matters the pastors may well show themselves as sensible and for the sake of peace yield to the people, instructing them wherein the bells have been improperly used and how they may henceforth be rightly used. Although in some places the custom of ringing the bells against bad weather is retained, undoubtedly the custom has its origin in a good intention, probably of arousing the people thereby to pray God that he would protect the fruits of the earth and us against other harm. Since, however, the people afterwards became superstitious and it was believed that bad weather was driven away by the bells and especially by the consecration of the bells, which had become a custom of long standing, it would not be amiss if in summertime the preacher explained to the people when storms threaten and the bells were rung, that the reason for the custom was not that the sound of the bells or the consecration of the bells drove away the storm or the frost, as had been taught, and believed hitherto, but that thereby each one should be reminded to pray to God for his protection of the fruits of the earth. . . . The Office of Superintendent This pastor (Pfarherr) shall be superintendent (Superattendent) of all the other priests who have their parish or benefice in the region, whether they live in monasteries or foundations of nobles or of others. He shall make sure that in these parishes there is correct Christian teaching, that the Word of God and the holy gospel are truly and purely proclaimed, and that the holy sacraments according to the institution of Christ are provided to the blessing of the people....... If one or more of the pastors or preachers is guilty of error in this or that respect, the superintendent shall call to himself those concerned and have them abstain from it, but also carefully instruct them

109

wherein they are guilty and have erred either in commission or omission, either in doctrine or in life. But if such a one will not then leave off or desist, especially if it leads to false teaching and sedition, then the superintendent shall report this immediately to the proper official, who will then bring it to the knowledge of our gracious lord, the Elector. His Electoral grace will then be able in good time to give this proper attention. . . . Schools The preachers are to exhort the people to send their children to school so that persons are educated for competent service both in church and state. For some suppose it is sufficient if the preacher can read German, but this is a dangerous delusion. . . . At present many faults exist in the schools. We have set up the following syllabus of study so that the youth may be rightly instructed. In the first place the schoolmasters are to be concerned about teaching the children Latin only, not German or Greek or Hebrew as some have done hitherto and troubled the poor children with so many languages. This is not only useless but even injurious. It is evident that these teachers undertake so many languages not because they are thinking of their value to the children but of their own reputation. Second, they are also not to burden the children with a great many books, but avoid multiplicity in every way possible. [Editor’s note: Specific recommendations are then given about what each of the three divisions of students should read and be taught.] SELECTIONS FROM LUTHERAN CHURCH ORDERS 78. CATECHIZATION: THE WITTENBERG CHURCH ORDER (1533) This was the first church order for the central city of the Lutheran Reformation, although many of the topics it covered were already mentioned in the instructions for the 1528 visitation to the churches of Saxony. This excerpt shows once again the importance attached to the catechism as a tool for teaching basic doctrine and morality. It also shows how church leaders communicated the contents of the catechism to adults as well as to students in the schools.

110

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Fig. 3.2. View of the Town of Wittenberg.

From Richter 1:221, trans. Eric Lund. On all holy days after the high Mass, the fourth deacon who is especially delegated to catechize the peasants and peasant children shall ride to the villages [surrounding the city of Wittenberg] and preach to the people from the catechism. He shall also retell the plain and simple stories or the gospel for the holy day. After the sermon, the entire catechism including the instructions of Christ concerning Baptism and the sacrament [of the Lord’s Supper] shall be recited to the people. Then one shall admonish them to pray. The deacon shall sing a German hymn with the peasants before and after the sermon so that the peasants with their children and the hired workers shall learn to sing diligently and rightly. The deacon can indeed exhort them concerning this at the opportune time....... There should be special preaching [in Wittenberg] on the catechism four times a year, one time by the pastor and the other three times by the other three priests. On the preceding Sunday, the pastor shall warn the people that they are obliged to send their children and hired workers. This shall take place in the first two weeks of Advent, the first two weeks after Quadragesima, in Cross Week and the week following it, and in the two weeks just after the harvest, before one has taken in the hops, around the Sunday before St. Bartholomew’s day and the following two weeks.1 Each time preach eight days, namely, Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays in both weeks after midday at the proper hour for Vespers. . . .

79. BAPTISM: LUTHER: THE ORDER OF BAPTISM, NEWLY REVISED (1526) As in the case of the Mass liturgy, Luther was still cautious in 1523 about making major changes in the ritual of baptism. He waited until 1526 to omit certain traditional external actions such as blowing under the eyes, putting salt into the mouth, putting spittle and clay in the ears and nose, anointing the breast and shoulders with oil, and marking the crown of the head with chrism. He retained the making of the sign of the cross, the exorcism of the devil, and the putting on of a christening robe. From LW 53:107–9, trans. Paul Z. Strodach, rev. Ulrich Leupold. See also Emil Sehling, Die ev evang angelischen elischen Kirchenordnung Kirchenordnungen en des XVI. Jahrhunderts 1/1 (Leipzig: Reisland, 1902), 18–23. The officiant shall say: Depart, unclean spirit, and give room to the Holy Spirit. Then he shall sign him with a cross on his forehead and breast and say: Receive the sign of the holy cross on both your forehead and your breast. [Followed by two prayers.] Then the priest shall lay his hand on the head of the child and pray the Our Father together with the sponsors kneeling. . . . Then the child shall be brought to the font, and the priest shall say: The Lord preserve your coming in and your going out now and for evermore. Then the priest shall have the child, through his sponsors, renounce the devil. . . . [The sponsors respond to several questions.] Then he shall take the child and immerse it in the font and say: I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Then the sponsors shall hold the little child in the font and the priest shall say, while he puts the christening robe on the child: The almighty God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has regenerated you through water and the Holy Spirit and has forgiven you all your

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORM PROPOSALS

sin, strengthen you with his grace to life everlasting. Amen. Peace be with you. Amen. THE BRANDENBURG-NÜRNBERG CHURCH ORDER (1533) In addition to specifying how a baptism should be conducted, church orders frequently addressed issues such as the responsibilities of baptismal godparents and midwives, as the following excerpt illustrates. This particular church order was prepared by Andreas Osiander (see also doc. #71) with the assistance of Johannes Brenz, the influential reformer of the imperial city of Schwäbisch-Hall. Nürnberg, a city of over fifty thousand, was the seat of the imperial court and an important commercial center in southern Germany. It was gradually won over to the Lutheran reform movement between 1523 and 1533. The church order also applied to the territory of Brandenburg-Ansbach in the north because it was ruled since 1417 by descendants of a former ruler of Nürnberg. From Richter 1:198, trans. Eric Lund. Since Baptism is a sign of our Christian covenant, like the circumcision of the Jews in the Old Testament, one should baptize the little child, according to the wishes of the parents, as speedily as possible. According to the instructions of God in Genesis 17[:12], the little child was circumcised promptly on the eighth day. Christ says, “Who is not born again from water and the spirit may not see the Kingdom of God [John 3:3],” and Paul calls Baptism a bath of rebirth [Titus 3:5]. Now, since the little child must be reborn as soon as it is born in order to come into the kingdom of God, we believe that the Apostles also baptized children because they baptized entire households [Acts 16:15], and it is certain that no one can prove anything otherwise or oppose this from the Holy Scriptures. But the pastor and church workers should be diligent to ensure that knowledgeable sponsors are chosen for this necessary work of Christian Baptism, who know why they are there and who will treat the Baptism with proper devotion, respect, and esteem. They should also be examined to see that they are not thoughtlessly frivolous, peevish, or drunk, so that they earnestly and knowingly speak the Christian prayers and the words by which the baptism is particularly enacted. They must not arouse frivolity or annoyance among the surrounding listeners but should rather move them to devotion and good Christian thoughts. In the same way, the other peo-

111

ple who are present, especially the one who holds the child, should shun all frivolity, disorderliness, and scandal and should devoutly request grace, salvation, faith, and blessing for the child being baptized. . . . And since until now a praiseworthy and wellgrounded custom has been maintained in the Christian community that all Christian people, but especially the midwives, may baptize the little child when its life is endangered, what one calls emergency Baptism (Jachtauf), the pastors should diligently instruct and admonish the midwives so that they approach the Baptism earnestly and in the fear of God and especially that they rightly understand and know properly how to speak the words (“I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”). . . . The one who has been given emergency Baptism is truly baptized, and it is not necessary to baptize a second time. That was an unnecessary abuse in former times and is especially to be avoided so that one does not give occasion to the gross errors of the Anabaptists. . . . 80. CONFESSION: THE CHURCH ORDER OF ALBERTINE SAXONY (1539) This church order was prepared by Justus Jonas for Albertine (or Ducal) Saxony, which had been separate since 1485 from Ernestine (or Electoral) Saxony, where Luther was based. The Reformation had been resisted in this territory until the death of Duke Georg in 1539. This excerpt illustrates two reasons why the rite of confession was retained: to provide an opportunity to the conscience of the hard-hearted and to console those who were burdened with guilt. From Richter 1:310–11, trans. Eric Lund. There are two kinds of people who come to confession. Some understand nothing and have little sense of conscience but are still not entirely wicked. One finds some who were not instructed about anything under the pope and did not learn what sin is, what results from it, or how one can get free of it and obtain grace. They grew up in such ignorance that although they want to do what is right, they are ashamed still to learn in old age and find it very difficult to go to confession. Therefore they oftentimes remain apart from confession and the sacrament as long as it can be delayed or put off. When such people come, who want to do what is right but know nothing, one should first touch their consciences and teach them to know and feel that

112

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

they are poor sinners and need grace, in a way something like this: If one comes and says, “Most worthy and esteemed master, I come, wanting to manifest all that pertains to being a God-fearing and pious man, but I do not know how I should do that or bring that about. Therefore I ask you to instruct me in the best way.” The pastor should then say: “Dear friend, do you know the Ten Commandments and what they say about God’s expectations concerning what people should and should not do?” The penitent answers: “No, master, unfortunately I do not know them, for under the pope few priests spoke to the poor laypeople about the Ten Commandments.” The confessor should say further: “Dear friend, because you do not know the Ten Commandments, it is certain that you have not kept them. This is the greatest sin that a person can commit, to ask nothing about God although you have made daily use for twenty or thirty or forty years of so many of God’s gifts and benefits, and have been given body, soul, senses, understanding, food and drink, and all necessities. You allowed his dear son to serve you with his suffering and death for your salvation and blessedness, and allowed this to be preached to you all the time, but not one time did you think about this or ask what you might be obligated to do to praise, thank, and serve your dear merciful God for such great and manifold benefits. When it is this way, the devil can do what he wills and always drive or pull your heart, which wants to know nothing of God, from one sin to another. Just think that if you should die now, you would never be able to defend yourself against his strong judgment for such horrible scorn of God and his holy word. You would be desperate and would be eternally lost. But since our loving God prolongs your life, you should feel sorrow for such horrible sins and should ask God for forgiveness and grace and also diligently listen to and learn his holy word and the gospel with sincerity and devotion in order to live in accordance with it and be pious. . . .” But if there are [other] people who are aware of their sins or come themselves without a special reminder from the confessor and confess themselves to be poor sinners and desire to be instructed and consoled by God’s Word so that they might be freed from their sins, they should be instructed and consoled in a way like this: “Dear friend, because you recognize yourself as a poor sinner, this is a good and certain sign that you still have a gracious God. For where one does

not recognize sins and has no regret or sorrow over them, that is an evil sign and indicates that the devil has entirely possessed and hardened the heart. Therefore you should hold it for certain that your confession of your sins, your regret and sorrow, and your desire to free yourself from them is an especially great grace of God and work of the Holy Spirit for which you should be thankful before God. “Even more you should thank the Lord God that he does not leave you to despair because of your sins, regret, and sorrow but is so gracious to you that he teaches you by his holy gospel to seek consolation and forgiveness. “But so that such grace might be all the more certain and secure in you, I also want to impart to you the word of absolution through which the grace that is proclaimed in general to all the world through the public preaching of the gospel may be given as a particular promise to you at this time. And, my dear friend, you should regard the word of absolution that I impart to you as God’s promise as if God were declaring his grace and the forgiveness of your sins through a voice from heaven and should heartily thank God that he has given such power to the church and to Christians on earth. . . .” 81. THE LORD’S SUPPER: THE WÜRTTEMBERG CHURCH ORDER (1536) Württemberg, the largest principality in southwestern Germany, established its Lutheran territorial church in 1534. This first church order was also prepared with the assistance of Johannes Brenz. Lutherans insisted that the Lord’s Supper should never be celebrated without communicants. The following passage notes the careful steps taken to determine who the communicants would be. It also indicates that although Luther advocated frequent communion, not all Lutheran churches celebrated it on a weekly basis. From Richter 1:267–68, trans. Eric Lund. We have for various reasons observed that the Supper of Christ shall be held approximately six times a year in all of our principality’s parishes, that is, once every two months and as often in between those times as there are people present who desire the most worthy sacrament. If one wishes to celebrate the sacrament on a certain Sunday, one shall announce this from the pulpit the Sunday before or at a more favorable time if there be one. Accordingly, on Saturday evening, after the singing of a German hymn, the pastor shall give a

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORM PROPOSALS

sermon concerning the institution and use of the most worthy sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. Then, at the end of the sermon, he shall admonish the people who wish to go to the gracious table of the Lord on the following Sunday or feast day to proceed to the choir after the sermon and present themselves to the pastor or his assistant so that they might be counted and recognized. . . . Since one has a count on Saturday evening of the number of people who want to partake of the Supper of Christ, one shall also count out the bread to the approximate number of people. Similarly, one shall set out the wine in its appropriate measure and prepare it along with the cup so that at the end none of it remains left over, all is handled properly and respectfully, and no one will give offense. . . .

113

called in from Wittenberg to help settle quarrels between various religious factions, and the church order he drafted for the city became an important model for the structuring of other Lutheran churches. From Richter 1:116, trans. Eric Lund. Good books have been written about images, noting that it is not improper or unchristian to have images, especially when one portrays stories by them. [But] we freely confess that we have many false images and much unnecessary clutter in our churches. Still, since we cannot be iconoclasts [image-attackers] and other well-known and pious people would not take offense at this, we have, using regular power and authority, only done away with those images before which people prayed and toward which idolatry and special honor were directed by the setting up of candles and candlesticks. All the others that are not troublesome we have allowed to remain in the churches. But if the same kind of idolatry and supposed worship takes place again before some other images, we will also do away with these, using regular power and authority. They are not worthy of this honor, for one should pray and make invocations to God alone, as he says in Isaiah 42[:8], “I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols.” THE FORMULA OF REFORM FOR WITTENBERG (1545)

Fig. 3.3. Seventeenth-century etching of Johannes Brenz (1499–1570).

82. ACTS OF DEVOTION: THE BRAUNSCHWEIG CHURCH ORDER (1528) The guild masters and the commercial leaders in Braunschweig, one of the north German Hanseatic League cities, persuaded the city council to support the Reformation. Johannes Bugenhagen was then

This document was prepared by Melanchthon. From Richter 2:86, trans. Eric Lund. Here we add an article concerning the invocation of the saints who have departed from this life. For it is manifest that the world is full of the worship of idols in the form of this invocation. It is expressly written in Deuteronomy 6[:13] and Matthew 4[:10], “The Lord your God,” who disclosed himself to you through his Word and certain testimony, “you will adore and he alone will you serve.” However, it is customary for a great multitude of people to have recourse to the saints, as if they gave benefits of the body or soul. Manifestly, this error is a worship of idols. But some look for excuses and paint or dress up this rite with various colors. The saints are not being invoked, they say, as authors or producers of these gifts but as intercessors. This disguise is refuted by this clear reply. In the church, that is, the people of God, no invocation should be taught, instituted, or established that

114

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

does not have the support of a commandment or example from the Word of God. Yet, it is manifest that there is absolutely no commandment or example of this invocation [of the saints] in the writing of the prophets and apostles. And it is said in Romans 14[:23], “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.” When, therefore, there is nothing in the Word of God concerning this invocation, it is doubtful that the custom of such invocation pleases God. Therefore it should in no way be established. . . .

morning, some only once. Some announce it formally and publish the banns from the pulpit two or three weeks in advance. All such things and the like I leave to the lords and the council to order and arrange as they see fit. It does not concern me. But when we are requested to bless them before the church or in the church, to pray over them, or also to marry them, we are in duty bound to do this....... THE CHURCH ORDER FOR THE CITY OF HANNOVER (1536)

Fig. 3.4. Portrait of Johannes Bugenhagen (1537) by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

83. MARRIAGE ORDERS: LUTHER: THE ORDER OF MARRIAGE (1529) From LW 53:111–12, trans. Paul Z. Strodach, rev. Ulrich Leupold. Many lands, many customs, says the proverb. Since marriage and the married estate are worldly matters, it behooves us pastors or ministers of the church not to attempt to order or govern anything connected with it, but to permit every city and land to continue its own use and custom in this connection. Some lead the bride to the church twice, both evening and

Urbanus Rhegius (1489–1541) was an important Lutheran preacher in Augsburg who was invited by the Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg to move to north central Germany in 1530 to help consolidate the Lutheran Reformation in that region. This excerpt from his church order for the city of Hannover gives an example of the permanent tribunals that the Lutheran churches introduced as a substitute for the Catholic ecclesiastical courts that dealt with marriage cases. From Richter 1:275–76, trans. Eric Lund. In order to prevent disorder and impropriety in the enactment of Christian marriage, we have delegated three persons, a [city] councilor, our syndic, and the [church] superintendent, to judge impediments to marriage such as degrees of kinship by blood or marriage, according to imperial and divine law. The pope’s law is too strict with prohibitions, and it is too easy to get dispensations from it by the payment of money, but since he is not an authority for us, we will leave his law to his own realm. The emperor is our natural lord and a divinely ordained authority, but when some marriage case is reported that cannot be easily decided by imperial law and must still be settled so that greater harm does not grow from it, we also wish, within the capacity of our Christian freedom, to take the divine law of Moses as a guide to provide better advice for conscience and [to promote] the common peace. Now if Moses was given the right to make legal judgments but gave us no command in the law, then no prohibition concerning that matter applies to us. And no one can doubt that Moses as a great prophet who spoke and wrote as he was inspired by the Holy Spirit also knew what was honorable or dishonorable in the state of marriage. For he certainly did not speak in vain to the people of Israel in Deuteronomy 4[:8], “What other great nation has statutes and ordinances

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORM PROPOSALS

as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?” A secret marriage bond that takes place without the knowledge and will of the parents by evil and irregular means we will, simply by imperial and divine law, not recognize as a marriage, and whoever carries out such a secret and dishonorable practice shall be punished according to the particular circumstances of the misdeed. Such persons as cannot bear to be with each other and wish to separate should present themselves before the aforementioned judges to see whether or not they have just cause for their proposal. And in order that the holy state of marriage might be understood better and undertaken with more sincerity and fear of God, the preachers should at all times teach and admonish the congregation so that the people might learn what the state of marriage is and how each Christian within this state ought to live both for the sake of themselves and their children. 84. BURIALS: VISITATION ARTICLES FOR ELECTORAL SAXONY (1533) From Richter 1:230, trans. Eric Lund. This is how one conducts burials in Wittenberg. They may be performed in other ways, as long as one holds to God’s Word and conducts the ceremonies in a Christian manner. First. If a common person dies, the church bells are not rung [to assemble people], but the nearest neighbors go with the body to the grave. Second. If a middle-class citizen dies, friendship requires the schoolmaster and his students to participate by singing “Out of the Depths I Cry to You” [see doc. #59a] on the way to the grave, etc. Now, at the graveside, when the body is about to be buried, the schoolmaster or his associates together with those assembled there shall sing “We All Believe in One God” [the Creed, see doc. #59b], so that the article of the resurrection of the flesh may be comprehended. Still, the church bells are not rung for the burial and it will not be required to call the chaplain. Third. If one of the distinguished people dies, the body is buried with a procession. All of the church workers are not obligated to be there, but are requested to do so out of friendship. The schoolmaster attends along with the students. The people may be called together by the ringing of the large bells; however, this seldom happens.

115

85. CONFIRMATION: THE BRANDENBURG CHURCH ORDER (1540) This church order applies to Electoral Brandenburg, which was brought into the Lutheran movement quite late by Joachim II in 1539. The Lutheran church in the northern Markish provinces retained many traditional elements of church life, such as the episcopal form of church government and the practice of confirmation. Many of the early church orders contain no article on confirmation. From Richter 1:325–26, trans. Eric Lund. We want confirmation according to the old use to be maintained. Namely, that if the baptized come to the years when they know what they believe and pray and also know the content of the catechism, what it is to live in a Christian manner and to conduct themselves honorably, they shall be called and examined during the visitation of the bishop, and where it is found that they have a good report of their faith and Christian conduct, the bishop shall, with the laying on of hands, ask God the Almighty to remain constant with them, to uphold and strengthen them, and thus they are confirmed. But if some are also found who come to this age and are still not rightly or sufficiently instructed in their faith, the bishop shall reprimand the pastors and godparents and demand that the pastor diligently instruct the congregation and the sponsors so that they henceforth know what they believe and how they should live. This can surely take place if the catechism is diligently preached and promoted. . . . 86. ORDINATION: THE ORDINATION OF MINISTERS OF THE WORD (1539) From LW 53:124–26, trans. Paul Z. Strodach, rev. Ulrich Leupold. First. The candidates shall be examined either on the same or the preceding day. If they are worthy, the congregation after due admonition by the preacher shall pray for them and for the whole ministry, namely, that God would deign to send laborers into his harvest and preserve them faithful and constant in sound doctrine against the gates of hell, etc. Second. The ordinator and the minister or presbyters of the church shall place the ordinand in the center before the ordinator and all shall kneel before the altar. And the choir shall sing “Veni sancte spiritus.” V. Create in me a clean heart, O God. R. And renew a right spirit within me.

116

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

The customary collect of the Holy Spirit shall be read. Third. After this the ordinator shall ascend the step of the predella and facing the ordinands shall recite with a clear voice 1 Timothy 3 . . . [and Acts 20:28–31]. Fourth. The ordinator addresses the ordinands in these or similar words: Herein you hear that we bishops—that is, presbyters and pastors—are called not to watch over geese or cows, but over the congregation God purchased with his own blood that we should feed them with the pure Word of God and also be on guard lest wolves and sects burst in among the poor sheep. This is why he calls it a good work. Also in our personal conduct we should live decently and honorably and rule our house, wife, children, and servants in a Christian way. Are you now ready to do this? Answer: Yes. Fifth. Then while the whole presbytery impose their hands on the heads of the ordinands, the ordinator says the Lord’s Prayer in a clear voice. Let us pray. Our Father, etc. . . . Sixth. The ordinator shall address the ordinands with these words of St. Peter, 1 Peter 5[:2–4]. . . . Seventh. The ordinator shall bless them with the sign of the cross and use these or other words: The Lord bless you that you may bring forth much fruit. After this each one shall return to his own place. And if it is desired, the congregation may sing “Now Let Us Pray to the Holy Ghost.” This ended, the presbyter chants: Our Father, etc. And first the ordinands shall commune with the congregation, then likewise the ordinator if he so desires. 87. VISITATION PROCEDURES: HESSE CHURCH ORDER (1537) Hesse was a margraviate on the western border of Saxony. Philip of Hesse (1504–67), who ruled this territory for almost fifty years, provided early and important support for Luther’s reform efforts (see doc. #49). This excerpt illustrates the techniques commonly used by visitors to gain information about spiritual and moral life. From Richter 1:282, trans. Eric Lund. Each superintendent shall visit every parish in his district at least once every two years and should diligently ascertain first of all what each pastor is doing with regard to his teaching and his life. First, with regard to teaching, the superintendent shall have a friendly conversation with each pastor

to find out his views on each point and article about which many sects raise disputes in our time, such as the divine and human natures of Christ, what law, sin, Christian repentance, the gospel, and good works are, how sins are forgiven and eternal life is attained, what Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are and who should and should not participate in them, and many more such matters that are all most necessary to know, teach, and proclaim. Second, in order to gain further knowledge about how teaching is upheld and improved in each parish, the superintendent, in every parish that he visits, should call the congregation together in the morning and let the pastor of the place give a sermon, the topic of which the superintendent has specified the evening before. [He shall] also inspect the pastor’s church book and how he sings, prays, reads, celebrates Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and other evident practices. And after the sermon, he shall privately and in a friendly manner instruct, teach, and earnestly admonish the pastor to improve anything that he considers blameworthy and in need of correction. The superintendent shall also diligently gain information about the manner of life of the pastor. After the conclusion of the sermon he shall let the pastor retire and shall ask the congregation to observe whether their pastor teaches purely or impurely, whether or not he lives honorably, uprightly, and irreproachably, and also whether he visits or operates a place to drink beer or wine or a public tavern, or if he occupies himself with the management of such an indecent establishment. [The superintendent shall also inquire] how the pastor conducts himself with regard to the poor people in his parish, those who are in the hospital or infirmary, the sick and the like and also toward his wife, children, servants, and neighbors. Likewise, the superintendent should also ascertain who the chaplains [assistant ministers] and other church workers are and whether they are rightly submissive to the pastor and have committed their lives to their services toward the parishioners. . . . And when the superintendent has sufficiently investigated the teaching, life, and behavior of the pastor and the other church workers, and has judged and corrected whatever faults he found in them, he should ask the pastor, in the absence of the parishioners, how they are disposed toward God and his dear Word, whether they diligently go to preaching, and encourage their children and servants to fear God and respect his Word. He shall ask whether there are any among them who have dealings with

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORM PROPOSALS

the Anabaptists and their teachings, also how they conduct themselves with regard to the Lord’s Supper, Baptism, and the princely orders concerning marriages, the Baptism of children, and the like. . . . And after everything necessary has been reported to the superintendent by the pastor, he shall summon the parishioners before him in order to find out for himself their actual understanding of such things. He shall let some of them, both young and old, say their prayers, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments and after that shall select certain articles and ask what they have learned and understand about this or that, such as the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, Baptism, and the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. . . . 88. CHURCH WORKERS: THE CHURCH ORDER FOR THE CITY OF BRAUNSCHWEIG (1528) From Richter 1:113, trans. Eric Lund. In every church there shall be no more than one sexton [Küster or Coster] who unlocks the doors, rings the bell, brings water for baptism, remains by the altar [during the service], prepares the bread and the wine, etc. He shall obey the preachers and not grumble, doing in the church what he is called upon to do and helping the pastors in cases of emergency when they must go out. One shall count out and give him every pfennig that he needs to compensate the bell ringers, and one shall arrange for and promise him an honorable wage for the work that he is obliged to do in the church. The sexton should ring to assemble the people a quarter hour before all services, according to the orders of the preacher. If he grumbles, is unwilling, or finds such duties troublesome, let him go and find another sexton. Because organ-playing is also not unchristian, as it states in the Psalter (if one plays not idle or worthless songs but hymns and spiritual songs), every church shall pay a wage to their organist so that he will be obligated to perform such service.

117

wards they shall ask questions and examine the children about the articles of the catechism that have been recited or read aloud. And where one or more branches belong to the parish, the sacristan shall teach in all places, alternating between them according to the advice of the pastor, so that the youth in all of the villages are instructed as is necessary and will not be neglected. The sacristans should especially take pains to read the prayers aloud to the children and their elders, very slowly and clearly, distinctly reciting word for word as it is printed in the Small Catechism. And they shall not be so wanton, bold, or careless as to change, increase, decrease, or mix up the words in any way other than as they are designated in the printed copy. For in so doing, the young people will be poorly instructed and will afterwards learn to pray incorrectly from one another. . . . No sexton who has not been examined and ordained shall be allowed to preach. But those who have been examined, appointed, and carefully called to the office of deacon shall not only preach but also be permitted to perform other church duties such as hearing confession and administering the sacrament.......

GENERAL ARTICLES FOR THE VISITATION IN ELECTORAL SAXONY (1557) From Richter 2:186–87, trans. Eric Lund. In the villages, the sextons shall be obligated on all Sunday afternoons and on a certain day during the week to diligently and clearly teach the children the catechism and Christian hymns in German. After-

Fig. 3.5. Portrait of Justus Jonas in a volume titled Two Hundred German Men in Portraits and Biographies, edited by Ludwig Bechstein (1854).

118

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

89. DISCIPLINE: THE ORDER FOR THE WITTENBERG CONSISTORY (1542) Consistories were set up in three locations in Electoral Saxony: Wittenberg, Zeitz, and Zwickau. In each case, there were four commissioners with expertise in law and theology. These regulations were prepared by Justus Jonas. From Richter 1:367–71, trans. Eric Lund. What cases should be heard by the Consistory: [The Consistory] shall hear cases concerning marriage and these articles in particular: Which marriage vows are legally binding and which are not. Whether there are sufficient reasons to advise and offer help again to an innocent partner who has been unjustly abandoned by her husband. How to punish spousal violence (saevitia maritorum) when the visitors receive daily complaints that the devil is causing much loathing and arousing all kinds of vexation by it, to the hindrance of the holy gospel. How to judge when married people live with each other in daily quarreling, cause all kinds of irritation, and do not want to be reconciled with each other. Adultery. Rape of a virgin. Incest or violation of degrees of prohibited relationships. Public usury. When children scorn and hold their parents in disrespect. Women who smother their children during sleep or when drunk. All blasphemy against God. Mocking and derisive talk against the gospel, Christian doctrine, and ceremonies. Secret associating with Jews and Jewesses. Mutiny by the sexton or others against the pastor....... For what cases a person should be excommunicated: First, they should be excommunicated who spread seditious and seductive doctrines and will not cease from doing so. Still, no one should be banned without being informed ahead of time of the doctrine. In cases where one sadly persists in error, the punishment shall at all times be imposed with the proviso of an appeal to the princes and by a decree of the elector. Second, they should be excommunicated who,

after being warned, persist in adultery, fornication, usury, etc., and do not reform. Third, they shall be punished with the ban who scorn their father and mother and cause harm by this deed. So also those who prey on, strike, or apply a strong hand to their priest, pastor, and preacher, deacon or church worker and when many outcries about this reach the visitors. Still they shall first be accused and convicted of the committed deed and then condemned through sentencing. Fourth, all blasphemers. Those who are convicted of using mocking, disdainful, or scornful speech about Christian teachings should be punished by excommunication. Fifth, those who behave in a wanton, insolent, or frivolous manner or insult the preacher during Holy Communion, the sermon, or the time for singing in church. So also, those who out of scorn will not go to any church or preaching house for some weeks, a month, or a year. Also those who sing shameful songs composed about the preacher. Sixth, those are to be banned who are found and convicted of practicing magic, circulating suspicious spells, committing perjury, or scorning the obligations of an oath they have sworn. 90. PASTORAL CARE: THE WITTENBERG CHURCH ORDER (1533) In Wittenberg, there was a chief pastor who was also called the superintendent and three assisting priests who were also called deacons or chaplains. A fourth assistant, called a village chaplain, was specifically appointed to conduct services in the surrounding villages. From Richter 1:222, trans. Eric Lund. Once the priests have been requested to hear the confession of or administer the sacrament to a sick person, they shall visit the sick person often after that, namely, every day or every second or third day, whichever is convenient, and console him with the Word of God until he either dies or returns to the hope of life. However, if the sick person has others with or around him who can console him, then such visits are not necessary. They also need not visit those who have a chronic illness or are not in danger of death, unless they are especially requested to do so. But they shall go two times a week to the hospital, if they wish, and teach the catechism to the people who cannot go out and to the others who are with them. For all preaching in the villages, the pastor shall, by himself or in some way from another citizen,

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORM PROPOSALS

secure a horse for the fourth deacon at a certain definite time. The peasants should also be content with this favor, which did not happen in former times, although those who can should also come now and then to the preaching in the city. . . . The pastor is entirely not responsible for securing a horse [to visit] the sick among the peasants because this also cannot be done. For it can happen that in the morning or afternoon priests are requested for the sick in three or four villages. Then one would need to get four horses or else the neglect would be reckoned to the pastor. Therefore, the pastor is not responsible for securing a horse [to visit] the sick among the peasants, but the peasants should fetch a priest themselves with their own wagon. Still the three priests should be ready if they are summoned in such emergencies with a wagon. The fourth deacon is only responsible to visit the sick who are in need when he comes to preach with the pastor’s horse. If it so happens that the same sick need a priest at another time and fetch him with their wagon, one of the other three priests shall be ready and willing to console the sick. . . . The fourth deacon may hear the confessions of sick peasants and administer the sacrament to them but he is not obligated to do so. That is the duty of the other three deacons, but if the need arises, he may wish to do this. However, if a pestilence comes to one or more villages, only the fourth deacon shall go to hear the confession of the sick or to administer the sacrament, so that the other three deacons do not bring the pestilence into the city. This is because one cannot do without their services in the city. 91. POOR RELIEF—THE COMMON CHEST: THE LEISNIG AGREEMENT (1523) The parish of Leisnig in Electoral Saxony set up one of the earliest Lutheran plans for the systematic care of the poor. Luther showed his approval by arranging for the publication of the proposal. From LW 45:182–89, trans. Walther Brandt. . . . The administration of the common chest shall be set up in the following manner: annually each year, on the Sunday following the octave of Epiphany, at about eleven o’clock, a general assembly of the parish shall convene here in the town hall. There, by the grace of God united in true Christian faith, they shall elect from the entire assembly ten trustees or directors for the common chest who shall be without exception the best-qualified individuals; namely, two from the nobility, two from the incumbent city council, three from among the common

119

citizens of the town, and three from the rural peasantry. The ten thus duly elected shall immediately assume the burden and responsibility of administration and trusteeship of the common chest. . . . Every Sunday in the year, from eleven o’clock until two hours before Vespers, the ten directors shall meet in the parsonage or in the town hall, there to care for and exercise diligently their trusteeship, making their decisions and acting in concert in order that deeds of honor to God and love to the fellowChristian may be continued in an unbroken stream and be used for purposes of improvement. These decisions of theirs shall be kept in strictest confidence and not be divulged in unauthorized ways. . . . The ten directors shall appoint from among their number two building supervisors. These two, with the advice and knowledge of the other eight, shall have charge of the church buildings, the bridge, the parsonage, the school, the sacristan’s place, and the hospitals. . . . To the pastor or priest called and elected by our congregation, and to a preacher similarly called by us and appointed to assist the pastor (though the pastor himself should be able and qualified to preach God’s Word and perform the other duties of his pastoral office), and also to a chaplain if the need for one arises, the ten directors on the unified resolution of the entire assembly are to furnish annually each year a specified sum of money, together with certain consumable stores and lands and properties subject to usufruct, to support them, and adequately meet their needs, one-fourth to be paid each quarter at the Ember fast out of the common chest, in return for a proper receipt. The sacristan or custodian, to whom the assembly entrusts the locking up of the church and the suitable care of it, shall be given by the ten directors out of the common chest in quarterly installments a specified annual salary and certain usable stores and usufructs....... The ten designated directors, in the name of our general parish assembly, shall have the authority and duty, with the advice and approval of our elected pastor and preacher and others learned in the divine Scriptures, to call, appoint, and dismiss a schoolmaster for young boys, whereby a pious, irreproachable, and learned man may be made responsible for the honorable and upright Christian training and instruction of the youth, a most essential function....... In accordance with a determination of the general assembly, the ten directors shall give a schoolmaster as compensation for his services a spec-

120

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ified annual salary plus certain stores in quarterly installments out of the common chest. . . . Likewise, the ten directors shall grant to an upright, fully seasoned, irreproachable woman an annual stipend and certain stores out of our common chest for instructing young girls under twelve in true Christian discipline, honor, and virtue and, in accordance with the ordinance for our pastoral office, teaching them to read and write German, this teaching to be done during certain specified hours by the clear light of day and in a respectable place that is above suspicion. . . . Those individuals in our parish and assembly who are impoverished by force of circumstances and left without assistance by their relatives, if they have any capable of helping, and those who are unable to work because of illness or old age and are so poor as to suffer real need, shall receive each week on Sunday, and at other times as occasion demands, maintenance and support from our common chest through the ten directors. This is to be done out of Christian love, to the honor and praise of God, so that their lives and health may be preserved from further deterioration, enfeeblement, and foreshortening through lack of shelter, clothing, nourishment, and care, and so that no impoverished person in our assembly need ever publicly cry out, lament, or beg for such items of daily necessity. For this reason the ten directors shall constantly make diligent inquiry and investigation in order to have complete and reliable knowledge of all these poor—as above—in the city and villages within our entire parish, and they shall confer on this matter every Sunday. . . . 92. SCHOOLS: TO THE COUNCILMEN . . . THAT THEY ESTABLISH AND MAINTAIN CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS (1524) From LW 45:350–71, trans. Albert Steinhaeuser, rev. Walther Brandt. . . . Every citizen should be influenced by the following consideration. Formerly he was obliged to waste a great deal of money and property on indulgences, masses, vigils, endowments, bequests, anniversaries, mendicant friars, brotherhoods, pilgrimages, and similar nonsense. Now that he is, by the grace of God, rid of such pillage and compulsory giving, he ought henceforth out of gratitude to God and for his glory, to contribute part of that amount toward schools for the training of the poor children. That would be an excellent investment. . . . When I was a lad they had this maxim in school:

“Non minus est negligere scholarem quam corrumpere virginem”—“It is just as bad to neglect a pupil as to despoil a virgin.” The purpose of this maxim was to keep the schoolmasters on their toes, for in those days no greater sin was known than that of despoiling a virgin. But, dear Lord God, how light a sin it is to despoil virgins or wives (which, being a bodily and recognized sin, may be atoned for) in comparison with this sin of neglecting and despoiling precious souls, for the latter sin is not even recognized or acknowledged and is never atoned for. O woe unto the world for ever and ever! Children are born every day and grow up in our midst, but, alas! there is no one to take charge of the youngsters and direct them. We just let matters take their own course. . . . Since a city should and must have [educated] people, and since there is a universal dearth of them and complaint that they are nowhere to be found, we dare not wait until they grow up of themselves; neither can we carve them out of stone or hew them out of wood. Nor will God perform miracles as long as men can solve their problems by means of the other gifts he has already granted them. Therefore, we must do our part and spare no labor or expense to produce and train such people ourselves. . . . Although the gospel came and still comes to us through the Holy Spirit alone, we cannot deny that it came through the medium of languages, was spread abroad by that means, and must be preserved by the same means. . . . In proportion then as we value the gospel, let us zealously hold to the languages. . . . A simple preacher (it is true) has so many clear passages and texts available through translations that he can know and teach Christ, lead a holy life, and preach to others. But when it comes to interpreting Scripture, and working with it on your own, and disputing with those who cite it incorrectly, he is unequal to the task; that cannot be done without languages. A saintly life and right doctrine are not enough. Hence, languages are absolutely and altogether necessary in the Christian church. . . . To this point we have been speaking of the necessity and value of languages and Christian schools for the spiritual realm and the salvation of souls. Now let us consider also the body. Let us suppose that there were no soul, no heaven or hell, and that we were to consider solely the temporal government from the standpoint of its worldly functions. Does it not need good schools and educated persons even more than the spiritual realm? . . . Now if (as we have assumed) there were no soul, and there were no need at all of schools and

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORM PROPOSALS

languages for the sake of the Scriptures and of God, this one consideration alone would be sufficient to justify the establishment everywhere of the very best schools for both boys and girls, namely, that in order to maintain its temporal estate outwardly the world must have good and capable men and women, men able to rule well over land and people, women able to manage the household and train children and servants aright. Therefore, it is a matter of properly educating and training our boys and girls to that end....... If children were instructed and trained in schools, or wherever learned and well-trained schoolmasters and schoolmistresses were available to teach the languages, the other arts, and history, they would then hear of the doings and sayings of the entire world,

121

and how things went with various cities, kingdoms, princes, men, and women. Thus, they could in a short time set before themselves as in a mirror that character, life, counsels, and purposes—successful and unsuccessful—of the whole world from the beginning; on the basis of which they could then gain from history the knowledge and understanding of what to seek and what to avoid in this outward life, and be able to advise and direct others accordingly....... It is highly necessary, therefore, that we take some positive action in this matter before it is too late; not only on account of the young people, but also in order to preserve both our spiritual and temporal estates. . . .

4. The Church’s Struggle for Survival (1546–1648)

During the twenty-five years between Luther’s excommunication and his death, the reform movement he instigated evolved into a new church noticeably different from Roman Catholicism in its doctrinal beliefs, modes of worship, and administrative structures. By the 1540s, Lutheranism had become well established in many German territories and imperial cities. It was continuing to expand its influence in the adjoining regions of Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. Most of the rulers who supported Luther were cooperating together as members of the Schmalkald League, and the leaders of the territorial churches in Germany were making progress in educating and transforming the religious outlook of the common people. Nevertheless, there was considerable apprehension about what the future held for the Evangelical Lutheran churches. The meetings of theologians at several colloquies designed to promote doctrinal agreement and better relations between Catholics and Protestants resulted in no lasting progress. Negotiations between the emperor and the princes at various diets repeatedly ended in failure. Luther’s polemical outbursts in his final years against the pope, the Jews, and various other opponents reveal how convinced he was that the devil was at work preparing a final assault against everything for which he had labored. Yet, even he could not have fully realized the extent to which internal divisions within the Lutheran movement and a new assertiveness on the part of its perennial enemies would set off a series of developments that, within a few months after his own death on February 18, 1546, almost brought an end to the movement he started. The emperor, Charles V, had not been able to

devote much attention to religious developments in Germany because of the wars he was conducting against France and the Turks. However, in 1544 he finally managed to get France to agree to a peace treaty. Shortly thereafter, he paid tribute to the Turks in order to conclude an armistice with them. Freed from these distractions, he now proposed to assemble the German princes at an imperial diet and to address all of the religious and political issues that alienated him from the Lutherans. Fearing that the emperor might make undesirable concessions to the dissenting princes in order to reestablish peaceful coexistence, Pope Paul III intensified his efforts to assemble a general council to deal with the religious questions. The Imperial Diet met at Worms in March 1545, and the following December the first meeting of the general church council took place at Trent. The Lutherans did not feel that they could participate in the council under the terms the conveners had established and attempted instead to have the religious issues addressed at an Imperial Diet or another special council in Germany. However, when the Lutheran princes and their religious advisers met with Charles V once again at a diet in Regensburg in June 1546, they could not ignore the signs that the emperor had secretly been preparing to reassert his authority over them by force. The emperor and the pope had, in fact, reached an agreement to work together to assemble the army for this purpose (doc. #93). The emperor had also worked out clandestine arrangements with several German princes either to gain their support or to ensure their neutrality when the war against the Protestants finally began. Most significant, Charles V secured the cooperation of a politically ambitious Lutheran ruler, Moritz (Mau-

124

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

rice), Duke of Albertine Saxony (1521–53), by promising him control of the bishoprics of Magdeburg and Halberstadt and the territory of Electoral (Ernestine) Saxony, governed at that time by his cousin, Duke Johann Friedrich. The Schmalkald League quickly organized its own forces in order to prevent the imperial troops from entering Germany, and in July 1546, the Schmalkald War began. The inability of the Protestant princes to act decisively and in a cooperative manner, combined with a shortage of financial resources, severely limited their effectiveness. When the army of Duke Moritz linked up with the forces of the emperor at the critical battle of Mühlberg in April 1547, the Protestants suffered a crushing defeat. Duke Johann Friedrich, the leader of the Lutheran princes, was captured, and shortly thereafter, Philip of Hesse, the other major defender of the Protestant cause, surrendered after being promised that he would not be put to death for his resistance. In keeping with the promise he had made before the war began, Charles V turned over the lands of Duke Johann Friedrich to Duke Moritz and also gave him the title of elector. At this point, the emperor became angry with the pope for moving the council from Trent to Bologna. So, in September 1547, at the Diet of Augsburg, Charles V decided to deal with the religious divisions in Germany by himself. He formed a commission to work out a temporary settlement. The resulting proposal, the Augsburg Interim (doc. #94), published in May 1548, called for the reintroduction of some Catholic beliefs and practices but also realistically permitted the continuation of some important Protestant innovations, such as clerical marriage and the celebration of the Eucharist with both bread and wine, until these issues could be discussed more fully at a general church council. The emperor may have thought that he was making a significant conciliatory gesture to the Protestants by including a few important concessions, but the response he got was overwhelmingly hostile. The imprisoned Duke Johann Friedrich was told he could escape his death sentence if he supported the interim proposal, but he refused to abandon his religious convictions. Even Duke Moritz, whom the emperor expected to provide an example of compliance, hesitated to do so because of the strength of the negative popular reaction to the Augsburg Interim. The Lutherans were in almost total agreement that the Augsburg Interim was an unacceptable reimposition of Catholicism, but the church leaders and princes were not all of one mind about what step they should take next in order to ensure the survival

of the Lutheran movement. Duke Moritz tried to balance his loyalties by suggesting that the Lutherans should propose a compromise to the emperor in the form of an alternative interim settlement. He persuaded Philip Melanchthon, the church leader whom many regarded as Luther’s successor, and several other theologians from Wittenberg and Leipzig to draft such a proposal at a series of meetings in Pegau, Celle, and Leipzig. The resulting document, called the Leipzig Interim (doc. #95), was adopted in December 1548 and was implemented by Duke Moritz as the standard for church belief and practice in Electoral Saxony. Melanchthon and his associates replaced some statements in the Augsburg Interim that they thought could not be reconciled with essential Lutheran beliefs, but for the most part they went along with the restoration of many Catholic church practices. Conciliatory by nature, Melanchthon was especially convinced at this moment that the Evangelical churches could only escape fatal persecution if they gave the emperor some sign that they were willing to meet him partway. Melanchthon argued that many rites and ceremonies associated with the way Catholics celebrated the sacraments were not incompatible with Lutheran beliefs and could therefore be accepted without causing any harm. Almost immediately after the adoption of the Leipzig Interim, a number of other Lutheran church leaders spoke out vehemently against any compromise with the emperor. The most notable of these critics were Matthias Flacius Illyricus (1520–75), professor of Hebrew at the University of Wittenberg, and Nikolaus von Amsdorf (1483–1565), bishop of Naumburg-Zeitz. They called Duke Moritz the “Judas of Meissen” for betraying his fellow Lutherans and suggested that the strategy he and Melanchthon endorsed would destroy Lutheranism by opening the door to a full-scale reintroduction of Catholicism (docs. #96 and 97). Forced to flee from Saxony, they found refuge in Magdeburg, which became the center of a determined resistance movement. Lutheranism was split between those who endorsed the strategy of Melanchthon and those who sympathized with Flacius and Amsdorf. As Lutheran opposition to the emperor intensified, Duke Moritz began to reassess his commitments (doc. #98). Dissatisfied with what he had gained from his cooperation with Charles V and fearful of a new coalition of Lutheran princes in the far north of Germany, he signed a treaty with the king of France and proposed working with the other princes in a new campaign against the emperor. In 1552, Moritz

THE CHURCH’S STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL (1546–1648)

swept back across the territories he had once conquered for the emperor and met with such success that he was able to persuade his Catholic opponents to meet at Passau to negotiate a peace treaty. Since neither side was satisfied with the results of these negotiations, warfare resumed in the following year. Duke Moritz died of wounds received in battle in 1553, but the other Lutheran princes continued the fight until a more enduring settlement was concluded after negotiations with King Ferdinand, the emperor’s brother, at the Diet of Augsburg in 1555. The Catholic allies agreed to recognize Lutheranism as a legitimate expression of Christianity and left it up to each prince to decide whether Catholicism or Lutheranism would become the required religion of his lands (doc. #99). The one exception to this policy pertained to the territories governed by ecclesiastical officials in Germany. King Ferdinand insisted that if any ruling Catholic bishops converted to Lutheranism they could not secularize their domains. He expected them to resign and relinquish jurisdiction to Catholic successors. The Peace of Augsburg seemed to ensure the survival of Lutheranism, but it did little to relieve the resentment that different religious groups felt toward each other. Lutheran church leaders who had supported or rejected the Leipzig Interim traded accusations and attempted to exclude each other from leadership roles in the churches. The Interim crisis also revealed that there was no consensus among the Lutheran theologians about many issues of belief and church practice. The theological stance of Melanchthon and his associates provoked a series of doctrinal controversies that occupied the attention of church leaders for the next three decades (see chapter 5 of this volume). The Peace of Augsburg stopped the war between the Protestants and the Catholics, but continuing fluctuations in the confessional allegiances of various German rulers raised new questions about the adequacy of the provisions it proposed to promote peaceful coexistence. Protestant Church leaders grew fearful of the reviving strength of the Catholic Church, particularly in southern Germany. Catholic rulers were equally upset when the Lutherans continued to extend their influence in several ecclesiastical territories in the north. The religious situation was complicated even further by the fact that the Peace of Augsburg had excluded Calvinism as a confessional option in Germany. To the dismay of both Lutherans and Catholics, Calvinist influence began to grow in Germany after it acquired the support of the Elector of the Palatinate in 1563. The territorial rulers who

125

switched from Lutheranism to Calvinism were often more willing than the Lutherans to resist the Catholic princes, and they played an important role in a series of local conflicts in the final decades of the sixteenth century, bringing the religious parties even closer to a major confrontation. In 1582, when the archbishop of Cologne converted to Protestantism and continued to claim the right to rule this important electoral territory, the Duke of Bavaria, the most assertive of the Catholic princes, sent troops to the city and expelled the Protestants. In 1607, when a Protestant mob attacked an illegal Catholic religious procession in the imperial city of Donauwörth, the Duke of Bavaria occupied the city and imposed allegiance to Catholicism. The Protestant princes protested at an Imperial Diet in Regensburg in 1608 and requested modifications in the terms of the Peace of Augsburg that would legitimate the territorial gains they had made since 1555. When the Catholic princes rejected their demands, the Protestant princes resorted to the formation of a Protestant Union in order to cooperate in the defense of their territories (doc. #100). This, in turn, prompted the Catholic princes to join together as a rival league. War finally resulted in 1618 when the Protestant nobles of Bohemia resisted the efforts of their king to rescind the guarantee of religious toleration that had previously been given to them by the emperor. The Protestant Union, led by the Calvinist Elector of the Palatinate, came to their defense, and the Thirty Years’ War began. Not all of the Lutheran princes of Germany gave their support to the Protestant Union. Most notably, Duke Johann Georg of Electoral Saxony stayed out of the early stages of the struggle because of his hesitance to cooperate with Calvinists and his hope to gain some territory by siding with the emperor. Facing a divided opposition, the forces of the emperor and the Catholic League crushed the revolt in Bohemia and extended their campaign of reconquest into Austria and Germany. When the war spread into northern Germany by 1625, the Lutheran princes of Lower Saxony were drawn more fully into the conflict. Despite the assistance given to them by King Christian IV of Denmark, they were still defeated, and in 1629 Emperor Ferdinand II issued the Edict of Restitution, which required the Protestants to relinquish any territorial gains they had made since 1552 (doc. #101). This was the low point in the war from the point of view of the Protestant princes, but their prospects for survival increased greatly in 1630 when King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden decided to intervene.

126

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Although he presented himself as a defender of Lutheranism against Catholicism, his interests in the war were also clearly motivated by his desire to extend his own political influence over all of the territories bordering on the Baltic Sea (doc. #102). It took some persuading for him to gain the support of the Lutheran princes of Germany, since they did not wish to trade one overlord for another. Nevertheless, his successes in battle ultimately did much to restore confidence and encourage cooperation among the Protestant forces (doc. #103). After Gustavus Adolphus died in the battle of Lützen in November 1632, the Protestant forces once again suffered some setbacks. The Lutheran Elector of Saxony continued to keep his distance from the other Protestant princes and finally signed a separate treaty with the emperor in Prague in 1635. Those other princes who had not yet given up the fight were bolstered in the final stage of the war by support from both Lutheran Sweden and Catholic France. This coalition, now held together by political interests more than religious affinity, inflicted heavy losses on the troops of the Catholic League. At last, when it became clear that neither side could eliminate the other, the emperor, the German princes, and their foreign allies all agreed to a peace treaty, which was signed on October 24, 1648 (doc. #104). This Peace of Westphalia reaffirmed the decision that princes would be free to determine the religion of their territories. When enforced again at this point, however, it meant that the Catholics regained control of some territories that had become Protestant during the sixteenth century, and Calvinism was recognized as an option that a prince could elect. Lutheran gains were mostly confined to some of the ecclesiastical territories of the north, which they were finally allowed to secularize. It would take Germany a long time to recover from the destructive results of the Thirty Years’ War. The style of warfare used by the combatants contributed both directly and indirectly to the decimation of the population. The soldiers, many of whom were mercenaries, were not paid adequately, so their willingness to risk their lives was purchased by allowing them to plunder at will. Some towns were besieged more than ten times during the war. Those who escaped a violent death at the hands of the soldiers still faced a risk of starving to death or dying of plague. In some cases, the people became so desperate that they resorted to cannibalism (doc. #105). It is commonly estimated that one-third of the population of the cities perished during the war and as much as two-fifths of the rural population was wiped out between 1618 and 1648.

As society disintegrated, many Lutherans were deprived of adequate pastoral care due to the shortage of ministers and the deterioration of church institutions. Consequently, the communal aspects of religious life were often weakened. As is often the case in times of war, people were frequently willing to compromise their moral values or religious commitments in order to increase their chances of survival. This deterioration in religious life convinced some Lutherans, after the war, that a general reformation of spiritual life was desperately needed (see chapters 7 and 8 of this volume). It was not uncommon for such reformers to view the destructiveness of the war as a divine punishment for the sinfulness of the German people (doc. #106). Deep pessimism about the possibilities of renewal encouraged others to seek refuge in an introspective, individualistic piety that looked for consolation in the ecstasy of religious experiences or the prospect of bliss in the life to come. Still others sought to promote recovery from the age of religious wars by clarifying and defending the doctrinal beliefs that defined the identity of Lutheranism in contrast to Catholicism and Calvinism. These responses to the situation in Germany in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries will be examined more carefully in later chapters. THE SCHMALKALD WAR AND INTERIM CRISIS 93. THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN EMPEROR CHARLES V AND POPE PAUL III (JUNE 26, 1546) Pope Paul III (1534–49) and Emperor Charles V often interacted as rivals instead of allies. Although both of them favored the convening of a church council and the suppression of Protestant dissent, they disagreed about how to accomplish these goals. Four months after Luther’s death, however, they overcame their mutual distrust, at least temporarily, and signed the following alliance. The pope offered financial support and twelve thousand Italian soldiers to help the emperor defeat the Schmalkald League. From Walch 17:1453, trans. Eric Lund. . . . Whereas Germany has been disturbed for many years by gross error and false belief, and some now continue to act in such a way that great harm, corruption, and destruction may occur in Germany; and whereas now for some time there have been those who have wanted to take some action with

THE CHURCH’S STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL (1546–1648)

respect to such false belief in order to avoid divisions and errors and to maintain the unity of Germany; so an open and general council has been convoked and assembled at Trent. The Protestants, however, together with the Schmalkald League said that they did not want to submit to or attend the council that began to meet on the third Sunday in Advent just past and has since then, by the grace of God, been able to make some progress. 2. Therefore, his Holiness, the Pope, and his Majesty, the Emperor, have considered it advisable and productive that they should put together and accept the articles described below, agreeing to comply with them faithfully, to the honor and praise of Almighty God and for the sake of the unity of all people, especially in Germany.

127

this war effort or the faith of the Holy Christian Church, unless he has obtained the permission and consent of his Holiness, the Pope, or the Legate of the Holy See. . . . 94. THE AUGSBURG INTERIM (MAY, 1548) The Augsburg Interim consisted of twenty-six articles, the first eight of which discussed theological issues related to sin and salvation. The excerpts below focus on the changes in church practice that it recommended From J. Mehlhausen, ed., Das Augsburg ugsburger er Interim von 1548 (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1970), 66–142, trans. Eric Lund. 11. Of the Power and Authority of the Church

Fig. 4.1. A group of German soldiers known as Landsknecht, mercenary foot soldiers and pikemen who were an important military force in Germany and other European countries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Etching ca. 1530 by Daniel Hopfer (1470−1536).

3. First, that his Imperial Majesty in the name of God and with the help and assistance of his Holiness, the Pope, should, in the upcoming month of June, supply himself with soldiers and military equipment to prepare for war against those who have protested against the council, against the Schmalkald League, and also against all those in Germany who persist in false belief and error. With all his power and might, he should bring them back again into the ancient, true, and undoubted faith and into obedience to the Holy See. At the same time, his Imperial Majesty should endeavor with all his zeal and perseverance to see whether he can bring the rebels back to the old Faith and to obedience to the Holy See in an amicable manner, without war. In any case, he should prepare himself so that if they cannot be persuaded peaceably within the announced time, his Imperial Majesty will still be armed and ready for war. . . . 4. Furthermore, that his Imperial Majesty should not propose or accept any agreement with the abovementioned parties, which might be detrimental to

Although “Scripture,” Christ says, “cannot be broken” [John 10:35], and for that reason is unshakable and greater than all human authority, nevertheless, it has always been in the power of the church to discern between true and counterfeit scripture. From this source came the canon of Scripture, which was introduced in the name of the apostles and disciples of the Lord to distinguish between genuine and false writings. And just as the church has always had power and authority in this matter, so also it has the power to interpret the Scriptures and especially to extract and explain doctrines from them, since the Holy Spirit is present with it and leads it into all truth as Christ promised. . . . Furthermore, it is certain that the church has the power to punish and to excommunicate and also the power to bind, as Christ has ordained. . . . 12. Of Ecclesiastical Ministers The church also has teachings, given to it by God, which one should explain to the people. It has outward worship that one should treat and teach as holy and salubrious to the use of Christians. No less, the church has ministers who suitably administer such duties; neither can nor should the church lack such people. Not all Christians are called to these duties, for God himself has from the beginning given some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, in the work of ministry and to the upbuilding of the body of Christ [Eph 4:11–12]. . . . Therefore one should take care lest one mix

128

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

together the spiritual priesthood, which all who are anointed by the Holy Spirit and are Christians have in common, with the external ministry, which does not belong to all but only to those who are called and ordained. For that cannot take place without causing grave and harmful disorder and ruin in the church. 13. The Pope and Other Bishops Just as the church, which is the body of Christ, has one head so that it can more easily be maintained in unity, so also it has many bishops to rule the people whom Christ has purchased with his precious blood. Furthermore, by divine law, it has one highest bishop who presides over the others with a fullness of power, to guard against schism and division, through the prerogatives awarded to Peter. . . . All Christians should be especially obedient to this highest bishop and every one of his bishops, as the apostle says, “Be obedient to your leaders who keep watch over your souls” [Heb 13:17]. 17. The Sacrament of Penance Now since men who are reborn often fall into grave sin, Christ has instituted the sacrament of penance, which serves us, like a second plank in a shipwreck, after Baptism. . . . As with the other sacraments, this one also has the power to sanctify. But this sacrament consists particularly in the absolution of the priest, which is grounded in the institution and words of Christ, who has delegated this power to the priests, saying: “As my Father sent me, so send I you. Receive the Holy Spirit. Those whom you forgive, their sins are forgiven” [John 20:21–23]. . . . And although the satisfaction that expiates the guilt and eternal penalty of sin should be attributed to Christ alone, nevertheless, that satisfaction that consists of the fruits of repentance, namely, fasting, almsgiving, and prayers, is willingly received by us and is imposed by the priest in connection with the dispensing of the sacrament. . . . 18. The Sacrament of the Altar Now whoever has been restored to life in the Lord through the sacrament of penance must also be sustained by food and must grow in spiritual gifts. Therefore, Christ has instituted the sacrament of the altar, under the visible elements of bread and wine, which offers to us the true body and blood of Christ and through these spiritual foods unites us with him

as the head and members of the body so that we are nourished to all good, renewed and received through love into communion with the saints. . . . And if now we attribute as much to Christ and his words as we ought, it is no doubt that as soon as the word is added to the bread and wine, they become the true blood and body of Christ and the substance of the bread and wine is changed into the true body and blood of Christ. But whoever denies this calls the omnipotence of Christ into doubt and accuses him of being a liar. . . . 19. The Holy Oil The sacraments that we have considered above bring many great benefits to man when they regenerate the old man from the weaknesses of the flesh or confirm the regenerate in grace when they are received or restore again those who have fallen from grace or unite those restored more strongly with Christ. . . . And although these sacraments are always useful while we are in this life, as often as they are used, so that a sick man in his illness would not lack a special help in his time of danger, which could come to the aid of his body or strengthen his soul against the fiery dart of Satan, the sacrament of unction was instituted to which are added the prayers of the church. This oil the apostles first used as was mandated by the Lord when he sent them out to preach, “to cast out demons, and anoint the sick so they will be healed” [Mark 6:13]. . . . Therefore, whoever scorns this sacrament scorns Christ himself and his grace, which he extended to us through this holy oil. And, the greater such scorn is, the greater the danger faced by the sick person, not only in body but also in soul, and the more culpable is the rejection of the sacrament. . . . 23. The Invocation of the Saints When we consider the immeasurable benefits of Christ in the sacrifice of the altar, in which he made a sacrifice of himself for his entire spiritual body and for the salvation and welfare of all believers, it is appropriate, following the Lord’s example and the admonition of the apostle, that prayers for the wellbeing of the whole church should be addressed to God and expressions of thanks for all his benefits. So the church assembles all its members together and gives thanks for all those who, having departed from this world, live with the Lord. And the church especially gives thanks by the veneration of the saints

THE CHURCH’S STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL (1546–1648)

beloved by God, who, although they were weak in nature, were strengthened through the power of his grace so that they overcame the frailties of the flesh and with many fights against sin, the devil, and death, not through their own strength but by the strength of God, gained a crown of righteousness before the just judge. . . . But we not only honor the saints and thank God for them but also wish that through their prayers and merits we may be protected by their help in all things. And we rightly believe that they, as members of one communion and one body, are also bound with us by one spirit and a chain of love and that they desire our salvation and suffer with us in misfortune....... But we do not say that the merits belonging to the saints are the same as the merits we find in Christ, for since he gave himself for us and shed his blood for us he merited and acquired the perfect reconciliation of the world with God. . . . But out of the mercy and liberality of God and from the grace of Christ the merits of the saints are not only conducive to their own salvation but also useful for our protection and the obtaining of divine grace. . . . 26. Of Ceremonies and the Use of Sacraments The old ceremonies relating to the sacrament of Baptism should all remain, namely, exorcism, the renunciation of the devil, the profession of faith, the chrism, and others, for they serve to show and signify the power of this sacrament. So also the old ceremonies that have been added to the Mass by the Catholic church should not be changed, for they are all appropriate to what is done in the Mass. . . . The ceremonies of the other sacraments should be used according to the old Agendas. Still, where they give cause for superstitious use, they should be improved with timely counsel. The altars, priestly vestments, vessels, signs of the cross, likewise crosses, candles, images, and pictures, should be retained in the church. Nevertheless, they are remembrances, and no worship should be accorded to them nor should any superstitious practices be attached to pictures or holy objects. . . . One should retain all the holy days accepted by the church, and if all are not retained, at least the most important: Sundays, the Birth of our Lord, the Circumcision of our Lord, Epiphany, Palm Sunday, Easter and the two following days, the Ascension of our Lord, Pentecost and the two following days, Corpus Christi, the feast days of the Virgin Mary and

129

the days of the holy apostles: John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, Stephen, Lawrence, Martin, Michael, and All Saints. And also in every church the day of its patron saint so that we honor God through his saints and so that we may be excited to imitate them and might desire to be associated with their merits. . . . And since one should hold with the apostle that he who is without a wife is concerned for the things of the Lord, it is to be wished that clergy will be found who are celibate and maintain true chastity. Nevertheless, since there are many performing ministerial functions who have taken wives, they should not be dismissed from their duties but should await the discussion of their situation and a judgment from the general council, for a change in these things cannot take place at this time without causing grave disorder. . . . Likewise, the administration of the Eucharist under both kinds to which many have now become accustomed cannot be changed at this time without serious commotion. And because a general council to which all subjects of the Holy Roman Empire must submit will without doubt consider this issue with pious and zealous care so that in any case the consciences of people and the peace of the church will be taken into consideration, those who have received both kinds before this time need not give this up but should wait for the discussion and decision of the general council. . . . 95. THE LEIPZIG INTERIM (DECEMBER, 1548) The Leipzig Interim proposal followed the basic format of the Augsburg Interim but was a briefer document. To facilitate comparison, the selections included here roughly parallel the excerpts given above. Several other articles that provoked later doctrinal disputes are included in chapter 5 of this volume. From CR 7:259–64, trans. Eric Lund. It is our judgment that one should render obedience to His Majesty, the Holy Roman Emperor, our most gracious sovereign, and behave in such a way that His Imperial Majesty and everyone may note that we are all inclined to quiet, peace, and unity. This advice we faithfully admonish others to follow and will, as much as possible, also observe ourselves....... Accordingly, we judge first that all that the ancient teachers have affirmed with regard to adiaphora, that is, matters of indifference that may be observed without violating the divine Scriptures and that, on the other hand, still remain in use, should also be main-

130

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

tained henceforth, and that therein no burden or augmentation should be sought or applied, since this cannot occur without offending a good conscience....... Of Ecclesiastical Power and Authority What the true Christian church, gathered in the Holy Spirit, acknowledges, determines, and teaches in regard to matters of faith should be taught and preached, since nothing it determines should or can be contrary to the Holy Scriptures. Of Ecclesiastical Ministers . . . Learned pastors and ministers should be ordained who are competent and fit to teach the Word of God and to preside over the people in a Christian manner. . . . All ministers should be subject and obedient to the supreme bishop and other bishops who administer their episcopal office according to God’s command, and use the same for edification and not for destruction. These other ministers should be also ordained by such bishops upon presentation by their patrons. . . .

Of Extreme Unction Although in this land anointing with oil has not been in use for many years, it is written in Mark and James how the apostles used it. James says, “If anyone is sick among you let him call for the priests of the church so that they may pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith will make the sick man well, and the Lord shall raise him up” [Jas 5:14–15]. Therefore, such unction may be observed, according to the use of the apostle, and Christian prayer and words of consolation from the Holy Scriptures may be spoken over the sick. The people should be instructed concerning this in such way that they understand it rightly and all superstition and misunderstanding will be removed and avoided. Of the Mass

Infant baptism, along with exorcism, the assistance and confession of sponsors, and other ancient Christian ceremonies, should be taught and retained.

Mass should be observed henceforth in this land with ringing of bells, with lights and vessels, with chants, vestments, and ceremonies. In places where there are sufficient persons, the priests and ministrants should go in a becoming way before the altar in their regular church vestments and robes, speak in the beginning the Confiteor, and the introit, the Kyrie eleison, the Gloria in Excelsis Deo, and the Dominus vobiscum, the collects, the epistle, and all that now current in Latin should be sung. . . . The Gospel to be sung in Latin and read to the people in German.......

Of Repentance

Of Images

Repentance, confession, and absolution, and what pertains thereto, should be diligently taught and preached, so that the people confess to the priests, and receive absolution in God’s stead from them. They should also be diligently admonished and urged to pray, fast, and give alms. No one should be admitted to the highly venerated sacrament of the body and blood of Christ unless he has first confessed to the priest and received absolution from him. Furthermore, the people should be diligently taught and instructed that in this sacrament we are united with Jesus Christ our Savior as the head with the members of his body, so that by it we are raised up and nourished to all good. . . .

The images and pictures of the sufferings of Christ and of the saints may be also retained in the churches, and the people should be taught that they are only remembrances, and no things to which divine honors should be attached. To the images and pictures of the saints, however, no superstitious resort should occur or be encouraged.

Of Baptism

Of Holidays Sunday, the Birthday of our Lord, St. Stephen’s Day, St. John the Evangelist’s Day, the Circumcision of the Lord, Epiphany, Easter and the two following days, the Ascension of the Lord, Pentecost with the two days following, Corpus Christi, the Festivals of the Holy Virgin Mary, the days of the Holy Apostles, of St. John the Baptist, of St. Mary Magdalene, of St. Michael and some others, on which there should be

THE CHURCH’S STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL (1546–1648)

only church services with preaching and Mass and communion, as of the Conversion of Paul; of the beheading of John, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in Passion Week. Of the Eating of Meat One should abstain from the eating of meat on Fridays and Saturdays, also in fasts, and this should be observed as an external ordinance at the command of his Imperial Majesty. Still, those whom necessity excuses, such as hard laborers, travelers, pregnant women and those in childbed, old weak persons, and children, should not be bound hereby. Of the Deportment of Ministers And we consider it honorable and good that pastors and ministers in their vestments as well as otherwise should deport themselves in a priestly and creditable manner, and that with the cooperation and advice of the bishops or consistories they should make an arrangement with one another, and observe it, so that by their apparel a distinction may be observed between the ministers and worldly persons, and proper reverence may be shown toward the priestly state. . . .

131

hate, he will get away with it even less than the Jews or Romans did. Therefore we poor Saxons under the Elector should neither lose heart nor be terrified by the coarse tyrant from Meissen, for he will not succeed, that I know for sure. God cannot suffer or endure such cruel and shocking disloyal ingratitude and will not help or support such a wanton fool but will much more strike out and exterminate him entirely as not only the Holy Scriptures but all of history also attests and proves. For Duke Moritz’s departure from the gospel and God’s Word as well as his disloyalty and ingratitude toward the Elector of Saxony is such a haughty claim of superiority that God can have no patience with it. His partners, those hypocrites, the forces of Meissen, may cover it up as much as they want, but his and their venomous evil, their deceit, lies, avarice, and false heart are known to everyone, and it is evident that the Lord Duke Moritz, himself the false and disloyal claimant, has bound himself with their will, knowledge, and counsel to King Ferdinand against the Elector, the rightful heir and lineage of Saxony, in order to drive him out and exterminate him, as the secretly conducted conference at the castle in Prague will clearly point out, when it comes to light. . . .

96. AMSDORF: WARNING AGAINST THE GODLESS DUKE MORITZ (1549) Born in the same year as Luther, Nikolaus von Amsdorf was involved in the earliest struggles of the Lutheran movement and continued to be a forceful presence for almost twenty years after Luther’s death. Always noted for his uncompromising defense of Luther’s teachings, he was quick to conclude that the churches needed to take a firm stand against both the political maneuvering of Duke Moritz and the theological manipulations of Melanchthon. From Theodor Pressel, Nic icolaus olaus von Amsdorf: nach gleichzeitig gleichzeitigen en Quellen (Elberfeld: Friderichs, 1862), 57–59, trans. Eric Lund. . . . God has said that he neither can nor will endure scorning or blaspheming of the gospel and will in no way allow it to go unpunished, as the Jews and Romans who sinned unknowingly have truly experienced. But since Duke Moritz knowingly and with a well-considered mind has begun and undertaken this unheard of, horribly evil deed against God and his Word to exterminate the legitimate bloodline of the ruling family of Saxony out of pure envy and

Fig. 4.2. Portrait of Duke Moritz of Saxony (1559) by Lucas Cranach the Younger.

132

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Therefore, guard yourself against the disloyal Duke Moritz, who has begun such cruel, disloyal, and evil deeds to please the emperor and the pope, lest we forsake the hidden and unseen God and his Word and come again under the papacy, accepting its abominations and abuses. For it is certainly true that if Duke Moritz wants to stay in the good graces of the emperor he must allow the Mass to be prepared again and held everywhere in his land. Wait and see if he is not eventually chased out of the land. This will certainly happen if he does not improve, convert, and become pious, for God cannot suffer such disloyalty and falsehood. Therefore let everyone be warned sufficiently that they must protect themselves against Duke Moritz and his talk, guile, deceit, and wickedness. For whoever gives himself to Duke Moritz without necessity puts himself under the pope and the emperor, scorns God and his Word, and perjures himself against the Elector. . . . 97. AMSDORF: LETTER AGAINST THE LEIPZIG INTERIM (FEBRUARY 15, 1549) From Theodor Pressel, Nic icolaus olaus von Amsdorf: nach gleichzeitig gleichzeitigen en Quellen (Elberfeld: Friderichs, 1862), 70, trans. Eric Lund. 1. What Christ our Lord is against no Christian can or should willingly accept. The Leipzig Articles are against and opposed to Christ for they do not teach or gather to Christ but disperse from and oppose Christ. It is written: “Whoever is not with me is against me.” Therefore all who accept and agree with these articles are Christ’s enemies and persecutors. 2. It is certain that God cannot be served with human tradition. Now the Leipzig Articles are merely human and papist traditions; therefore one cannot honor or serve God with them. And although the heart knows that such traditions are not a divine service, still the emperor and pope have commanded them as if they were divine service and want them to be held and considered as divine service. Therefore, a word to anyone who accepts and holds the Leipzig Articles, who accepts them against his own heart and conscience and consents by that action to the pope’s abominations and idolatry and gives others an example and justification for serving and honoring the true God with such human traditions: “You should not do what you think is good but what I command you.” God and his dear Son, Jesus Christ, have not commanded the Leipzig Articles, and there-

fore the Christian cannot and should not accept the same articles in any way. 3. Christians cannot and should not accept any teaching of the devil, for all the devil’s teachings are against the truth of the gospel and Christian freedom. Both of these cannot stand and remain alongside the devil’s teachings because truth and lies do not rhyme together. Where the devil’s teachings get the upper hand and rule, both Christian freedom and the truth of the gospel perish. Now rules in the Leipzig Articles related to the eating of meat and the like are merely teachings of the devil, since they are commands or prohibitions made by the emperor that erect the religion of the pope again. It is laughable that they should so impudently be called a civil law, since the pope formerly forbid them under the guise of piety and the emperor now has renewed the papal laws and decrees and ratified them with great earnest. Therefore no Christian can or should accept the Leipzig Articles without violating the gospel and his conscience. For in so doing, he would be accepting the mandate of Antiochus, who set up his abomination and idol (the Interim) in the holy city (that is, holy Christendom) [1 Maccabees 1]. . . . 98. MANIFESTO OF DUKE MORITZ AGAINST THE EMPEROR (1552) When it became disadvantageous to Duke Moritz to continue his alliance with Charles V, he claimed that during the Schmalkald War he had not understood the emperor’s true political intentions. In this manifesto, he prepares to assume a new role as defender of the German people against a deceitful tyrant. From Quellenbuch zur Geschichte der Neuzeit euzeit, ed. Max Schilling (Berlin: Gaertners, 1903), 103–6, trans. Eric Lund. By God’s grace, we (Moritz, Duke of Saxony; Johann Albrecht, Duke of Mecklenburg; Wilhelm, Count of Hesse), along with the other princes and nobles associated with us, offer our friendly service, favorable greetings, and wish for grace and all good things to all the electors and princes, princely houses, counts, lords, nobles, as well as the honorable cities and estates of the Holy Empire of the German nation. We want you to know that we have always and at this time still desire nothing more highly than a general peace in the holy realm of the German nation and seek to find and conclude a confirmation of the same in a true and Christian agreement concerning the strife and separation of the Christian religion, in

THE CHURCH’S STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL (1546–1648)

accordance with the prophetic and apostolic word and divine doctrine. The emperor has many times given us fair words, written promises, pledges, and imperial decrees concerning such an agreement, yet, as you know, not only has it not materialized, but the reverse has happened when he has found the opportunity to reinterpret, call back, or abolish all such decrees, letters, promises, and fair words. . . . It has not stopped at that, but he has furthermore now and again under the guise of religion embittered some evidently Christian rulers against us or our other associates, slandered and aroused hatred against us, incited us against each other, and given others an impression of our religion that is different from what it evidently is. The issue of religion appears to be of utmost concern to him, but the opposite is actually the case. Under the guise of attempting to resolve a religious schism, he would like to force through and achieve his own domination. . . . We, the abovementioned Elector and princes together and especially in common, have considered the present miserable state of the German nation, our very beloved fatherland, how it has gone into decline, and the extent to which we Germans have been overrun with troops from foreign nations. For many years, the poor subjects of the emperor from the nobility, cities, and villages have been neglected or run into the ground, and their women and children violated. Some of the same have been abused against all nature; one thing of value after another has been forced from them under false pretenses. Especially, in many ways our old praiseworthy freedom has been weakened, diminished, reduced, and smothered, and all our goods and possessions, our sweat and blood have been sucked out of us. ..... Thus, we have finally been brought by this and other means into such an unbearable, beastly, hereditary servitude, yoke, and bondage that our descendants and children’s children cry to heaven and curse us under the ground for having watched this come about. So we, therefore, have confidentially acted together and have revealed our intentions to other Christian rulers, such as the praiseworthy crown of France and other lords and friends of ours. We have united in the name of Almighty God, his beloved Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit (which leads us and rules us) and, with a powerful hand, seek the acquittal of Count Philip of Hesse and the imprisoned Duke Johann Friedrich of Saxony. We, Duke Moritz and the Elector of Brandenburg, consider it our high duty to do what we can to throw off the burdensome yoke of beastly servitude and bondage and to rescue

133

and recover the old praiseworthy liberty and freedom of our beloved fatherland, the German nation. May the Holy Trinity bestow grace, favor, and salvation upon us. Amen.

Fig. 4.3. Portrait of Emperor Charles V (1532) by Jakob Seisenegger (1505–67).

99. THE RELIGIOUS PEACE OF AUGSBURG (1555) It took seven months for the Diet of Augsburg to work out the details of the following peace treaty. The principle of reservatio ecclesiastica (see point #18, below) was still very much in dispute at the end of the negotiations.

134

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

From Select Documents Illustr Illustrating ating Mediaev Mediaeval al and Modern History History, ed. Emil Reich (London: King & Son, 1905), 230–32. 15. In order to bring peace into the Holy Empire of the Germanic Nation between the Roman Imperial Majesty and the Electors, Princes, and Estates: let neither His Imperial Majesty nor the Electors, Princes, etc., do any violence or harm to any estate of the empire on account of the Augsburg Confession, but let them enjoy their religious belief, liturgy, and ceremonies as well as their estates and other rights and privileges in peace; and complete religious peace shall be obtained only by Christian means of amity, or under threat of the punishment of the Imperial ban. 16. Likewise the Estates espousing the Augsburg Confession shall let all the Estates and Princes who cling to the old religion live in absolute peace and in the enjoyment of all their estates, rights, and privileges. 17. However, all such as do not belong to the two abovenamed religions shall not be included in the present peace but be totally excluded from it. 18. And since it has proved to be a matter of great dispute what was to happen with the bishoprics, priories, and other ecclesiastical benefices of such Catholic priests who would in course of time abandon the old religion, we have in virtue of the powers of Roman Emperors ordained as follows: where an archbishop, bishop, or prelate or any other priest of our old religion shall abandon the same, his archbishopric, bishopric, prelacy, and other benefices together with all their income and revenues that he has so far possessed shall be abandoned by him without any further objection or delay. The chapter and such as are entitled to it by common law or the custom of the place shall elect a person espousing the old religion who may enter on the possession and enjoyment of all the rights and incomes of the place without any further hindrance and without prejudging any ultimate amicable transaction of religion. 20. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Augsburg Confession, dogma, appointment of ministers, church ordinances, and ministries hitherto practiced (but apart from all the rights of the Electors, Princes and Estates, colleges and monasteries to taxes in money or tithes) shall from now cease, and [those adhering to] the Augsburg Confession shall be left to the free and untrammeled enjoyment of their religion, ceremonies, appointment of ministers, as is stated in a subsequent separate article, until the final transaction of religion will take place. 23. No Estate shall try to persuade the subjects of

other Estates to abandon their religion nor protect them against their own magistrates. Such as had from olden times the rights of patronage are not included in the present article. 24. In case our subjects, whether belonging to the old religion or the Augsburg Confession, should intend leaving their homes with their wives and children in order to settle in another place, they shall be hindered neither in the sale of their estates after due payment of the local taxes nor injured in their honor. THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR (1618–1648)

Fig. 4.4. John Calvin at age 53. Etching by René Boyvin (ca. 1525–ca. 1598).

100. THE FORMATION OF THE PROTESTANT UNION (1608) When they formed the Protestant Union, a number of Lutheran and Calvinist princes, including the Electors of the Palatinate and Brandenburg, set aside their religious differences to face a common opponent. As this document indicates, however, the Lutheran Elector of Saxony was not one of the original signatories.

THE CHURCH’S STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL (1546–1648)

From Gerhard Benecke, ed., Germany in the Thirty Years War (New York: St. Martin’s, 1979), 9–10. In view of the urgent necessity, we, the undersigned Electors and Estates of the Holy Empire, much less to damage but much more to strengthen and uphold peace and unity in the Holy Empire, as dedicated and obedient Estates of the Empire of the German Nation, our beloved fatherland, in order to advance the common well-being, our land, and people, and also those Estates who will in future join us to further peace, order, and protection in the name of God the Almighty, have one and all reached the present amicable and confidential agreement that we acknowledge by virtue of this letter, as follows: 1. That each member shall keep good faith with the other and their heirs, land, and people, and that no one shall enter any other alliance; also that no Estate, jurisdiction, territory, or subjects shall damage, fight, or in any way harm another Estate, nor break the laws of the Imperial constitution, nor give aid in any manner if such a break should occur. . . . 4. It is our wish that in matters concerning the liberties and high jurisdictions of the German Electors and Estates, as also of the Protestant (Evangelische) Estates’ grievances as presented at the last Imperial assembly concerning infringements of those selfsame rights, freedoms, and laws of the Empire, these shall all be presented and pressed at subsequent Imperial and Imperial Circle assemblies, and not merely left to secret correspondence with each other. We also agree to try to influence other Protestant Estates (that is, Saxony) toward an understanding with us. 5. We also agree that this secret union shall not affect our disagreement on several points of religion, but that notwithstanding these, we have agreed to support each other. No member is to allow an attack on any other in books or through the pulpit, nor give cause for any breach of the peace, while at the same time leaving untouched the theologian’s right of disputation to affirm the Word of God. 6. If one or the other of us is attacked . . . the remaining members of the Union shall immediately come to his aid with all the resources of the Union, as necessity may demand, and as set out in the detailed agreement. . . . 101. THE EDICT OF RESTITUTION (1629) The Edict of Restitution was issued after the king of Denmark had withdrawn in defeat from the Thirty Years’ War. Although the Protestants were

135

now in a very vulnerable position, the emperor did not attempt to force their return to Catholicism. Realistically, he only attempted to reverse any gains made by the Protestants since the Peace of Augsburg. From Select Documents Illustr Illustrating ating Mediaev Mediaeval al and Modern History, ed. Emil Reich (London: King & Son, 1905), 234. We, Ferdinand, by the grace of God, Holy Roman Emperor . . . are determined for the realization both of the religious and profane peace to dispatch our Imperial commissioners into the Empire; to reclaim all the archbishoprics, bishoprics, prelacies, monasteries, hospitals, and endowments that the Catholics had possessed at the time of the Treaty of Passau (1552) and of which they have been illegally deprived; and to put into all these Catholic foundations duly qualified persons so that each may get his proper due. We herewith declare that the Religious Peace (of 1555) refers only to the Augsburg Confession as it was submitted to our ancestor Emperor Charles V on 25 June 1530; and that all other doctrines and sects, whatever names they may have, not included in the Peace are forbidden and cannot be tolerated. . . . 102. KING GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS: FAREWELL TO THE SWEDISH ESTATES (MAY, 1630) Although Gustavus Adolphus also had political motivations for getting involved in the war in Germany, this document shows that he described the cause to the Swedish people as a campaign to protect his fellow Lutherans from the advance of Catholic tyranny. From James H. Robinson, ed., Readings in Eur Euroopean History History, vol. 2 (Boston: Ginn, 1906), 207. I call on the all-powerful God, by whose providence we are here assembled, to witness that it is not by my own wish, or from any love of war, that I undertake this campaign. On the contrary, I have been now for several years goaded into it by the imperial party, not only through the reception accorded to our emissary to Lübeck, but also by the action of their general in aiding with his army our enemies, the Poles, to our great detriment. We have been urged, moreover, by our harassed brother-inlaw [the Elector of Brandenburg] to undertake this war, the chief object of which is to free our oppressed brothers in the faith from the clutches of the pope, which, God helping us, we hope to do.

136

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

103. KING GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS: REPLY TO THE AMBASSADOR FROM BRANDENBURG (JULY, 1630) The Protestant princes needed the assistance offered by the king of Sweden in order to defeat the emperor, but some of them hesitated to let him get involved in Germany for fear that they would only exchange one foreign overlord for another. In this letter, Gustavus Adolphus attempts to assuage the concerns of the princes and offers an ultimatum to his brother-in-law, the Elector of Brandenburg. From James H. Robinson, ed., Readings in Eur Euroopean History History, vol. 2 (Boston: Ginn, 1906), 210.

think by prayers and beseechings and such like means to obtain something different? . . . I seek not my own advantage in this war nor any gain, save the security of my kingdom; I can look for nothing but expense, hard work, trouble, and danger to life and limb. . . . I tell you plainly that I will know nor hear nothing of “neutrality”; his Excellency must be either friend or foe. When I reach his frontier he must declare himself either hot or cold. The fight is between God and the devil. If his Excellency is on God’s side, let him stand by me; if he holds rather with the devil, then he must fight with me; there is no third course—that is certain. . . . 104. THE TREATY OF OSNABRÜCK, WESTPHALIA (1648) The Peace of Westphalia was concluded after months of negotiations at Osnabrück and Münster among France, Sweden, and the German Catholics and Protestants. From Norman G. R. Elton, ed., Renaissance and Ref Reformation, ormation, 1300–1648 (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 249. Article 5: From Paragraphs 1 and 30

Fig. 4.5. Portait of King Gustavus Adolphus (1624) by Jacob Hoefnagel (1575–1630).

. . . I have come into this land for no other purpose than to free it from the thieves and robbers who have so plagued it, and first and foremost, to help his Excellency out of his difficulties. Does his Excellency then not know that the emperor and his followers do not mean to rest till the Evangelical religion is wholly rooted out of the empire, and that his Excellency has nothing else to expect than being forced either to deny his religion or to leave his country? Does he

The Religion Peace of 1555, as it was later confirmed . . . by various Imperial diets, shall, in all its articles entered into and concluded by the unanimous consent of the Emperor, Electors, Princes and Estates of both religions, be confirmed and observed fully and without infringement. . . . In all matters there shall be an exact and mutual equality between all the Electors, Princes and states of either religion, as far as agrees with the constitution of the realm, the Imperial decrees, and the present treaty; so that what is right for one side shall also be right for the other; all violence and other contrary proceedings being herewith between the two sides forever prohibited. . . . Whereas all immediate states enjoy, together with their territorial rights and sovereignty as hitherto used throughout the Empire, also the right of reforming the practice of religion; and whereas in the Religion Peace the privilege of emigration was conceded to the subjects of such states if they dissented from the religion of their territorial lord; and whereas later, for the better preserving of greater concord among the states, it was agreed that no one should seduce another’s subjects to his religion, or for that reason make any undertaking of defense or

THE CHURCH’S STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL (1546–1648)

protection, or come to their aid for any reason; it is now agreed that all these be fully observed by the states of either religion, and that no state shall be hindered in the rights in matters of religion, which belong to it by reason of its territorial independence and sovereignty. Article 7: From Paragraphs 1 and 2 It is agreed by the unanimous consent of His Imperial Majesty and all the Estates of the Empire that whatever rights and benefits are conferred upon the states and subjects attached to the Catholic and Augsburg faiths, either by the constitutions of the Empire or by the Religious Peace and this public treaty . . . shall also apply to those who are called reformed (Calvinists). . . . Beyond the religions mentioned above, none shall be received or tolerated in the Holy Empire. THE EFFECTS OF WAR ON THE LUTHERAN PEOPLE OF GERMANY 105. THE DIARY OF HANS HEBERLE (1618–1649) The following recollections, written by a Lutheran cobbler from a village near Ulm, provide a glimpse of the experiences and attitudes of a devout layperson who lived through the entire Thirty Years’ War. In addition to recording his own memories, Hans Heberle also included material from printed reports that described notable events in other parts of Germany (for example, the effects of the siege of Breisach). From Der Dr Dreissigjährig eissigjährigee Krieg in zeitg zeitgenössischer enössischer Darstellung: Hans Heberles “Zeytr “Zeytreg egister” ister” 1618–72 1618–72, ed. Gerd Zillhardt (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1975), 92–109, trans. Eric Lund. . . . In the year 1617 a Lutheran festival was held on account of Dr. Martin Luther, the highly esteemed and dear prophet of Germany, the shining light that brought forth again the Word of God. To commemorate this [the start of the Reformation], a joyous festival was held in all of the Evangelical churches, and all the children in the territory of Ulm were given a special half batzen, called a jubilee coin, as a remembrance of the occasion. Special sermons and prayers were composed and delivered in the churches. Much was written about them and some of them I remember, but I cannot describe them here on account of

137

their length. The celebration was held on St. Martin’s Day, the eleventh day of November in the year 1617. The anniversary festival was the beginning of the war, for one can read frequently in Catholic records about how the sight of this celebration stuck painfully in their eyes. In the year 1618 a great comet appeared in the shape of a great and terrifying rod, which was a severe threat from God on account of our sinful lives for which we formerly and still deserve punishment; it was seen from fall until spring. In the 1620s and 1630s we would unfortunately experience what it signified about what was to follow, and we have lamented the same with hot tears. It is not enough to describe what happened but this little book will attempt diligently to do so. It was also during this year that the great and well-known market town of Plurß was destroyed by an earthquake. In the year 1619 Ferdinand II became the Holy Roman Emperor, and under him a great persecution arose, with war, rebellion, and the shedding of much Christian blood, as a few examples will demonstrate. First, a great war began in Bohemia, which he attempted to restore by force to his religion. After that, war spread in the following years to the territories of Braunschweig, Mecklenburg, Lüneburg, Friesland, Brandenburg, Pomerania, Gottland, Austria, Moravia, Silesia, Heidelberg, indeed, to almost all of Germany, about which I cannot tell or describe everything. . . . The year 1628, the twelfth day of May: On account of the events of the war, hours of prayer were appointed and established in city and country so that we might ask God Almighty to avert the current punishment and act beneficently toward us again. In this same year the emperor extended his war and brought it as far as the moors and the city of Stralsund, which he vigorously attacked and besieged. But because the city lay on the moor and was exposed to the moor, it had strong help from the king of Sweden, whom it received as a protector and to whom it surrendered. He helped it considerably and rescued it from the enemy and drove off the imperial troops so that they had to withdraw with great injury and damage. This marked the beginning of the Swedish king’s intervention in Germany. . . . Now [1629: the year of the Edict of Restitution], since the Augsburg Confession was abolished in all places by the emperor, and Catholic properties had to be given back to the Catholics, the Evangelical estates were shocked and the Catholics were very glad. Then there was a true uproar, and no one had

138

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

any security. Everyone feared that their things would be taken away. Then some writings came from the king of Sweden to the Evangelical estates saying that he wanted to come and help the threatened religion. This brought great joy to the Evangelicals. They took heart in the fact that they would be helped and also became more resolute. Since the imperial forces were for the most part out of Germany and had gone to Italy, the Evangelicals became somewhat bolder. They got up the courage to complain publicly that what had taken place was a great injustice because it affected those who had never fought against the emperor as well as those who took up weapons again. But because the emperor had issued a mandate or edict in which he ordered that all things that had been previously taken, contrary to the terms of the Peace of Religion, should be given up and returned to the Catholics, there was more than a little hesitation among the Evangelicals. There was not one among them who did not have some such goods in his possession. And because the negotiations went better than anyone could have thought, the protesters were overcome by the emperor. . . . In this year [1630] the situation was very bad for the Evangelical religion in all places, and if the king of Sweden had not stood up against the emperor in war, the German princes would have been lost. They were all too weak and could not overcome the cunning horde. But God, who can complete and turn all things around, caused the one who dug the grave to fall into it. It is appropriate to observe at the end of the year in this difficult, troubled, and tragic time that we could not easily forget what God has done for us up to the present, according to his holy Word, which has so clearly guided us. On the twenty-fourth of June, the feast day of St. John, we Evangelicals held a festival of thanksgiving in all churches, for it was a hundred years to the day that the Evangelical confession was delivered at Augsburg through some princes and the estates of the Holy Empire to the great emperor, Charles V. We held this celebration with beautiful worship services and prayer and song and communion. In the morning and afternoon sermons, the Augsburg Confession was read publicly from the pulpit by the pastor so that everyone would know what the confession contained. . . . In the summer [of 1632] as the king of Sweden moved out of Bavaria to come to the help of the Saxons, whose land had fallen under the control of imperial troops, the imperial and Swedish armies fought at Lützen in Saxony and the Swedes held the field,

but lost their king, who perished in the battle from a shot....... On the thirtieth day of July [1638], the battle and strike against Breisach took place. The Bavarian and imperial troops fought badly with the troops from Weimar and France, so that the imperial and Bavarian side lost several thousand men along with many wagons and provisions that the city of Breisach had supplied. In this battle almost all the commanders were taken captive except for [General Franz Egon von] Fürstenberg, who escaped in a small boat down the Rhine. . . . On the eighteenth of August, Breisach was besieged by Duke Bernhard of Weimar. . . . On the ninth day of December, Breisach reached an accord with Duke Bernhard because of the great starvation. The city surrendered due to the great hunger and besieging after having held out and bravely resisted from August 18 to December 9. To see how it was, a description follows: The description of the hunger in Breisach during the siege. . . . A horse’s foot cost five shillings and a pound of dog’s flesh 5 batzen. Many mice and rats were sold for a high price. . . . Almost all the dogs and cats in the city were eaten. Several thousand horses, cows, oxen, calves, and sheep were eaten up and devoured. On November 24 a soldier under arrest in the prison died, and before the warden in charge could order his burial the other prisoners had cut up the body and eaten it. The prisoners even picked holes into the walls of their prison with their fingers and ate what they found. Two dead men who had already been buried were cut open, and their innards were taken out and eaten. In one day, three children were consumed. The soldiers promised a pastry-cook’s boy a piece of bread if he followed them into their camp. But when he got there, they butchered him up and ate him. On December 10 eight well-known burgher’s children disappeared in the fishers’ district alone, and were presumed to be eaten, since no one knew where they had gone. This is not to mention all the children of beggars and strangers whom no one knew anyway. In the town square alone ten corpses were found, not counting all those found in the alleys and on the dung-heap. . . . Is this not a great calamity above all calamities that one should go through this and partly watch similar happenings every year, month, week, day, and hour?

THE CHURCH’S STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL (1546–1648) No wonder that we are dying, through such shocking and difficult events to which God has subjected all of Germany. I have myself unfortunately experienced this from my youth onward and especially during my married years, as is clearly manifest in what I have endured. Yet God shall never forsake me. He helps me through this difficult time, through many fights and great conflicts, in the distress of war and plague, on the open field and on the frontier. I thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, you are always my helper, who has saved me from many perils, and helped me through hard times with loose scoundrels, who are so many and cause so much pain for pious folk. With their godless living they strive against God’s order. Oh true God, see what they do; protect us and defend us against this false band, who persecute you and your Holy Word now in many places. Stay with us, O Lord above, and we will always praise you; on your heavenly throne hear me, Lord, through your Son. I wish for nothing more at this hour, I say ‘amen’ with all my heart. My name is Hans Heberle, Now God give me my eternal reward. . . .

This year [16]49 is a fortunate, exceptional jubilee and year of joy. Although peace was made in the year [16]48, the provisions of the treaty were not fully concluded. But glory be to God in the highest; now there is peace on earth in our Germany and in the entire Holy Roman Empire, among the emperor, the Swedes, the French, and all kings, princes, counts, and cities, and also villages, towns, hamlets, farms, and isolated places. Rich and poor, young and old, women and men, wives and children, even all the dear cattle and horses will all take delight and enjoy peace. Yes, also the dear acres and fields that lay deserted and desolate for a long time will be properly plowed and cultivated once more, and from them we poor human children will sustain ourselves again so that we may heal the great injury that we have experienced and overcome our grief. We may also carry on our trades in order to pay the cost assigned to us for horsemen along with the peace tax and finally bring an end to this great burden. . . . Our lords reached an agreement with each other about how and when every regiment should be dis-

139

banded so that no mutiny might arise in the Empire accompanied by the soldiers’ robbing, plundering, and other troubles. (This was necessary since the greater part of them were completely evil and daring scoundrels, as almost all soldiers are.) Still there were delays and in the meantime we had to continue to pay the demobilization taxes, every month, and even every week and day. But praise and thanks be to God, our regiment was disbanded and withdrawn from the land, peaceably and without causing any harm, on the 11th day of October, the same week as the blessing of the Holzchurch. . . . 106. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS OF J. V. ANDREAE (1634–1635) Johann Valentin Andreae (1586–1654), the grandson of Jakob Andreae, was an important theologian and church leader in southwest Germany. Early in his life he attempted to promote social and religious reform through a number of imaginative writings, which included a utopian work entitled Christianopolis and several anonymous treatises that initiated the myth of a secret scholarly fraternity known as the Rosicrucians. From 1620 to 1639, he served as superintendent of the Lutheran churches in Calw. Subsequently he became court preacher in Stuttgart and general superintendent of the territorial church of Württemberg. The following excerpts from his writings describe the hardships he faced as a minister serving during the Thirty Years’ War. His concerns about the degeneration of moral and spiritual life echo the preoccupations of the devotional writer Johann Arndt (see chapter 7 of this volume), who was a strong influence on the development of his thought. From Ein Schwäbischer Pfarr arrer er im Dr Dreissigjährig eissigjährigen en Krieg Krieg, ed. Paul Antony (Heidenheim: Heidenheimer, 1970), 90–94; and Johann Valentin Andreae, Vita ab ipso conscripta (Berlin: Schultz, 1849), 161–63, trans. Eric Lund. The Destruction of the City of Calw (1634) from a Letter to a Friend Through murder, plunder, scorching and burning, the seizing of people and other destructive activities, the size of our population has diminished by two thirds. We were 3,832, but 2,304 have departed, so now we are only 1,528. Those of us who remain would consider ourselves fortunate if only, as other

140

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

places have been allowed to do, we were left alone to assess our own losses which did not exceed a ton of gold, and were not furthered burdened by the other circumstances related to our poverty which have completely forced us to the ground and exhausted us. The number of destitute people is so large that they run to 500 or 600 head, and in our town treasury there is not one penny left. From among the citizens alone there are 125 persons in the hospital and still more, here and there in their houses who have to be supplied regularly. It is not possible to say how much this service of love costs us, since even the richest can hardly provide for their own families. Yet we would perhaps have been able to bear these cost since Christian love always finds a way with charity, if only the fierce war tax had not, for a third time, sucked all the blood out of us. Our poor town had to pay 800 gulden weekly over and above the fixed rate others were assessed, and it was collected with extreme severity. How do you think we must feel when we see ourselves at the edge of an abyss which devours us, especially since plague and hunger wipes out 100 to 150 of us monthly, so that those who remain alive also have to pay the tax assessments of the dead. . . . I am not so hardened that I do not also remember with horror the destruction of so many honorable married women, so many men and woman citizens of whom on one day alone we buried 83, and about whom we will keep a record, if we can. One should also include violated women and ravished virgins, and the young men, the bloom of the town who were led away to certain ruin in body and soul. . . . Still, the war-tax collectors are threatening us anew with burnings and laying waste, with torture and forced labor. It they are allowed to carry on like this we will all soon be dead. At least in this way we would escape their violence, but then my heart would still be troubled by thoughts of the heap of remaining orphans who would suffer all manner of injustice. You would hardly believe what I say, that among those who have starved and frozen to death there were some people who had over 1000 gulden a year in income. I saw the orphans of a former merchant who had an inheritance of 15,000 gulden wandering aimlessly through the alleys. They were finally taken into the homes of their relatives by command of the authorities. You can hardly imagine the liberties that are taken with the poor as they lie dying in their own filth and even now breathe their last breaths despite all our foresight and provisions. Corpses are often found in front of the gravedigger’s home, stripped

of their shrouds and the linen in which they were wrapped, lying quite naked there, since people are so covetous of the rags which covered them. It is not worth speaking of medicines or painkillers since there are no doctors, chemists or barbers left. Only the hangman remains in their place. The few of us who remain alive do so more as a miracle of God than through nature or skill. We live and freely celebrate our church services. We publicly rebuke sins, which occur all the more readily in this anarchy times because they go unpunished more than is usually the case. Undaunted, we console depressed souls, and as far as we are able, we faithfully treat those who have suffered misfortune with real aid. . . . From Andreae’s Autobiography The second half of the year [1635] was almost entirely dedicated to funerals, when the plague raged so severely in Württemberg and the neighboring areas that one can assume that it snatched away the greater part of the inhabitants. At least from those remaining among us it snatched 173 in August, 193 in September, 119 in October, 44 in November; overall in the whole year approximately 772 people. To be sure, at an outwardly inconvenient time, my colleague, Greins, went elsewhere, and on account of the needy circumstances no successor could be found, so for four long months the burden lay almost entirely on me, who myself struggled with indisposition. Still, I buried 430 bodies and gave 85 funeral sermons, one after another. . . . The year 1636 was a more tolerable year with regard to public calamities and the almost unprecedented famine—as long as you disregard the difficulty of correcting outwardly corrupted morals and the mangling of flesh by local vultures. . . . Since now nothing more noteworthy about this year comes to mind, I will here give space to my sorrow about the preceding failings, for it is to be confessed publicly that God, irritated by our unrighteousness, has decreed our downfall. Our theology has surely been debased by the regurgitation of scholastic opinions and quarreling as well as by the irritation of mystics among the secular people, and by the infection spread by openly godless people. . . . Consciences have been lulled to sleep, and all types of evil have gained entrance: simony, church robbing, the destruction of spiritual seminaries, equivocation in preaching, the plundering of old learning, the banishment of what remains of a good spirit by useless

THE CHURCH’S STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL (1546–1648)

prattle; in a word, all that fosters evil and entirely stifles what is good. To speak of political defects, it does not seem right to me when it is judged that the foremost houses of Germany have gone under through the imprudence of counselors and the troublesome obtrusiveness of such helpers. Rather, I lament that religion has no more harmful enemy than most heads of states, through whose example and orders all blasphemies are incited, all piety exterminated, whatever is against Christ is led in and, to be sure, with such force that it is as if a law had been given about that. And we still wonder that all supports for the honoring of God as well as the establishment of the state collapse? They were long ago gnawed away as by a worm or sawed through to the bark. Although they have the appearance of durability, they cannot endure a jolt. . . . So passed the fiftieth year of my sorrow-filled life. Should I consider myself unfortunate when I freely remember that I alone remain from my father’s entire line, not only me but also my sister, Margaret, an afflicted widow, and how I am plagued with bodily weakness, twists of fate, and the persecution of envy? I have had to watch forty-three members of the second generation be reduced to eighteen heads. I have had to endure being a witness of the body of my fatherland and of its murderer, once my friend but now wilder than a tiger, and I must look at the decline of religion, the chaos of politics, the destruction of learning, the ethical corruption of the youth under the yoke of slavery. Yes, I must almost convey, what can my life be other than its punishments and its length other than a roasting over a slow fire? But God has concluded that I, despite the errors of my life and so many shapes of death that no one can number or grasp them all, should live on and learn to have hope for better times as much as the power from above and our own weakness makes possible. Let it be so, so goes the will of the Lord, and amidst tears and sighs I will shout for joy to him.

141

107. BATTLE HYMN FROM THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR (1631) Hymns were written during the Thirty Years’ War to encourage soldiers and civilians alike in the times of great distress. The most famous of such “battle hymns” was written by Johann Michael Altenburg (1584–1640), a Lutheran pastor who throughout his career served various parishes in the vicinity of Erfurt. The text below was written after the victory of Gustavus Adolphus at Leipzig in 1631. It became a favorite of the Swedish king, who had it used at a service of prayer before the decisive battle of Lützen in 1632, during which he lost his life. Later, the Pietist leader Philip Jacob Spener used it in his family devotions every Sunday afternoon. (The original German version has five verses.) From Lyr yraa Germanica Germanica, trans. Catherine Winkworth (New York: Stanford, 1856), 15. Verzage nicht du Häuflein klein Fear not, O little flock, the foe Who madly seeks your overflow, Dread not his rage and power: What though your courage sometimes faints, His seeming triumph o’er God’s saints Lasts but a little hour. Be of good cheer; your cause belongs To him who can avenge your wrongs, Leave it to him our Lord. Though hidden yet from all our eyes, He sees the Gideon who shall rise To save us, and his word. As true as God’s own word is true, Nor earth nor hell with all their crew Against us shall prevail. A jest and by-word are they grown; God is with us, we are his own, Our victory cannot fail.

5. Factionalism in the Late Reformation (1546–1580)

When Philip Melanchthon participated in the process of formulating the Leipzig Interim, he was convinced that the compromises it contained only concerned nonessential matters of church practice (see chapter 4 of this volume). He believed that what he said in this document about justification, good works, and other doctrinal issues did not conflict in any significant way with the theological stance endorsed by the Lutheran churches in the Augsburg Confession (doc. #108). Other Lutheran church leaders, however, offered a very different interpretation of what Melanchthon was doing. They attacked him because they thought his conciliatory actions were a blatant manifestation of cowardice and a strategy based on a tragic miscalculation of the intentions of the emperor. They also accused him of demonstrating a willingness to alter some of the fundamental doctrinal teachings of the Lutheran churches. For several decades after the end of the Schmalkald War, the defenders and opponents of the Leipzig Interim continued to argue with each other about which group could rightly claim to be providing constructive leadership of the reform movement that Luther had inaugurated. Most of the theologians of Electoral Saxony, especially the humanistically educated professors at the Universities of Wittenberg and Leipzig, were sympathetic toward the interpretation of Christian doctrine elaborated by Philip Melanchthon. Consequently, they came to be called Philippists. The critics of the Philippists, forcefully led by Matthias Flacius Illyricus, clustered in Magdeburg and later at the new University of Jena, which was founded in 1547. They called themselves the Gnesio-Lutherans, the genuine Lutherans, thereby signaling their belief

that the Lutheran churches were endangered by the infiltration of false teachers, whose influence they intended to oppose. These factions faced off against each other in several extended doctrinal disputes that were only resolved by the emergence to prominence of another group of theologians who did not fully endorse the positions of either the Philippists or the Gnesio-Lutherans. Through patient negotiating, this mediating party managed to check the tendency of the opposing factions to drive each other into increasingly extreme positions. They were also successful in moving the churches toward a new consensus that was articulated in the most elaborate of the traditional Lutheran confessional documents, the Formula of Concord. The doctrinal dispute that developed most directly out of the Interim crisis was the adiaphoristic controversy. Both the Gnesio-Lutherans and the Philippists agreed that some church practices were neither commanded nor forbidden in the Scriptures and could therefore be observed or ignored without coming into conflict with the doctrinal teachings of the church. They reached different conclusions, however, about which ceremonies fell within this category of adiaphora. Even more importantly, they disagreed about whether these ceremonies continued to be matters of indifference when the churches were forced by some hostile power to accept them or face adverse consequences. The Gnesio-Lutherans argued that, in periods of persecution, yielding to the demands of the enemies of the church, even on seemingly nonessential matters, would be dangerous for several reasons. Simple believers would be confused by such compliance with the demands of their persecutors, and the absence of any resistance to the

144

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

persecutors would encourage them to intensify their efforts to destroy the churches (doc. #109). To the Gnesio-Lutherans, coerced acceptance of nonessential customs and church practices was more than dangerous; it was also sinful because any failure to confess the true faith in a decisive way was tantamount to idolatry. At first, Melanchthon answered the GnesioLutherans by insisting that their unqualified resistance to any compromise with the emperor actually posed the greatest threat to the churches (doc. #110). Eventually, however, the polemical writings of Flacius and other Gnesio-Lutherans turned so many people against Melanchthon that he grew weary of defending himself and expressed regret over his decision to participate in the development of the Leipzig Interim proposal (docs. #109 and 110). Despite this shift in Melanchthon’s position, some of his associates continued to argue against the Gnesio-Lutheran’s views about adiaphora and about what should have been done during the Interim crisis. Over two decades after the debate had begun, the Philippist theologians of the Universities of Wittenberg and Leipzig still insisted that the Gnesio-Lutherans misunderstood Christian freedom if they taught that adiaphora change their status in times of persecution (doc. #111). Both sides claimed to find support for their positions in the Bible and the writings of Martin Luther. In scrutinizing the Leipzig Interim proposal, the Gnesio-Lutherans also found several doctrinal statements that they considered just as problematic as the reintroduction of Catholic church practices. In particular, they took issue with language about the necessity of good works (doc. #113). Nikolaus von Amsdorf, a valued coworker of Luther in the early days of the Reformation who had been a fellow exile with Flacius in Magdeburg during the Schmalkald War, was most outspoken about this issue. As early as 1536, he had complained to Luther about passages in the writings of Melanchthon that suggested justification cannot occur without the presence of good works. In 1551, he began again to publish critical treatises about this issue, naming Johannes Bugenhagen, another early coworker of Luther, and Georg Major, a colleague of Melanchthon at the University of Wittenberg, as the chief perpetuators of Melanchthon’s viewpoint (doc. #115). Major responded at length to Amsdorf’s charges, and, consequently, the prolonged debate about this issue that ensued has come to be called the Majoristic controversy (doc. # 114). As in the adiaphoristic controversy, Melanchthon

once again sought to distance himself from a position he had taken in the past. Recognizing that it was easy to confuse what his writings and the Leipzig Interim said about good works with the Catholic belief that good works earned merit, he proposed that Lutherans should be more cautious about using the language of necessity (doc. #118). Major, however, stood his ground. Fearful of antinomian tendencies in Lutheranism (that is, the belief that the Christian has been freed from the need to fulfill or seek guidance from the Law of God), he tried to emphasize the connection between justification and the life of new obedience to God that grace makes possible. He denied that true faith exists where there is no evidence of its fruits, namely, good works (doc. #117). Other prominent Gnesio-Lutherans such as Flacius joined Amsdorf in raising questions about the implications of Major’s arguments (doc. #116), but in the later stages of the dispute many of them felt the necessity to distance themselves from some of the intemperate pronouncements that Amsdorf began to make. Exasperated by Major’s persistent defense of the necessity of good works, Amsdorf was driven to affirm the very opposite, that good works were actually harmful or injurious to salvation (docs. #119 and 120). In saying this, he meant to point out the danger of trusting in good works as a way to gain salvation, but since this qualifying thought was not explicitly articulated in the slogan that Amsdorf circulated, he only contributed to the further polarization of the Gnesio-Lutherans and Philippists. The Majoristic controversy was not the only doctrinal dispute in which the two parties tended to provoke each other into increasingly extravagant doctrinal assertions. The same phenomenon took place in the interrelated synergist and Flacian controversies about free will and original sin. Another disputed aspect of the Leipzig Interim was its assertion that a person cooperates with God in the process of salvation. This brief declaration reflected Melanchthon’s discomfort with the position Luther had taken in his debate with Erasmus about free will (doc. #122). Unlike his mentor, Melanchthon felt that the will must contribute in some modest way to the salvation of an individual. If this were not the case, it seemed that the only way to explain why all people are not saved would be to conclude that God arbitrarily chooses to give grace only to certain individuals. Melanchthon believed that such an affirmation contradicted what the Bible taught (doc. #123). The issue of the role of the will in salvation became a focus of intense discussion between the Philippists and the Gnesio-Lutherans in 1555, when Johann

FACTIONALISM IN THE LATE REFORMATION (1546–1580)

Pfeffinger, a professor at Leipzig who had assisted Melanchthon in the composition of the Leipzig Interim, published a short collection of theses on this topic (doc. #124). Pfeffinger argued that the will was not like a stone or a block in the process of salvation; rather it was drawn willingly to God. He emphasized this point in order to make it clear that humans alone are to blame if they are not saved. Like Melanchthon, Pfeffinger and his Philippist sympathizers admitted that original sin had weakened the power of the will, but, by their reckoning, this inherited deprivation did not entirely destroy the capacity of the will to accept or reject the gift of grace given through the Holy Spirit. The Gnesio-Lutherans stood much closer to Luther in their emphasis on the bondage of the will. Writers such as Tilmann Heshus attempted to refute Pfeffinger’s arguments by quoting biblical passages that use the language of slavery and death to describe the human predicament. In discussing the issue of predestination, they asserted that it was important to distinguish between God’s general desire to be gracious to all creatures and the special election by which God chose those who would believe in Christ (doc. #125). When the Philippists spoke of the will as a cause of salvation along with the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, the Gnesio-Lutherans responded that this could not be so because the impact of original sin was to make the will naturally resistant to God. In 1559 the controversy became even more complicated when Victorin Strigel, a prominent theologian at the University of Jena, acknowledged his sympathy for the viewpoint of the Synergists and refused to ascribe to the anti-Philippist Book of Confutation, which the Duke of Saxony sought to implement as the doctrinal norm for his territory. Strigel was briefly imprisoned for his act of resistance, but the Duke eventually decided to let Strigel defend his views in a public debate against Matthias Flacius. This Weimar Disputation, held in 1560, had the unexpected result of provoking another controversy. As they discussed the impact of the fall on human nature, Strigel began to employ Aristotelian metaphysical terminology in his assessment of original sin. He argued that original sin was only an accidental property of the substance of a person. Although the fall had diminished and distorted the power of the intellect and will, this did not alter the fact that humans were still created in the image of God (doc. #127). When asked to address this philosophical question, Flacius totally contradicted Strigel’s assertions. He asserted that the effect of the fall was to make original sin the very substance of

145

human nature. The image of God was actually transformed into the image of Satan (doc. #128). The synergist controversy lingered on for more than a decade. The Philippists attempted to refute Flacius with both biblical and philosophical arguments and also raised pastoral questions about how simple believers would be affected by the declaration that human nature is imprinted by the image of Satan (doc. #129). Once again, as had happened in the Majoristic controversy, the Gnesio-Lutherans became divided among themselves. Many of the close associates of Flacius charged him with introducing new doctrinal error in the process of responding to the Philippists. This development significantly tarnished the reputation of the person who had been unsurpassed in his influence on the outlook of the Gnesio-Lutheran party since the early days of the Interim crisis. Although the rest of the controversies that created unsettled conditions in the Lutheran churches involved some of the same disputants, they were not directly stimulated by the Leipzig Interim. The Osiandrian controversy about essential righteousness takes its name from Andreas Osiander, the distinguished coworker of Luther who had played an important role in the formation of the Lutheran church in Nürnberg. During the Interim crisis, he had taken refuge in Prussia, where he was offered a position as professor of theology at the University of Königsberg. The other theologians in Königsberg resented this appointment because Osiander had never acquired an advanced academic degree in theological studies. They were even more disturbed by the interpretation of the doctrine of justification, which he began to defend in various writings and public disputations. Osiander taught that justification consists of more than the forgiveness of sins based on the imputation of the alien righteousness of Christ. In addition to being declared righteous by God, the sinner is infused with the righteousness of Christ. By the operation of the Holy Spirit, Christ enters the justified sinner and gradually causes the sinner to become righteous (docs. #131 and 132). Joachim Mörlin, preacher at the cathedral in Königsberg, offered the most extensive critique of Osiander’s viewpoint. In particular, he objected to the description of justification as a gradual process and the subjective emphasis on the indwelling of Christ (doc. #133). This controversy was unique in that many Philippists and Gnesio-Lutherans, for once, united in condemning Osiander. Both Melanchthon and Flacius agreed that Osiander’s ideas about justification by the infusion of righteousness

146

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

were closer to the traditional emphasis of Catholic theology than to the forensic conception of justification that had been taught by Luther (doc. #134). While the Osiandrian controversy preoccupied the attention of theologians in Prussia, the cryptoCalvinist controversy began to develop in Saxony. This final dispute started in 1552, when Joachim Westphal, a Gnesio-Lutheran pastor in Hamburg, published an extensive critique of Calvin’s view of the Lord’s Supper. In 1549, the Reformed churches of Switzerland had worked out a common statement of their beliefs about the Lord’s Supper called the Consensus of Zurich (Consensus Tigurinus) (doc. #136). This agreement convinced Westphal that there was no significant difference between the sacramental theology of the Calvinists and the ideas of Zwingli, which Luther had condemned in 1529 at the Marburg Colloquy (doc. #36). Westphal wanted to alert the Lutheran churches to this fact because he was disturbed by the growing influence of Calvinism in Germany. Although the controversy specifically concerned the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper, it also prompted an extensive discussion of other christological matters. In response to Westphal, Calvin argued that after the resurrection, the body of Christ was in heaven. It was not possible for his body to be in many places at the same time. Therefore, although a believer is spiritually nourished by the body and blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, the body and blood are not locally present in, with, and under the elements of bread and wine (doc. #137). Westphal, on the other hand, emphatically reasserted Luther’s view that the divine attribute of omnipresence had been communicated to the body of the resurrected Christ. This made possible the local presence of Christ wherever the Lord’s Supper was celebrated. Furthermore, it meant, contrary to the claims of the Calvinists, that all participants, the godly as well as the wicked, orally receive the body of Christ when they commune. Although Melanchthon had originally shared Luther’s views about the Lord’s Supper, his personal discussions and correspondence with Calvin and Martin Bucer, the reformer of Strassburg, had diminished his certainty about the reality of a sacramental union between the body of Christ and the bread. He tried to stay out of the controversy, but other Philippists, including his son-in-law Kaspar Peucer, became more active proponents of Calvin’s sacramental theology in Electoral Saxony. By 1571, they had persuaded the elector to accept the Dresden Consensus, a summary of teachings about the Lord’s

Supper that rejected the idea of the ubiquity of Christ’s human nature (doc. #138). Two years later, an anonymous Philippist treatise on the controversy titled Exegesis Perspicua was even more explicit in calling for toleration of the Calvinist viewpoint (doc. #139). This development set off a major outcry on the part of the Gnesio-Lutherans, who in a short time managed to convince the elector that he had been the victim of a Philippist conspiracy to replace Lutheranism by Calvinism in Saxony. To prevent this occurrence, he imprisoned or banished the most influential crypto-Calvinists. As this last episode indicates, the proliferation of doctrinal disputes became a matter of great concern to the Lutheran princes as well as the theologians. They were particularly worried that the emperor and the Catholic princes in Germany might take advantage of the disunity between the Gnesio-Lutherans and the Philippists and attempt once again to suppress Lutheranism altogether. Consequently, the Lutheran princes took various initiatives over several decades to promote reconciliation between the two major factions. They organized large-scale consultations between political and religious leaders, but these produced little progress. By 1570, however, they began to meet with some success on the regional level, primarily because of the assistance they received from two able theologians who were not closely identified with either the Philippists or the Gnesio-Lutherans, Jakob Andreae and Martin Chemnitz. Andreae was the author of an important set of published sermons intended to evaluate the disputed issues in language that even simple believers could understand. These sermons became an important starting point for discussions with small groups of theologians in southwestern Germany that culminated in an agreement called the Swabian Concord. Chemnitz encouraged support for this proposal in northern Germany and helped draft a revised version of it known as the Swabian-Saxon Concord. After the suppression of the crypto-Calvinist movement in 1574, the Elector of Saxony also supported the deliberations of Andreae and Chemnitz and sponsored the important consultations they held with several other theologians at Torgau and Cloister Bergen. At last, in May 1577, the theologians reached agreement on the Formula of Concord, which they submitted for approval by the Lutheran churches in two versions, a short form known as the Epitome and a longer form known as the Solid Declaration. In general, the Formula of Concord evaluated the theology of the Gnesio-Lutheran party more favorably than the positions taken by the Philippists. This

FACTIONALISM IN THE LATE REFORMATION (1546–1580)

is particularly true with regard to the issues under discussion in the adiaphoristic, synergist, and cryptoCalvinist controversies. However, it also rejected the extreme view of original sin defended by Flacius in reaction to the synergist tendencies of Strigel and the misleading language that Amsdorf had adopted in response to the view of good works defended by Georg Major (docs. #112, 121, 126, 130, 135, 140). For a variety of reasons, some doctrinal and some political, a number of Lutheran territorial churches never endorsed the Formula of Concord. Nevertheless, its preparation had the effect of reversing the trend toward factionalism that had gone on for several decades. By 1580, support for the Formula was clearly extensive enough to warrant its inclusion in the Book of Concord, the official collection of important documents summarizing Lutheran doctrinal beliefs that was published in Dresden to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Augsburg Confession. As part of this collection, it would exercise an important influence on the further development of systematic theology in the Age of Orthodoxy. THE ADIAPHORISTIC CONTROVERSY 108. MELANCHTHON: LETTER ON THE LEIPZIG INTERIM (1548) This letter of December 18, 1548, was written to one of Melanchthon’s friends in Weimar on behalf of Duke Georg of Anhalt. From CR 7:251–53, trans. Eric Lund. You indeed weep over the damage done to the churches, which are disturbed in various ways by the proclamation of a new form of doctrine. This sadness is common to many pious people. We see shadows covering the truth; many good and learned pastors expelled from their churches; exiles wandering with their families, who waste away from the hardships of exile and poverty; the kindling of new discords; the breaking up of the meetings of dissenters, where the voice of true doctrine has resounded. All these things are most sad in themselves, and they will bring about a limitless scattering among foreign peoples in the future unless the Son of God sitting at the right hand of the eternal Father, the guardian of his church, moves his work among us, for which I indeed pray with my whole heart along with you and all pious people, calling upon him to preserve his churches and their hospitality. . . . In order, therefore, to retain necessary things, we are less rigid about those things that are not neces-

147

sary, particularly since some of the rites [that they want to require] have, to a great extent, continued in use in the churches of these regions. . . . We know that much is said against this moderation, but the devastation of the churches such as is occurring in Swabia would be a greater scandal. If it is possible by this moderation it can be brought about that neither doctrine or liturgy are changed and pastors are not expelled, then we are being criticized unjustly. . . . I am also not moved by the outcries that when a weakening of front has been made, the adversaries will afterwards seek a change of other matters. Our confession concerning necessary things is heard. In this, with God’s aid, we will hereafter show constancy more eagerly, since they will not be able to accuse us of being stubborn about small and unnecessary matters. The affair will show that we are contending for great causes. Perhaps also the delay while these things are being discussed will be beneficial to the churches. But even if a delay will be of no advantage, still the consolation is not useless that we have so long spared the weak, and that we have not right away, in the very beginning, desolated the churches, which would occur if we gave up nothing to the powerful. Besides this very arrangement of rites, which many complain about too passionately as an infringement of liberty, is not in itself vicious. . . . 109. RESPONSE OF FLACIUS AND GALLUS TO SOME PREACHERS OF MEISSEN (1549) Both the Augsburg and Leipzig Interim documents called for the use of all the traditional Catholic vestments. In 1549, when some pastors in Meissen asked for guidance in deciding whether to comply with this demand, Matthias Flacius and his coworker, Nikolaus Gallus (1516–70), based their advice on considerations of the effect compliance would have in a time of persecution. From Friedrich Bente, Historical Intr Introductions oductions to the Bo Book ok of Conc oncord ord (St. Louis: Concordia, 1921), 110. . . . We do not believe that the robber will let the traveler keep his money, although first he only asks for his coat or similar things, at the same time, however, not obscurely hinting that, after having taken these, he will also demand the rest. We certainly do not doubt that you yourselves, as well as all men endowed with a sound mind, believe that, since the beginning is always hardest, these small beginnings of change are at present demanded only that a door

148

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

may be opened for all the other impieties that are to follow. . . .

give up and cast their arms aside? You win! I retreat. I do not fight anymore concerning these rites, and I wish very much that there would be sweet concord in the churches. I also acknowledge that I have sinned in this matter and ask for God’s pardon for not having fled far away from those insidious deliberations. But I will refute those false accusations that are hurled at me by you and Gallus. . . . 111. FINAL REPORT OF THE THEOLOGIANS OF WITTENBERG AND LEIPZIG (1570)

Fig. 5.1. Engraving of Philip Melanchthon by Albrecht Dürer (1526).

110. MELANCHTHON: LETTER TO FLACIUS EXPRESSING REGRETS (SEPTEMBER 5, 1556) A year after the conclusion of the Peace of Augsburg, Melanchthon still seemed unable to erase the memory of the Interim crisis. In this letter, he expresses some regret for his past actions but still criticizes Flacius for continuing to disparage his leadership abilities and doctrinal beliefs. From CR 8:841–42, trans. Eric Lund. I knew that even the most trivial changes [in church practices] would be unwelcome to the people. Nevertheless, since our doctrine was retained untainted, I thought it was better for our people to submit to this servitude than give up the ministry of the gospel. . . . Afterwards you began to contradict me. I yielded; I did not fight. According to Homer, Ajax fighting with Hector is satisfied when Hector gives up and admits that he is the victor. But you never put an end to your accusations. What sort of enemy is this that continues to strike at those who

Until the end of the crypto-Calvinist controversy, most of the theologians at the Universities of Wittenberg and Leipzig were Philippists. In this final report, they provide a comprehensive defense of their shared views about a variety of disputed matters, beginning with the adiaphora issue. From Endlicher Bericht der Theolog Theologen en beider Universiteten Leipzig und Wittenberg (Wittenberg: Hans Lufft, 1570), 137–38, 140–41, trans. Eric Lund. First of all, their theses posit this definition: adiaphora or matters of indifference signify outward customs or practices one is in the habit of observing and using in the community of God that are neither expressly commanded nor forbidden in the Word of God. But soon after, they made this definition: that some adiaphora are themselves free and unforbidden, but others are forbidden and not free. This nonsensical distinction and separation is obviously contradictory speech for it is entirely opposed to the description of adiaphora that they previously set up. For if adiaphora are ceremonies that are neither commanded nor forbidden in God’s Word, how can one truthfully say that some are forbidden and not free? For if some are forbidden and not free, how can they be adiaphora? . . . It takes us by surprise that our opponents after so much public instruction should cite the invalid rule and so often repeat as a special argument that in times of persecution, the adiaphora or matters of indifference are no longer free but necessary things; namely, that a necessary confession of faith involves taking a stand upon such things. They cite the example of Daniel [Daniel 6], Eleazar, the seven Maccabees [2 Maccabees 6], and some words of our Lord Christ and Paul. But they should reasonably concede that this fabricated rule is false and groundless, on account of the judgment that a necessary confession (at the time of persecution or otherwise) is based on those things

FACTIONALISM IN THE LATE REFORMATION (1546–1580)

that the church of God is commanded or ordered to believe, hold, and do in God’s Word. For “to confess” signifies to speak, write, and publicly proclaim, according to one’s station and calling, the necessary teachings revealed by God and all necessary articles contained in the same, seeking to give an account of the faith, freely and without show, also regardless of any danger to body and possessions, before all the world and everyone. But the adiaphora are not commanded in God’s Word, or else they would be neither human traditions nor matters of indifference that are only instituted for the good order of people in the church. Therefore the confession cannot be based on the accepting or omitting of adiaphora, be it in the time of persecution or any other time. . . . This belongs to a right confession, that one clearly and decisively confess every part of Christian doctrine according to the type and features of each part in particular. No danger, great or small, should come about to change the necessary confession nor any features of any part of the confession. Now everyone knows that there is a great difference between the faith having to do with the articles of necessary doctrine and outward practices that are not commanded in God’s Word but are free and matters of indifference. Therefore, where pure doctrine is not displaced one should and must at all times in and out of danger maintain the correct understanding and use of adiaphora and let Christian freedom be seen so that everyone may understand that adiaphora do not necessarily bind the conscience and that they who do not maintain a ceremony or church practice are not judged or condemned to be cast out and separated from the church. . . . This has continuously been the church’s teaching about adiaphora as Luther himself clarified many times in his writings and thoughts. For when he was dealing with the papists, he himself was prepared to concede and put up with outward customs, so long as they would not extend into forbidden misuse or get forced on the conscience but would be observed for the retention of peace, good order, and discipline. And this was especially his opinion in the judgment that he wrote with his own hand about Augsburg 1530 when a confession was also demanded of our church and the danger was as imminent as it would ever be afterwards. “So they should not think,” he says, “that we are stiff or obstinate about the main point, I for myself am willing and ready to accept all such outer customs and wish for peace as long as my conscience is not thereby burdened, as I have almost always requested in all my books. And in the Apology of the Augsburg

149

Confession, in the chapter on human traditions in the church [article 15] it ends with these explicit words: ‘At this Augsburg Reichstag we have let ourselves be examined and have been found willing, out of love, to observe some adiaphora with others. For we have among us considered general unity and peace, so long as it can be maintained without burdening consciences, to be preferred above all other things.’”1 But the Flacians cite the example of Daniel as a proof that outward matters of indifference should be considered necessary in the time of persecution, because Daniel, after the king of the Medes gave the order that anyone who for thirty days asked for something from any God or man except the king should be thrown to the lions, nevertheless knelt daily in his summer house, when the window was open toward Jerusalem, and petitioned, praised, and thanked his God as he was accustomed to do. This did not fall under the category of adiaphora, for since the royal command tried to omit and abolish the worship of God, which Daniel showed to the true God of Israel according to the law of the Lord and that was even expressly sought by the enemy, Daniel either had to put himself in outward danger or forsake his divine worship. And if he were to persist continually in the invocation of his God, he could not demonstrate this at that time other than by the outward gestures. So he was not free, and it was not an adiaphora, for in this case to refrain from his prayer and invocation entirely and in an open place was to neglect his confession. But it is a far different thing if one maintains pure doctrine and all Christian worship undefiled and witnesses enough about this and still yields something with good discretion in outward matters of indifference without scorning the truth, wishing for peace, and maintaining necessary doctrine. Rather, one will thereby show the right understanding and use of free matters of indifference. The example of Eleazar and the seven Maccabees who would rather have died than eat swine’s flesh also does not belong here, since the Jewish polity was still in effect and the eating of pork was earnestly forbidden for the Jews in the law of God. The tyrannical Antiochus publicly ignored that which the Bible said and subjected the people to all abominations so that they would forget the law of God and would accept other ways. So, it was truly not an adiaphora or a free matter of indifference for the Jewish people. . . .2

150

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

112. EPITOME OF THE FORMULA OF

THE MAJORISTIC CONTROVERSY

CONCORD: ARTICLE 10 (1577) From BC 515–16. X. Concerning Ecclesiastical Practices Which Are Called Adiaphora or Indifferent Matters Affirmative Theses The Proper, True Teaching and Confession concerning This Article 1. To settle this dispute, we unanimously believe, teach, and confess that ceremonies or ecclesiastical practices that are neither commanded nor forbidden in God’s Word, but have been established only for good order and decorum, are in and of themselves neither worship ordained by God nor a part of such worship. “In vain do they worship me” with human precepts (Matt 15[:9]). 2. We believe, teach, and confess that the community of God in every place and at every time has the authority to alter such ceremonies according to its own situation, as may be most useful and edifying for the community of God. . . . 4. We believe, teach, and confess that in a time of persecution, when an unequivocal confession of the faith is demanded of us, we dare not yield to the opponents in such indifferent matters. As the Apostle wrote, “Stand firm in the freedom for which Christ has set us free, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” [Gal 5:1]. And: “Do not put on the yoke of the others; what partnership is there between light and darkness?” [2 Cor 6:14]. “So that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you, we did not submit to them even for a moment” [Gal 2:5]. For in such a situation it is no longer indifferent matters that are at stake. The truth of the gospel and Christian freedom are at stake. The confirmation of open idolatry, as well as the protection of the weak in faith from offense, is at stake. In such matters we can make no concessions but must offer an unequivocal confession and suffer whatever God sends and permits the enemies of his Word to inflict on us.

113. THE LEIPZIG INTERIM OF 1548 Articles 4 through 7 of the Augsburg Interim presented a Catholic interpretation of the doctrine of justification and stressed the importance of love and good works. Melanchthon drafted completely new statements on these topics for the Leipzig Interim, but the Gnesio-Lutherans still thought that what he said retained the spirit of the original Catholic document. From The Bo Book ok of Conc oncord, ord, or The Symbolical Bo Books oks of the Ev Evang angelical elical Luther Lutheran an Church Church, ed. Henry E. Jacobs (Philadelphia: General Council Publication Board, 1908), 265–67. How a Person Is Justified Before God . . . In those thus reconciled, virtues and good works should be called righteousness, yet not in the sense that the person on this account has forgiveness of sins or that the person is, in God’s judgment, without sin, but that for his Son’s sake God regards this weak, inchoate obedience of the believers in this miserable, infirm, impure nature with pleasure; and of these works as righteousness John speaks when he says: “He that does right is righteous” [1 John 3:7]. And it is true that where the works are contrary to God, there is contempt of God, and no conversion to God has occurred in the heart. As is the tree, so also are the fruits. . . . Of Good Works . . . He who perseveres in sins contrary to conscience is not converted to God and is still God’s enemy, and God’s wrath abides upon him if he be not converted. This is precisely in accord with Galatians 5:21: “I tell you, as I have told you before, that they who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” . . . Further, if anyone who has been in God’s grace acts against God’s command or his conscience, he grieves the Holy Ghost, loses grace and righteousness and falls beneath God’s wrath; and if he be not again converted he falls into eternal punishment as Saul and others. . . . For this reason, to speak briefly, it is readily understood that good works are necessary, for God has commanded them; and if the course of life be in

FACTIONALISM IN THE LATE REFORMATION (1546–1580)

opposition thereto, God’s grace and Holy Ghost are rejected, and such sins merit eternal condemnation. But virtues and good works please God thus, as we have said, in the reconciled, because they believe that God receives their person for Christ’s sake and will be pleased with this imperfect obedience; and it is true that eternal life is given for the sake of the Lord Christ out of grace, and at the same time that all are heirs of eternal salvation who are converted to God and by faith receive forgiveness of sins and the Holy Ghost. Nevertheless, the new virtues and good works are so highly necessary that if they are not quickened in the heart, there would be no reception of divine grace. . . . Thus regeneration and eternal life are in themselves a new light, fear of God, love, joy in God and other virtues; as the passage says: “This is life eternal, to know you the only true God, and me, Jesus Christ.” As, now, this true knowledge must shine in us, it is certainly true that these virtues, faith, love, hope, and others, must be in us, and are necessary to salvation. All this is easy for the godly to understand who seek to experience consolation from God. And since the virtues and good works please God, as has been said, they merit also a reward in this life, both spiritual and temporal, according to God’s counsel and still more reward in eternal life, because of the divine promise. . . . 114. MAJOR: ANSWER TO AMSDORF (NOVEMBER, 1552) Georg Major (1502–74) was rector of the University of Wittenberg during the Schmalkald War and was about to become superintendent of the churches of Eisleben when Nikolaus von Amsdorf published a book attacking him for his association with the drafters of the Leipzig Interim. After this critical evaluation of his candidate, Count Albrecht of Mansfeld withdrew the appointment. In reply to Amsdorf, in 1552, Major tried to disclaim any responsibility for the composition of the Leipzig Interim but continued to support some of what it said about good works. The boldness of Major’s defense prompted a flood of Gnesio-Lutheran polemics. Amsdorf published a brief rebuttal, and his associate, Flacius, alerted others to some problematic implications of Major’s position. Major then attempted to clarify his position in great detail in his book on the conversion of Paul. His mentor, Melanchthon, retreated from the controversy, but Major continued to find support

151

elsewhere, especially from Justus Menius (1499–1558) in Leipzig. From Johann Gieseler, A Text-Bo ext-Book ok of Church History History, vol. 4, trans. Samuel Davidson, ed. Henry Smith (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1868), 438. I do confess that I have previously taught and still teach, and furthermore will continue to teach all my days that good works are necessary to salvation. And I say publicly with clear words that no one is saved through evil works and also that no one is saved without good works. In addition, I say, let whoever teaches otherwise, even if it is an angel from heaven, be accursed. . . . Although we teach that works are necessary to the salvation of the soul, nevertheless, such good works cannot or may not effect or merit the forgiveness of our sins, be reckoned as righteousness, or give the Holy Spirit and eternal life. Such precious heavenly benefits are acquired for us only through the death of our one mediator and savior, Jesus Christ, and must be received only through faith. However, good works must be present, not as merits but as required obedience to God. . . . 115. AMSDORF: BRIEF INSTRUCTION CONCERNING MAJOR’S ANSWER (1552) From Gottlieb Planck, Geschichte der pr protestantisotestantischen Theolog Theologie ie (Leipzig: Siegfried Lebrecht Crusius, 1796), 3:482, trans. Eric Lund. We know well, praise God, and confess that a Christian should and must do good works. Nobody disputes and speaks concerning that; nor has anybody doubted this. On the contrary, we speak and dispute concerning this, whether a Christian earns salvation by the good works that he should and must do. . . . For we all say and confess that after his renewal and new birth a Christian should love and fear God and do all manner of good works, but not that he may be saved, for he is saved already by faith. This is the true prophetic and apostolic doctrine, and whoever teaches otherwise is already accursed and damned. I, Nikolaus von Amsdorf, therefore declare that whoever teaches and preaches these words as they stand, “Good works are necessary to salvation,” is the same as a Pelagian, a mameluke, a denier of Christ, and a duplicitous papist. For the papists, Cochlaeus, Witzel,3 and others use these words in the same form and manner as Major reintroduces them to us. Therefore, Major is also entirely possessed with the spirit of the papists because he here, without any need, with such defiance and offense asserts and

152

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

defends the words of the papists. And although he afterwards maneuvers about and offers clarifications of his position, that is only a dissembling by which he sets himself outside of the suspicion that he accepted and went along with the Leipzig Interim.

works. And so we come back again to the old attack of conscience.

116. FLACIUS: AGAINST THE EVANGELIST OF THE HOLY GOWN, DR. MISER MAJOR

From Wilhelm Preger, Matthias Flacius Ill Illyricus yricus und seine Zeit Zeit, vol. 1 (Erlangen: Theodor Bläsing, 1859), 370, trans. Eric Lund. When I say the new obedience or good works that follow faith are necessary for salvation, this does not mean that one must earn salvation by good works, or that they can make up, effect, or impart the righteousness by which a person may stand before the judgment seat of God, but that good works are effects and fruits of true faith, which should follow it and which Christ effects in the believers. For whoever believes and is justified is now bound and obligated to begin to be obedient to God the Father, to do good and avoid evil, or else that person risks losing his or her righteousness and salvation. . . . If now you are justified by faith alone and had become a child and heir of God and if Christ and the Holy Spirit now dwell in you through this faith, then your good works are not done in order to attain salvation (which you already have by grace alone without any works), but in order to retain salvation and not lose it again, good works are necessary to such an extent that, if you do not do them, it is a certain sign that your faith is dead and false, a painted faith, and only an imagined.

(1552) From Wilhelm Preger, Matthias Flacius Ill Illyricus yricus und seine Zeit Zeit, vol. 1 (Erlangen: Theodor Bläsing, 1859), 363, trans. Eric Lund. Now if good works are necessary to salvation, and if it is not possible for anyone to be saved without them, then tell us, Dr. Major, how will a man be saved if all his life until his last breath he has lived sinfully, but now, just as he is about to die, he desires to lay hold of Christ, as is the case with many on their deathbed or on the gallows? How will Major comfort such a poor sinner? It is certainly true that one says to the sinner after absolution: “Go and sin no more,” or “Do the righteous fruits of repentance,” or “Let your good works shine forth,” but how will he produce the fruit or good work that is supposedly necessary for salvation if he is about to die? The poor sinner will declare: “Major, the great theologian, writes and teaches as most certain that no one can be saved without good works, and that good works are absolutely necessary to salvation; therefore I am damned, for until now I have never done any good works.” Here, Major will say: “Do them from now on.” Then the poor man will answer, as those who teach works-righteousness do: “If I had any longer to live I could do such works are necessary for salvation, but now I am dying.” Furthermore, the devil will also charge his poor conscience with the words of Isaiah who said: “All our good works are as a filthy raiment,” or the words of Luther who said, “No good work is without sin. Where then are your good works that are necessary for salvation?” Dr. Luther, as one who experienced many difficult temptations, often said that the devil can easily make our good works dissolve away. But Major speaks, as Dr. Martin used to say it, like an inexperienced theologian and tongue-thrasher. Major will also have to state and determine the least number of ounces or pounds of good works one must have to be saved. He will also have to determine the exact hour at which a sinner began to do good works so he can be certain that he has some good

117. MAJOR: SERMON ON THE CONVERSION OF PAUL (1553)

118. MELANCHTHON: JUDGMENT CONCERNING GOOD WORKS (1553) This public position statement by Melanchthon appeared in December 1553. From CR 8:194, trans. Eric Lund. New obedience is necessary. It consists of renewal of life, spirit, light, contemplating and knowing God, joyfully submitting to God, invoking God, submitting ourselves to God, being set on fire by the hearing of the gospel through Word and spirit. Yet when it is said: New obedience is necessary to salvation, the papists understand that good works merit salvation. This proposition is false; therefore I give up using this way of speaking. Nevertheless, it is customary to say: New obedience is necessary, not as merit but by the necessity of formal cause such as when I say: a white wall is necessarily white. . . .

FACTIONALISM IN THE LATE REFORMATION (1546–1580)

153

Luther, yes, against Luther himself. For Luther, of blessed and holy memory, writes many places and especially in Galatians, that good works are not only not necessary, they are also harmful to salvation.4 120. AMSDORF: GOOD WORKS ARE INJURIOUS TO SALVATION (1559)

Fig. 5.2. Etching of Nikolaus von Amsdorf, bishop of Naumburg, by the German painter and printmaker Peter Gottlandt (1558).

119. AMSDORF: PREFACE TO LUTHER’S SERMONS ON JOHN 18–20 (1557) According to Amsdorf, it was not enough to stop asserting that good works are necessary for salvation. The Lutheran emphasis on grace and faith could only be preserved by a firm rejection of the worth and significance of any human achievement. Amsdorf contradicted Major by stating that good works are detrimental to salvation and supported this position by an appeal to the writings of Luther. From Walch 8:846, trans. Eric Lund. Everyone can see and observe from what Dr. Martin Luther professed that he showed no favor to any sects, rabble, or Enthusiasts. Rather, he condemned and rejected them all, as he also would have condemned those of this sort who appeared after his death, such as the Interimists, adiaphorists, or Majorists. Therefore, it is unfair and shameless of them to associate themselves with D. M. L., crying, writing, and boasting that Doctor Martin taught and wrote as they write and teach, even though the very opposite is obviously found in his books. I shall point out a single, most wicked and dangerous example of this: All who teach that good works are necessary for salvation blatantly teach and write contrary to

From Theodor Pressel, Nic icolaus olaus von Amsdorf: nach gleichzeitig gleichzeitigen en Quellen (Elberfeld: Friderichs, 1862), 123, trans. Eric Lund. The proposition “Good works are injurious to salvation” is unfairly condemned, for these words can be understood only with reference to the type and nature of works by which one claims to merit grace and salvation. Therefore such a proposition is aggravating to human understanding, wisdom, and holiness and to monks, nuns, and the highly learned; therefore they think it can be fairly condemned. Worldly people also have such a high regard for human understanding and wisdom that they cannot understand how the good works by which they think they acquire salvation can be injurious. But this is not surprising since it is not possible to hear the Word of God without God’s Spirit and grace. All those who believe and teach about religious matters according to the measure of the understanding and busy themselves with philosophy are heretics who have always taught and written that one can grasp and understand with the intellect. Therefore they also judge contrary to God’s Word, glossing and interpreting it according to the meaning that is congenial to the intellect and philosophy. In accordance with the human wisdom known to everyone, even the heathen, they all teach in their churches and schools that good works are necessary and good for salvation; in no way will they suffer in the school of the Holy Spirit in which one praises and honors that which the Word of God believes and proclaims. In the schools of the jurists and sophists, the proposition “Good works are injurious to salvation” is condemned. But divine and heavenly wisdom teaches that all men, however pious or holy they may be, even believers, are unrighteous sinners before God and also that all their works are sins that, except for the grace that makes believers and their works pleasing to God, they would be damned as much as the others and their works would be sins, detrimental to their salvation. If they do all that God has commanded and serve God day and night with all good works, they would still be damned with all their works if God went to them in judgment. But

154

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

that their works are not harmful or damnable is due merely to Christ in whom they believe. . . . 121. EPITOME OF THE FORMULA OF CONCORD: ARTICLE 4 (1577) From BC 498–99. Affirmative Theses . . . 2. We also believe, teach, and confess that at the same time, good works must be completely excluded from any questions of salvation as well as from the article on our justification before God, as the apostle testifies in clear terms, “So also David declares that salvation pertains to that person alone to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works, saying, ‘Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered’” (Rom 4[:6–7]), and also, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph 2[:8–9]). 3. We also believe, teach, and confess that all people, particularly those who have been reborn and renewed through the Holy Spirit, are obligated to do good works. 4. In this sense the words “necessary,” “should,” and “must” are used correctly, in Christian fashion, also in regard to the reborn; in no way is such use contrary to the pattern of sound words and speech. 5. Of course, the words necessitas, necessarium (“necessity” and “necessary”) are not to be understood as a compulsion when they are applied to the reborn, but only as the required obedience, which they perform out of a spontaneous spirit—not because of the compulsion or coercion of the law—because they are “no longer under the law, but under grace” [Rom 6:14]. THE SYNERGIST CONTROVERSY 122. MELANCHTHON: LETTER TO SPALATIN CONCERNING THE LUTHER-ERASMUS DEBATE (1524) During the debate between Luther and Erasmus about free will, Melanchthon was in touch with both disputants, trying to get them to moderate what they said to each other. On this particular issue, his humanistic background predisposed him to sympathize with Erasmus more than Luther. From CR 1:673, trans. Eric Lund.

Erasmus has written a book on free will. We are sending this book to you. It seems that he has not treated us with contempt. A short while ago I also received letters from him, which you will see. They will also be brought to you by this young man. I desperately desire that this subject, which is the most important in the Christian religion, should be carefully examined, and for this reason I rejoice that Erasmus has taken up the struggle. For a long time I have wished that some prudent person should oppose Luther on this matter. If Erasmus is not this man, I am greatly deceived. 123. MELANCHTHON: LOCI COMMUNES OF 1548 Melanchthon continuously revised his basic summary of Christian theology. In the edition of 1548, written in the year of the Interim crisis, it became more evident to the public that Melanchthon did not totally agree with Luther about the effect of sin upon the power of the will. From CR 21:658–59, trans. Eric Lund. I have seen many who, when troubled by their sins, have asked: “How can we hope to be accepted by God when we perceive no new light and no new virtue in us? Free will does nothing, so we must live in mistrust and doubt until we become conscious of rebirth in us.” This impression that the will is not active is a dangerous delusion from which one must free the mind. Pharaoh and Saul opposed God freely and without compulsion, although he had given them frequent and convincing proofs of his presence. On the other hand, the conversion of David did not occur in such a manner as when a stone is turned into a fig. Free will cooperated in him; for when he heard the threats and the promises of God, he willingly and freely confessed his faults....... God has ordered the preaching of his Word in such a way that when someone considers and accepts the promise, while still struggling with doubt, the Holy Spirit begins to work within. Therefore, when people excuse their idleness because they think that free will does nothing, I answer: “It is an eternal and unchanging commandment of God that you should obey the voice of the gospel, hear the Son of God, and acknowledge the Mediator.” You may say, “I cannot.” But in a manner you certainly can, and when you have consoled yourself with the gospel, then ask God to assist you, and know that the Holy Spirit is efficacious in such consolation. Convince yourself that God intends to convert us in this man-

FACTIONALISM IN THE LATE REFORMATION (1546–1580)

ner, when we, moved by the promise, wrestle with ourselves, pray for help, and resist our lack of trust, our disbelief, and other evil inclinations. For this reason some in former times have said that free will has the capability of turning toward grace; that means hearing the promise, endeavoring to assent to it, and struggling against sin. . . . Since the promise is universal, and there are no contradictory wills in God, the reason for the acceptance of some and the rejection of others must necessarily be within ourselves. The right use of this doctrine in the practice of faith and in the consolation of the soul will confirm the truth that these three causes concur: the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, and the Will. 124. PFEFFINGER: FIVE QUESTIONS ON THE FREEDOM OF THE HUMAN WILL (1555) The Leipzig Interim had asserted that God “does not work with man as with a block, but draws him so that his will also cooperates.” Johann Pfeffinger (1493–1573), who had assisted Melanchthon in composing this statement, defended it more fully in the following theses. From Friedrich Bente, Historical Intr Introductions oductions to the Bo Book ok of Conc oncord ord (St. Louis: Concordia, 1921), 131. #14. . . . Some assent or apprehension on our part must occur when the Holy Spirit has aroused the mind, the will, and the heart. Hence Basil says: Only will, and God anticipates; and Chrysostom: He who draws, draws him who is willing; and Augustine: He assists those who have received the gift of the call with becoming piety, and preserves the gifts of God as far as man is able. Again: when grace preceded, the will follows. . . . #17. If the will were idle or purely passive, there would be no difference between the pious and the wicked, or between the elect and the damned, as between Saul and David, between Judas and Peter. God would also become a respecter of persons and the author of contumacy in the wicked and damned; and to God would be ascribed contradictory wills, which conflicts with the entire Scripture. Hence it follows that there is in us a cause why some assent while others do not. . . . #30. For since the promise of grace is universal, and since we must obey this promise, some difference between the elect and the rejected must be inferred from our will, namely, that those who resist the promise are rejected, while those who embrace the promise are received. . . . All this clearly shows that

155

our will is not idle in conversion or like a stone or block in its conduct. . . . #34. Some persons, however, shout that the assistance of the Holy Spirit is extenuated and diminished if even the least particle be attributed to the human will. Though this argument may appear specious and plausible, yet pious minds understand that by our doctrine—according to which we ascribe some cooperation to our will, namely, some assent and apprehension—absolutely nothing is taken away from the assistance rendered by the Holy Spirit. For we affirm that the first acts must be assigned and attributed to him who first and primarily, through the Word or the voice of the gospel, moves our hearts to believe, to which thereupon we, too, ought to assent as much as we are able, and not resist the Holy Spirit, but submit to the Word, ponder, learn, and hear it, as Christ says: “Whosoever has heard of the Father and learned comes to me.” . . . #36. And although original sin has brought upon our nature a ruin so sad and horrible that we can hardly imagine it, yet we must not think that absolutely all the knowledge that was found in the minds of our first parents before the Fall has on that account been destroyed and extinguished after the Fall, or that the human will does not in any way differ from a stone or a block; for we are, as St. Paul has said most seriously, coworkers with God, whose coworking, indeed, is assisted and strengthened by the Holy Spirit. 125. HESHUS: ON SO-CALLED FREE WILL— AGAINST THE SYNERGISTS (1562) Although Tilmann Heshus (1527–88) is best known for his involvement in the crypto-Calvinist controversy, he was actively involved in many of the doctrinal debates of his age. This intense GnesioLutheran lost several positions during his career as a pastor and professor because of the offense caused by his polemics. From Vom Vermeinten Freyen Willen: Wider die Synerg ynergisten isten (Magdeburg: Kirchener, 1562), 2:2 & 4, trans. Eric Lund. Part 2:2 That the human will cannot cooperate or do anything in its conversion, justification, or rebirth is demonstrable from the entire Scriptures, which testify that man is not free by nature and does not have his heart, will, or thought in his power, but affirm

156

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

to the contrary that his best powers, related to his understanding and will, are ensnared and imprisoned and locked up under the power and tyranny of sin and are the enslaved servant of the devil— thus that he by himself can wish, desire, or choose nothing other than what is opposed to righteousness, pleasing to the devil, and worthy of hellfire. . . . Origen imagined that the will of man is its own lord who sits on a stool like a judge with virtue and sin, life and damnation before him, and it is up to him to give himself to righteousness or sin as he so chooses.5 The intellect dreams this and philosophy supports this lie, but God’s Word speaks otherwise of this matter, declaring that the natural understanding and will are as if a man lies bound in stocks and cannot move himself. Yes, sin is so much his own that he wants or can do nothing but sin and pervert himself in his lusts. Many passages in the Scripture testify to this. John 8:34: Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. When the Son makes you free, you will die to your sins. Romans 6:20: When you were slaves to sin, you were free from righteousness. Romans 7:14: I am carnal, sold into slavery under sin. Isaiah 50:1: Because of your sins, you were sold. Isaiah 52:3: You were sold for nothing and redeemed without money. How do you reconcile such servitude or slavery with the freedom by which a man can do something for himself? They are as opposed as day and night. . . . Part 2:4 Since we have now, with God’s help, clarified the pure and scripturally based doctrine of the unfree will and the conversion of man through God’s grace and have also pointed out the errors and falsifications of which we must beware, we will, at last, consider some of the objections of the Synergists. From this everyone may see how our opponents have no ground for their errors in God’s Word and will, therefore, hold more firmly to the truth. . . . The primary false argument of the Synergists is this: If there is no cooperation by a person in conversion, and it is only the work of God, then God must not be of one mind toward all people. Yet Scripture testifies that God is good toward everyone and does not want anyone to be lost (2 Pet 3:8; 1 Tim 2:4). Therefore, there must be a free will in a person, which is the cause why some receive the Word and others reject it. Answer: This is without a doubt the most difficult argument related to this matter, and the foremost writers of all times have given much consideration to

it. . . . It is rightly and truly believed of God that he wants all men to be saved, but it in no way follows that one may conclude from this that there is some power of free will remaining in man and some cooperation in conversion. Rather, it only follows that God is not the cause of the damnation of men and also does not hinder the salvation of anyone. . . . It is like a pious father who always wants it to go well with his children. If a child does evil, he orders that one to be flogged. Nevertheless, he continues to wish that it should go well with the child. So, the promise of the gospel demands that one believe in the name of Jesus Christ. God wants all people to be saved insofar as they believe in Christ. But he also wills that the others who do not believe should be damned. Therefore, it is one thing to speak about the general will of God and quite another to speak about the election and plan of God. For God’s election and eternal plan has no condition, but as God has concluded from eternity, so it happens. It is a matter not only of his will, counsel, and pleasure but also of his work and plan, which no one can understand. If God makes a Christian believe, he does not only give his Word and does not only proclaim his will, but grasps him effectively and renews the man, directs him to faith and the new life without any conditions or cooperation. 126. EPITOME OF THE FORMULA OF CONCORD: ARTICLES 2 AND 11 (1577) From BC 491–94, 552–55, 517–18. Epitome of the Formula of Concord: Article 2 Affirmative Theses . . . 1. On this article it is our teaching, faith, and confession that human reason and understanding are blind in spiritual matters and understand nothing on the basis of their own powers, as it is written, “Those who are natural do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them and they are unable to understand them” [1 Cor 2:14] when they are asked about spiritual matters. 2. Likewise, we believe, teach, and confess that the unregenerated human will is not only turned away from God but has also become God’s enemy, that it has only the desire and will to do evil and whatever is opposed to God, as it is written, “The inclination of the human heart is evil from youth” [Gen 8:21]. Likewise, “The mind that is set on the flesh is hos-

FACTIONALISM IN THE LATE REFORMATION (1546–1580)

tile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed, it cannot” [Rom 8:7]. As little as a corpse can make itself alive for bodily, earthly life, so little can people who through sin are spiritually dead raise themselves up to a spiritual life, as it is written, “When we were dead through our trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ” [Eph 2:5]. Therefore, we are not “competent of ourselves to claim anything [good] as coming from us; our competence is from God” (2 Cor 3[:5]). . . . Negative Theses . . . 4. [We reject and condemn] that, although human beings are too weak to initiate conversion with their free will before rebirth, and thus convert themselves to God on the basis of their own natural powers and be obedient to God’s law with their whole hearts, nonetheless, once the Holy Spirit has made a beginning through the preaching of the Word and in it has offered his grace, the human will is able out of its own natural powers to a certain degree, even though small and feeble, to do something, to help and cooperate, to dispose and prepare itself for grace, to grasp this grace, to accept it, and to believe the gospel. . . . 8. . . . Some ancient and modern teachers of the church have used expressions such as, “Deus trahit, sed volentem trahit,” that is, “God draws, but he draws those who are willing”; and “Hominis voluntas in conversione non est otiosa, sed agit aliquid,” that is, “The human will is not idle in conversion but also is doing something.” Because such expressions have been introduced as confirmation of the natural free will in conversion contrary to the teaching of God’s grace, we hold that these expressions do not correspond to the form of sound teaching, and therefore it is proper to avoid them when speaking of conversion to God. On the other hand, it is correct to say that in conversion God changes recalcitrant, unwilling people into willing people through the drawing power of the Holy Spirit, and that after this conversion the reborn human will is not idle in the daily exercise of repentance, but cooperates in all the works of the Holy Spirit which he performs through us. 9. . . . Therefore, before the conversion of the human being there are only two efficient causes, the Holy Spirit and God’s Word as the instrument of the Holy Spirit, through which he effects conversion; the human creature must hear this Word, but cannot believe and accept it on the basis of its own powers but only through the grace and action of God the Holy Spirit.

157

Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord II. Concerning the Free Will or Human Powers ..... It is indeed true that both the Enthusiasts and the Epicureans misuse in unchristian fashion the teaching regarding the impotence and wickedness of our natural free will and the teaching that our conversion and rebirth are the work of God alone and not of our powers. Because of such talk, many people become dissolute and disorderly as well as indolent and sluggish in all Christian activities, such as prayer, reading, and Christian meditation. They say that because they cannot possibly convert to God on the basis of their own natural powers, they want to continue to rebel against God or to wait until God converts them against their will with his brute power. . . . Other timid hearts may fall into troubling thoughts and doubts, whether God has chosen them and wants to make His gifts effective in them through the Holy Spirit, because they do not have a strong, burning faith and heartfelt obedience. Instead, they perceive in themselves only weakness, worry, and wretchedness. Therefore, on the basis of God’s Word we now want to give a further account of how the human being is converted to God; how and through which means (namely, through the oral Word and the holy sacraments) the Holy Spirit desires to be active in us and to give and effect true repentance, faith, and the new spiritual power and capability to do the good in our hearts; and how we should respond to such means and use them. . . . A person who has not yet been converted to God and been reborn can hear and read this Word externally, for in such external matters, as stated above, people have a free will to a certain extent even after the fall, so that they may go to church and listen or not listen to the sermon. Through these means (the preaching and hearing of His Word), God goes about His work and breaks our hearts and draws people, so that they recognize their sins and God’s wrath through the preaching of the law and feel real terror, regret, and sorrow in their hearts. Through the preaching of the holy gospel of the gracious forgiveness of sins in Christ and through meditating upon it, a spark of faith is ignited in them, and they accept the forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake and receive the comfort of the promise of the gospel. In this way the Holy Spirit, who effects all of this, is sent into their hearts. . . . However, if people do not want to hear or read the proclamation of God’s Word but disdain it and

158

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

the congregation of God’s people and then die and perish in their sins, they can neither find comfort in God’s eternal election nor obtain mercy. For Christ, in whom we are chosen, offers his grace to all people in the Word and in the holy sacraments, and he earnestly desires that people should hear it. He has promised that where “two or three are gathered” in his name and are occupied with his holy Word, he will be “there among them” [Matt 18:20]. If such people disdain the tools of the Holy Spirit and do not want to hear, no injustice is done to them if the Holy Spirit does not enlighten them but lets them remain and perish in the darkness of unbelief....... Although God does not force human beings in such a way that they must become godly (for those who persistently resist the Holy Spirit and stubbornly struggle against what is recognized truth, as Stephen said of the obdurate Jews in Acts 7[:51], will not be converted), nonetheless God the Lord draws those people whom he wants to convert and does so in such a way that an enlightened understanding is fashioned out of a darkened understanding and an obedient will is fashioned out of a rebellious will. Scripture calls this creating a new heart [Ps 51:12].

hearts, and thus blocking the Holy Spirit’s ordinary path, so that he cannot carry out his work in them; or if they have given it a hearing, they cast it to the wind and pay no attention to it. Then the fault lies not with God and his election but with their own wickedness [cf. 2 Pet 2:9–15; Luke 11:47–52; Heb 12:15–17, 25]. THE FLACIAN CONTROVERSY

Epitome of the Formula of Concord XI. Concerning the Eternal Predestination and Election of God . . . The Pure, True Teaching concerning This Article ... 4. Praedestinatio, however, or God’s eternal election, extends only to the righteous, God-pleasing children of God. It is a cause of their salvation, which God brings about. He has arranged everything that belongs to it. Our salvation is so firmly grounded on it [cf. John 10:26–29] that “the gates of hell will not prevail against it” [Matt 16:18]. . . . 7. This Christ calls all sinners to himself and promises them refreshment. He is utterly serious in his desire that all people should come to him and seek help for themselves [cf. Matt 11:28; 1 Tim 2:4]. He offers himself to them in the Word. He desires them to hear the Word and not to plug their ears or despise his Word. To this end he promises the power and activity of the Holy Spirit, divine assistance in remaining faithful and attaining eternal salvation. 11. That “many are called and few are chosen” [Matt 22:14] does not mean that God does not want to save everyone. Instead, the reason for condemnation lies in their not hearing God’s Word at all or arrogantly despising it, plugging their ears and their

Fig. 5.3. Matthias Flacius Illyricus (1520–75).

127. THE WEIMAR DISPUTATION BETWEEN VALENTIN STRIGEL AND MATTHIAS FLACIUS (1560) The Weimar Disputation was arranged by Duke Johann Friedrich of Saxony and took place August 2–8, 1560. In discussing the impact of original sin on free will, during the second session of this debate, Strigel, the Philippist, raised the issue that provoked the Flacian controversy. From Simon Musäus, Disputatio de Orig Originali inali Peccato et Liber Liberoo Arbitrio inter M. Flacius et V. Strig Strigelium elium (1563), 22–26, trans. Eric Lund.

FACTIONALISM IN THE LATE REFORMATION (1546–1580)

STRIGEL: Original sin is a defect and deprivation in all of the powers and faculties of man and chiefly in these three: first in the mind, second in the will, and third in the heart. In the mind, it is a loss of divine light, that is, of the knowledge of God’s nature and will. This darkness appears as terrible and dismal doubts about all divine things, about providence, and the promises and threats of God. These evils, I believe I have made clear, are both privative and positive. Furthermore, in the will, it is not only an aversion to God as the proper object to which it ought to be directed, but also a conversion, that is, an appetite for things that are illicit and prohibited by God such as seeking security in secondary things, contempt for God, and murmuring against God. Third, in the heart, it is an ataxia, that is, a manifold confusion of appetites or desires, wrongful love of ourselves, lust for vengeance, and the proliferation of inordinate passions. On account of this defect and deprivation, God has become angry with the whole human race for, indeed, this poison or evil is propagated to all the posterity of Adam. . . . Original sin [however] is not a substance or a certain substantial quantity. Rather, it is a quality of a secondary sort, that is, a loss of strength or power: It has a liability attached to it, that is, an assignment to eternal punishment by the judgment of the most just God. From this, it is possible to discern what it really is, namely, not a substance or a property that differentiates one species from another but an accident, a privation that comprises both a deficiency and a disordered movement or impulse. . . . FLACIUS: I have cited testimonies where the Word of God says that original sin is the very composition of the old man. They all understand it to be the same mass. Ezekiel 11 and 36 say that the heart is like a stone, that a new heart must be created, and many other things that distinctly indicate that original sin is a substance. STRIGEL: Then you deny that original sin is an accident? FLACIUS: Luther distinctly denies that it is an accident. But, second, it should be noted that you are continuing to dispute from philosophy concerning substance and accident, which ought not to be the way of thinking of theologians in matters concerning religion and truth. Third, you say that the will cannot be deprived of its own free action without the annihilation of man. Scripture testifies to the contrary that what pertains to the divine in the intellect has not only been killed, put to death, and destroyed, but man also has been transformed into the image of Satan. Look at Colossians 2[:11–13], which speaks of

159

the circumcision of a corpse, etc. Here Paul is speaking of inherent evil, or the annihilation of the good powers. To this he adds that the will is the possession of Satan. See 2 Timothy 2[:26]. Just as a Christian captured by a Turk is not free but is restricted to doing what his master wills or commands, so Satan effectually holds the hearts of his captives like an ox by the nose. . . . You digress from the aim of our deliberation and deviate into plausibilities. You do not refute my arguments from the Word of God. Luther speaks of original sin as a corruption of nature like the flesh or total mass of a man changed by leprosy. I say, Scripture does not allow us to speak of original sin as if it were a trivial accident, but just as yeast leavens a total mass, so the total nature of man is subjected to corruption. I say that man is poisoned, is entirely prone or inclined to evil and entirely unable to do good. Scripture testifies to this. . . . STRIGEL: I am not saying that man can grasp the grace of God of his own powers, but that the Holy Spirit stretches out our hands. And so that no ambiguity will remain, I will clarify this through an example. Only a mother or wet nurse can nourish a child, for a child is too weak to seek its nourishment by its own exertions. If the mother or wet nurse does not nourish it, it will die of hunger. Now the question is how the poor child draws the milk from its mother’s breast. I say that the child sucks and draws in the milk, but only if the mother has directed the mouth of the child to her breast. If this does not happen, the child would not know what to do. . . . FLACIUS: The mother not only offers her breast, but the child also feels hunger in itself and possesses the power in its body to receive food. Yes, it moves its mouth and lips and is prepared to suck. Strigel, then, would have it that there is a power in us to desire and receive the food, that is, the benefits of God. In fact, you thereby attribute to corrupt man a very great power with respect to spiritual things. Now, then, deny that this opinion is Pelagian. . . . I explain my entire view as follows: Man is purely passive. If you consider the innate faculty of the will, its willing, and its powers, then he is purely passive when he receives. But if that divinely bestowed willing or spark of faith kindled by the Spirit is considered, then this imparted willing and this spark are not purely passive. But the Adamic will not only does not operate or cooperate but, according to the innate malice of the heart, even operates contrarily.

160

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

128. FLACIUS: TREATISE ON ORIGINAL SIN FROM CLAVIS SCRIPTURAE (1567) Flacius resisted the introduction of Aristotelian metaphysical categories into the discussion of theology. In his 1567 guide to the study of the Bible, he emphasized this fact. Nevertheless, in the treatise on original sin appended to this volume, he persisted in speaking of original sin as part of the substance of human nature. From Clavis Scriptur Scripturae ae (Leipzig: Erythropilus, 1695), 771–72, 787, trans. Eric Lund. I believe and assert that original sin is a substance, because the rational soul (as united with God) and especially its noblest substantial powers, namely, the intellect and will, which before had been formed so gloriously that they were the true image of God and the fountain of all justice, uprightness, and piety, and altogether essentially like unto gold and gems, are now, by deceit of Satan, so utterly perverted that they are the true and living image of Satan, and, as it were, filthy or rather consisting of an infernal flame, not otherwise than when the sweetest and purest mass, infected with the most venomous ferment, is altogether and substantially changed and transformed into a lump of the same ferment. . . . Some object that I introduce new opinions into the church when I affirm that original sin, or rather a certain part of original sin, is a substance. I respond: there is no good reason to say this opinion is new since it is taught in so many works not only by Luther and the writings of others as I will afterwards show, but also most wisely in sacred Scripture itself, where truly this sin is many times described in essential words. . . . Luther in a sermon for the feast of the circumcision says:6 the disease that should be cut out adheres not in any works but in nature itself. The substance of man is totally corrupted so that sin is the origin of man and whatever is in him. Furthermore, this sin is original, or rather the whole nature of man is sin, even if no actual sin, as it is called, is committed. This sin is not committed as all other sins are but exists in itself, lives, and produces all sin. It is a substantial sin that is not sinned at a certain hour or time, but as long as a man lives that sinning endures. . . . In sum, original evil is that same fount of all evil, of all guilt and penalty in man. Scripture therefore says the heart is depraved, perverted, and distorted, that it rushes headlong to evil or ranges even from infancy. Genesis 6:5, 8:21; Jeremiah 17:9—the heart

is blind and hardened, stony and adamantine (Deut 29:4; Ezek 11:19, 36:26; Rom 1:21; Eph 4:18). 129. FINAL REPORT OF THE THEOLOGIANS OF WITTENBERG AND LEIPZIG (1570) For once, the Philippists found Flacius in a vulnerable position. He had raised questions about the pastoral implications of speaking of the necessity of good works. Now they questioned the impact of speaking of original sin as part of human substance. From Endlicher Bericht (Wittenberg: Hans Lufft, 1570), 164, trans. Eric Lund. Let every rational, God-fearing man consider what an immeasurable and unholy misery, cross, and grief it would be for the poor female sex if a pregnant woman should think and conclude that the fruit that she bore is not, in essence, a special gift of God but of the devil who formed it essentially according to his image, who dwells in it and powerfully—yes, essentially—impressed and implanted his devilish larva in its flesh and blood. Yes, what will one in this case say to the poor female sex? All Christian fathers and mothers to whom God gives children search their own hearts and think what a joy or pleasure they will have in their children, if this great consolation should be received that children are a work, gift, present from God as Psalms 127, 128 testify. But how would a Christian father or mother view the shape of the child if we must say: This fruit of your body is the flesh and blood of Satan dwelling in you and your wife, formed and created in an essential way according to his image and likeness, that it is from Satan that your child received and obtained, through you, a so highly corrupted, evil nature, substance, and essence, such a gruesome, horrible larva. If, we ask, a pious, God-fearing father and mother viewed their children with this thought, what kind of joy, comfort, and pleasure would they have in marriage? . . . In opposition to this horrible, abhorrent blasphemy, which is basically nothing other than the old, damned Manichaean abomination, except that it is advanced and excused with more crafty and poisonous words, we differentiate the substance and essence and the entire life of man, which God alone gives and sustains, from original sin, that dung and poison clinging to the essence that comes from and is derived from the devil. And we continually say that the devil takes no part along with God in forming the substance and essence, the entire life and all that is essential in man, and that this human nature, although it is sinful and corrupted (and though this

FACTIONALISM IN THE LATE REFORMATION (1546–1580)

sin is inherited in birth along with and next to the nature and essence of man and is originally from the devil), still it is not from the devil but is a work and creation of God alone, as can be shown from countless passages in the Word of God. The entire 139th Psalm (139:13–16) is a splendid and comforting testimony that our life and essence is formed, given, and sustained by God alone. “You, O Lord,” this psalm says, “were with me in my mother’s body and I thank you that I am so wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works, that my soul confesses. My bones were not hidden from you when I was made in secret, when I was formed within the earth. Your eyes saw me when I was still not ready to be born. All my days were written in your book and still shall be and it could not be otherwise.” 130. EPITOME OF THE FORMULA OF CONCORD: ARTICLE 1 (1577) From BC 488–91. Affirmative Theses . . . 1. We believe, teach, and confess that there is a difference between original sin and human nature—not only as God originally created it pure, holy, and without sin, but also as we have it now after the fall. Even after the fall this nature still is and remains a creature of God. This difference is as great as the difference between the work of God and the work of the devil. . . . 3. On the other hand, we believe, teach, and confess that original sin is not a slight corruption of human nature, but rather a corruption so deep that there is nothing sound or uncorrupted left in the human body or soul, in its internal or external powers. Instead, as the church sings, “Through Adam’s fall human nature and our essence are completely corrupted.” . . . Negative Theses . . . [13.] Concerning the Latin words substantia and accidens, since they are not biblical terms and are words unfamiliar to common people, they should not be used in sermons delivered to the common people, who do not understand them; the simple folk should be spared such words. But in the schools and among the learned these terms are familiar and can be used without any misunderstanding to differentiate the essence of a thing from that which in an “accidental” way adheres to the thing. Therefore, these words are properly retained in scholarly discussion of original sin. For the difference between God’s work and the

161

devil’s work can be made most clear through these words because the devil cannot create a substance but can only corrupt the substance, which God has created, in an “accidental” way, with God’s permission. THE OSIANDRIAN CONTROVERSY 131. OSIANDER: CONCERNING THE ONLY MEDIATOR (1551) This treatise contained the fullest development of Andreas Osiander’s thought about human righteousness and the nature of justification. From Von dem Einig Einigen en Mitler Jesu Christo und Rechtf Rechtfertig ertigung ung des Glaubens, Bekantnus (Königsberg: Lufft 1551), 30–33, trans. Eric Lund. Since we are in Christ through faith and he is in us, we also become the righteousness of God in him, just as he became sin for us [2 Cor 5:21]. That is, he showered us and filled us with his divine righteousness, as we showered him with our sins, so that God himself and all the angels see only righteousness in us on account of the highest, eternal, and infinite righteousness of Christ, which is His Godhead itself dwelling in us. And although sin still dwells in our flesh and clings to it, this sin is just like an impure little drop in comparison with an immense pure ocean, and God does not want to see it on account of the righteousness of Christ that is in us. . . . By the fulfillment of the law and by his suffering and death, Christ merited and acquired from God, his heavenly Father, this great and exalted grace: He has not only forgiven our sin and taken the unbearable burden of the law away from us, but also wishes to justify us through faith in Christ, to infuse justification or righteousness, and, through the working of His Holy Spirit and the death of Christ into which we are incorporated by Baptism, to kill, wipe out, and entirely exterminate the sin that, though already forgiven, still dwells in our flesh and clings to us. Therefore the second part of the office of our dear and faithful Lord and Mediator Jesus Christ consists of his turning toward us and dealing with us poor sinners, as with a guilty party, in such a way that we acknowledge this great grace and receive it by faith with thanksgiving. In so doing, he can make us alive from the death of sin by faith, and completely mortify and exterminate that sin, which, though already forgiven, still dwells in our flesh and clings to us. This, above all else, is the act of our justification.

162

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Fig. 5.4. Portrait of Andreas Osiander by artist Georg Pencz (1544).

Thus we are justified with his essential righteousness: One will call him “The Lord is our righteousness.” Jeremiah 23:6 and 33:16. . . . Therefore we live with his essential righteousness and will also henceforth live, as he says, “Just as the living Father has sent me, and I live because of my Father’s will, so whoever eats of me will also live because of my will.” John 6:57. . . . But to eat the flesh of Christ and to drink his blood means in this passage nothing other than to believe that he has offered his body for our sins—but thus that through this faith we become one flesh with him and are purified with his blood from our sins. . . . Whoever does not hold to this manner of our justification, no matter what he may confess with his mouth, is certainly a Zwinglian at heart, for it is impossible for one to believe that the true body of Christ is in the bread and his true blood is in the cup without believing that Christ truly dwells in the Christian. . . . They also teach things colder than ice who hold that we are simply regarded as righteous on account of the forgiveness of sins, and not on account of the essential righteousness of Christ, who dwells in us through faith. . . .

132. OSIANDER: DISPUTATION ON RIGHTEOUSNESS (OCTOBER 24, 1550)

133. MÖRLIN: APOLOGY CONCERNING THE OSIANDRIST ENTHUSIASTS (1557)

The following text reveals the biblical texts with which Osiander supported his arguments about the righteousness that comes from Christ’s indwelling in the Christian. From Gottlieb Planck, Geschichte der pr protestantisotestantischen Theolog Theologie ie, vol. 4 (Leipzig: Siegfried Lebrecht Crusius, 1796), 271–73, trans. Eric Lund. The entire fullness of deity dwells in Christ bodily and consequently also in those in whom Christ dwells. . . . And he promised us that this would take place when he said: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.” John 6:56. And again: “Whoever loves me will keep my word and my Father will love him, and we will come and dwell with him.” John 14:21. . . . He also diligently admonishes us to abide in him and says: “You have already been purified by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you.” John 15:3–4. . . . Therefore St. Paul boasts and audaciously says: “I live, yet it is no longer I, but Christ, who lives in me.” Galatians 2:20. . . .

Joachim Mörlin wrote several important treatises against Osiander’s position. The following excerpt concisely shows the counterarguments that he drew from biblical texts. From Apolog pologia ia auff die vermeinte widerleg widerlegung ung des Osiandrischen Schwermers in Pr Preussen, eussen, M. Vog ogels els (Magdeburg: Lotter, 1557), dii–diii, trans. Eric Lund. The Opposition Between the Teachings of Paul and Osiander For Paul, “to impute” means that God reckons an alien innocence to us and on account of this receives us as righteous and pious, although we are still not so in ourselves. Romans 2 and 4. To the contrary, for Osiander, it means that righteousness is present and at hand in us. For Paul, “justification” means that the godless one who has no good work or good reputation can easily be accounted or accepted as righteous on account of the obedience of Christ to eternal life. Romans 4. To the contrary, for Osiander, it means that right-

FACTIONALISM IN THE LATE REFORMATION (1546–1580)

eousness pours out, flows, and evidently bubbles up through a little funnel. For Paul, “righteousness” means the gracious forgiveness of our sins, which we experience without the law and any works, through faith in the obedience of Christ and his merits, by which we are eternally accepted and saved by God. Romans 3 and 4. To the contrary, for Osiander, righteousness means the piety with all virtues that moves us to do good. In summary, Paul credits it all to the grace of God, the merits of Christ, and because of that the forgiveness of sins. He cannot allow the law or works to be used or praised along with renewal as righteousness before God, but modestly excludes them with words such as: by faith alone, grace, not of ourselves, without the law, without works, and so forth. This is powerfully declared in Romans 3 and 4, 1 Corinthians 4, Ephesians 2. He also considers renewal a result or fruit of the righteousness of faith and repentance. To the contrary, Osiander teaches in one summary that the grace of God, the merits of Christ, the forgiveness of sins in his blood are not and cannot be righteousness, and, in rebuttal, states that when one teaches this, it is a horrible idolatry and blasphemy. For Osiander, our righteousness before God to eternal life is the renewal and entirely new life that comes from God dwelling and working in us. 134. MELANCHTHON: CONFUTATION OF OSIANDER (SEPTEMBER, 1555) For once, Melanchthon basically agreed with a theological judgment made by his Gnesio-Lutheran opponents. From CR 8:582–83, trans. Eric Lund. We clearly affirm the presence or indwelling of God in the reborn. We do not say that God is present in them like the power of the sun at work upon the veins of the earth, but that the Father and the Son are actually present, breathing the Holy Spirit into the heart of the believer. This presence or indwelling is what is called spiritual renewal. This personal union, however, is not the same as the union of the divine and human natures in Christ but is an indwelling like someone living in a separable domicile in this life. We should say in addition that although this indwelling or renewal is necessarily present in the reborn, it does not endure unless that faith first shines that justifies a person before God, that is, the faith by which one has the remission of sins, and is reconciled and accepted by God to eternal life on account of the

163

obedience of the mediator, as it says in Daniel [9:18] and many other places: We are heard by the Lord not on account of our own righteousness but on account of his mercy. Although God dwelt in Moses, Elijah, David, Isaiah, Daniel, Peter, and Paul, nevertheless none of them claimed to be righteous before God on account of this indwelling or the effecting of their renewal but on account of the obedience of the Mediator and his gracious intercession, since, in this life, the remnants of sin were still in them. Therefore, although this renewal is pleasing to God, infinitely greater preference should be given to the obedience and intercession of the Mediator, since, as Paul says, we are chosen in love [Eph 1:4]. And Ephesians 3: through whom we have access in confidence through faith in him. Osiander especially makes an issue of this article and contends that man is righteous on account of the indwelling of God, or because of the God dwelling in him, not on account of the obedience of the Mediator, and not by the imputed righteousness of the Mediator through grace. He corrupts the proposition “By faith we are justified” into “By faith we are prepared that we may become just by something else,” that is, the indwelling God. Thus in reality he is saying what the papists say: “We are righteous by our renewal,” except that he mentions the cause where the papists mention the effect. We are just when God renews us. He therefore diminishes the honor due to the Mediator, obscures the greatness of sin, destroys the chief consolation of the pious, and leads them into perpetual doubt. For faith cannot exist unless it contemplates the promise of mercy concerning the Mediator. Nor is there an inhabitation unless consolation is received by this faith. It is preposterous to teach that first one is to believe in the indwelling and afterward in forgiveness of sins. Therefore, since this dogma of Osiander is both false and pernicious to consciences, it should be shunned and condemned. 135. EPITOME OF THE FORMULA OF CONCORD: ARTICLE 3 (1577) From BC 494–96. Concerning the Righteousness of Faith Before God . . . Affirmative Theses . . . 2. Accordingly, we believe, teach, and confess that our righteousness before God consists in this, that God forgives us our sins by sheer grace, without any

164

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

works, merit, or worthiness of our own, in the past, at present, or in the future, that he gives us and reckons to us the righteousness of Christ’s obedience and that, because of this righteousness, we are accepted by God into grace and regarded as righteous. . . . 5. We believe, teach, and confess that according to the usage of Holy Scripture the word “to justify” in this article means “to absolve,” that is, “to pronounce free from sin”: “One who justifies the wicked and one who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord” (Prov 17[:15]); “Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies” (Rom 8[:33]). When in place of this the words regeneratio and vivificatio, that is “new birth” and “making alive,” are used as synonyms of justification, as happens in the Apology, then they are to be understood in this same sense. Otherwise, they should be understood as the renewal of the human being and should be differentiated from “justification by faith.” THE CRYPTO-CALVINIST CONTROVERSY 136. THE CONSENSUS OF THE CHURCHES OF ZURICH AND GENEVA (1549) Although the Zurich Consensus (also called the Consensus Tigurinus) never gained the status of a formal confession for the Reformed tradition, it was important as the first successful effort to reconcile the eucharistic theology of the churches influenced by Zwingli and Calvin. From Consensus Tig igurinus urinus, trans. Henry Beveridge, rev. ed. (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1849), 218–20. 16. All Who Partake of the Sacraments Do Not Partake of the Reality We carefully teach that God does not exert his power indiscriminately in all who receive the sacraments, but only in the elect. For as he enlightens unto faith none but those whom he has foreordained to life, so by the secret agency of his Spirit he makes the elect receive what the sacraments offer. 21. No Local Presence Must Be Imagined We must guard particularly against the idea of any local presence [of the body and blood of Christ with the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper]. For while

the signs are present in this world, are seen by the eyes, and handled by the hands, Christ, regarded as man, must be sought nowhere else than in heaven, and not otherwise than with the mind and eye of faith. Therefore it is a perverse and impious superstition to enclose him under the elements of this world. 22. Explanation of the Words “This Is My Body” Those who insist that the formal words of the Supper—“This is my body; this is my blood”—are to be taken in what they call the precisely literal sense, we repudiate as preposterous interpreters. For we hold it out of controversy that they are to be taken figuratively—the bread and wine receiving the name of that which they signify. . . . 25. The Body of Christ Locally in Heaven And that no ambiguity may remain when we say that Christ is to be sought in heaven, the expression implies and is understood by us to intimate distance of place. For though philosophically speaking there is no place above the skies, yet as the body of Christ, bearing the nature and mode of a human body, is finite and is contained in heaven as its place, it is necessarily as distant from us in point of space as heaven is from earth. 137. CALVIN TO ALL MINISTERS OF CHRIST IN THE CHURCHES OF SAXONY AND LOWER GERMANY (1556) This personal defense and appeal from John Calvin to the Lutherans of Germany appeared as a preface to his “Second Defense of the Sacraments in Answer to Westphal.” From CR 37:46–50, trans. Eric Lund. Because the dispute concerning the sacraments that was unhappily carried on among the learned for more than twenty years has now with some effort been calmed for a short while, and people’s minds are disposed to moderation, it seemed especially fitting to facilitate a full settlement by giving a public statement in few and simple terms of the doctrine that the churches of Switzerland follow. . . . Most of you are acquainted with the short description that we published five years ago with the title Consensus Tigurinus, in which, without attacking anyone and without any bitter words, we not only compiled a summary of the whole controversy under distinct headings, but

FACTIONALISM IN THE LATE REFORMATION (1546–1580)

also endeavored, insofar as a frank confession of truth allowed, to heal all offenses completely. . . . About two years later, a certain Joachim Westphal arose who, rather than being softened to concord by the temperate simplicity of that doctrinal summary, seized upon the name of Consensus as a kind of Furie’s torch to rekindle the flame. . . . He writes that my books were highly prized and esteemed by the people of his sect during the time when they thought I differed from the teachers of the church of Zurich. Then why this sudden alienation now? Is it because I have deviated from my former opinion? . . . How can it be that the doctrine that formerly pleased him in my writings now repulses him so strongly when it is professed by the people of Zurich? . . . I was forced to refute the perverse attack of this man in a short treatise. He, as if an inexpiable crime had been committed, has flamed forth much more intemperately. It has now become necessary for me to repress his insolence. . . . The dispute with him concerns three articles: First, he insists that the bread of the Supper is substantially the body of Christ. Second, to explain how Christ may exhibit his presence to believers in the Supper, he maintains that the body is boundless and exists everywhere without locality. Thirdly, he does not want to allow for any figure of speech in the words of Christ, however much agreement there may be as to this matter. He considers it so important to take a stand on these words that he would prefer to see the whole world convulsed than admit any interpretation. We defend the view that the flesh and blood of Christ are truly offered to us in the Supper such that they vivify our souls, and we unambiguously specify that our souls are invigorated by this spiritual food that is offered us in the Supper, just as our bodies are nourished by earthly bread. Therefore we maintain that in the Supper there is a true participation in the flesh and blood of Christ. If anyone is moved to dispute about the word “substance,” we assert that Christ breathes life into our souls from the substance of his flesh; indeed, he infuses his own life into us, although it should in no way be imagined that there is a transfusion of substance. This is the cause of the implacable wrath of Westphal: when we confess that the flesh of Christ gives life and that we are truly partakers of it in the Supper, he is not satisfied with this simplicity but urges and contends that the bread is substantially the body. From this another dogma emerges, namely, that the body and blood of Jesus Christ are taken into the mouth of an impious person in the very same way as bread and wine. For how can it be that he affirms so

165

obstinately that the body of Christ was taken by Judas no less than by Peter, unless it is because the substance of the sign is not changed by a person’s unbelief? Furthermore, he imagines a substance that is not at all consistent with the Word of God, namely, that Christ fastens his own flesh substantially to the bread....... The second question arises from no other source than the mode of communion that Westphal considers to be necessarily connected up with the boundless nature of Christ’s body. According to him, if the body of Christ be not actually placed before us, there is no real communion. We hold the contrary view that no distance of space hinders the boundless energy of the Spirit, which transfuses life into us from the flesh of Christ. And here we detect the depravity of those who odiously scatter the idea among the people that we take away the presence of Christ from the Supper because we estimate the power of God according to our own sense. As if the sublimity of this mystery did not transcend the reach of human intellect, the mystery that Christ, though remaining in heaven with regard to the placement of his body, still descends to us by the secret grace of his Spirit, so that, having united us to himself, he makes us partakers of his life. The power of God is less magnificently extolled by one who teaches that life flows into us from the flesh of Christ, than by another who draws his flesh out of heaven so that it may give us life. . . . In order not to delay your reading of my book any longer, I will now touch on the last issue in this dispute. He thinks it sinful to inquire into what Jesus Christ meant when he said that the bread is his body because, in his mind, the clarity of the words precludes the need for any interpretation. We again appeal to the familiar and common usage of Scripture, which, whenever it deals with the sacraments, transfers the name of the thing signified to the sign. Examples of this occur not only once or twice but so frequently that those who are practiced in the interpretation of Scripture consider it to be the common rule. . . . Therefore, those who deny that the body of Christ is represented to us under the symbol of bread pervert not only the whole order of Christ but the Spirit of God of its customary mode of speech. Westphal attributes the name of body to the bread. But where is his modesty when he is so puffed up as to cry out that any interpretation of the words must be considered the greatest sacrilege? It is appropriate to point, as with the finger, to the sources of the whole controversy in order to expose the fact that a disagreement that ought to have been extinct is again kindled, more from the

166

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

haughty disdain of the opposing party than from any just cause. If you fear a deadly and lamentable result, as one certainly ought to fear (and there is certainly ground to fear it), I entreat you, by the sacred name of Christ and the bond of our unity in him, to endeavor earnestly to find a remedy. Whatever be the method of conciliation offered, I declare that I will be not only favorably disposed but also eager to embrace it. . . . 138. THE DRESDEN CONSENSUS OF 1571 In 1570, the Philippist theologians of Saxony published a new catechism that contained hints that they were sympathetic to Calvin’s view of the Lord’s Supper. When asked to clarify their views, they produced this document. From Johann Gieseler, A Text-Bo ext-Book ok of Church History History, vol. 4, trans. Samuel Davidson, ed. Henry Smith (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1868), 466–67. Although the human nature of Christ was transfigured after the resurrection and ascension and purified of all weaknesses to which it was previously subject, and although it was endowed with higher properties than those belonging to angels and men, nevertheless it remained a truly human nature and had the essential attributes that pertain to such a nature. It was not deified or endowed with eternity, or infinitude of being or with other similar divine attributes, but truly and certainly remained flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. . . . We interpret the description and story of the ascension of Christ to heaven literally, maintaining that the ascension was not a mere appearance and not only a visible spectacle and that our Lord Jesus Christ has retained his true body from earth in heaven. He penetrated the visible heavens and occupied his heavenly dwelling where, in glory and majesty, he retains the essence, attributes, form, and shape of his true body and from where he will visibly come again in the last days to judge with great majesty. . . . We believe and maintain that in the dispensation of the Lord’s Supper, our Lord Jesus is truly and certainly present and that with the bread and wine he gives us his true body sacrificed for us on the cross and his true blood that he shed for us, and thereby testifies that he receives us, makes us members of his body, purifies us with his blood, gives us forgiveness of sins, and truly wishes to dwell and be efficacious in us. . . . We shun all the alien disputes pertaining to the

institution of this Supper, conflicts that Luther himself zealously tried to avoid. He often said that there should not be disputes about omnipresence or ubiquity. But in recent times restless people have begun to inflict them upon us again, just as we have also experienced much grief concerning other issues since the German war, so that everything that had formerly been considered right and undisputed has now been mischievously interpreted wrongly and falsified. These restless people bring charges against the churches and schools of this land, which always maintained one form of teaching. They do not seek either the truth or peace but provoke very dangerous and vexing disputations not only about the article concerning the true presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper but also about other articles. And what is most dreadful, they corrupt simple and certain teachings with unfounded and alien opinions. 139. EXEGESIS PERSPICUA (OF THE SAXON CRYPTO-CALVINISTS) (1573) This document appeared anonymously in 1573. Later, it was attributed to Joachim Curaeus, a Silesian physician with Philippist sympathies. In addition to calling for toleration of a range of views about the Lord’s Supper, it restated Philippist reservations about the Lutheran doctrines that had been contested by Calvin and criticized in the Consensus Tigurinus. From Joachim Curaeus, Exeg Exegesis esis perspicua et ferme integr integraa contr ontroversiae oversiae de sacr sacraa Coena (Heidelberg: Maier, 1575), 190–92, trans. Eric Lund. All purified churches should be in harmony with one another, and this harmony should not be disturbed on account of disagreements about the Lord’s Supper. Let us be brothers; let us be one in Christ. Omitting this dangerous talk about ubiquity, about the eating of the true body by the impious and similar things, the teachers in our churches should agree upon a certain formula that can provoke no offense. With Paul, they should say that the bread is the communion of the body of Christ [1 Cor 10:16]. The way of speaking that has been handed down in the writings of Melanchthon should be used and much should be said of the benefits that result when this is the foundation in this case. . . . It would be advantageous to put to rest all public disputations concerning this matter, and if contentious persons stir up quarrels and unrest among the people, the proper thing to do, as Philip advised, is to remove such persons from either party and sub-

FACTIONALISM IN THE LATE REFORMATION (1546–1580)

stitute more modest people in their places. . . . Teachers ought to serve with a spirit of harmony, recommend the churches and teachers of the opposing party, and publicly denounce the wrongful beliefs that people have devised concerning them. 140. EPITOME OF THE FORMULA OF CONCORD: ARTICLES 7 AND 8 (1577) From BC 503–11. VII. Concerning the Holy Supper of Christ . . . To explain this controversy, it must first of all be noted that there are two kinds of Sacramentarians. There are the crude Sacramentarians, who state in plain language what they believe in their hearts: that in the Holy Supper there is nothing more than bread and wine present, nothing more distributed and received with the mouth. Then there are the cunning Sacramentarians, the most dangerous kind, who in part appear to use our language and who pretend that they also believe in a true presence of the true, essential, living body and blood of Christ in the Holy Supper, but that this takes place spiritually, through faith. Yet, under the guise of such plausible words, they retain the former, crude opinion, that nothing more than bread and wine is present in the Holy Supper and received there by mouth. For “spiritually” means to them nothing other than “the spirit of Christ” that is present, or “the power of the absent body of Christ and his merit.” The body of Christ, according to this opinion, is, however, in no way or form present, but it is only up there in the highest heaven; to this body we lift ourselves into heaven through the thoughts of our faith. There we should seek his body and blood, but never in the bread and wine of the Supper. Affirmative Theses The Confession of Pure Teaching concerning the Holy Supper, against the Sacramentarians 1. We believe, teach, and confess that in the Holy Supper the body and blood of Christ are truly and essentially present, truly distributed and received with the bread and wine. 2. We believe, teach, and confess that the words of the testament of Christ are not to be understood in any other way than the way they literally sound, that is, not that the bread symbolizes the absent body and the wine the absent blood of Christ, but that they are truly the true body and blood of Christ because of the sacramental union. . . .

167

6. We believe, teach, and confess that the body and blood of Christ are received not only spiritually through faith but also orally with the bread and wine, though not in Capernaitic fashion but rather in a supernatural, heavenly way because of the sacramental union of the elements. The words of Christ clearly demonstrate this, when Christ said, “take, eat, and drink,” and the apostles did this. For it is writ-ten, “and they all drank from it” (Mark 14[:23]). Likewise, St. Paul says, “The bread, which we break, is a Communion with the body of Christ” [1 Cor 10:16], that is, who eats this bread eats the body of Christ. The leading teachers of the ancient church—Chrysostom, Cyprian, Leo I, Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine, and others—unanimously testify to this. 7. We believe, teach, and confess that not only those who truly believe and are worthy, but also the unworthy and unbelievers receive the true body and blood of Christ, though they do not receive life and comfort, but rather judgment and damnation, if they do not turn and repent. . . . Negative Theses . . . [We unanimously reject and condemn . . .] 5. That the body of Christ in the holy sacrament is not received orally with the bread, but only bread and wine are received by mouth; the body of Christ, however, is received only spiritually, through faith. 11. That the body of Christ is enclosed in heaven, so that it can in no way be present at the same time in many or all places on earth where his Holy Supper is being conducted. 21. We also hereby completely condemn the Capernaitic eating of the body of Christ. It suggests that his flesh is chewed up with the teeth and digested like other food. The Sacramentarians maliciously attribute this view to us against the witness of their own conscience, despite our many protests. In this way they make our teaching detestable among their hearers. . . . VIII. Concerning the Person of Christ Out of the controversy regarding the Holy Supper there arose a disagreement between the theologians of the Augsburg Confession who teach purely and the Calvinists (who also led some other theologians astray) over the person of Christ, the two natures in Christ, and their characteristics. Status controversiae Chief Issues of Disagreement in This Dispute: The chief question was whether on the basis of the personal union the divine and human natures—and likewise the characteristics of each—are intimately linked

168

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

with each other within the person of Christ, in reality (that is, in fact and in truth), and to what extent they are intimately linked. Affirmative Theses . . . 11. According to the personal union he always possessed this majesty, and yet dispensed with it in the state of his humiliation. For this reason he grew in stature, wisdom, and grace before God and other people [Luke 2:52]. Therefore, he did not reveal his majesty at all times but only when it pleased him, until he completely laid aside the form of a servant [Phil 2:7] (but not his human nature) after his resurrection. Then he was again invested with the full use, revelation, and demonstration of his divine majesty and entered into his glory, in such a way that he knows everything, is able to do everything, is present for all his creatures, and has under his feet and in his hands all that is in heaven, on earth, and under the

earth, not only as God but also as human creature, as he himself testifies, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” [Matt 28:18], and St. Paul writes: He ascended “above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things” [Eph 4:10]. As present everywhere he can exercise this power of his, he can do everything, and he knows all things. 12. Therefore, he is able—it is very easy for him—to share his true body and blood, present in the Holy Supper, not according to the manner or characteristic of the human nature, but according to the manner and characteristic of God’s right hand, as Dr. Luther says in [his explanation of] our Christian creed. This presence is not an earthly nor a Capernaitic presence, but at the same time it is a true and essential presence, as the words of his testament say, “This is, is, my body,” etc.

6. Theology in the Age of Orthodoxy (1580–1700)

The writings of Martin Luther are full of references to the importance of correct doctrine. In an early confrontation with a Catholic opponent, Luther boldly stated: “Bad doctrine is a thousand times more harmful than a bad life” (WA 6:581). In a 1530 sermon, he clarified the basis for this conviction: “Where doctrine is not right, it is impossible for life to be right and good; for life must be prepared by doctrine and must follow it” (WA 32:408). For this reason, Luther would repeatedly call for vigilant attendance to the task of defending true doctrine and refuting false teachings. In response to another Catholic opponent, he wrote, “Whether you are pious or evil does not concern me. But I will attack your poisonous and lying teaching that contradicts God’s Word; and with God’s help I will oppose it vigorously” (WA 7:279). Luther reformulated this sentiment as a general principle in his commentary on Galatians: “In matters concerning faith we must be invincible, inflexible, and exceedingly obstinate; indeed, if possible, harder than steel” (WA 40/1:188). In the post-Reformation era that, from the perspective of church history, is usually called the Age of Orthodoxy, most Lutheran theologians were preoccupied with this concern. Indeed, they rivaled Luther in their zeal for the clarification and defense of correct doctrine. The adoption of the Book of Concord as the fullest measure of the Lutheran confessional position can, for the sake of convenience, be considered the starting point of this new period. By 1580, the original leaders of the Lutheran reform movement had all passed from the scene. The Lutheran church had also successfully disposed of a recent, internal threat to its unity by agreeing upon the Formula of Concord, a more elaborate statement of confessional

beliefs addressing the disputed issues that had divided church leaders into several competing factions in the decades immediately after Luther’s death. The initial, formative stages in the development of the Lutheran tradition were over. In the next phase of Lutheran history, extending throughout the seventeenth century, theologians tended to see themselves as conservators of the achievements that had been gained by the first two generations of reformers and as defenders of a distinctive doctrinal viewpoint that defined their identity over against other rival religious movements. Martin Chemnitz (1522–86) was the most important transitional figure between the late Reformation and the Age of Orthodoxy. Along with Jakob Andreae, he had been the driving force behind the composition of the Formula of Concord. While attending to the problem of disunity within the Lutheran movement, he had also devoted considerable energy to refuting the doctrinal positions of other religious groups. In his Examination of the Council of Trent, Chemnitz produced the definitive Lutheran evaluation of the dogmatic decrees that had been formulated by the Roman Catholic Church in response to the Protestant Reformation (doc. #148). Chemnitz also wrote more focused books on Christology and the Lord’s Supper that were inspired, to a large extent, by his desire to clarify and defend Lutheran doctrine in response to the criticisms of Calvinist Protestants (docs. #146 and 147). While serving as a pastor and church administrator in northern Germany, he also prepared an explanation of the Loci Communes of his teacher, Philip Melanchthon. When this book was posthumously published in 1591 as the Loci Theologici, it was widely

170

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

honored as a valuable corrective to the more controversial aspects of Melanchthon’s interpretation of Lutheran doctrine. After the death of Chemnitz, theological leadership was generally exercised by clergy who taught at several prominent German universities. In the early part of the seventeenth century, the greatest representative of Lutheran orthodoxy was Johann Gerhard (1582–1637), a professor at the University of Jena. In his multivolume (approximately 2,800 pages) systematic theology, also titled Loci Theologici, Gerhard broke new ground in the development of theological method. To clarify the nature and sources of theological knowledge, he discussed the objectives of theological investigation and the authority of the Bible before he began his analysis of specific Christian doctrinal beliefs (docs. #141, 142, 143, 144, and 145). Gerhard also introduced more extensive use of Aristotelian metaphysical categories in his analysis of the articles of faith. This initiative began a trend among Lutheran theologians who, in subsequent generations, would continue to reappropriate the philosophical resources that had been commonly used in Catholic theology and would increasingly write in a style reminiscent of medieval scholasticism (docs. #146, 147, 148, and 149). Many prominent Lutheran theologians taught at other universities in Tübingen, Strassburg, Giessen, Leipzig, and Helmstedt, but the institution that had the most sustained effect on the development of Lutheran orthodoxy was the University of Wittenberg, where Luther had taught. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, its theological faculty was noted for the contributions of Aegidius Hunnius (1563–1616), who wrote extensive biblical commentaries, and Leonard Hutter (1563–1616), whose Compend of Lutheran Theology, in simple questionand-answer format, would be used for generations as a concise textbook for the training of pastors and teachers. By the middle of the century, Wittenberg had developed a widespread reputation as the chief bastion of strict Lutheran orthodoxy. Nikolaus Hunnius (1585–1643), son of Aegidius Hunnius, was especially noted for clarifying the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental articles of faith, a topic of great significance in the ongoing debates about how Lutherans should relate to Catholics and Calvinists (doc. #145). Abraham Calov (1612–86) produced the most influential Lutheran biblical commentary of the century, his Biblia Illustrata, and was renowned for his skill as a polemicist. He wrote extensively and passionately against other religious groups, such as the Roman Catholics,

Calvinists, Arminians, and Socinians, but devoted his greatest energy to combating the syncretists, advocates of reconciliation between different church groups who supported the liberal viewpoint about fundamental articles introduced by Georg Calixtus of the University of Helmstedt (doc. #150). In the latter half of the seventeenth century, Johann Quenstedt (1617–88), another Wittenberg theologian, became the dominant voice among Lutheran dogmaticians. His Didactico-Polemical Theology ranks with the major works of Chemnitz and Gerhard as one of the outstanding theological systems written during the Age of Orthodoxy (docs. #141, 142, 143, and 144). Quenstedt’s popularity in his own age and his influence upon theologians in subsequent centuries were due not so much to his creativity as to his ability to produce an effectively organized and thorough summary of a century of Lutheran theological reflection since the adoption of the Formula of Concord. This is also true of the last notable dogmatician of the Age of Orthodoxy, David Hollaz (1648–1713), who had studied under Calov and Quenstedt at Wittenberg. His meticulously categorized Examination of Acroamatic Theology marked the culmination of the scholastic tendencies that had developed in Lutheran dogmatics (docs. #141, 142, 143, and 144). In other respects, however, Hollaz was untypical of the Orthodox theologians. First of all, he spent his whole life as a pastor in northern Germany and never taught at a university. Second, his extensive attention to the issue of how doctrinal belief relates to the practical matter of living a Christian life reveals the influence of the Pietist reform movement that would make this concern the preeminent issue in the next period of Lutheran history. Although all of these dogmatic theologians were especially interested in demonstrating continuity among the Formula of Concord, the earlier Lutheran confessions, the theology of Luther, the early creeds of the church, and the Scriptures, it would be a mistake to portray them merely as systematizers of earlier thought. They extended the analysis of certain issues that had been treated quite briefly during the Reformation and, in some cases, developed convictions about the method and content of theology that diverged from the viewpoints of Luther and his associates. Theologians in the first half of the seventeenth century mostly followed the Locus method pioneered by Philip Melanchthon. They treated Christian theology as a collection of articles of faith that could be separated into discrete topics or loci, arranged synthetically in a cause-to-effect sequence, and verified by evidence derived from the teachings of the Bible.

THEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF ORTHODOXY (1580–1700)

Starting with consideration of the nature and creative work of God, they proceeded to describe human nature before and after the fall, the problem of human sin, the way to salvation offered through Christ, and finally, the doctrine of the church and the last things. Within this common framework, they nevertheless displayed much variety in the way they divided up the subject matter of theology. At times, they created new subcategories to distinguish between various facets of key topics, and some of these distinctions eventually became standard elements of systematic theology. For example, whereas earlier Lutheran systematicians presented the doctrine of salvation quite simply in a single locus on justification, orthodox theologians from the time of Nikolaus Hunnius onward laid out a detailed order of salvation (ordo salutis), which differentiated between six or seven aspects of the application of grace, beginning with the divine call to the sinner and reaching a completion in mystical union with God (doc. #151). In the second half of the seventeenth century, some theologians began to depart more extensively from the arrangements introduced by Melanchthon. Instead of favoring the synthetic method, they developed an analytic method that first considered the goal of the divine plan for humanity and then proceeded to show how attainment of this goal has been made possible. For example, Johann Dannhauer (1603–66), the most noted theologian at the University of Strassburg, began his innovative systematic theology, Hodosophia Christiana, by describing God as the summum bonum toward which all of life was intended to point and depicting humans as pilgrims traveling the sacred way toward this goal. He described sin as an obstacle along the way, Christ as the savior who leads humans back to God, and Scripture as the light that illuminates the path of their journey. From the time of Gerhard onward, the theologians continued to work out their thoughts about the nature of theological investigation and greatly expanded the prolegomena with which they introduced their systematic theologies. The issue of the role of reason and philosophy in the work of the theologian attracted renewed attention. Like Luther, the orthodox dogmaticians always emphasized the limits of reason and the need for the revelation recorded in the Scriptures, yet they were also concerned to show how reason and philosophy could be valuable as secondary resources to help explicate and defend the conclusions derived from revelation (doc. #142). Luther had strongly criticized the scholastic theology of the Roman Catholic tradition for its use of Aristotle, but the orthodox theologians once again argued

171

for a selective use of the terminology and categories that this type of theology and philosophy provided. As they probed the nature of revelation and responded to Catholic criticisms of the Lutheran understanding of Scripture, the orthodox theologians also greatly expanded their analysis of the normative authority of the Bible. In their efforts to establish the dependability of the Scriptures as a source of divine truth, they went beyond Luther in their insistence upon the divine inspiration of the specific words of the biblical books, the inerrancy of the texts with regards to all aspects of truth, and the complete reliability of every part of the traditional biblical canon (doc. #144). In addition to affirming the reliability of the Scriptures and showing how the articles of faith of the Lutheran confessions were true and consistent with this source of revelation, the theologians also attempted to point out the weaknesses of antithetical viewpoints defended by other religious groups (docs. #146, 147, 148, and 149). The systematic theologies of this period were almost always both didactic and polemical. The doctrinal debates of the Reformation era were not forgotten, and the task of confronting and refuting the beliefs of Roman Catholics and Calvinists seemed all the more urgent because political trends in this period convinced the theologians that these groups in particular continued to pose a serious threat to the very survival of Lutheranism. In 1555, the Peace of Augsburg had awarded a degree of toleration to the Lutherans in parts of the Holy Roman Empire, but by 1618 Catholics and Protestants were once again clashing on the battlefield. Decades of bitter confrontation with Catholics in the Thirty Years’ War sharpened the resistance of most secular and religious leaders to the thought of toleration or coexistence. At times, however, the Lutheran dogmaticians seemed to be even more concerned about the threats posed by the Calvinists. Again, political factors helped to intensify this consciousness. Even before the start of the Thirty Years’ War, the Lutherans had lost control of several German territories when rulers switched their support to the Calvinist tradition. This happened in the Palatinate in 1561, in Hesse and Bremen in 1581, in Anhalt in 1595, and finally in Brandenburg in 1613. There were exceptions, however, to this intense feeling of rivalry between religious groups. While the other theologians engaged in their polemics, Georg Calixtus (1586–1656) of the University of Helmstedt called for the establishment of closer fellowship between Lutherans and other Christian groups on the basis of their shared acceptance of

172

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

the Apostles’ Creed. In addition, he argued that the points of differences between the groups were not over matters that would affect the salvation or damnation of individual believers (doc. #150). To most Lutheran theologians, the irenic perspective of Calixtus and his fellow syncretists looked dangerous and based on faulty assumptions, but the chorus of voices lamenting the excesses to which polemics were taken would grow steadily as the seventeenth century progressed. This issue would also be taken up in the writings of several of the major Lutheran devotional writers of the Age of Orthodoxy and would surface again as a concern of the Pietists. THEOLOGICAL PROLEGOMENA In Philip Melanchthon’s Loci Communes, the first Lutheran systematic theology, published in 1521, there was no preliminary discussion of the nature and character of theology. This topic was only addressed elsewhere in Melanchthon’s writings about the use of dialectics. In the latter half of the sixteenth century, Andreas Hyperius (1511–64) and David Chytraeus (1531–1600) devoted whole books to the topic of how theology should be studied, concentrating particularly on issues related to the interpretation of the Bible. In the seventeenth century, these topics became a standard focus of attention in the introductory sections or prolegomena of any systematic theology. In their fullest development, the formal prolegomena to dogmatics discussed the definition of theology, its subject matter, the purpose and proper method of theological study, and the sources of religious knowledge. This involved analysis of the role of reason and natural theology as well as divine revelation and its relation to the canon of the Bible. The following excerpts give some representative samples of what major dogmaticians had to say about these topics. Johann Gerhard was the first dogmatician to construct a formal prolegomenon. Quenstedt and Hollaz summarized the consensus of belief as it had developed in the later stages of the Age of Orthodoxy. The following selections have been translated by Eric Lund from: Johann Gerhard, Loci Theolog logici ici (Frankfurt: Hertel, 1657); Johann Quenstedt, Theolog Theologia ia Didactic Didactico-P o-Polemica olemica (Leipzig: Fritsch, 1715); and David Hollaz, Examen Theolog Theologicum icum Acr Acroamaticum oamaticum (Leipzig: Kiesewetter, 1735).

141. THE DISCIPLINE OF THEOLOGY Gerhard: Loci Theolog Theologici ici Bk. 1, Prooemium 31 Theology, considered systematically and abstractly, is doctrine drawn from the Word of God by which men are instructed in true faith and pious living to eternal life. Theology, considered in the way of practice and concretely, is a divinely given disposition conferred upon a man by the Holy Spirit through the Word, whereby he is not only instructed in the knowledge of divine mysteries, by the illumination of the mind, so that what he understands leads to a salutary effect upon the feelings of his heart and the actions of his life, but also rendered fitted and ready to inform others concerning these divine mysteries and the way of salvation, and to vindicate heavenly truth against the corruptions of its disparagers; so that men, radiant with true faith and good works, are brought into the kingdom of heaven. Quenstedt: Theolog Theologia ia Didactic Didactico-P o-Polemica olemica Pt. 1, Ch. 1, Sect. 2, q. 3 A distinction is made between theoretical sciences, which consist wholly in the mere contemplation of the truth, and practical sciences, which, indeed, require a knowledge of whatever is to be done, but which do not end in this, nor have it as their aim, but which lead to practice and action. We think that theology is to be numbered, not with the theoretical, but with the practical sciences. Pt. 1, Ch. 1, Sect. 1, theses 15–24 Revealed theology, drawn from the revealed word of Scripture, is knowledge of God and divine things that God communicates in verbal revelations to men in this life, to the praise of his glorious grace and for the salvation of man. Catechetical theology, which extracts only the preeminent parts of Christian doctrine, educates the uncultured common people. It is also called elementary or initial theology because it first deals with the elements and rudiments of the Christian religion and occupies itself especially with laying the foundation of the doctrine of faith. Acroamatic theology, which teaches the mysteries

THEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF ORTHODOXY (1580–1700)

of the faith more accurately and extensively, confirms sound doctrine and confutes errors that are contrary to the truth. It informs bishops and presbyters of the church and primarily those in the academies who are not only Christians but will become teachers of Christians. Note: Catechetical and acroamatic theology do not differ in what they consider but in the manner and object of their considerations. Acroamatic theology, as to the manner of its treatment, is either exegetical, or didactic strictly socalled, or polemical, or homiletical, or casuistic, or historical. Exegetical or biblical theology, which is also called prophetic by some, is concerned with the paraphrasing or richer explication of sacred Scripture and with the comparing of commentaries. It investigates the true and genuine meaning of the whole or particular books or texts. Didactic theology, strictly so-called, which is also called systematic or thetic or positive theology, presents the commonplaces (loci communes) of theology in order, states them clearly, exactly defines the dogmas of the faith, and, having separated them into parts, deduces and demonstrates them from the foundation of faith, which they have in sacred Scripture. Polemical theology, both controversial and elenctic, which some call scholastic or, more often, academic, treats past and recent theological controversies, rightly delineates the state of a question, confirms the celestial truth of arguments sought from sacred Scripture, vindicates what has been confirmed against exceptions, asserts what has been vindicated against objections, and occupies itself in building up truth and destroying falsehood. Homiletical theology, which they also call ecclesiastical theology, informs those who will become ministers of the church about the method of public speaking and the practice of preachers. Casuistic theology, which some also call consistorial, reflects on matters of conscience, or contributes to the formation of conscience in doubtful cases, so that it may be strengthened if weak, emended and corrected if in error, and firmly established if troubled or in doubt. Historical theology explains the history of the ancient, primitive church and how the doctrine of the gospel was propagated in it by the orthodox, attacked by the heretics, defended by councils, and then proclaimed by teachers orally and in writings.

173

Hollaz: Examen Ch. 1, Prolegomena, q. 18 A theologian, in the general sense of the term, is a man well instructed in the discipline of theology, whereby he is rendered prompt in explicating and defending heavenly truth. The theologian, in a special and more excellent sense, is said to be a reborn man, offering unshakable assent to the truths that reveal the mystery of the faith and relying on the same by trust, who is adept in teaching others and confuting opponents. Ch. 1, q. 30 The study of theological controversies is especially necessary for those aspiring toward the higher offices in the church. Knowledge of controversies is likewise necessary for those preparing themselves for lower positions. . . . Controversies that are useless and thorny and arise from the domination of perverse states of mind are unworthy of theological inquiry or discussion. 142. THE SOURCES OF THEOLOGY: REASON AND REVELATION

Fig. 6.1. Johann Gerhard (1582–1637).

174

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Gerhard: Loci Bk. 1, Locus 21: De Scriptura Sacra, 474L

as a sort of secondary proof where the matter has already been decided from Scripture. Hollaz: Examen

Divine revelation, not human reason, is the starting point of faith, nor are we to judge concerning the articles of faith according to the dictates of reason, otherwise we would not have articles of faith, but only opinions of reason. The thoughts and pronouncements of reason are to be restrained and restricted within the sphere of those things that are subject to the decision of reason, and not to be extended to the sphere of those things that are placed entirely beyond the grasp of reason. . . . Sound reason is not opposed to faith, if it is understood to be that which is truly and properly called reason, namely, that which does not transcend the limits of its sphere, and does not arrogate to itself decisions concerning the mysteries of faith, or that which, illumined by the Word, and rectified by the Holy Spirit, does not follow its own principles in the investigation of the mysteries of the faith, but is led by the light of the Word and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. . . .

Without the use of reason, we cannot comprehend and confirm dogmatic theology, nor vindicate it from the artifices of adversaries. Certainly, God revealed the wisdom of eternal salvation in his Word not to irrational brutes but to men possessing sound reason, and bestowed on them the grave mandate that they should read, hear, and study his Word (Deut 6:6; John 5:39). And so intellect is required for receiving this subject and apprehending its methods. For just as we cannot see without eyes, or hear without ears, so we can understand nothing without reason. However, human reason is not the source or primordial element from which the proper and most immediately related principles of faith are derived.

Quenstedt: Theolog Theologia ia Didactic Didactico-P o-Polemica olemica

Gerhard: Loci

Ch. 3: De Theologia Principio, Sect. 2

Bk. 1, Locus 2: De Natura Dei, Ch. 4, 59

A distinction should be made between human reason before the fall and after the fall. Formerly, it was never opposed to revelation, but now, vitiated by corruption, it is very often an adversary. . . . A distinction must be made between [1] the organic or instrumental use of reason and its principles, when they are employed as instruments for the interpretation and exposition of the sacred Scriptures, in refuting the arguments of adversaries drawn from nature and reason, in discussing the signification and construction of words, and rhetorical figures and modes of speech; and [2] the normal use of philosophical principles, when they are regarded as principles by which supernatural doctrines are to be tested. The former we admit, the latter we repudiate....... A distinction should be made between pure theological questions and mixed ones (in which both philosophy and theology are used). We concede that in the mixed questions, principles particular to philosophy may be employed, not for the purpose of decision or demonstration, but merely for illustration or

It is possible to demonstrate the existence of God either from nature or from Scripture. For that reason, Augustine in book eight of The City of God distinguishes between natural and revealed knowledge of God. . . . The Book of Nature can teach in two ways, internally and externally; consequently natural knowledge [of God] is divided into two types, έμφυτον (innate) and επίκτητον (acquired). Innate knowledge has its origin in certain common notions (κοινοRL έννοιαις), which are the obscure rubble of the lost divine image or vestiges of the light that enlightened the human mind before the fall, certain sparks through which that common notion that there is a God is naturally engraved in the minds of all men. Therefore, we also refer those things to the internal book of nature that pertain to the internal testimony of conscience that the Scholastics call synteresis συντήρησις). . . . Acquired knowledge from the Book of Nature is collected by the human mind from contemplation of the works and effects of God and the investigation of nature. . . .

Ch. 3, q. 4

143. NATURAL AND REVEALED THEOLOGY

THEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF ORTHODOXY (1580–1700)

The Book of Scripture supplies a more certain foundation for the proof of the existence of God; hence revealed knowledge yields more perfect and reliable results. Quenstedt: Theolog Theologia ia Didactic Didactico-P o-Polemica olemica Ch. 4: De Deo, Sect. 2, q. 1 We must distinguish between natural knowledge of God, viewed in its original integrity, and the same in its crude remains; the former is a perfect θεογνωσία (knowledge of God), constituting a part of the mental aptitude of our first parents, as it was graciously imparted; the latter, on the other hand, is a partial and imperfect knowledge of God, still left behind in our corrupt nature after the fall. It is, as it were, a little spark of primeval light, a tiny drop from a vast ocean, or a small particle of a splendid house that has burned down. . . . Natural knowledge of God is not sufficient to secure salvation or even to prevent condemnation, nor has any mortal ever been redeemed, nor can anyone ever be redeemed, by it alone.

175

144. SACRED SCRIPTURE AS DIVINE REVELATION Gerhard: Loci Bk. 1, Locus 1: De Scriptura Sacra, Ch. 2 The efficient cause of Scripture is either principal or instrumental. The principal cause is the true God, three persons in one essence, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. . . . The instrumental causes of sacred Scripture are holy men of God (2 Pet 1:21), that is men, such as the prophets in the Old Testament and the Apostles in the New Testament, who were peculiarly and immediately called and elected by God to record divine revelation in writing. For that reason, we call them the amanuenses of God, the hands of Christ, the scriveners or notaries of the Holy Spirit, who did not speak or write according to their own human will but were led, impelled, inspired, and governed by the Holy Spirit. Quenstedt: Theolog Theologia ia Didactic Didactico-P o-Polemica olemica

Sect. 2, q. 2

Ch. 4: De Sacra Scriptura, Sect. 2, q. 4

There were many scholastics who taught that it was possible to attain eternal salvation without knowledge of Christ . . . [and] certain Calvinists, such as Zwingli1 (in his Exposition of Faith to the King of France) number Hercules, Numa, Aristeides, Socrates, Cato, Scipio, and others among the heavenly blessed and ascribe eternal salvation to them. . . . We should distinguish between the pedagogical and didactic utility of natural knowledge of God and its utility for generating faith and procuring salvation. We concede the former and deny the latter. . . . We should distinguish between the full salvation of the Gentiles and a certain mitigation of their punishments in eternal damnation. Our adversaries challenge us based on the authority of Luther, who in chapter twenty-two of the Table Talk said, “Cicero was a wise man, so was Seneca; I hope God will be gracious to them.” But he is speaking here not of full salvation but of the mitigation of punishments in eternal damnation. For there are grades of glory in heaven and grades of punishment in hell.

The Holy Spirit did not simply inspire the meaning or sense of the words contained in Scripture, which the prophets and apostles then set forth, expressed, and embellished with their own words by their own will. The Holy Spirit supplied, inspired, and dictated the very words and each and every utterance to the writers. Sect. 2, q. 5 The original canon of sacred Scripture is infallibly true and free from all error. The canon of sacred Scripture contains no lie, no falsehood, not the least error in word or sense, but all of it is most true, whatever matter it treats, be it dogmatic, moral, historical, chronological, topographical, or onomastic, for the Holy Spirit must not and could not allow any ignorance, thoughtlessness, forgetfulness, or lapse of memory on the part of the recorders in the consigning of the sacred letters.

176

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Hollaz: Examen

Articles of Faith: Fundamental and Non-Fundamental

Prolegomenon 3, De Scriptura, q. 17 Erasmus, Suárez, Beza,2 and others deny that the individual words of the prophets and apostles are divinely inspired. They argue that if each and every word of sacred Scripture were inspired by one Spirit of God, the manner of speaking of all the sacred amanuenses would be one and the same style. But their styles are very different. Our response: It happens among men that a secular author distinguished for his eloquence and talent will display various styles of speaking. Certainly Cicero expressed and cultivated grand, mediocre, and humble styles of speaking and writing. The same practice is found in divine writers: St. John wove together diverse types of writing in his Gospel, his Letters, and the book of Revelation, influenced by the diversity of arguments to which a particular style was appropriate. The Gospel of John sets forth the divinity of Christ by the gravity of its words; the Letters stir up love by the sweetness of their diction; and Revelation explains the fate of the church, in a manner familiar to the prophets. The Holy Spirit gives to each to speak as the circumstance warrants (Acts 2:4). 145. FUNDAMENTAL ARTICLES OF FAITH Efforts to classify doctrines according to their importance first appeared in the writings of Johann Gerhard. This topic attracted further attention when certain Calvinists suggested that the differences between themselves and the Lutherans were not very important. In 1626, Nikolaus Hunnius argued against this viewpoint in his Careful Examination of the Fundamental Doctrinal Differences between the Lutherans and Calvinists and thereby stimulated much further debate about the differences between fundamental and non-fundamental articles. From Διάσκεψις Theolog Theologica ica de Fundamentali Dissensu Doctrinae Ev Evang angelicae-Luther elicae-Lutheranae, anae, et Calvinianae, seu Ref Reformatae ormatae (Wittenberg: Fincelius, 1663), 36–37, 42, trans. Eric Lund.

Hunnius: Διάσκεψις Ch. 2, Sect. 6:116 The true foundation of faith is one. . . . It is a chain consisting of several loops or articles, which are mutually connected and make up a complete unity....... So the foundation of faith contains many particular dogmas, but all are mutually coordinated to make up one whole. Ch. 1, q. 1, Sect. 12:51, 54, q. 1 An article of faith is a part of Christian doctrine through which we are led to eternal salvation. I distinguish the historical word from the dogmatic word, and the moral teachings, which give rules for how to live, from the dogmas of faith, which teach what one should and should not believe. These latter are actually and properly dogmas. . . . Since now I am not concerned with the foundation of piety but with the foundation of faith, not with what should be done but with what should be believed, the historical and moral, which at no time deserve to be called articles of faith, should be wholly withdrawn from consideration. Ch. 1, q. 1, Sect. 12:56, 57 An article of faith is either fundamental or not fundamental. . . . Furthermore, fundamental articles are of diverse types: Some are called primary, and others secondary, according to the cause to which they are assigned. The distinction between them consists in this: To be unacquainted with some articles prevents faith and salvation, while it is possible to lack knowledge of certain other articles and still be saved. Nevertheless, to deny the latter jeopardizes salvation. The diversity to which this distinction points can be understood by an example. . . . Whoever does not know that God wills to be merciful to men living in a state of original sin cannot rest in the firm trust that God wants to be merciful to him. For can he who does not know that God wills to be merciful to anyone conclude that God wants to be merciful to him in particular? Whence it follows that this dogma is a primary fundamental article. . . .

THEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF ORTHODOXY (1580–1700)

On the other hand, it is clearly possible not to know that God, who made his will known in the writings of the prophets and apostles, is infinite, boundless, and immutable without losing salvation, because trust in God can be preserved inviolate without knowing this. Many simple and good Christians never consider this and many similar doctrines throughout their whole lives without losing faith and salvation on this account. . . .

177

be believed and done. No symbolic book perfectly comprehends each and every dogma of faith and precept of morality. . . . The symbolic books are not absolutely necessary, but hypothetically, the removal of the symbols would have the most grave effect on the state of the church.

Ch. 1, q. 1, Sect. 14:65 It is clear and plain . . . that they who are ignorant of or deny what has been taught in the church concerning the fall and perpetual rejection of certain angels, the confirmation of the good angels, the immortality of man before the fall, the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit . . . and a good many other doctrines of this type are not per se damned, although these matters are nonetheless correct in their substance. Articles of Faith in Scripture and the Symbolic Books Hollaz: Examen Ch. 2, q. 25, 26 A summary of religion and of the articles of faith is contained in the ancient and more recent symbols. The ancient symbols that are ecumenical or universal are the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene, the Constantinopolitan, the Ephesian, the Chalcedonian, and the Athanasian Creeds. . . . The more recent symbols of our church are the unaltered Augsburg Confession, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, the Schmalkald Articles, Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms, and the Epitome of Twelve Articles as well as the Solid Declaration, which is called the Formula of Concord. . . . The sacred canonical Scriptures carry the weight of divine authority so that they are the infallible norm by which true dogmas of the faith are distinguished from false ones. The symbolic books have the authority of the church, and they are said to be the respective norm, certainly in respect to the external profession of faith by which we testify to the unanimous consensus of the church as regards the doctrine of the faith. . . . Sacred Scripture adequately contains all that should

Fig. 6.2. Martin Chemnitz (1522–86) by unknown artist.

DISPUTED ISSUES IN DIDACTIC AND POLEMICAL THEOLOGY CHRISTOLOGY AND THE LORD’S SUPPER In their disputes with other Protestants about the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the Lutheran theologians defended the view that Christ could be present with his body and blood in more than one place at the same time. This issue stimulated extensive discussion of how humanity and divinity were united in the person of Christ. In his 1578 book on the two natures of Christ, Martin Chemnitz addressed the latter issue and attempted to show that what Lutheranism taught about the implications of the hypostatic union was supported by the testimony

178

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

of the Scriptures and consistent with the beliefs of the most venerable theologians of early Christianity. Later, in 1590, in his book on the Lord’s Supper, he proceeded to show how the communication of attributes between the two natures of Christ made possible the kind of presence of Christ in the sacrament that the Lutheran confessions affirmed. The following excerpts are interesting for what they reveal about the concerns of this influential theologian and the mode of argumentation he used to defend Lutheran doctrine. 146. CHEMNITZ: THE TWO NATURES OF CHRIST (1578) From The Two Natur atures es in Christ Christ, trans. J. A. O. Preus (St. Louis: Concordia, 1971), 15, 19–20, 22, 261–63. Dedicatory Epistle The knowledge of the person of Christ is described in the Word of God as knowing that he is the true God and equal with God (John 5:18; Phil 2:6; 1 John 5:20), and that he is made a partaker of flesh and blood as we are, except for sin (Heb 4:15). That is, there are two natures, the divine and the human, in the incarnate Christ. . . . Scripture also shows that in the works of Christ as Mediator and Savior, because of the hypostatic union, each nature performs in communion with the other that which is proper to it, so that, as in Hebrews 2:14, “Through death he destroyed him who had the power of death,” and Acts 20:28, “God has redeemed the church with his own blood.” On this basis Scripture then leads us to the communication of the majesty (genus maiestaticum).3 For although cleansing from sin and vivification are essentially properties of the majesty of the divine nature of Christ, yet Scripture also predicates vivification, or making alive, to the flesh of Christ (John 6:54). It is written in 1 John 1:7: “The blood of the Son of God cleanses us from sins.” Moreover, this communication of majesty does not take place through commingling (confusio), conversion, or equating of natures, but through the plan (oikonomia) of the hypostatic union, as the ancients used to say. These are the headings under which we customarily divide the explanation of the doctrine of the person of Christ, namely, the two natures, their hypostatic union, and the communication of attributes (communicatio idiomatum). . . .

In our own time on the occasion of the controversy over the Sacrament [of the Lord’s Supper] I saw that a dispute concerning the hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ, the communication of his attributes, and related matters was raging with heavy debate in the church. Danger signals were becoming evident on both sides, and since I was much concerned with this dispute, I decided that the safest way to educate and remedy my own simplicity would be to consult the fathers of the church, who, in the times of the pristine purity and learning directly after the apostles, were active in expounding this subject publicly and with characteristic diligence, and to hear them as they conferred among themselves and shared their well-considered and pious opinions on the basis of God’s Word. For in this way, like Gregory’s pigmies sitting on the shoulders of giants, we can more easily and correctly form a judgment on the basis of God’s Word concerning this difficult question, we can acquiesce with more conviction to sound and simple teaching, and we can more safely escape the danger of falling. . . . To this end I have with considerable zeal and effort collected from approved teachers of the ancient church whose writings have come down to us certain notable citations that seem to serve a useful purpose in elucidating this discussion. I have subjoined them to the testimonies of Scripture, added a brief and simple interpretation, and so distributed them that one can note with what diligence and with what rationale the ancient church constructed the form of true doctrine and sound words concerning this mystery on the foundation of the Word of God, and from what notions and errors it preserved its faith and confession in the midst of this controversy. I have also cited certain things from the Scholastic writers, wherein they have followed in the footsteps of the ancients; for, as in the case of other doctrines, here also they have often departed from the norm of Scripture and from the paths of the true ancient church. Their disputatious methods, however, ought not produce any prejudice against the truth. . . . The true and real reason for our faith and confession that Christ wills to be present with his body and blood in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper is his own words of institution in which, by a testamentary decree, he reveals his will. For the Son of God says about those elements that are exhibited in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper and received in the mouths of the communicants: “This is my body, which is given for you. This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many.” But since the essential and natural properties and conditions of a

THEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF ORTHODOXY (1580–1700)

physical body do not permit or allow such a body to be present in different places at the same time, and since the adversaries complain that this kind of presence conflicts with the reality of Christ’s human nature, it must surely be demonstrated that, because of the hypostatic union of the divine Logos with the assumed human nature, the Son of God can manifest the presence of his body and blood, which he has promised to the church by his testamentary institution, and that this does not conflict with the actuality of his human nature. . . . Ch. 21: The Communion of Christ’s Human Nature with the Divine In Colossians 2:9 Paul says: “In Christ dwells the whole fullness of the Godhead bodily.” Now it is certain that this whole fullness of the Deity is not some created quality or a finite gift, nor can we say that the whole fullness of the Deity dwells in the divine nature of Christ. Therefore, this passage correctly applies to the body and to his human nature. The adverb “bodily” is so interpreted by Augustine, Epistola 57, and also by other fathers. Origen in his De Principiis, Bk. 2, ch. 6, says: “We are sure that some warmth of the Logos must be reckoned to have come to all the saints, but we must also believe that the divine fire itself dwells substantially in the soul of Christ, and from this some warmth comes to others.” . . . Athanasius, De Ariana et Catholica Confessione: “God is not changed into human flesh or substance, but in himself he glorified the nature that he assumed, so that human nature with its weak and mortal flesh was exalted into divine glory, whereby it possessed all power in heaven and on earth, which it did not possess before it was assumed by the Logos.” . . . [Editor’s note: Chemnitz cites several passages from other church fathers.] From these few statements of Scripture and antiquity it becomes clear that as a result of the hypostatic union with the Logos, not only created or finite qualities but also many other things, which cannot be understood as created gifts or qualities but of necessity must be understood as attributes that are proper to the divine nature, have been given to the human nature in Christ above and beyond its essential or natural properties. It is certainly manifest from these quotations that these qualities are predicated as given to Christ in time, not simply according to his divine nature but because of and with respect to the assumed human nature, or according to the human nature,

179

not only to the person in general through concrete terms that designate the person, but expressly to the flesh or to the human nature of Christ; so that I do not understand how anyone can deny it, unless in these matters the god of this world has blinded the minds of those who do not believe. Therefore the correct understanding of Scripture compels us to hold that above and beyond these divine gifts that were produced or created and are inherent formally in Christ’s human nature because of the hypostatic union, there is another and the highest category of gifts given or communicated to Christ according to his humanity, namely the attributes of the divine nature of the Logos themselves, with which the assumed nature of Christ by reason of its union has the kind of communion that fire has when it communicates its essence and power to shine and burn to heated iron, through the union without commingling, so that the heated iron by this union and through the communing shines and burns, as we shall explain more fully later. Therefore, Christ, according to his human nature and insofar as this nature is personally united with the Logos, differs from the other saints not only by reason of his gifts, which by comparison excel the others in number and degree, but also by reason of the union he differs totally from the saints. For in no other nature does the divine glory of the Only-Begotten so shine forth, through no other does it so manifest itself, as in the assumed human nature. . . . Ch. 23: The True Mode Communication of the Majesty Now let us turn our attention to the true mode of the communication. For no matter how often we reject and deny the commingling, conversion, abolition, and equating, yet the adversaries always vociferously raise the object that we are guilty of an implied contradiction in application and are protesting our innocence contrary to the facts, if by our words we deny the commingling or equating and yet assert that the attributes of the divine nature are actually and truly communicated to the assumed nature because of the personal union. For they cry that this is impossible without commingling and equating. Yet nature itself in the physical world, or rather God in nature, furnishes us clear examples in which we are able not only to understand but also to see and even feel before our very eyes, as it were, how this can take place in the union of two substances, and that there actually is a true and genuine communi-

180

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

cation of the characteristics of one substance to those of another, without any commingling or equating of the two. In the case of heated iron (this example has been used by the entire ancient church to describe the personal union of the two natures in the person of Christ) the intimate union of the two natures of the fire and the iron takes place through interpenetration (περιχώρησις). The fire, to be sure, does not take on the properties of the iron, so that it becomes black and cold. Nor is there an abolition of the properties of the iron, for it remains a solid body, and in this union or communion the iron retains essentially also its natural blackness and coldness (although under the heating they do not appear); and when the fire is separated from the hot iron, we see that it has not lost them by abolition. For the blackness and coldness are not added again to the iron from without, but the iron, when it is separated from the fire, then shows that it has retained its own natural properties even under the heating, and it has retained them unimpaired. Nor does the fire produce a different kind of heat and transfer it outside itself to the heated iron, as in the case of boiling water or when the fire is carried in an iron vessel. For through the union the fire communicates to the heated iron its own essence and its essential qualities, such as its glow and the power of giving light and heat; and because of the union the method of communication is that the fire does not glow or give heat of itself or wholly in an absolute sense, as if without burning (πύρωσις), but rather in, with, and through the hot iron. . . . Since in the case of the union of fire and iron we are able to see and understand that this kind of communication of properties of the iron takes place without commingling or equating, how does the conscience or the godly mind dare to say in the presence of God that this cannot take place in the case of that high and ineffable personal union of the divine and human natures in Christ without commingling or equating, since we have the Scripture as our authority and all antiquity as our witness that such attributes are neither created gifts nor finite qualities but attributes and characteristics of the divine nature itself were given to Christ in time according to his assumed human nature, as we have said before and will show more fully in succeeding chapters? . . . . . . With my whole mind and body I rebel against the notion that has come from Peter the Martyr4 that “God with all his omnipotence could not cause a true human body, not even the body of the Son of God, although it is united with the deity and exalted above every name, to be at one and the same time in more

than one place with its true essence unimpaired.” I also rebel at Beza’s statement that “Christ could not have instituted the kind of presence of his body in the Supper that the words indicate.” Augustine says that he dared to make no limitations concerning the grace, the activity, and the state of glorified bodies, and that he was unable to form any opinion about them, that it was wholly brash to pontificate about this glory, because the eye has not seen it, nor the ear heard it, and it has not entered into the heart of man. Therefore, how can we venture to say with good conscience that the body of Christ—which is above every name, not only that which is named on earth but also in the world to come and is exalted to the throne of the majesty and power of the eternal Father—that this body is hemmed in and restricted by the normal limits of its nature and the obviously narrow limits of our reason, so that the Son of God in union with his body, with his true nature intact, cannot be present in the Supper, although the words of his will and testament in their simple, proper, and natural sense do teach and promise his presence? 147. CHEMNITZ: THE LORD’S SUPPER (1590) From The Lord’s Supper Supper, trans. J. A. O. Preus (St. Louis: Concordia, 1979), 198, 204–5. Ch. 12: Concerning the Arguments of the Adversaries . . . Human reason understands and our senses themselves grasp that a true human body by reason of its proportions and size cannot be extended and diffused into infinity, but rather has a certain symmetry of its proportions and a certain position of its parts and members, and is circumscribed to one particular place in such a way that by its own natural power it cannot at one and the same time be truly and substantially present in many difference places. Now Scripture certainly affirms that the Son of God according to his human nature has been made like unto his brethren in all respects except for sin. Therefore, although the proper and natural meaning of the works of institution asserts the true and substantial presence of the body and blood of the Lord in all those places in which the Lord’s Supper is celebrated, yet because the human mind cannot comprehend how this can take place while the true integrity of the human nature remains intact, it seeks various pretexts on the basis of other Scripture passages in order that it can under some appearance

THEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF ORTHODOXY (1580–1700)

of being biblical depart from the proper and natural meaning of the testament of the Son of God. . . . If the major proposition of this argument is stated thus: The human body according to the common and usual condition of its nature is circumscribed to one certain place in such a way that by its own physical nature and power it cannot be in many different places at the same time, then the proposition is true, but it draws no conclusions that are in opposition to the substantial presence of the body of Christ in the Supper. For this does not come about by the common and usual mode of nature, nor by natural power and human reason, but by divine power and heavenly reason. . . . They object that the essential or natural properties of a body are finite and circumscribed, which we freely grant; but Christ in his Supper is not acting according to the natural properties of a body. For because Scripture predicates them, we accept and believe many other things concerning the flesh of Christ because of the hypostatic union with the divine nature, things that far exceed the natural and essential properties of our bodies, far above every name, as has been indicated. Similarly, because we have an express word regarding the substantial presence of the body and blood of the Lord in the Supper, just why should we depart from the natural meaning of the words of Christ’s testament? It is not a sufficiently great or compelling reason, on which conscience could rightly or safely rely, that it does not coincide with our notions of the essential or natural properties of a true body. For it is absolutely certain that the human nature of Christ has received from the hypostatic union with the divine nature countless other gifts that are not only far above the essential properties of a true body but above every name. . . . JUSTIFICATION, FAITH, AND GOOD WORKS The Jesuit Order was a major source of revitalization within the Roman Catholic Church during the Age of Orthodoxy, and a number of Jesuit theologians were involved in prolonged polemical exchanges with the Lutheran dogmaticians. The following texts show the strategies used by the two most important Lutheran theologians in response to Catholic critics. Martin Chemnitz’s Examination of the Council of Trent, published in several volumes between 1566 and 1573, was stimulated by a defense of Catholicism written by a Portuguese Jesuit named Jacob Payva de Andrada. Johann Gerhard’s Catholic

181

Confession, published in 1626, was a direct response to the Disputations on the Controversies over the Christian Faith against the Heretics of This Time, written by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), the most formidable Jesuit theologian of the Counter-Reformation.

Fig. 6.3. Etching of Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) by artist Jean-Jacques Boissard in Bibliotheca chalcographica, 1652–1669.

148. CHEMNITZ: EXAMINATION OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT (1566–1573) From Examination of the Council of Trent: Part 1, trans. Fred Kramer (St. Louis: Concordia, 1971), 538–44. Part 1, Topic 8: Justification; Sect. 5: Concerning the Growth of Justification After It Has Been Received Council of Trent: Canon 24 “If anyone says that the justice received is not preserved and is also not increased before God through

182

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

good works, but that the works are only the fruit and the signs of the justification received, not also a cause of its increase, let him be anathema.” Examination The testimonies of Scripture are clear, that the renewal of the new man, as also the mortification of the old, is not perfect and complete in this life but that it grows and is increased day by day until it is perfected in the next life, when this corruptible will have put on incorruption. Profitable also and necessary in the church are exhortations that the regenerate should not neglect, extinguish, or cast away the gifts of the Spirit that they have received but that they stir them up with true and earnest exercises, calling on the help of the Holy Spirit, that he may give an increase of faith, hope, life, and of the other spiritual gifts; for what the punishment of spiritual negligence is the parable of the talents shows. . . . If it were these chief points of the doctrine that are dealt with in this chapter of the Tridentine decree, there would be no controversy, for the matters are true. But let the reader again note the insidious cunning of the synod. They take the teaching and the testimonies of Scripture on how the renewal ought to grow from day to day, how the inherent gifts of the Spirit must increase through prayerful exercises, but behind this facade they are after something far different. For the title speaks of the growth of the justification that has been received, and the chapter says that those who have once been freely justified are afterwards justified more through the keeping of the commandments of God and of the church, so that afterwards a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone. . . . [The Tridentine fathers] want to confirm and obtrude on the church the papalist distinction of a first and a second justification. For they call that the first justification when an unregenerate man is first permeated with the inherent righteousness, when the first quality, or infused characteristic, of love has been received. And of this first infusion of love they say that no works merit it as a deserved reward. But they call that the second justification when the infused love exercises its operations, bringing forth good works. And this second justification, they say, can and should be obtained through good works. And these works, they think, merit a greater righteousness than the one that is infused freely, for Christ’s sake, in the first justification. Yes, they add that those works in which their second justification consists finally merit eternal life, which, they say, must be bestowed

as a deserved reward upon our works performed in love. So say the Jesuits. . . . It is not hard to see that this opinion conflicts diametrically with the teaching of Scripture. For the Scripture is not speaking only of the beginning of conversion when it says that we are justified before God to life eternal by grace, for Christ’s sake, without works, so that justification occurs in a moment but that afterwards, in order that we may obtain salvation, we are throughout our whole life justified through and on account of our good works. For in Romans 4 Paul proves that Abraham was justified by faith, freely, for Christ’s sake, without works not only in the beginning of his conversion but that also when, a new man, he had obeyed God with good works through many years, there was imputed to him righteousness without works, not as to one who worked but as to one who believed. . . . In Romans 5 there is found a glorious division. The first is concerning the beginning: “Through Christ we have access by faith to this grace that, being justified by faith, we may have peace with God.” The second is concerning the middle: “In that same grace we stand by faith.” The third is concerning the end: “Through the same grace we glory by faith in hope of the glory of God,” that is, as we by faith have access to grace, so also we hope that we shall by the same faith and grace arrive at glorification. As, therefore, we have peace with God in the beginning of our justification by faith, freely, for Christ’s sake, without works, so we have it also in the middle and the end. . . . Topic 9: Faith; Sect. 1: Concerning Preparation for Justification Canon 9: “If anyone says that the ungodly is justified by faith alone in such a way that he understands that nothing else is required that cooperates toward obtaining the grace of justification, and that it is in no way necessary for him to be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will, let him be anathema.” Since it was their purpose to establish the entire form of Scholastic doctrine for their own churches and to foist it on ours again, they had to think out such trickery, lest this fraud should be noticed by everybody at first glance. For this reason they studiously flee and avoid in most things the terms, or modes of speech, that originated without Scripture in the philosophical workshops of the Scholastic writers, but the matters themselves, as they are taught

THEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF ORTHODOXY (1580–1700)

by the masters of the sentences, they simply retain, except that they add a smoke screen by means of certain terms borrowed from Scripture in order that the reader who is not versed in the useless disputations of the Scholastic writers but only accustomed to the language of the Holy Spirit may think at first glance that the council gave serious thought to some degree of reformation of the Scholastic doctrine according to the norm of Scripture when he hears that here they do not so frequently use only the terminology of the Scholastics but bring in also, in some places, the words and phrases of Scripture. But later, as he progresses, he finds out, both from the matters and from the words, something far different, yes, the very opposite. . . . What defect then, you ask, is found in that decree? I reply: (1) They want to have faith understood as historical knowledge and bare assent, so that they deny that it is trust in the divine mercy that forgives sins for Christ’s sake. (2) They imagine that divine grace only moves and excites free will, which thereafter is able, from its own natural powers, to begin and render those preparations. (3) In those preparations they set up some merit and some worthiness, in view of which we are justified. For they say that faith should hold that when a man does what is in him, then God must of necessity infuse grace. (4) That which is the true function of faith, namely, to lay hold of Christ for righteousness and salvation, that they ascribe to love. And they simply invert the order shown in Scripture. For they imagine that the love toward God in us must precede reconciliation with God, although it is impossible that true love toward God should be begun, unless there is previously heard and apprehended by faith the voice of the gospel concerning the reconciliation through the mercy of God for the sake of the Son and Mediator. These things certainly do not agree with Augustine (to say nothing of the Scripture), who constantly inculcates this rule: “Good works do not precede him who is to be justified, but follow him who is justified.” 149. GERHARD: CONFESSIO CATHOLICA (1633–1637) The full title of this treatise is: “Catholic Confession in which Catholic and Evangelical Doctrine Professed by the Church of the Augsburg Confession is Confirmed by Support from Roman Catholic Writers.” It was first published in 1626.

183

From Conf onfessio essio Catholica (Leipzig: Genschius, 1679), 1513–17, trans. Eric Lund. Bk. 2, Part 3, Art. 23, Ch. 6: The Necessity of Good Works First Thesis: In the Evangelical church, the necessity of good works is not denied, much less are good works prohibited. . . . Second Thesis: Although we say that works are necessary, nevertheless we deny that they are necessary for the attainment of salvation. Subthesis: 1. The necessity of good works can be asserted in two ways: The necessity of presence [necessitas praesentiae], of course, and the necessity of efficient causation [necessitas efficientiae]. The first signifies no more than that it is necessary for one who would be saved to labor with great care. The other, however, signifies something more, namely, the cause of that necessity, truly that good works are necessary to the effecting of salvation. We defend the prior sort of necessity, as a species or mode. The papists, however, defend the other. 2. A distinction should be made between external and internal works. We deny that external works are necessary in those who immediately after laying hold of baptism depart from this life. Nevertheless, we teach the necessity of internal works, that is, interior renewal, since baptism is a “washing of regeneration and renewal” (Titus 3:5). The apostle teaches, moreover, that internal renewal is classifiable as a work when he pronounces man to be “justified by faith without works of the law” (Rom 3:28). . . . [Editor’s note: Gerhard makes additional technical distinctions about connotations of necessity.] 4. Chemnitz in the chapter on good works in part three of his Loci extends this point a little more. “Scripture especially uses the designation of necessity in four ways, which indeed relates to this question. “First, for that which is necessary for justification and salvation (Acts 15:5; Gal 2:4, 6:12). “Second, the mention of necessity in certain places in Scripture signifies something either forced or involuntary as when external work is forced out against one’s will or involuntarily, contrary to the intention of the mind (2 Cor 9:7; Philemon 14). “Third, Scripture uses the designation of necessity for when something is not arbitrary or a matter of indifference but an obligation by reason of a divine will and command (Acts 13:46; 15:21; Rom 13:5; 1 Cor 9:16). “Fourth, more frequently the word is used gener-

184

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ally for the necessity of consequence (pro necessitate consequentiae) or immutability (immutabilitatis) (Heb 7:12). This usage applies to when there is a definite and important reason why something should not be omitted but should be done (Phil 1:24). “Although good works are not necessary in accordance with the first and second mode, nevertheless, they are necessary in the sense of the third and fourth modes.” 5. We say good works are necessary not only by internal necessity, because true and living faith is not without good works (which basis for necessity Bellarmine claims is the only one handed down by us), but also on account of external necessity, which is due to the divine command that bids us to apply ourselves to good works. Antithesis: Bellarmine in Book 4 on justification states: “Our adversaries agree in this that good works are not necessary to salvation, except by necessity of presence. The sense of this proposition is that there ought to be good works, since faith, otherwise, is not alive or true unless it produces good fruits in the same manner that fire is not fire unless it glows with heat. Nevertheless, good works do not have any relation to salvation as merits, causes, or conditions of it. To the contrary we [Roman Catholics] say that good works are not necessary to salvation only by reason of presence, but also by reason of efficient causation, since they effect salvation and without the same, faith alone does not bring about salvation.” We now demonstrate our judgment [against this antithesis]: 1. From apostolic disputation: Romans 3 and 4; Galatians 2; Ephesians 2. The apostle, conjoining justification and salvation in the scriptural texts that constitute the proper foundation (sedes doctrinae) of the doctrine of justification, proclaims from the judgment of Moses and David, that is from the law and all the prophets, that “we are justified and saved by grace through faith without works. Blessed are those whom God accepts without works. Blessed is the one to whom God does not impute sin but saves by grace through faith. This is not of ourselves; this is a gift of God, not of works lest someone should glory in it.” The apostle by this pronouncement directly opposes those who place works in a position to be necessary for the attainment of salvation. 2. From the distinction of law and gospel: Justification and salvation are not from the law but from the gospel (Gal 3:11, 21; 5:4). Now indeed the gospel predicates justification and salvation on believing in Christ by grace without the condition of works (Rom 4:5–6).

3. From a reckoning of what is sufficient: If good works are necessary to effect salvation they must be reckoned either as merit or cause in the matter of salvation. Yet they are not the merits of our salvation as has been demonstrated earlier, neither are they the efficient cause or instrumental cause of our salvation because by the grace of God the remission of our sins, justification, and eternal life is put forth in Christ alone, our mediator (John 3:36; 1 John 5:1). Nor are they the conserving cause of salvation because the conservation of our salvation is not attributed in Scripture to our works, but to the power of God and faith (1 Pet 1:5, 9; Rom 11:20; Mark 16:16). 4. From the consequence of absurdities: If good works are placed in a position of necessity for the attainment of salvation, the promises of the gospel are no longer left to grace but are said to include the condition of works. The promise of salvation is rendered unsure when consciences timid and terrified by a sense of divine wrath are constantly disposed to doubt whether they have enough good works with which to effect their salvation (Acts 15:24). Other causes of justification and salvation are set forth, or at least more things are required for justification even though these very causes of justification and salvation, namely, the grace of God and the merit of Christ, are established in the proper authoritative passage (Acts 4:12, 15:11—faith; 1 Pet 1:5—not works; Eph 2:8; 2 Tim 1:9; Titus 3:5). Support for Our Assertions: 1. That some of them recognize that faith alone justifies. For if faith alone justifies, at least works are not necessary to the attaining of salvation. [Even though] the connecting of faith and works is approved by the very words of Bellarmine in Book 4, “We,” that is, the Roman Catholics, “say good works are necessary to the salvation of a man, not only by reason of presence but also by reason of efficient causation, since they effect salvation and, without the same, faith alone does not effect salvation.” 2. That the papists themselves recognize that good works are not absolutely and simply necessary to the salvation of all. (If works are necessary by reason of causation, they are necessary for the salvation of everyone, inasmuch as the effect is absent where the necessary cause producing it is not present.) Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, writing on James, chapter 2, says: “It is established that one is justified through faith also without works as is evident for one who, baptized as a child or as an adult,

THEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF ORTHODOXY (1580–1700)

straightaway dies.” (They indeed are not only justified but also are saved without works.) Jacobus Faber [Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples] on James, chapter 2, says: “Faith alone suffices where there is no time for works; faith alone suffices for little ones for their justification.” . . . Bellarmine in Book 1 states: “Origen teaches that man is able to be justified occasionally even if he does no external works. For he posits the example of the sinful women and the robber, who were not observed to have fasted or given alms before they were justified [Luke 23:39–43?]. So, . . . Origen excludes the external necessity of works when evidently the power or occasion of the doing of works is lacking in a similar manner.” In the same book and chapter: “Chrysostom teaches that faith alone without external works occasionally suffices but external works without faith never suffice. And the reason is rendered: Faith brings forth works; works do not bring forth faith.” In Book 4 on justification: “We understand good works to be necessary to men having the use of reason and as long as they live after obtaining the grace of remission whenever the occasion of fulfilling the law occurs. Indeed we do not deny that infants and also adults recently baptized are saved if immediately thereafter they depart from this life. They are judged to fulfill the whole law who living on after justification do not violate the precepts of the law and who at least display love, which is the fulfillment of the law in the heart.” (Perfect love is also perfect fulfillment of the law and effects salvation. Yet truly, perfect love occurs in no man in this life. Therefore it is inefficacious to the attaining of salvation.) Book 5: “Even though little ones who die soon after baptism are given eternal life only by the law of heredity, nevertheless God wants his sons who have use of reason to acquire that by their own labors and merits so that eternal life is owed to them by two claims, clearly by the claim of heredity and by the law of recompense of wages.” (If baptized little ones do not acquire eternal life by their own labors and merits but only are given eternal life by the law of heredity, it follows that good works are simply not necessary to the attainment of salvation.) . . . [Editor’s note: Gerhard goes on to analyze and reply to quotes from several other Roman Catholic theologians.]

185

150. THE SYNCRETIST CONTROVERSY: CALIXTUS AND CALOV Georg Calixtus was the most controversial Lutheran theologian during the Age of Orthodoxy. Educated at the University of Helmstedt, which was a center of Humanism more noted for its philosophers than for its theologians, he developed an intense aversion to the theological controversies of his day. Throughout his forty-year career as a professor at Helmstedt, he committed himself to the promotion of cooperation between opposing religious groups. He was in contact with other irenicists throughout Europe and participated in the Convention at Thorn in 1645 assembled by the king of Poland to promote the unification of different church traditions. Calixtus asserted that few of the articles of faith about which the theologians argued were fundamental beliefs necessary for the attainment of salvation. He suggested that common acceptance of the earliest and simplest ecumenical creed could and should be the basis for the unification of the churches. Abraham Calov of Wittenberg questioned the presuppositions of this specific proposal and charged Calixtus with promoting syncretism. He argued that the similarities that Calixtus saw between the different churches were very superficial and that any willingness to mix truth and error was a sign of an indifference to doctrine that endangered the salvation of individuals and the integrity of the Lutheran church. Not all of Calixtus’s antagonists were as hostile as Calov, but few were truly sympathetic to his irenic efforts. The selections from Georg Calixtus are in Heinrich Schmid, Geschichte der synkr synkretistischen etistischen Str Streitigkeiten eitigkeiten (Erlangen: Heyder, 1846), and are from the following of Calixtus’s works: Responsum maledicis theolog theologorum orum Mog Moguntinorum untinorum I (1644); Epicrisis et consider onsideratio, atio, scriptis ad colloquium Thoruniense (1645); Ver erantwortung antwortung an den Churf Churfürsten ürsten von Br Branandenburg (1649); and Dissertatio de desiderio et studio conc oncordiae ordiae ecclesiasticae (1650). The selections from Abraham Calov are in Heinrich Schmid, Calov: Digr Digressio essio de nov novaa theolog theologia ia Helmstadio-Reg Helmstadio-Regiomontanoiomontanorum (1648) and Syncr yncretismus etismus calixtinus (1653). All translated by Eric Lund.

186

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Calixtus Verantwortung §27 (Schmid, 170–71) I must confess, and confess willingly and gladly, that it has pained my heart as long as I have been able to consider it and more than I can express in words that those who are separated from each other by almost irreconcilable hatred and enmity and who anathematize and condemn each other were [all] baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and believe in one, Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and Earth. . . . [Consider those who] believe that the only-begotten Son of the Father willed to rescue us from sin, death, and damnation, assumed human nature, suffered and died, was resurrected from the dead, ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of the God and will come again to judge the living and the dead; who meanwhile believe and preach the gospel as Christ commanded and gather a church and fellowship that is well-pleasing to God through which forgiveness of sins is obtained; who believe that the dead will rise again bodily, that those who have lived well will enter eternal life while those who have done evil will go into the eternal fire; who firmly believe these things and live, not according to the flesh, but chastely, uprightly, and piously in this world, doing nothing contrary to their conscience, neither affirming nor denying any controversial position that does not seem right, and who make use of the Lord’s Supper as they can and as it seems right to them. I cannot believe and state anything other than that they are Christians and therefore worthy of being met with Christian love and kindness. If a single error should cast a man out of Christendom and cause his damnation, few if any Christians would remain and escape damnation. Besides, it is said that all who believe in the only-begotten Son of God will not perish but will have eternal life. St. Paul said [1 Cor 3:11–15]: No other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with wood, hay, stubble (that is unnecessary, unuseful, impertinent, superstitious, or erroneous things that would better be left off), he will suffer loss (his work will be lost, he will not get the reward that those who built with gold and silver on the foundation will receive), but he will [still] be saved (which reveals that not all errors deprive men of salvation). He will be saved, but only as through a fire. . . . From what I quote one learns that what has just been mentioned pertains to

salvation and those who believe and live accordingly are not to be excluded from the number of Christians. Desiderium #6 (Schmid, 172) Whoever is convinced in his mind that there is no papal infallibility, no papal primacy administering divine law, no purgatory, or no transubstantiation, cannot confess with good conscience that he believes that. . . . Whoever is convinced that he is bound by a divine command to receive both elements of the Eucharist cannot be content with one element without violating his conscience. Whoever is convinced that the presence of the body and blood of the Lord in the holy Eucharist is confirmed by the Word of God cannot deny this without immeasurable guilt....... But there is an enormous difference between the sentences: “I do not believe that this opinion is true,” and “I maintain that this opinion is heretical and that all who hold it are cut off from divine grace and the heavenly kingdom.” The former can be said of many things without the danger of initiating or establishing schisms, but not the latter. Epicrisis, Thesis 32 (Schmid, 164) I point out again and again that our theology is practical, and, consequently, I must say, questions that do nothing for the carrying out and exercising of [religious] practice should be considered indifferent and should not be disputed odiously or to the detriment of mutual Christian love. Our concern should be to do and accomplish, with as much industry as we can, what God demands and wants us to do. ad Moguntinos, Thesis 62 (Schmid, 146) The slow-minded and uneducated are not served by one faith and the clever and erudite by another, but all are Christians through one and the same faith, whether one is uncultured and a learner or refined by literary pursuits and a teacher, particularly for adults and those endowed with the use of reason. Epicrisis, Thesis 2 (Schmid, 153) It suffices to believe that there is one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that the Son was incarnated and became man, that the world was created by God and the dead will be raised. Furthermore, we need not probe in what way three persons are in one nature,

THEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF ORTHODOXY (1580–1700)

or how two natures subsist in one person, nor need we comprehend how divine power produces something from nothing or how God reintegrates what dissipates in thin air. None of this is prejudicial to us or our salvation. ad Moguntinos, Thesis 42 (Schmid, 143) The Apostolic Symbol [the Apostles’ Creed] contains the chief doctrines, the knowledge of which is necessary for the making of a true and faithful Christian and for the attainment of salvation. . . . [In the past], when catechumens had confessed the Creed, they were admitted to Baptism and were called and considered believers. Any artisans and farmers, any of the uncultured and simple people, be they men or women, are believers and stand in the state of grace, although all or many of them know and understand nothing more than the chief summary of the faith simply expressed in the Creed. And yet that is enough for their salvation. Desiderium, Thesis 4 (Schmid, 169) Whoever is outside the body or is not a member of the body under the headship of Christ cannot be saved. Yet those who are members of the body under the head of Christ are brothers and sisters. Therefore, as far as relates to the papists and the reformed, either it is fitting to deny that any of them are members of Christ and to affirm that all of them, however many they are or were, have been placed beyond hope of salvation and destined for eternal death, although they never acted contrary to their conscience and were afflicted by an ignorance that they were unable to overcome, or [to affirm that] if they can be or were able to become participants in eternal life with us, then they are sons of the same father, coheirs, brothers and sisters, who ought to be loved. Desiderium, Thesis 5 (Schmid, 178) Although actual and external communion through the sacrament is prohibited on account of unfortunate controversies concerning the same, there may persist, nevertheless, a virtual and internal communion, consisting of mutual benevolence and love of the kind that a Christian owes to another Christian and in the desire and zeal for the removing of impediments that block actual and external, perfect communion.

187

Calov Syncretismus, 10 (Schmid, 247) It is not a matter of seeking to know in whatever manner all things that should be believed can be traced back to the Apostolic Symbol, or whether they are at least implicitly or virtually contained in it. Rather, it is a matter of investigating whether all articles of faith that should be believed are explicitly and expressly included in the Symbol as it is used today. Digressio, 910 (Schmid, 252) It was not within the scope of the ecumenical councils to express all the fundamental articles of faith in the symbols, but to define those matters that came up for debate at that time, leaving out other articles about which there was little controversy even though they were no less fundamental than the ones they had labored with great care to define in the symbols. Syncretismus, 167 (Schmid, 262) If the only true heretics who should be subjected to anathema for doctrinal errors are those who directly deny articles expressed in the symbol, then the whole catholic church erred in the [later] ecumenical creeds in anathematizing certain dogmas that are not expressly contrary to the symbol. . . . Then the church erred in condemning those heretics who accepted the symbol or did not unquestionably contradict any of its articles. . . . Digressio, 923 (Schmid, 263) If Calixtus’s definition is admitted, then neither the Pelagians, nor the Anabaptists, nor the Arminians, nor the Calvinists, nor the Catholics have been heretics, for the articles that Calixtus asserts as necessary to believe for salvation have scarcely been corrupted by them. And where does it stand with the Arians and the Socinians? Surely they should not be called heretics for they do not deny any of the articles of the symbol that Calixtus thinks are the only necessary beliefs, but they claim to allow all of them! And therefore, those also who are ignorant of necessary articles of faith because of a defect of institution should be considered wholly Christian, as Calixtus affirms. In any case, ignorance of the articles of faith that must be believed for salvation could not be

188

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

damnable or pernicious for salvation, and they who do not believe certain necessary articles but simply do not know about them would be able to become participants in salvation. Digressio, 1105 (Schmid, 282) Is it not absurd that some want to regard Calvinists and papists as catholic Christians, provided only that they are not so devoted to their own sect that they completely curse us but embrace whatever in our tradition [they think] is right and in agreement with catholic faith and observance? This is ironwood (ειδηροξυλον) or opposites in opposition: for he who embraces our confession is not a Calvinist or papist but a genuine (γνησιως) Lutheran; thus he who is and remains a Calvinist or papist will, as such, embrace least of all whatever is right and in agreement with true faith and observance; to the contrary, the papist curses our doctrine and is understood to curse it as such. Quenstedt Theologia Didactico-Polemica, Ch. 5: De Articuli Fidei, Sect. 1, q. 5 Truly, we constantly assert that Calvinists and Lutherans differ not only in fundamentals but in many other articles of faith. Whence it should be observed: It is not enough that some fundamental article or some part of it is explicitly embraced while the rest are called into doubt, denied, or impugned, but it is necessary to hold to the total and complete fundamental article and not to mix in something false either directly or indirectly nor consider the remaining dogmas to be unnecessary for the foundation of faith. . . . To us, it is certain that the controversial questions with the Calvinists remain absolutely irreconcilable as long as they remain in their errors. . . . THE ORDO SALUTIS 151. HUNNIUS: EPITOME (1625) The Epitome Credendorum published by Nikolaus Hunnius in 1625 was a brief summary of doctrine that became very popular among the laity as well as the clergy. One of its most important features was the description of the doctrine of salvation as a series

of acts by which the Holy Spirit bestows the gift of grace. Later dogmaticians continued to use this pattern, although they did not always exactly follow the order presented by Hunnius. For example, Quenstedt spoke of the call (vocatio), rebirth (regeneratio), conversion (conversio), justification (justificatio), repentance (poenitentia), and mystical union (unio mystica). The idea of a spiritual union between God and the individual believer also became a topic of great interest to the devotional writers of the seventeenth century, whose writings are examined in the next chapter. From Epitome Cr Credendorum edendorum, trans. Paul Edward Gottheil (Nürnberg: Sebald, 1847), 124–25, 127, 129–30, 137–38, 144–45, 155, 165–67, 171, 174, rev. trans. Eric Lund. Chapter 17: Of God’s Merciful Calling The Lord Jesus Christ has brought about a reconciliation between God and sinful men, so that now nothing is hindering them from acknowledging and accepting this benefit with grateful hearts. In which latter act the Lord Jesus again faithfully assists them, in order to lead them to their heavenly Father. But for the better understanding of the same, we have to inquire: I. In which manner the Lord Jesus proceeds in this act, and II. Which means he employs to bring about the desired effect. 440. Christ is brought near to the sinner: a. by the calling, b. by repentance, c. by justification, d. by conversion, e. by renewing, f. by the new birth, g. by the union with Christ. 441. The calling is the first act, by which men are requested to become partakers of the benefits of Christ; this calling we stand in great need of. Suppose a prison being filled with prisoners who had all been ransomed; but as long as this their redemption is not communicated to them, and they requested to leave the prison, their redemption would be of no avail to them. Exactly so this great work of mercy, by which Christ has delivered us from the pains of hell by his blood, would be of no avail, if we had it not announced to us, and if we were not requested to become partakers of the benefits connected therewith.

THEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF ORTHODOXY (1580–1700)

449. a. The Lord Jesus calls all men to come to him, Matthew 11:28: “Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Now as all men must be said to labor and to be heavy laden, it follows that Christ has called them all unto him....... Chapter 18: Of Repentance 455. To insure us of our eternal salvation in his presence, God has made ample preparations, in all the proceedings that have been already treated of. It is true that the Lord Jesus has delivered us from our sins, reconciled us to God, opened unto us heaven and eternal salvation, even so that God has called upon us to partake of his grace and of the merit of the Lord Jesus Christ. But in to the enjoyment of these benefits, we have only then success, if we are aided by divine power. This aid God bestows upon us, thus raising again and upholding sinful men. 456. But this restoration of man is not accomplished at once, but only partly, so that only the beginning of it is made in this life. In this respect three different points are to be attended to, namely: 1. man, who requires help, and whose restoration is called repentance; 2. God the Lord, who is either bringing sinful men before the judgment seat, or forgiving them their sins, which latter is called justification, or forgiveness of sins; men, who are induced to turn away from their evil and sinful life, giving themselves with all their might to the service of God—this is called conversion, new birth, and renewing; and 3. Christ, and the fact that men become united with him, which is called the engrafting in Christ. But the complete restoration is only brought about after the death of this body, in eternal life and in the kingdom of glory. 457. The first of these works of mercy is repentance. Concerning which we have to inquire: a. its nature, b. its necessity, c. of how many parts it consists, d. its source, e. whom among men it might concern, and f. its fruits and consequences. 458. What is repentance? Repentance means a real acknowledgement and sincere repentance of the sins of which we feel ourselves guilty, along with the firm assurance that God is willing to forgive them for the sake and the merits of his beloved Son. 461. Of how many parts repentance consists? We answer: of two parts, namely, the act of repentance and of faith.

189

The act of repentance consists of a. man’s conviction of being a sinner, b. the conviction that God is zealous against sin and that he is determined to punish the same with hellfire in all eternity; c. the conviction that man is by no means able to help himself in this emergency, and that he has to expect this help from no creature whatsoever; d. of a deep-felt repentance and sorrow with which the sinner feels himself sorely afflicted on account of his sin; and finally e. of a heartfelt desire, if possible, not to have sinned at all, together with an intense hatred against sin. Chapter 19: Of Justification 478. We have been considering man in his sinful state, in consequence of which state (if God would deal with him according to justice), he would be brought before the judgment of God, there to be convicted of sin, and condemned to eternal death. We have now to look for the means by which he might be saved from this emergency, delivered from his transgressions, and the punishment consequent to it. As such means are to be considered justification and forgiveness of sins. . . . 485. . . . In the act of our justification two different things are accomplished; namely, in the first place, the righteousness of Christ and his fulfilling the law are imputed unto man, as if he had done these things himself, and second, the sins that he had committed are not imputed to him, as if he had never committed the same. By the first act he is delivered from a debt, which he never possibly could have paid; whilst by the second he is freed from the burden of sin, which he never could have atoned for, and the punishment for which he could never have sustained. By these two acts he is delivered from the judgment of God in such a manner that henceforward he has not any more to fear either guilt or transgression, nor the evils that are the consequence of them. The manner in which our justification is proceeded with is as follows. The righteousness is 1. offered by God unto man, and 2. received and accepted by man. Thus God offers his righteousness unto man by means of his Gospel and by the Holy Sacraments, of which we propose to treat subsequently. From the last mentioned springs the faith by which the justification is accepted, as we intend to prove immediately. If man has offered unto him the justification, then he accepts of it by faith, which is, as it were, the

190

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

spiritual hand, by which the grace of God, the merits of Christ, the forgiveness of sins, righteousness, life, and salvation are laid hold of. 502. I. the nature of faith. Three things are necessary for our belief, namely: a. A knowledge of all that which God has revealed concerning our salvation, of which St. Paul writes, Romans 10:14: “How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?” b. An undoubted assent and conviction, as to the truth and inspiration of the divine work. If there is one, who has occasion to hear and to perceive that which God teaches, but considers it as a fable, contradicting it within his heart, such a one cannot have faith. For he has no faith in God; he grieves the Holy Spirit, putting away the word of God from him, and judges himself unworthy of everlasting life, Acts 13:46. c. An unflinching confidence in God, whereby man has the firm assurance that God is able and willing to bring to pass all his kind promised for his benefit and for that of all mankind. 507. II. The source of this faith is to be found in the Word of God and in the holy sacraments. a. In the Word of God for “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” Romans 10:17. b. In the holy sacraments; for Baptism “is the washing of regeneration,” Titus 3:5. But regeneration cannot take place where there is no faith; hence faith comes by Baptism. The Holy Supper appropriates the merits of Christ to the communicants in such a manner that, thereby, the Lord Jesus testifies to have given his body as well as shed his blood for them. This every man is requested to apply to himself individually, as if the Lord Jesus did say to everyone especially: this is my body, which is given for you for the forgiveness of sins, and this is my blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. Chapter 20: Of Conversion 537. With reference to conversion, the following points are to be considered: a. the nature of conversion; b. God, who works the conversion; c. man, who becomes converted; and d. the fruit of conversion. 538. a. The nature of conversion; this change is described to take place, when men are pricked in their hearts, Acts 2:37; when their hearts are smitten, 2 Samuel 24:10; when their hearts are opened, so that they attend unto the word of God, Acts 16:14; when

the stony heart is taken out of them and a new and pure heart given them, when a new and a free spirit is put within them, and they thus become the people of God and walk in his statutes, Ezekiel 11:19, 36:26; Psalm 51:12. . . . 559. The question as to how it is, that, in the whole, but a few men are converted, everyone will easily answer himself when attending to that which has been stated already. For although it is true, that man can know nothing for the furtherance of his conversion, yet he may do a great deal to hinder it. It is true that he cannot work out his own conversion, but it is as true that he can hinder his being converted. Suppose a man is falling ill, then he cannot cure himself; but he can easily put an obstacle in the way of his recovery, in that he does not obey the injunctions of his medical adviser, and, casting from him his medicines, does everything to augment his sickness. . . . Chapter 22: Of Regeneration 567. Regeneration has been compared to the natural birth. As man is born from his parents, so he is, as it were, spiritually born anew, or a second time, by God. For which reason the latter act is not called simply a birth, but a new birth, or regeneration. . . . 574. . . . b. The nature of regeneration and what it consists of. In this respect we have to observe 1. mortification of the sinful nature. This does not mean to say that the members of the body were to be subjected to mortification, but that they are to be made captive to the obedience of Christ, 1 Corinthians 10:5; that sin should have no more dominion in our members, but that they should be henceforth members of righteousness, Romans 6:12–13; that they who are Christ’s should crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts, Galatians 5:24. . . . 575. . . . b. The second part consists in the awakening of the soul and all of its powers to an activity with which God is well pleased. Everyone who is not performing some sort of work is like a dead body, and accordingly as we are by nature unfit for anything that is good, the Holy Ghost designates us as “dead,” Ephesians 2:1; Colossians 2:13: “when ye were dead in trespasses and sins.” Now if God imparts unto us the ability to do whatever is good and spiritual, then he makes us alive, and by becoming alive, we are able to perform good works. . . .

THEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF ORTHODOXY (1580–1700)

Chapter 23: The Believer’s Union with Christ 590. That the Lord Jesus stands in a close union with the believer, we find stated in Scripture partly in express terms, partly in figures and parables. Express terms we met with: John 6:56, “He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, dwells in me, and I in him”; John 14:20, “At that day you shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you”; 1 Corinthians 6:17, “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit”; Galatians 2:20, “I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me”; Ephesians 5:30, “We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones”; 1 John 3:24, “If that which you have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, you also shall continue in the Son and in the Father”; 1 John 4:13, “Hereby know that we dwell in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit”; 2 Peter 1:4, “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises:

191

that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature.” 597. This circumstance is beautifully explained in Scripture by the figure of marriage: Genesis 2:24, “They shall be one flesh”; 1 Corinthians 6:16–17, “Know you not that he who joined himself to a harlot is one body with her? For two, he says, shall become one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit”; Hosea 2:19–20, “I will betroth you unto me forever, yea I will betroth you unto me, in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies; I will even betroth you unto me in faithfulness.” A promise by which God in his part rests the spiritual union upon righteousness that he alone can give, and upon grace and mercy that he bestowed upon man. While on the part of man, God rests this union upon nothing but faith, by which they might trust in him that he is seeking their best, and that he is willing to be gracious unto them. All that causes a spiritual union, but not a bodily union.

7. Seventeenth-Century Devotional Literature and Hymnody

The common practice of describing the postReformation era as the Age of Orthodoxy emphasizes the strict confessional consciousness of the period and the important developments that took place in systematic theology. Seventeenth-century Lutheranism, however, should not be characterized only in terms of the outlook and achievements of the influential dogmaticians. It was also a period in which many of the best-loved hymns and most widely read devotional books of the Lutheran tradition were written. These texts reveal to us another set of concerns and attitudes that were also common in the Age of Orthodoxy and equally significant in shaping the future development of Lutheranism. In the Reformation period, Lutheran reformers produced a variety of writings that were intended to edify ordinary believers. Simple catechisms summarized the most important beliefs and gave practical instruction about how people should live. Published collections of sermons provided easily understandable interpretations of the Bible, and small prayer books or hymnbooks gave families guidance for the observance of devotional practices in their homes. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, however, many Lutheran pastors felt that much more needed to be done to improve the state of religious life among the common folk. Convinced that the laity were often indifferent to moral and spiritual values, the writers of devotional literature attempted to show more clearly how Christian belief should affect the way people live. Stephen Praetorius (1536–1604), Martin Moller (1547–1606), and Philipp Nicolai (1556– 1608) were three of the most notable early devotional writers in the Age of Orthodoxy (doc. #171). Each of them in different ways stressed the importance of holy living

as a product of faith and described the transformative effect of the indwelling of Christ in the believer. They all used mystical language in their description of Christian experience, and Moller in particular was explicitly indebted to medieval spiritual writers for what he had to say about this topic. The practice of reappropriating selected resources from the medieval spiritual tradition soon became commonplace. This constituted one of the most distinctive but controversial features of the work of the seventeenth-century devotional writers. As important as these early writers were, they are minor figures compared to Johann Arndt (1555–1621), a north German pastor who served in later life as general superintendent of the churches in the Duchy of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel. His Four Books of True Christianity, first published in 1605 and later expanded into six books, became the single most influential devotional text in Lutheran history. Arndt also wrote a very popular prayer book called The Little Garden of Paradise and republished medieval spiritual writings, such as The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis, and the Theologia Deutsch. Simple people who could read were more likely to own a book by Arndt than any of the writings of Luther. Over 140 editions of Arndt’s writings were published during the next century, and True Christianity was also translated into Latin, Dutch, English, French, Russian, and several other languages. Arndt was convinced that Germany in his day was in a state of moral and spiritual decay and suggested that the misguided preoccupations of many of the clergy were partially to blame for this development (docs. #152 and 154). Through his writings, he attempted to reorient attention to the practical mat-

194

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ter of encouraging repentance and spiritual renewal. Arndt stressed the importance of both active and contemplative aspects of piety (docs. #153 and 155). He insisted that true, living faith becomes active in love toward other people, but he also encouraged believers to set aside time for careful introspection and solitary meditation (doc. #156). The famous dogmatician Johann Gerhard (1582–1637) had been directed to the study of theology by Arndt, who was his pastor while he was growing up in the city of Quedlinburg. The personal influence of Arndt on Gerhard’s life is evident in Gerhard’s lifelong interest in providing practical spiritual guidance for all believers as well as the sophisticated theological analysis that only the most educated could understand. Even before he became well known for his systematic theology, Gerhard was influencing people through his Sacred Meditations, first published in Latin in 1606 and circulated five years later in a German translation (docs. #158, 159, and 160). The ponderous style of his later devotional writings limited their appeal, but the amount of devotional literature he produced is significant evidence that the dogmaticians were concerned with how people lived as well as what they believed. The tremendous devastation resulting from military battles, plague, and famine during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) created new challenges for those who were committed to the revitalization of popular piety. Many Lutheran pastors believed that widespread suffering and uncertainty about the future had dulled the moral and spiritual sensitivity of many people. This tragic situation stimulated the production of a vast quantity of new devotional books and inspired the writing of some of the bestknown Lutheran hymns of the seventeenth century. Many of the great hymnwriters of the Age of Orthodoxy such as Johann Heerman, Martin Rinkart, and Paul Gerhardt had firsthand experience of the suffering caused by the war, yet out of their profound faith in Christ they composed lyrical poetry that conveyed messages of consolation and hope (docs. # 171, 175, and 176). Their meditations on the sufferings of Christ on the cross helped people put some perspective on their own hardships and remember to be thankful for the gift of salvation (docs. #172, 173, and 174). When earthly life seemed so bleak, the hymnwriters called attention to the peace and joy that could be found now in an experience of the presence of Christ and more fully in the future after passing through death into eternal life with God. After the Thirty Years’ War, the city of Rostock

became a notable gathering place for reform-minded clergy who were deeply influenced by the writings of Arndt. While some of these reformers, such as Theophilus Grossgebauer (1628–61), campaigned for reform of the institutions of the church and a recovery of lapsed zeal, others attempted to promote the transformation of individual lives through their preaching and the publication of edifying literature (doc. #162). Joachim Lütkemann (1608–55), a pastor who taught at the University of Rostock, promoted practical piety in a number of devotional books that rivaled Arndt’s in popularity (doc. #161). The Arndtian orientation at Rostock continued through the often controversial reform efforts of Heinrich Müller (1631–75), who taught Greek and theology at the university. In a number of books, including Spiritual Hours of Refreshment (1664), Müller criticized both clergy and laity for their worldliness and, like Arndt, asserted that the work of divine grace in a person should bring about a clearly evident conversion or rebirth (docs. #163, 164, and 165). The last of the great disciples of Arndt connected to Rostock was Christian Scriver (1629–93), who, after receiving his education there at the university, went on to pastorates in Magdeburg and Quedlinburg. Much of what he wrote recalled the themes found in the writings of Arndt and Müller, but he was especially creative in the way he depicted the process of spiritual growth and the spiritual problems people faced in daily life. This is most evident in his emblematic book Gotthold’s Occasional Devotions (1663–69) (docs. #166, 167, 168, 169, and 170). Since most of these writers dealt extensively with ordinary people in their church work, they differed from the dogmaticians in the vocabulary they used to convey the Christian message and developed a different sense of what were the most pressing problems facing the Lutheran church. They wrote mostly in German, the language of daily life, instead of Latin, the language of scholars. In their books, they attempted to touch the hearts and stimulate the wills of people, while the arguments of the dogmaticians appealed primarily to the intellect. Both dogmaticians and devotional writers offered instruction about true faith and pious living, but the latter group offered a fuller explication of how people’s lives should be practically affected by the doctrines that the dogmaticians had shown to be true. The devotional writers of the seventeenth century were very conscious of their Lutheran identity, but their outlook differed from Luther’s in several respects. They were generally more optimistic than Luther about the potential for spiritual growth in this

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE AND HYMNODY

life and were more inclined to measure the effect of divine grace by external signs of changed behavior (docs. #152 and 166). The devotional writers were also less suspicious of claims to an immediate experience of God. Luther had strictly disassociated himself from the Enthusiasts of his day, who believed themselves to be guided by the inward testimony of the Spirit of God. He had also criticized some of the doctrinal assumptions and ascetic practices that the medieval mystics had defended in their pursuit of mystical union with God. Most of the seventeenthcentury devotional writers, however, were as interested in cultivating the subjective experience of the indwelling of Christ as they were in proclaiming the objective work of Christ for the salvation of humanity (docs. #154, 158, and 163). In some people, this inwardly oriented piety, influenced by medieval ascetic and mystical literature, seemed to lead to a world-negating outlook, which was also in tension with Luther’s concern to bring religious life back into association with the secular world. On the other hand, the devotional writers frequently emphasized that true faith becomes active in love, a theme that was central to Luther’s theology (doc. #165). The subjective experience of conversion usually brought about a new commitment to holy living, which included concern for the welfare of other people. The dogmaticians and devotional writers of the Age of Orthodoxy generally maintained respectful relations, but at times, their different orientations led to tensions between them. Johann Arndt was not alone in criticizing the adverse consequences of the polemical preoccupations of the dogmaticians. Nor was he alone in suspecting that the faith of some dogmaticians was only a matter of intellectual assent (assensus) and not the saving faith (fiducia) that affects the whole orientation of a person. In turn, the most zealous guardians of doctrinal orthodoxy went so far as to charge that writers such as Arndt and Müller were heretics because of what they had written about the sacraments, good works, and the experience of mystical union with Christ (doc. #157). Conflicts of this sort increased within Lutheranism toward the end of the seventeenth century, when the Pietist reform movement extended the discussion of the issues first introduced by the devotional writers.

195

JOHANN ARNDT: SIX BOOKS OF TRUE CHRISTIANITY (1605–1610)

Fig. 7.1. Illustration of Johann Arndt from 1870 publication, Zweihundert Bildnisse und Lebensabrisse berühmter deutscher Männer, 3rd ed., Leipzig.

Johann Arndt (1555–1621) studied medicine and theology at Helmstedt, Strassburg, and Basel. During his early pastorates in Eisleben, Quedlinburg, and Braunschweig, he lived through several disturbing disruptions of communal life caused by conflicts between opposing religious or political factions. Seeking to make religion a more influential force in people’s daily lives, he began to write a comprehensive guidebook describing an ideal of spiritual growth. In 1605 he published the first book of True Christianity, which interpreted what the Bible had to say about the loss and recovery of the image of God in human nature. This “Book of Scripture” was soon after supplemented by “The Book of the Life of Christ,” which portrayed Christ as the doctor who heals the disease of sin and as a model of the godly life. The third book, called the “Book of Conscience,” described the indwelling of Christ and how the Christian could come to experience it. The fourth book, the “Book of Nature,” presented meditations on the six days of creation in order to show the knowledge of God that could be derived from nature.

196

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

In all but the first book, Arndt extensively paraphrased medieval writers such as Angela of Foligno, Thomas à Kempis, Johann Tauler, and Raymond of Sabunde. He also borrowed selectively from controversial sixteenth-century Spiritualists, such as Valentin Weigel and Paracelsus. Some Lutheran pastors and theologians recognized this feature and raised questions about his orthodoxy. Toward the end of his life, the criticisms of Arndt’s theology became so public that he had to write an extensive defense of his writings, which was circulated along with some of his shorter treatises as books five and six of True Christianity. Arndt salvaged his reputation and became an extremely popular author. Nevertheless, some later theologians would continue to blame Arndt for introducing alien elements into the Lutheran understanding of Christianity. Selections are taken from Arndt WC, 14–16, 31, 118–21, 333–36, 339–42, and 566–75, trans. Eric Lund. 152. FOREWORD TO BOOK ONE Dear Christian reader, the godless and impenitent behavior of those who praise Christ and his word with their mouths and still lead entirely unchristian lives as if they lived in heathendom instead of Christendom, attests clearly to the great and shameful misuse of the holy gospel in these last days. Such ungodly conduct has prompted me to write this book so that simple people might see what true Christianity is, namely, the demonstration of a true, living, active faith through sincere godliness and the fruits of righteousness. I also want to show that we bear the name of Christ not only because we believe in Christ, but also because we ought to live in Christ and Christ in us. True repentance must proceed from the innermost ground of the heart; heart, mind, and spirit must be changed, so that we become conformed to Christ and his holy gospel; we must be renewed daily, made new creatures through the Word of God. (For just as every seed produces fruit of its own kind, so the Word of God must daily produce new spiritual fruits in us. If we are to become new creatures by faith, we must live according to the new birth.) In summary: Adam must die in us, and Christ must live in us. It is not enough to know God’s Word; one must also put it into effect in a living, active practice. ...

153. BOOK ONE, CHAPTER FIVE: WHAT TRUE FAITH IS He who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God (1 John 5:1). Faith is a heartfelt confidence and undoubting trust in the grace of God promised in Christ and in the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. It is kindled by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. Through this faith we obtain forgiveness of sins, completely freely, out of sheer grace (Eph 2:8), not by our own merit but by the merit of Christ. Therefore, our faith has a certain foundation and does not waver. This forgiveness of sins is our righteousness, which is true, perpetual, and eternal before God. For it is not the righteousness of an angel but of the obedience, merit, and blood of Christ and becomes our own through faith. Even if it is weak and we are still burdened with many remaining sins, these are covered over out of grace, as Christ wills it (Ps 32:2). By this heartfelt confidence and heartfelt trust, a man gives his heart entirely and absolutely to God, rests in God alone, gives himself over to God, clings to God alone, unites himself with God, becomes a partaker of all that which is of God and Christ, becomes one spirit with God, receives new power from him, new life, new consolation, peace and joy, rest of soul, righteousness and holiness: and also, from God through faith, a man is born anew. For where true faith is, there Christ is with all his righteousness, holiness, redemption, merit, grace, forgiveness of sins, kinship of God, inheritance of eternal life. This is the new birth that comes from faith in Christ. . . . Everything that is born of God is truly no shadow work, but a true life work. God will not give birth to a dead fruit, a lifeless and powerless work, but a living, new man must be born from the living God. Our faith is the victory that conquers the world [1 John 5:4]. Now that which conquers must be a mighty power. If faith is to be victorious over the world, it must be a living, victorious, active, real, divine power; indeed, Christ must do everything through faith. Through this power of God we are once again drawn into God, inclined toward God, transplanted and implanted in God, taken out of Adam as from a cursed vine and placed in Christ the blessed and living vine (John 15:4). Thus, in Christ we possess all his benefits and are made righteous in him. Just as a shoot grafted into a good stem becomes green, blossoms, and brings forth fruit in it, but dies apart from the stem, so a man outside of Christ is

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE AND HYMNODY

nothing other than a cursed vine and all his works are sins (Deut 32:32-33). . . . From this you now see that works cannot make you righteous. You must first of all be transplanted into Christ through faith and be righteous in him before you can do any good work. See indeed that your righteousness is the grace and gift of God that comes before all your merit. How can a dead man move, stand, or do anything good if someone does not first make him living? Thus, since you are dead in sins and dead to God, you can do no work pleasing to God unless you are first made living in Christ. Righteousness comes only from Christ through faith, for faith is in man as a newborn, small, naked, and simple child that stands bare and unclothed before his Redeemer and Sanctifier, and receives all from him who brought it forth, namely, righteousness, piety, holiness, grace, and the Holy Spirit. . . . Since Christ now dwells and lives in you through faith (Eph 3:17), his indwelling is not a dead work but a living work. As a result, the renewal comes from Christ through faith. Faith brings about two things in you: first, it plants Christ in you and makes you his possession; second, it renews you in Christ so that you grow, blossom, and live in him. What is the use of a graft in a stem if it does not grow green and bring forth fruit? Just as formerly through Adam’s fall, through the seduction and deception of the devil, the seed of the serpent was sowed in man—that is, the evil, satanic kind, out of which an evil, poisonous fruit grew—so through the Word of God and the Holy Spirit faith was sowed in man as a seed of God in which all divine virtues, qualities, and characteristics were contained, in a hidden manner, and grew out to a beautiful, new image of God, to a beautiful, new tree on which the fruits are love, patience, humility, meekness, peace, chastity, righteousness, the new man, and the whole kingdom of God. The true sanctifying faith renews the whole man, purifies the heart, unites with God, makes the heart free from earthly things, hungers and thirsts after righteousness, works love, gives peace, joy, patience, consolation in all suffering, conquers the world, makes children of God and heirs of all heavenly eternal benefits and coheirs of Christ. . . .

197

154. BOOK ONE, CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: THE PURITY OF TEACHING AND OF THE DIVINE WORD IS UPHELD NOT ONLY WITH DISPUTATIONS AND MANY BOOKS BUT ALSO WITH TRUE REPENTANCE AND HOLY LIFE . . . The pure teaching and truth of the holy Christian faith must necessarily answer the rabble and heretics and be defended according to the example of the holy prophets, who preached firmly against the false and idolatrous prophets in the Old Testament. It must also follow the example of the Son of God, who earnestly disputed against the Pharisees and scribes in Jerusalem. . . . We also see how St. Paul, against the false apostles, defended the article of justification by faith (Rom 3:21ff.; 4:1ff.), of good works (2 Corinthians 9:8ff.), of the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor 15:1ff.), and of Christian freedom (Gal 5:1ff.) and other doctrines. The holy bishops and fathers of the early church followed and continued his example, writing many well-grounded polemical books against the pagan idolatrous religion and other heretics who arose out of it. To this end the chief councils were set up by the praiseworthy Christian emperors against the archheretics Arius, Macedonius, Nestorius, and Eutyches. Also, in our own time, the whole world knows that the false practices of the papists and other sects have been demolished by the polemical writings of that dear man, Dr. Martin Luther. It is reasonable, then, that one should write, preach, and dispute against heretics and the rabble, for the upholding of pure doctrine and true religion. For the apostle Paul commanded that one should dispute with and overcome those who contradict sound doctrine (Titus 1:9). Still, these activities have deteriorated into such misuse in our time that with so many heavy disputations, polemical sermons, writings, and rebuttals, Christian life, true repentance, godliness, and Christian love are being entirely forgotten. It is as if Christianity consists only in disputations and the multiplication of polemical books, and not far more in seeing to it that the holy gospel and the teaching of Christ are applied in a holy life. 1. Look then at the examples of the holy prophets and apostles, even the Son of God himself. They not only strove firmly against false prophets, false apostles, and idolaters, but they also insisted on repentance and a Christian life. With powerful preaching, they proclaimed that religion and worship would be destroyed by impenitence and godless living, that the

198

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

church would be laid waste and the land and people punished with hunger, war, and pestilence, as experience has shown to happen. . . . What else did the Lord Christ preach in John 12:35? “Walk in the light while you have it so that the darkness may not overtake you.” What is it to walk in the light other than to follow Christ in life? What is it to be overtaken by darkness other than to lose the pure doctrine of the gospel? From this it is thus clear that no one without true repentance and a holy life can be enlightened with the light of truth. . . . 2. Thus, true knowledge and confession of Christ and pure teaching does not consist in words only but in action and in a holy life, as St. Paul says in Titus 1:16: “They say they know God but they deny him by their works; hence, they are an abomination, disobedient and unfit for all good works.” In this passage we hear that Christ and his word are denied as much by a godless life as by words. . . . Whoever confesses Christ’s teaching and not his life confesses only half of Christ, and whoever preaches Christ’s teaching and not his life preaches only half of Christ. Much is written and disputed concerning teaching but little concerning life. We may be well served with polemical books on doctrine, but pure repentance and Christian life are served little by them. For what is teaching without life? A tree without fruit. Truly, he who does not follow Christ in his life also does not follow him in his teaching, for the chief article of the teaching of Christ is: Love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith (1 Tim 1:5). As a result, many a man learns to speak and argue much concerning disputed articles of belief so that he might look good, but in his heart he is an evil man, full of pride, envy, and avarice, worse than any basilisk. St. Paul, not without cause, ties faith and love together (2 Tim 1:13), and this is to point out that teaching and life are to agree together. 3. We do not of course mean to say that through our power and piety blessedness is achieved, for we are preserved for blessedness through the power of God (1 Pet 1:5). It is clear that through a godless life the Holy Spirit is expelled with all his gifts among which the gifts of faith, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom are not the least. How can the truth of pure doctrine be upheld without a holy life? Clearly, the godless who do not follow Christ cannot be enlightened with the true light. On the other hand, whoever walks in the light, that is, who follows Christ in life, is enlightened by the true light (John 1:9), which is Christ, and is preserved from all error. Concerning this, the holy and spiritual teacher [Johann] Tauler said: “If a man gives himself and

resigns himself to God and denies his will and flesh, then the Holy Spirit is able to enlighten him and to teach him properly since God keeps the pure Sabbath and rest-day in his heart and frees it from all evil lusts, wishes, and works.” Now this should be understood to concern the state after conversion and of daily enlightenment and increase of new gifts after conversion. 4. It is not without cause that the Lord says in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He calls himself first “the way” because he has shown us the way. But how? Not only through his holy teaching but also through his innocent life. His life is nothing other for us than true repentance and conversion to God, which leads us to truth and life, in which the whole of Christianity consists, in which all the books and the commandments are contained. We have this Book of the Life of Christ to study throughout our life, namely, in true repentance, in living, active faith, in love, hope, meekness, patience, humility, prayer, and the fear of God, the right path to truth and to life that is in all respects Christ himself. He is the narrow way and the small gate (Matt 7:14), which few of you find, and the only Book of Life, which few of you study. Everything is contained in it that is necessary for a Christian; thus, we do not need any other book for our holiness. . . . 7. Finally, that faith is true that is active through love (Gal 5:6), through which man becomes a new creature, through which he is newborn, through which he is united with God, through which Christ dwells in us (Eph 3:17), lives in us, and works in us, by which the kingdom of God is established in us, through which the Holy Spirit purifies and enlightens our hearts (Eph 4:23). Many splendid passages bear witness to this: 1 Corinthians 6:17, “He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.” What does it mean “to become one spirit” with Christ other than to be of a like mind, heart, and spirit with Christ? This is indeed the new, holy, noble life of Christ in us. Again, 2 Corinthians 5:17: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature.” What does “to be in Christ” mean? Not only to believe in him but also to live in him....... 155. FOREWORD TO BOOK THREE Just as our natural life has its different steps—childhood, adulthood, old age—so it is also in our spiritual life. Our Christian life has its beginning in repentance, by which a man daily improves himself; next, like middle age, comes more enlightenment by meditation on divine things, prayer, and bearing the

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE AND HYMNODY

cross, through which all the gifts of God are increased. Last comes the completeness of old age that consists of full union through love. St. Paul names this the perfect maturity of Christ and mature manhood in Christ (Eph 4:13). I have taken this order into consideration, as much as possible, in the first three books, and reckon that all of Christianity is covered in them (along with my little prayer book), as much as is necessary, although all may not be perfect or more might be desired. I have added the fourth book to the rest in order to show how Scripture, Christ, human nature, and all of nature harmoniously agree and how all things lead toward and flow back to the one, eternal, living origin of all which is God. So that you may rightly understand what I say in this third book, you should know that it points out how you may seek and find the kingdom of God within you (Luke 17:21). For this to happen, you must give your whole heart and soul to God, not only your understanding, but also your will and heartfelt love. Many think today that their Christianity is sufficient or even more than satisfactory, if they grasp Christ with their understanding, through reading and disputation. This is the focus now of the common course of theological study, which consists of mere speculation and scholarly learning and does not consider that the other powers of the soul, namely, the will and affections must also be engaged. You must also consecrate both of them to God and Christ so that you have given your entire soul to him. There is a great difference between the understanding by which we know about Christ, and the will by which we love him. We know Christ as much as we can, but we love him as he really is. To know Christ with our understanding and not to love him are worth nothing. It is a thousand times better to love him than to be able to dispute and discourse about him (Eph 3:19). Therefore, we should learn so to seek Christ with our understanding that we may love him with our heartfelt will and pleasure. From true knowledge of Christ, true love of Christ also comes. If we do not do that, we may indeed find him but to our own great detriment. For this is what the Lord says in Matt 7:21: “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.” There are two ways of obtaining wisdom and knowledge. The first group does it through much reading and disputing; these are the learned. The other group seeks through prayer and love; we call them the saints. Between these two there is a great difference. Those who are only learned but not lovers of God are proud and puffed up, but the holy

199

are lowly and humble. If you take the first way, you will never find your internal treasure; if you take the other way, you will find it within yourself. The entire third book seeks this second way. . . . 156. BOOK THREE, CHAPTER TWO: THE MEANS BY WHICH A MAN ATTAINS HIS INWARD TREASURE, NAMELY, THROUGH TRUE, LIVING FAITH AND THROUGH TURNING WITHIN HIMSELF “You transgressors, go into your heart” (Isa 46:8). The truest way to turn within to this inward treasure and highest blessing is by a true and living faith. Although we have already explained its power and character in the first and second books, how it clings to Christ alone and is grounded only in him, we must treat the topic [of faith] more sublimely here, showing now how it relates to the matter at hand. It is the property of a true and living faith to cling loyally to God, to put its whole confidence in him, to trust him with a whole heart, to give itself entirely to him, to leave itself to his mercy, to unite itself with God, to be and remain one with God, to rest alone in God, to hold his inner Sabbath, to let God alone be its highest desire, wish, longing, delight, and joy, shutting out all creatures, wishing and desiring nothing but God alone as the highest, eternal, unending, perfect Good, which is all Good, without which no true Good can be in heaven and earth, in time and eternity, and all this in and through Christ Jesus, our Lord, who is “the beginner and completer of our faith” (Heb 12:2)....... Faith is the means of attaining our inward treasure, when God holds a still Sabbath and a man turns within himself. For just as the motion of the heavenly bodies is, therefore, the most noble and perfect, because it returns to the origin from which it began its course: so also the life journey of man may be accounted most noble and perfect, when it returns to its origin, which is God. But this cannot happen unless a man goes within himself with all his powers, withdraws his understanding, will, and memory from the world and all fleshly things, turns his soul with all its desires to God through the Holy Spirit, flees from the world and rests in the still Sabbath, which God can cause to take place within him. God waits for this Sabbath of the heart, and it is his highest joy when he can bring it to pass within us. . . . Man can do nothing better than be at rest and hold this Sabbath. All that God needs for his work is for one to give him a humble and resting heart; then he effects

200

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

his work in the soul into which no man can come. The eternal wisdom of God is so delicate in its work that it cannot allow a creature to see it. The more the soul rests in God, the more God rests in it. If you rest completely in God, then God will rest completely in you. But if you use your own will, understanding, memory, and desires according to your own pleasure, God cannot use them or do his work within you. If two are to become united, one must rest and be receptive while the other must act. God is an infinite, constant, active power, pure movement, never resting, acting in you as far as he can without your hindering him. This can be understood better by a comparison: . . . Just as the ear must be empty of all other tones if it is to hear a good piece of string music, so also the soul must be empty of the world to hear the sweetness of God. The more, therefore, you fight fleshly lusts, the more you will “partake of the divine nature.” (2 Pet 1:4). Nature cannot allow a vacuum to exist. It fills all things with itself. But before Nature can intrude, something must be empty and remain so. Through this principle and means, great arts have been contrived. Thus, if a man empties his heart of love of the world and self-will, of lusts and desires and keeps himself free from these, God will not allow him to remain empty. He must fill the vacuum with his divine grace, love, wisdom, and knowledge. . . . Our carnal affections, self-love, self-will, our own wisdom, honor, and desire, are our nearby friends. It pains the flesh to forsake these and to leave them. But to do that is the beginning of the search for the hidden treasure, “the costly pearl in the field” about which our Lord speaks in Matthew 13:46: “A man sold all his things so that he might find the pearl.”...... Just as the blessed Virgin Mary was a pure, undefiled virgin (and remained in eternity as she lovingly received Christ, Luke 1:27), so if our soul is as a pure, undefiled virgin, that is, unpolluted by love of the world, unspotted, free from all the pollutions of the world, it will spiritually conceive Christ. It has the highest treasure within it, “the king’s daughter inwardly clothed” (Ps 45:13), her treasure hidden within her. But if the soul is wedded to the world, how can it be wedded to Christ? . . . But if your office or calling hinders you from going into your heart, then you should look for a small place and choose a time in the day or night to turn inward to the ground of your heart in whatever way you can and say with St. Augustine: “O dear Lord, I want to make a pledge to you: I want truly to die to myself so that you might live in me. I myself want to be silent, so that you might speak within me.

I want to be still within myself so that you might act within me.” 157. BOOK SIX: DEFENSE OF BOOK THREE The foundation and ground of all that I wrote in the third book of True Christianity is the saying of the Lord: “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). St. Paul also says in Ephesians 1:13: “You who believed in him were sealed with the Holy Spirit.” This happens in our heart and soul. Concerning this, Tauler said that we must be guided to the inner ground of our heart to seek our inner treasure. There we will find it; there the power of faith will reveal itself, the inner spiritual beauty, decor internus. . . . Every chapter is a little portion of the seal of the Holy Spirit and if the book is opened with prayer and meditation, many benefits of this treasure and the kingdom of God will come to pass. This is not Enthusiasm, as some despicable men think; rather it is what St. Paul calls ἀναζωπυρεῖν [to light up again]. Out of a little spark a fire will flare up and out of a little seed a great tree will grow. It is also not Schwenckfeldianism, as you might think, for [I believe that] a Christian is already born anew, made a believer, and converted from God’s Word and the most worthy sacrament of baptism. Some just lack the practice and exercising of active faith. It is also not Osiandrism, for it is the grace-rich righteousness of Christ not essential righteousness that works pure fruits of grace in us. Note well that it is not papism, for [the inner treasure] comes through grace, not our own merit. Furthermore, it is not Weigelianism, for [it is attained through] the power of the living Word of God.1 JOHANN GERHARD: SACRED MEDITATIONS (1606) In School of Piety, a lengthy, practical manual published in 1622, Johann Gerhard stated that the devil fights against the Christian church in two ways: by encouraging false teaching and by planting the weeds of false security in the hearts of people.2 Gerhard attempted to promote purity of teaching through his systematic theology and purity of life through his devotional writings. In Sacred Meditations he emphasized the need for true repentance, consoled the penitent sinner by reflecting on the salvific Incarnation and Passion of Christ, and then described the new life that should flow from true faith. Although Gerhard, like Arndt, used mystical language to

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE AND HYMNODY

describe the union of the believer with God and encouraged imitation of the life of Christ, the way he presented these themes never provoked any controversy. Sacred Meditations was first published in 1606. From Johann Gerhard, Meditationes sacr sacrae ae ad ver veram am pietatem excitandam (Frankfurt: Hermsdorff, 1685), #13, 28, 30, trans. Eric Lund. 158. SPIRITUAL MARRIAGE OF CHRIST AND THE SOUL Jesus Is the Bridegroom of the Soul “I will betroth you unto me forever,” Christ says to the faithful soul [Hos 2:19]. Christ wanted to take part in the wedding celebration in Cana of Galilee [John 2:2], in order to show us that he had come to earth to celebrate a spiritual wedding. “Rejoice gladly in the Lord and take delight, O faithful soul, in your God for he has clothed you with the garments of salvation, he has covered you with the robe of righteousness, as a bride adorns herself with necklaces” [Isa 61:10]. Rejoice because of the honor of your bridegroom; rejoice because of the comeliness of your bridegroom; rejoice because of the bridegroom’s love. His honor is the greatest: “for he is true God, blessed forever” [Rom 9:5]. How great then is the dignity of this creature, this faithful soul, that the Creator himself wishes to take her as a spouse to himself! His beauty is the greatest: “For he is more handsome in form than the sons of man” [Ps 45:2]; since “they beheld his glory, the glory as of the onlybegotten of the Father” [John 1:14]; “his face shone like the sun” [Matt 17:2] “and his garments were white as snow” [Mark 9:3]; “grace is also poured onto his lips” [Ps 45:2]; “he is crowned with glory and honor” [Ps 8:6]. How great then is his mercy, that, though he is the perfection of beauty, he does not disdain to choose for his bride the soul of the sinner deformed by the stain of sins. How great is the majesty of the Bridegroom and the infirmity of the bride; the beauty of the Bridegroom and the deformity of the bride; and yet the Bridegroom’s love toward the bride is greater still than the bride’s toward her most esteemed and most beautiful Bridegroom. Consider the immense love of your bridegroom, O faithful soul; a love that drew him down from heaven to earth, which bound him to the pillar to be scourged, that affixed him to the cross, that enclosed him in the sepulcher, that dragged him down to hell. What made him do all this, if not love for his bride?

201

But our hearts must be harder than stone and lead that the bond of such love does not draw us upwards to God, from whom it first drew God down to us. “The bride was naked” [Ezek 16:22]; nor could she be brought into the royal palace of the heavenly kingdom; but he “clothed her with the garments of salvation and righteousness” [Isa 61:10]. When she lay wrapped in the dirty tunic of her sins and in the most foul rags of her iniquities, he gave her linen, bright and pure, so that she might cover herself; “the linen is the righteous deeds of the saints” [Rev 19:8], the garment is the righteousness procured by the death and passion of the bridegroom. . . . Acknowledge, O faithful soul, so many and such great signs of his infinite love; cherish, O faithful soul, the love of him, who out of love for you descended into the virgin’s womb. We ought to love him as much as and more than we love ourselves, since he who gave himself up for us is greater than we are. All of our life should be given back to him, in conformity to him who out of love for us totally conformed himself to us. Whoever does not return love to Christ who first loved him, is deservedly considered most ungrateful. O how much we ought to love him who out of love of us disregarded his majesty. O happy the soul that is united to Christ by the bonds of this spiritual marriage: She may securely and confidently apply all the benefits of Christ to herself, just as a wife, in other respects, radiates the reflected honor of her husband. It is by faith alone that we are made participants in this blessed spiritual union, as it is written, “I will betroth you unto me in faith” (Hos 2:19). Faith grafts us into Christ like branches into a spiritual vine (John 15:2), so that we draw all our life and strength from him; and as those who live together in marriage are no longer two but one flesh (Matt 19:6), so “anyone who clings to the Lord through faith is one spirit with him” (1 Cor 6:17), because “Christ dwells in our hearts through faith” (Eph 3:7). Faith, if it is true, is efficacious through love (Gal 5:6). Just as, in the Old Testament, the high priests were restricted to taking virgins as their wives (Lev 21:7), so this heavenly High Priest spiritually unites himself with the virgin soul which keeps herself whole and unspotted from the embraces of the devil, the world, and the flesh. Make us worthy, O Christ, to be admitted someday to the marriage of the Lamb (Rev 19:7). Amen.

202

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

159. GENERAL RULES FOR A GODLY LIFE “Piety Is the Perfection of Wisdom” Every day you are drawing nearer to death, to judgment, and to eternity. Consider, therefore, every day, how you will face death, withstand the severe test of the judgment, and live for all eternity. You should take great care respecting all your thoughts, words, and actions, because one day you must give a precise accounting of all your thoughts, words and actions [Matt 12:36]. At evening time, consider that death could be at hand this very night; and in the morning, keep in mind that death might approach you during the day. Do not put off conversion and the practice of good works until tomorrow, because it is not certain that there will be a tomorrow for you. It is certain, however, that death is impending. Nothing is more adverse to piety than procrastination [Sir 18:22]. If you continue to disparage the inward call of the Holy Spirit, you will never be truly converted. Do not put off conversion and good works until old age; instead, offer to God the flower of your youth. Old age is not certain to come to the young, but it is certain that destruction is prepared for impenitent young people. No time of life is more suitable for the service of God than [the days of your] youth when you have a vigorous body and a lively mind. You should never commit an evil deed to gain the favor of any man, for God, not that man, will one day judge your life. Therefore, never set up the favor of any man in preference to the grace of God. We are either advancing or retreating in the way of the Lord; therefore, examine your life every single day to see whether you are going forward or backwards in your zeal for piety. To stand still in the way of the Lord is really to regress; therefore, do not choose to stand still in the journey of piety, but strive earnestly always to walk for-ward in the way of the Lord. In your conversation, be pleasant to all, harsh to none, and familiar with few. Live dutifully toward God, upright with regards to yourself, [and] justly toward your neighbor [Titus 2:12]. Act graciously toward your friends, patiently with your enemies, benevolently toward everyone, and also generously, as far as you are able. While you live, die daily to yourself and to your vices, so that when you die you may live unto God. Show mercy always in the disposition of your mind, kindness in your countenance, humility in your manner, modesty in your dealings with others, and patience in tribulation. Always reflect on three

things about the past: the evil you have committed, the good you have omitted, and the time you have let slip away. Always consider three things about the present: the brevity of your present life, the difficulty of salvation, and the small number of those who will be saved. Always ponder these three future things: death, than which nothing is more horrible, the judgment, than which nothing is more terrible; and the punishments of hell, than which nothing can be more intolerable. Let your evening prayers emend the sins of the day which has gone by; let the last day of the week rectify the faults of the preceding days. Every evening, think about how many have fallen headlong into hell this day, and give thanks that God has granted you more time for repentance. There are three things above you of which you should never lose sight: the all-seeing eye of God, the all-hearing ear of God, and the books [of judgment] in which all things are recorded. God has totally shared himself with you; so give yourself totally to your neighbor. The best life on earth is that which is completely devoted to serving others. Show reverence and obedience toward your superiors, give counsel and aid to those who are your equals, watch over and discipline your inferiors. Let your body be subject to your mind, and your mind subject to God. Weep over your past misdeeds, give little weight to your present welfare, and with the total desire of your whole heart crave future blessings. Remember your sins, so that you may grieve over them; be mindful of death, so you may avoid sin; keep divine justice in mind, so you may fear to sin; yet remember the mercy of your God, so you do not give in to despair. . . . 160. IMITATION OF THE HOLY LIFE OF CHRIST Let Christ Be the Rule of Your Life The holy life of Christ is the most perfect model of virtue; indeed, every action of Christ is for our instruction. Many wish to attain to Christ, but draw back from following him; they want to enjoy Christ, but not to imitate him. “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart,” says our Savior [Matt 6:29]. Unless you are willing to be a disciple of Christ, you will never be a true Christian. May the Passion of Christ be your merit, but also the actions of Christ a model for your own life. . . . How do you truly love Christ, if you do not love his holy life? “If you love Me,” says the Savior, “keep My commandments” [John 14:15, 23]. Therefore, he

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE AND HYMNODY

who does not keep his commandments also does not love him. The holy life of Christ is a perfect rule of conduct for our lives. The unique rule of the life of Christ should be preferred to all the rules of St. Francis and St. Benedict. If you want to be an adopted son of God, observe whatever is associated with the onlybegotten Son of God. If you want be a co-heir with Christ, you should also be an imitator of Christ. He who chooses to live a vice-filled life, has given himself up to the service of the devil. Indeed, how can one who wants to be with the devil, also be in any way with Christ? To love vice is to love the devil; because all sins are of the devil [1 John 3:8]. And how can one be a true lover of Christ who is a lover of the devil? To love God is to love a holy life, because every holy life is from God; how then can one be a lover of God who is not a lover of a holy life? The proof of love is in the exhibition of works; it is characteristic of true love to obey the loved one, to think and will the same as the loved one. Therefore, if you truly love Christ, you will obey his commands, you will love a holy life with him, and, renewed in the spirit of your mind, you will meditate upon heavenly things [Eph 4:23]. Life eternal consists in knowing Christ [John 17:3]: for he who does not love Christ does not even know him; he who does not love humility, purity, gentleness, temperance, charity, also does not love Christ, for the life of Christ is nothing other than humility, purity, gentleness, temperance, and love. Christ says that he does not know those who do not do the will of his Father [Matt 7:21]; therefore those who do not do the will of the heavenly Father have no knowledge of Christ. What, in fact, is the will of the Father? “Our sanctification” [1 Thess 4:3], says the apostle. “Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Christ” [Rom 8:9]; but where the Holy Spirit is there his gifts and fruits will also appear. What are fruits of the Spirit? “Love, joy, peace, mildness, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, temperance” [Gal 5:22]. Just as the Holy Spirit rested upon Christ [Isa 11:2] so he rests also upon all those are in Christ by true faith, for the bride of Christ hastens toward the sweet smell of the ointments of Christ [Song 1:3]. “Whoever is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him [1 Cor 6:17]. Just as the union of the flesh of a man and wife joined makes one flesh out of two [Matt 19:6] so the spiritual union of Christ and the faithful soul makes them one spirit. Truly, where there is one spirit, there is the same will; and where there is the same will, there are also the same actions. Therefore, if one’s life does not conform to the life of Christ, it is proven that the

203

person neither clings to Christ nor has the Spirit of Christ. . . . JOACHIM LÜTKEMANN: FORETASTE OF DIVINE GOODNESS (1653) Lütkemann is another example of a devotional writer who was both a church administrator and an academic theologian. He served as pastor of one of the major churches of Rostock and became known for preaching eloquent sermons full of striking images and memorable analogies. Later as a professor of physics and metaphysics at the University of Rostock, he participated in many philosophical disputations. He showed respect for the task of discerning and defending correct doctrine, like other orthodox theologians, but he once said: “I would rather save one soul that make a hundred learned.” In 1661 he became court preacher and General Superintendent of his territorial church of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel. His most famous book, Foretaste of Divine Goodness, written in 1653, rivaled Arndt’s True Christianity in popularity for a period of time. It was the first book to be read in the Pietist conventicle meetings that Philip Jacob Spener organized in Frankfurt in 1670 [see chapter 8, #183]. Johann Lütkemann, Vorschmack Göttlicher Güte durch Gottes Gnade (Braunschweig: ChristophFriederich Zilligers Erben, 1704), trans. Eric Lund. 161. DAILY RENEWAL Part II: Meditation Fourteen: Daily Renewal The old people have said that the man who falls into sin both falls into the mud and under a heap of stones such that he is both soiled and wounded. Christ indicates almost the same in the image of one who falls among murderers, for he lies there, first wounded in his pain and afterwards unclean in his blood. (Luke 10:29-37) The uncleanness is quickly washed away, but for the wounds to be healed requires time. The sin and guilt is entirely forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ and that is our righteousness before God, but our evil nature will not let itself be healed so quickly but must be renewed daily. When the Samaritan cleanses and binds up the wounds of the half-dead man, he brings him into an inn where he lies under the hand of a doctor. Now just as it is a blessing that God washes the impurity

204

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

of our sins through the blood of his Son, it is also a blessing that he heals our wounds through his Holy Spirit and improves our evil nature through daily renewal. To understand this blessing we will consider in what it consists and how necessary it is. As for the nature of daily renewal, it is nothing other than a treatment by the Holy Spirit in which he changes us daily in the spirit of our mind such that we lay aside our old nature from us and put on the new nature which is created in the manner of God in true righteousness and holiness. . . . In a moment, God forgives sin, in a moment he takes me as a child, in a moment he unites himself with me and renews me in the spirit of my mind. In this way the new child is born, the man comes again to himself and is brought back to his rightful nature. However, before he comes to God, he cannot come to himself for his true nature lies in that he is in God and God is in him. . . . Now the Holy Spirit has to work through daily renewal, as it is written in 2 Corinthians 4(:16). “Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.” Now the Holy Spirit grasps, not the outer form, but the inner ground of our soul, and wishes to make us holy from the ground outward. For, just as you cannot consider someone a friend who, to be sure, acts friendly outwardly, in all outward gestures towards you but hates and envies you in the heart, so God can have no heart for you when you, to be sure, have the outward manner of a Christian but are still, inwardly in your heart, full of hate, envy, cruelty, unchastity, avarice, unrighteousness, lies, pride, empty honor, impatience and other impurities. Therefore, the Holy Spirit takes hold of us inwardly so that we might become richer daily in all knowledge and wisdom and gain enlightened eyes, the more and more to know both ourselves and our God, our great misery and God’s great love, mercy and friendliness, that we more and more reclaim the way of God and become ever more perfect. For this reason, daily renewal, first off, entails a constant strife because spirit and flesh are opposed to each other. The flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. Therefore we must always be in strife. Secondly, there belongs to daily renewal a steady effort and intention to do good, as we are admonished in Philippians 4(:8): “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is genuine, if there is anything excellent, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Christians should be zealous for good so that if they find anything good and Christ-like, they will take it as an

example to follow. Thus one Christian stimulates and builds up the other. Finally, thirdly, daily renewal also entails a daily reconciliation, for if we are zealous, we must still recognize and also feel that we are poor miserable sinners. Therefore, the Holy Spirit pleads for us with inexpressible sighs and cries in our heart, “Abba, beloved Father.” In brief, daily renewal consists of this: a man who is reborn through the Holy Spirit in consideration of the great grace that is brought to us again in Christ yields himself to God, seizes the opportunity to serve him again, shows himself to be thankful through child-like obedience, and also devotes himself to proving this obedience in deeds. Therewith, he protects himself from sin, performs works that are pleasing to God, and shows himself to be patient in crosses. And, although, to be sure, he still manifests great weakness, God loves a weak beginning and will not forsake his work. Just as he has begun this good in us, so will he also complete it, as long as we ourselves do not hinder him. THEOPHILUS GROSSGEBAUER: CR CRY Y OF A WATCHMEN FROM DEVASTATED ZION (1661) This Rostock pastor was a strong advocate for church discipline and for increased involvement of the laity in the workings of the church. In the long book for which he is best known, he pointed out moral and spiritual weaknesses in all kinds of social groups and called for a revitalization of religious zeal. Theophilus Grossgebauer, Wächterstimme aus dem verwüsteten Zion (Rostock: Johann Keylen, 1667), trans Eric Lund. 162. PREFACE: THE LOSS OF ZEAL Preface . . . I, for my part, have stood at my watchpost and diligently looked around me (Hab 2:1) to see why God afflicts his people. In the end, I can find no other cause at its source than zelum extinctum¸ the dying out of zeal for the retention of souls called to the Kingdom of God. All our misfortunes are buried in this pit and brimstone and pestilence steam forth from it. Unless our good God awakens the people who lack zeal, and they will renounce themselves and all their honor and pleasure, as in former times, for the sake of the house of the Lord, the chasm which has begun will grow wider and a great fall will take

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE AND HYMNODY

place with immense harm to many poor souls who, crying “Woe to us,” will die and decay away in their sins. The people have so lost God’s Word, that they have first lost the zeal to uphold the church, and after that the extinction of this zeal blinds the discretion of the wise and despises the advice of the simple. Love of the world, contempt for the kingdom of heaven, fear of men, hope for higher promotions and the wish for rest and peace are the five cold streams poured on the fire of divine zeal by the clergy and the laity until the last sparks have gone out. Hence everything in the Church goes on pro forma and according to appearance, habit is more important than the truth, and the respect of men more important than the commandment of God. . . . Will not the Lord our God let his own zeal burn over our sins because our zeal for the honor of his name has so entirely lapsed? That is why he has set out to enliven us by new punishments, and has put our irresponsible impertinence under his gaze, to determine whether we can be refined as vessels of honor, purified from the dross of sin for the sake of his glory. (Isa 1:25) For his blows are salutary, and the wounds he inflicts bring health. If he destroys our outward prosperity it is because he will thereby build the inner form of the new creature under us, just as a rich lord demolishes a part of his house in order to set something more beautiful in its place. . . . The church now suffers distress as at the time of Deborah. Judges 5 . . . For it is not enough for the belief of the church to be pure if the life of the church is ungodly. Aren’t the articles of faith the secrets to godliness? I Timothy 3:16. Are they not brought forth in order to make a new creature? Galatians 6:15. Shouldn’t they destroy the work of the devil within us? I John 3:8. Shouldn’t they make a man of God equipped for every good work? . . . HEINRICH MÜLLER: SPIRITU SPIRITUAL AL HOURS OF REFRESHMENT (1664) Many of the devotional writers developed their books out of sermons they had preached. Thus, their writings retain some of the rhetorical features of lively preaching. This is particularly evident in several of Heinrich Müller’s devotional books. His exhortations to holy living were often presented as if he were recording a conversation between himself and another person. He frequently used pithy phrases which were easily remembered because of his use of rhyme or wordplay. Some of his books were

205

designed to console people beset by suffering. Others were highly affective meditations on the love of God. Occasionally, however, Müller could be bluntly critical and polemical. This is most evident in his wellknown critique of superficial, sacramental religiosity, which offended some theologians to whom it sounded like a radical attack on the traditional focus of Lutheran worship. Like Arndt, Müller was forced to write a defense of himself to assuage the suspicions of those who thought his efforts to reform Lutheranism were really reshaping it in unacceptable ways. Spiritual Hours of Refreshment was first published in 1664. From Heinrich Müller, Geistliche Erquickstünden (Berlin: Rüdiger, 1735), #31, 152, 262, trans. Eric Lund. 163. SPIRITUAL DRUNKENNESS “The wine speaks through me.” That is what the drunk says. That is not good. You laugh, but I am shocked. The wine speaks through you; the devil speaks through the wine; the devil speaks through you. If the devil controls your tongue, he also possesses your heart. Nature has connected the heart and tongue closely together through a little vein. The heart is the well within which the Evil One brews his poison; the tongue is the gutter through which it pours out. “How can the devil come into the wine?” you ask. My dear one, how did he come into the snake? He knows how to coil himself nimbly into the creature and slink through the same into the heart. Truly I have nothing to do with you. If he could deceive Eve through the snake, why not you or me? But let that be. You boast that the wine speaks through you, I myself can also boast. The wine speaks through me perhaps more often than through you. Do you not notice, when I preach, how the fullness of the Spirit often flows out to my mouth? Many times my heart stands in a thousand springs and each spring goes up to heaven. I become so courageous that I want to force my way with my Jesus through spear and sword, through fire and flame, through trouble and death. I don’t know myself how I have this courage and, as it were, am captivated by the Spirit. The carnal man does not understand, but whoever has tasted the powers of heaven perceives that I am [spiritually] intoxicated. Hear then [what I say]. When my Jesus has bitterly afflicted me and wants to make it up to me, he leads me into his wine

206

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

cellar [Song 2:4] and lets me drink with delight as from a river [Ps 36:8]. Then I become full of the Spirit and when the heart is full, the mouth overflows. I sing and say of my Jesus, how sweet he is. I shout for joy and invite the souls which are bound in the Spirit with me: “O, come then, taste and see how friendly the Lord is. Blessed is he who trusts in him” [Ps 34:8]. Then, I am not speaking; the fullness of the Spirit, the heavenly joy-wine speaks through me. It is as Paul says: “Be filled with the Spirit and speak among each other with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, sing and make melody to the Lord in your heart” [Eph 5:19]. See then, the wine does not speak only through you but also through me. O Jesus, let me taste your sweetness in my heart and thirst instead after you.

Fig. 7.2. Heinrich Müller (1631–75).

164. THE IDOLATRY OF THE MOUTH CHRISTIANS “Divine Worship, Idol Worship” O, whose heart does not break from sorrow and dismay. God is made to adorn idols. How much worship of idols [Götzendienst] the Mouth Christians

conduct under the appearance of and in the name of worship of God [Gottesdienst]. With tears, I wrote about this in my Apostolic Chain of Inferences and now, weeping, I write about it once more. Christianity today (I speak here of the hypocritical Christians as the surrounding text sufficiently shows) has four dumb church idols which it follows: the baptismal font, the pulpit, the confessional seat, and the altar. They console themselves with their outer Christianity, that they are baptized, hear God’s Word, go to confession and receive the Lord’s Supper, but they scorn the inner power of Christianity. They scorn the power of baptism since they do not live in accordance with the new nature, but keep to their old nature, even though baptism is a bath of rebirth and renewal. They scorn the power of the Word of God, since they do not live as the Word intends, but refute the Word with their godless living and make a lie of it. They scorn the power of absolution, since afterwards they remain unchanged in their character, living today just as they did yester-day, even though the heart, if it is quickened with the consolation of divine absolution, will no longer love evil and hate the good. They deny the power of Holy Communion since they do not live in Christ with whom they are united, but live according to the lusts of their flesh and pour forth all kinds of sins. “What accord has Christ with Belial?” (2 Cor 6:15). All this is idolatry. For God is a Spirit and desires that we should worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). How is this? Isn’t it like the Anabaptists to call baptism, the Word, confession and the Lord’s Supper dumb idols? Friend, is there, then, no difference according to you between baptism and the baptismal font, preaching and the pulpit, confession and the confessional bench, the Lord’s Supper and the altar? The Anabaptists abolish the right use of the baptismal font, the pulpit, the confessional seat, and the altar; I endeavor to abolish the invalid reliance of the Mouth Christians who depend on and base themselves on these things. Is there no difference between use and abuse? I say then: It is idolatry if the heart attaches itself to something and trusts in something which is not actually God. Whatever the heart of a Mouth Christian relies on or trusts, other than God, that is its idol. For example, he relies on the altar and pulpit, trusting in them despite the fact that he does not believe in Christ and exercise his faith through love. He expects to become holy because he was carried to the baptismal font in his childhood, although now he does not demonstrate the power of baptism in his life, or because he sees and hears the preacher in the pulpit, although he does not receive the Word in faith

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE AND HYMNODY

nor bring it into his life, or because he comes quarterly to the confessional seat even though his heart neither means nor feels what his mouth confesses, or because he goes with other communicants to the altar, although there is neither devotion nor faith in his use of the Lord’s Supper. Isn’t that called idolatry when I base my salvation not on true faith in Christ but on a delusive faith in wood, lime, or stone? I say it one more time: Whoever does not serve God as one should according to his Word, in Spirit and in Truth, but merely with outward pretenses and actions, is idolatrous. Semblance without the Word of God is as much an idol as a wooden or silver image. 165. FAITH AND LOVE “Up and Out” The ascent of the angel on the ladder of heaven, which Jacob saw in his dream [Gen 28:10-12], is a lovely image of Christ. He is true God and Man, became the mediator between God and Man, united in himself God and Man, Heaven and Earth, going down in his Incarnation and going up in his Ascension. It is also a marvelous image of the Christian. For what is our Christianity other than a steady going up and going out? Up to God, out to our neighbor; to God through faith, to the neighbor through love. Upwards, heart! Grasp the bountiful Jesus in the arms of faith and say: “You are mine and that which is yours, is all mine.” O how rich you are in your Jesus; you can say Jesum meum et omnia. Let the world step up and display its riches; what does its treasure amount to? A little bit of poor earth. What you can show in comparison to that is more costly than heaven and earth. With a treasure in your sight, will you settle for a mite? Jesus above all and all in all. What the world gives is a bunch of scraps [Stückwerck]; what Jesus gives is whole and complete [Vollwerck]. The former brings thirst, the latter quenches it; the one agitates, the other gratifies. Jesum meum et omnia. Jesus is mine and in Jesus all is mine. He is my light in the darkness, so I cannot go astray, my righteousness against sins, my blessing against the curse, my life against death, my salvation against damnation, my protection against oppression, my joy in suffering, my fullness in need, my one and only, outside of him I desire nothing, my all, for in him I find all. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want [Ps 23:1].

207

In him alone is my delight, Far more than golden treasure, If I have him, then all is right My joy is without measure.

Outwards, heart! And grasp the poor Jesus in love’s arms. O! how he goes there hungry, thirsty, sad, naked, and wretched before your eyes. Will you let him hunger, he who gives you daily bread and feeds your soul with the hidden manna [John 6:32, Rev 2:17]? To thirst, who gives you to drink with delight as from a river [Ps 36:8]? To go sad and weeping, who consoled you so bountifully in your need and wiped all tears from your eyes [Rev 21:4]? To go naked, who clothed you with the robe of righteousness and adorned you with the garments of salvation [Isa 61:10]? To wallow in wretchedness who stepped into your distress so that you might enter into his joy [Matt 25:21]? No! my heart. Embrace him and say: I am yours and what is mine is all yours. Are you hungry, my Jesus? I will feed you. Are you thirsty? I will give you drink. Are you naked? I will clothe you. Do you weep? Here is a cloth of consolation with which I will wipe away your tears. He is entirely content with few and little. A morsel of bread is enough to him for his nourishment; a drop of cold water for his refreshment; an old rag to cover him; have you nothing else, [at least] give him a comforting word. You are completely accountable for all you have, and he will reward you from grace for all which you do to one of the least of his believers [Matt 25:40]. I want to say to you in a few words what I think. In Christ, that faith is only worth something which is active in love [Galatians 5]. Faith makes the Christian; love reveals the Christian. The former leads to God, the latter to the neighbor. The one takes, the other gives. The one receives what God has given, the other lets the neighbor receive. The richer the inflow, the richer the outflow. Do you want to be a Christian? Then practice outwardly what you receive according to the inner man. I want to be a tree which is rooted in heaven but bears fruit on earth. God will give moisture and growth, so my neighbor may break off and eat [the fruit].

208

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

CHRISTIAN SCRIVER: GOTTHOLD’S OCCASIONAL DEVOTIONS (1663–1669) Christian Scriver is best known as the author of the widely-read Treasure of the Soul, which he first published in 1675 but continued to expand until 1692. This lengthy study of the process by which the soul escapes from sin and recovers its original innocence frequently used imagery or stories to illustrate its spiritual message. Scriver was clearly influenced by the genre of emblem literature, which first appeared in Italy during the sixteenth century and quickly spread throughout Europe. Emblem books presented a series of pictorial images that were then given an allegorical interpretation by an accompanying text. In Gotthold’s Occasional Devotions, first published in 1663, Scriver devoted a whole book to short descriptions of natural objects or events from daily life, which he then used as symbols of the problems people faced in their pursuit of spiritual growth. The direct inspiration for this book appears to have been a similar book of meditations written by Joseph Hall, an English bishop. From Christian Scriver, Gottholds zuf zufällig älliger er Andachten (Leipzig: Johann & Friedrich Lüderwald, 1686), #1:8, 2:11, 2:27, 2:89, 3:16, 3:70, trans. Eric Lund. 166. THE SAILORS One day, while walking upon the banks of a river, Gotthold beheld a party of sailors impelling their vessels against the stream. Sometimes they fastened their ropes to a tree or post, and towed it forward. Sometimes, going ashore, they harnessed themselves to the ropes, and dragged it after them. Here, said he, I have a representation of my own voyage to heaven. The world is the powerful current which pulls many along with it into the sea of perdition. I, with my little ship, must struggle against this current because I have been commanded not to be conformed to the world, nor to love either it or its lusts. (Rom 12:2; 1 John 2:15.) This requires effort. My sighs and yearnings are my ropes, my resolution my pole, and my strength is in God and his Spirit. I strive and strain forward toward what lies before me (Phil 3:13). Here there must be no pause or relaxation. For just as the ship will disappear downstream and take the sailors along with it if they should cease to struggle against the current, so it happens in our Christian life. If we cease to fight with ourselves and the world, or become lax in our prayer or other holy

practices, we will soon become aware of our decline and the harm this causes. My God! help me always to strive resolutely, and press forward through death and life.

Fig. 7.3. Copper engraving portrait of Christian Scriver (1629–93) by unknown artist.

167. THE ROWERS Gotthold saw several sailors step into a boat to cross a river. Two took the oars, and, as usual, sat with their backs facing the shore toward which they intended to sail. A third remained standing at the helm and kept his eye unaverted on the place where they wished to land, and so they swiftly reached the shore. See here, Gotthold said, to those around him, we have a good reminder of our labor and vocation. Life is a swift and mighty river flowing through all of time into the ocean of eternity and never returning. On this river, each of us floats in the little ship of our vocation, which we must urge forward with the oars of our diligent labor. Now we should, like these sailors, turn our backs away from the future and, putting our trust in God who stands at the helm and skillfully steers the vessel toward what is profitable and blessed for us, we should diligently labor, unconcerned about anything else. We would laugh if we saw these men turn round and assert that they cannot row blindly but must see the place where they are going. Similarly, is it not foolishness for us, with our anxieties and thoughts, to insist on apprehending all things hap-

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE AND HYMNODY

pening now and in the future? Let us row, and work, and pray and leave it to God to steer, and bless, and govern. My God, stay with me in my little ship, and steer it according to your good pleasure. I will turn my face toward you, and in accordance with the ability you give me, I will diligently and faithfully labor, leaving it to you to provide all else. 168. THE BUTTERFLY CATCHERS Gotthold saw some boys in a garden, chasing butterflies, and was amused to observe what pains these simple fowlers took to catch the colorful insects. He said to a good friend: Do you know whom these children resemble? They are like those learned and clever scholars who demonstrate not so much their skill and understanding as their curiosity and pride in their excitement over many useless questions. What else are high-flying and useless thoughts and questions but insects such as these; and is the foolishness of these children any greater than that of the learned who imagine that they have hunted down something special when they come up with all sorts of strange, wonderful, and intricate questions and thoughts concerning spiritual and worldly things? Tell me, is any more benefit to be derived from one catch than from the other? And yet, unfortunately, it has almost come about in the world that whoever will not or cannot hunt and catch such flies and motley flying things is looked upon as an inept person. I, for my part, hold that there is a difference in worldly things between a learned and an intelligent person; as also in spiritual things there is a difference between a learned and a godly or pious person. When both are together, it is like the diamond glittering and sparkling in a setting of gold, or like golden apples in dishes of silver. If, however, I could have only one, I would prefer piety, and would rather grasp hold of heaven with the unlearned, than be damned while possessing great skill and aptitude. What is science without conscience? What help is it to learn all things and forget the most important? I have seen people who have many books only for the purpose that, if asked, they can say that they have them. I have known artisans who have many good tools, inherited from their elders or bought from others, but who still do not know how to use them. Do you think these serve any purpose? It is the same with learned people who do not use all of their skills as a tool for honor of God or for the improvement of themselves or their neighbors. I might have imagined that many more clever, learned people would get to heaven if the

209

most learned of all the learned had not said that, on that day, he will say to many who prophesied in his name: I never knew you, go away from me you evildoers (Matt 7:22, 23). There are two kinds of people who do futile work and suffer in their hearts as a result: those who gather much money and possessions and do not make use of them, and those who learn and know many things but do not regulate their lives by them. My God, I know that our knowledge is imperfect in this life and that the most noble and highest wisdom consists in the recognition of you and the Lord Jesus. Therefore, I will direct all my diligence toward believing in the crucified Lord Jesus, loving him, and following him in patience; and if I only comprehend a little, I will still not be deceived with the learned of this world. 169. THE VINE When Gotthold wanted to visit a man who was troubled and sorrowful, the family said that he was in the garden. Gotthold went to him and found him at work removing leaves from a vine. After a friendly greeting, he asked the man what he was doing. I find, said the man, that, on account of the abundant rain, this vine is overgrown with wood and leaves, which prevents the sun from getting to the grapes and ripening them. Therefore, I am pruning some of them so that the vine can produce mature, ripe fruit. Gotthold replied: Do you sense that the vine resists and opposes you when you do this work? If not, then why should you be displeased with a loving God who does to you what you do to the vine? You prune off the unnecessary leaves in order that the vine might bear better fruit; and God takes away your temporal blessings and earthly comforts, in order that faith along with its noble fruits, love, humility, patience, hope, and prayer might become greater, and finer, and sweeter in you. Whatever one might say, when a person has an overabundance of things, and knows nothing of the cross, the Sun of Righteousness, with its rays of grace, can scarcely reach the heart; and the Christian life is not as it should be. It bears only the tart and sour fruits of hypocrisy, pride, ill will, and harshness. Therefore, let God do with you as he wishes; he will not harm you. Now you strip off some leaves and, earlier, in spring, you hoed, made layers of the vines, pruned, and tied up the branches. My dear friend, you are also a branch on the spiritual vine which is the Lord Jesus. God is the vinedresser who knows well that without his grace and care he can expect nothing good from

210

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

you. For this reason, he allows contempt to lay you in the earth and trials to prune you. He binds you up through affliction and strips you through poverty, all to the end that his grace may be made sweeter to you and your heart sweeter to him. O my God! do not withdraw me from your care, or else I will grow wild and corrupt. Prune, bind, and strip me as you will; through it all, my comfort shall be that you cannot mean it for evil.

which is not grounded in holiness is not worth having and ends up as eternal enmity. My Lord Jesus! tune, regulate, and shape my life, to make it consonant with your life. It is true that my weak strings cannot be stretched so tight that I might attain your perfection. I console myself, however, with the thought that as in this lute there are higher and lower pitches, so you have both strong and weak Christians and you are satisfied with both, provided only that they are not false.

170. TUNING A LUTE Gotthold found one of his good friends busy with the tuning of his lute. Since this involved much effort, he said: The Christian may very appropriately be compared to such an instrument. The lute is made of plain and thin wood, and has not itself, but the hand of the artisan, to thank for fashioning it into such a beautiful instrument. Similarly, a Christian has no superiority over other people with regard to the weakness and corruptions of human nature, unless the hand of a merciful God has made of him an instrument of his grace. Now, just as a lute must be strung and skillfully tuned and touched, so also must the finger of God fill the heart of the Christian with good thoughts, and then tune and adjust them to the honor of his name and for the common good. Although a lute is a beautiful instrument, it very often gets out of tune, and therefore needs continual care. So it goes with our Christian life, which is often put out of tune by the devil, the wicked world, and our own will. It would sound badly unless the gracious hand of the Most High daily regulated and corrected it. Having noted this, let us also remember our own duties. If we apply such effort to tune a lute so that its sound may not be disagreeable to human ears, why do we not also take the trouble to tune and regulate our thoughts, words, and works so that they may not offend the most holy and keen eyes and ears of God? We hear at once and declare our displeasure if but a single string is out of tune; and yet we often do not perceive or care if there is discord between our lives or conduct and the holy commandments of God. People instantly tell us if a string is out of tune or misplayed. My friend, let us also remind each other when we perceive a flaw or discord in our Christianity. Self-love and false security can often keep us from noticing our own faults, so it is useful if another person feels free to give a good and suitable reminder to a pious and faithful heart. We should consider it good if someone shows us a better way. Friendship

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY HYMNWRITERS 171. NICOLAI: HOW BRIGHTLY BEAMS Philip Nicolai (1556–1608) served as a Lutheran pastor in Westphalia, at several places in the principality of Waldeck, and finally in Hamburg. He was keenly interested in dogmatic theology and actively participated in a variety of doctrinal controversies with Catholics and Calvinists during his lifetime, but in 1599 he also published an influential devotional work called Mirror of Joy of Eternal Life, written to console Christians during a period when plague was working its destructive way through his region. Nicolai introduced the use of the distinction between “true” and “false” Christians, which became standard in much seventeenth-century devotional literature. He also talked frequently about spiritual “rebirth” and union with Christ. Two of the hymn texts that first appeared in his devotional book rank among the most enduringly important pieces to come out of seventeenth-century Lutheranism. “Wake, awake, for night is flying” (Wachet auf) is drawn primarily from the imagery of Matthew 25:1-13 and comforts believers with the vision of the return of Christ. The other hymn, recorded below, is based on Psalm 45 and gives expression to the ardent love for Christ, which Nicolai made a major theme of his devotional book. This hymn (the original German version has seven verses) was commonly used at wed-dings and to comfort people on their deathbed. Both hymns employ the bride– bridegroom imagery that so many authors used to describe union with Christ. From Henry Harbaugh, Christ in Song Song,, vol. 2, ed. Philip Schaff (New York: Randolph, 1895).

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE AND HYMNODY

211

In thy blest body let me be, E’en as the branch is in the tree; Thy life my life supplying. Sighing, crying, For the savor of thy favor; Resting never, Till I rest in thee for ever. 172. HEERMANN: O HOLY JESUS

Fig. 7.4. A seventeenth-century commemorative engraving of Philip Nicolai made after his death in 1608.

Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern 1. How lovely shines the Morning Star! The nations see and hail afar The light in Judah shining. Thou David’s Son of Jacob’s race, My Bridegroom, and my King of grace, For Thee my heart is pining! Lowly, holy, Great and glorious, Thou victorious Prince of graces, Filling all the heavenly places! 2. O highest joy by mortals won! Of Mary and of God, the Son! Thou high-born king of ages, Thou art my heart’s best, sweetest flower, And thy blest gospel’s saving power My raptured soul engages. Thou mine, I thine; Sing Hosanna! Heavenly manna Tasting, eating, Whilst thy love in songs repeating. 3. Now richly to my waiting heart, O thou, my God, deign to impart The grace of love undying.

Another important hymn writer of the period of the Thirty Years War was Johann Heermann (1585–1647), a pastor in Silesia who experienced lifelong suffering, from childhood poverty, physical illness, and the ravages of war. The town of Köben where he served for many years was sacked four times between 1629 and 1634 by Catholic troops. Among the many hymns that have earned Heermann the reputation of being second only to Paul Gerhardt among the many great hymnwriters of the seventeenth century was the following text, which first appeared in 1630 (the original German version has fifteen verses). Like several others of his hymns, it was inspired by a meditation, now attributed to St. Anselm of Canterbury, which appeared in a wellknown medieval devotional handbook called the Manual of St. Augustine. The vivid description of the sufferings of Christ reflects the spirit of an earlier Lutheran devotional writer in Silesia named Valerius Herberger, with whom Heermann had lived while a schoolboy. His hymns are often seen as marking the transition from the objective focus of earlier Reformation era lyrics to the more subjective focus of later seventeenth-century texts. From Catherine Winkworth, Chor Choral al Bo Book ok for England, ed. William Bennett (London: Longman Green, 1865), #52. Herzliebster Jesu 1. Alas, dear Lord, what law then hast thou broken, That such sharp sentence should on thee be spoken? Of what great crime hast thou to make confession, What dark transgression? 2. They crown his head with thorns, they smite, they scourge him, With cruel mockings to the cross they urge him, They give him gall to drink, they still decry him, They crucify him. 3. Whence come these sorrows, whence this mortal anguish?

212

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

It is my sins for which my Lord must languish; Yes, all the wrath, the woe he doth inherit, ‘Tis I do merit! . . . 8. O mighty King! no time can dim thy glory! How shall I spread abroad thy wondrous story? How shall I find some worthy gift to proffer? What dare we offer? . . . 12. I’ll think upon thy mercy hour by hour, I’ll love thee so that earth must lose her power; To do thy will shall be my sole endeavour Henceforth for ever. 173. RINKART: NOW THANK WE ALL OUR GOD Despite the war-related suffering that disrupted so many of their lives, Lutheran hymnwriters from the first half of the seventeenth century still produced some of the most enduringly popular hymns of thanksgiving to God. Perhaps best known of these is the following text by Martin Rinkart (1586–1649), a pastor in Saxony whose town was also sacked more than once (but in this case by Swedish troops). Written sometime around 1636, as a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 50:29-32, its frequent use for centuries at public festivals of thanks-giving has earned it the label of “Te Deum of Germany.” From Catherine Winkworth, Lyr yraa Germanica, series 2 (New York: Randolph, 1863), 194. Nun Danket Alle Gott 1. Now thank we all our God With heart and hands and voices Who wondrous things hath done In whom his world rejoices; Who, from our mother’s arms, Hath blessed us on our way With countless gifts of love, And still is ours today. 2. O may this bounteous God Through all our life be near us, With ever joyful hearts And blessed peace to cheer us; And guide us when perplexed, And free us from all ills In this world and the next. 3. All praise and thanks to God The Father now be given, The Son, and him who reigns With them in highest heaven;

The one eternal God, Whom earth and heaven adore; For thus it was, is now, And shall be evermore. 174. RIST: O LIVING BREAD FROM HEAVEN Some hymnwriters of the seventeenth century were also noted for a wider range of literary achievements. Johann Rist (1607–67), a pastor who spent most of his career in the vicinity of Hamburg, also wrote plays and secular poems in addition to his 680 hymns. In 1644 he was designated poet laureate of Germany by the Emperor Ferdinand II. The following hymn is one of the best known from this period composed for use in the celebration of the sacrament of Holy Communion; the original German version has nine verses. From Catherine Winkworth, Lyr yraa Germanica, series 2 (New York: Randolph, 1863), 144. Wie wohl hast du gelabet 1. O living Bread from heaven, How well you feed your guest! The gifts that you have given Have filled my heart with rest. Oh, wondrous food of blessing, Oh, cup that heals our woes! My heart, this gift possessing, With praises overflows! 2. My Lord, you here have led me Within your holiest place, And here yourself have fed me With treasures of your grace; For you have freely given What earth could never buy, The bread of life from heaven, That now I shall not die. 3. Lord, grant me then, thus strengthened With heav’nly food, while here My course on earth is lengthened, To serve with holy fear. And when you call my spirit To leave this world below, I enter, through your merit, Where joys unmingled flow.

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE AND HYMNODY

175. GERHARDT: TWO HYMNS The most famous and influential of all the seventeenth-century Lutheran hymnwriters was Paul Gerhardt (1607–76). A Saxon educated at Wittenberg, he spent most of his life as a pastor in the region of Berlin until a conflict with the Calvinist Elector of Brandenburg forced his resignation in 1666. Gerhardt wrote 133 hymns, many of which have continued in use down to the present day. The two selections that follow illustrate how some of his hymns are moving declarations of orthodox doctrine, while others are of a more subjective and emotional nature. The first, “A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth,” in the original German version has ten verses. The second hymn, “Jesus, Thy Boundless Love to Me” (sixteen verses in the original German version), is based on a prayer from The Little Garden of Paradise, Johann Arndt’s widely used prayer book. One of the best known of his other hymns is “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” (O Haupt voll Blut), a free translation of a medieval hymn by St. Bernard of Clairvaux. “A Lamb . . .” is from Elizabeth Charles, Voices of Christian Lif Lifee in Song (London: Nelson, 1872). “Jesus . . .” is from John Wesley, ed., Hymns and Sacr Sacred ed P Poems oems (Bristol: Farley, 1744).

213

Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld 1. A Lamb goes uncomplaining forth, The guilt of all men bearing; Laden with all the sin of earth, None else the burden sharing! Goes patient on, grows weak and faint, To slaughter led without complaint, That spotless life to offer; Bears shame, and stripes, and wounds, and death, Anguish and mockery, and saith, “Willing all this I suffer.” 2. That Lamb is Lord of death and life, God over all forever; The Father’s Son, whom to that strife Love doth for us deliver! O mighty Love! what hast Thou done! The Father offers up his Son— O Love, O Love! how strong art Thou! In shroud and grave thou lays him low Whose word the mountains rendeth! O Jesu Christ! mein schönstes Licht 1. Jesus, Thy boundless love to me No thought can reach, no tongue declare; O knit my thankful heart to Thee And reign without a rival there. Thine wholly, Thine alone, I am, Be Thou alone my constant flame. 2. O grant that nothing in my soul May dwell, but Thy pure love alone; O may Thy love possess me whole, My joy, my treasure, and my crown: Strange fires far from my soul remove; My every act, word, thought, be love. 176. LUDAEMILLA ELISABETH: JESUS, ONLY JESUS

Fig. 7.5. Paul Gerhardt (1607–76)

Some of the most influential Lutheran women of the seventeenth century were daughters of territorial rulers. Although there was no place for them to contribute as dogmatic theologians, they offered their talents to the church as writers of hymns and devotional literature. One example of such a noble woman writer was Ludaemilla Elisabeth (1640–72), daughter of Count Ludwig of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. Her hymns were initially composed for her own private edification, but 206 of them were

214

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

eventually published as a book in 1687. This hymn has five verses in the original German version. From Ev Evang angelical elical Luther Lutheran an Hymnal of the Ev Evang angelelical Luther Lutheran an Joint Synod of Ohio Ohio, trans. A. Crull (Columbus: Lutheran Book Concern, 1888), 282. Jesus, Jesus, nichts als Jesus 1. Jesus, Jesus, only Jesus, Can my heartfelt longing still; See, I pledge myself to Jesus,

What he wills, alone to will. For my heart, which he hath filled, Ever cries: Lord, as thou wilt. 2. One there is for whom I’m living, Whom I love most tenderly; Jesus, unto whom I’m giving, What in love he gave to me. Jesus’ blood hides all my guilt; Lead me, Lord, then, as thou wilt.

8. Lutheran Pietism (1670–1750)

The term “Pietism” is used most broadly today to describe a particular kind of religious orientation that became influential within several branches of Protestantism during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The most distinctive characteristics of Pietism were a belief in the importance of a personal spiritual transformation, usually associated with an experience of religious conversion, and an intense concern for the promotion of holy living within the church and all of society. In light of these concerns, Pietism may be seen as a forerunner of the type of religiosity that is more commonly known in modern Christianity as Evangelicalism. The term “Pietist,” however, was originally used more narrowly to refer to the people associated with a practical movement of spiritual renewal that began within German Lutheranism in the 1670s through the efforts of Philip Jacob Spener. It was first used derogatorily, but eventually these Lutherans accepted the designation and used it to differentiate themselves from two other groups: those committed believers who remained attached to certain assumptions and attitudes of Lutheran Orthodoxy that the Pietists considered problematic and a larger number of people who, though baptized and accustomed to considering themselves Lutheran, exhibited few signs of any deep religious commitment in their daily lives. Philip Jacob Spener (1635–1705) was born into a devout Lutheran family in Alsace and received a solid training in philosophy and theology at the University of Strassburg. The professors who influenced him the most, Johann Schmidt and Johann Conrad Dannhauer, were noted for combining a fervent concern for the defense of Lutheran doctrine with an interest in the promotion of church reform and prac-

tical piety. Spener’s religious outlook, however, was also shaped by contact with Reformed Protestantism. An avid reader of devotional literature, his spiritual development was deeply affected not only by the writings of Johann Arndt and other Lutheran authors but also by English Puritan writers such as Lewis Bayly. In addition, during two years of postgraduate travel outside of Germany, he came in contact with Jean de Labadie, a French Reformed minister whose ideas about spiritual rebirth and efforts to promote church reform left a lasting impression on him. In 1666 Spener was appointed senior minister (and supervisor of eleven clergy) in Frankfurt am Main, a position of considerable authority seldom given to someone who was only 31 years old. He began almost immediately to speak out in his sermons against what he considered to be the moral decay of Germany and the lack of true Christian piety among those who professed allegiance to Lutheran doctrine. Most of the themes he emphasized were not novel. They had already been expressed frequently by many seventeenth-century Lutheran devotional writers. (For this reason, the roots of the theology of the Lutheran Pietists have often been traced as far back as Johann Arndt.) Spener, however, did not consider it enough to preach and write about the importance of rebirth. He also began to explore new ways of organizing church activities in order to facilitate the development of true faith and holy living. He initiated measures to improve the quality of catechetical instruction for children and regularly preached catechetical sermons on Sunday afternoons in order to reach adults as well. Spener also attempted to revive the ritual of public confirmation, which had largely disappeared within the Lutheran territorial churches.

216

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

He considered this ceremony to be an important opportunity for young people to commit themselves personally to the vows that had been made on their behalf by sponsors when they were baptized as infants. In 1670 Spener initiated another practice which would become one of the most common measures adopted by the Pietist movement to stimulate renewal. He began to hold twice-weekly meetings in his home, during which he and a small group of pious laypeople discussed a reading from the Bible or a devotional book and supported each other in their efforts to grow spiritually (doc. #178). As these conventicles or collegia pietatis began to proliferate and attract a diverse group of people, some of the clergy criticized Spener for his innovative practices and his tendency to shift the focus of attention from purity of doctrine to purity of life. Despite these criticisms Spener’s influence within the Lutheran churches gained strength after 1675 when he published Pia Desideria, a document that came to be seen as a kind of manifesto for the Pietist movement. Spener expressed deep dissatisfaction with the state of Lutheran church life and explicitly listed the moral weaknesses that were most common in each social class. He intimated that the Lutheran church, which had set out to reform the Roman Catholic tradition, was itself now in need of a fullscale reformation. Despite his somber assessment of the current state of religious life, Spener was very optimistic about the possibility of achieving better conditions in the church. From reading the book of Revelation, he had concluded that God was certain to bring about spiritual renewal, after which two momentous events would take place: The Jews would convert to Christianity, and the tyrannical power of the papacy would finally be overcome. Spener also made several concrete proposals that he hoped would turn the situation around (doc. #182). He emphasized the need to increase familiarity with the whole Bible and to promote its use in church worship, conventicles, and private homes as a practical guide for spiritual growth. He also called for an expansion of the ministry of laypeople in the church, increased attention to the practice of Christian love, and a shift in the focus of pastoral training away from the acquisition of disputational skills and toward the nurturing of a Christian manner of life. Without challenging the basic tenets of Lutheran theology, Spener argued that the preoccupation of Orthodox church leaders with the task of maintaining pure doctrine had degenerated into a focus on subtle controversies that were far less important than the need to teach people about conversion and the

practice of true piety. He also suggested that the contrapositioning of faith and good works, which Luther had established as a central feature of Lutheran theology, needed to be reexamined in a changed social setting in which people seemed more inclined to be complacent about spiritual growth than guilt-ridden by the inadequacy of their efforts to fulfill the commandments of God (doc. #178). Spener continued to defend his dynamic conception of the life of faith and appeal for reform during his later ministry as a preacher and church administrator in Dresden and Berlin. Along the way he reoriented the lives of many people who carried on his work long after his death. One of the most significant of his younger associates was August Hermann Francke (1660–1727), who had participated in a conventicle while studying theology at the University of Leipzig and had become fully committed to Spener’s understanding of Lutheranism after passing through a dramatic conversion experience in 1687 (cf. doc. #179 and #187). When he became pastor at Glaucha and professor at the newly established University of Halle in 1692, Francke began a period of intense activity that culminated in the establishment of Pietism as a powerful force all across northern Germany. At Halle he established an orphanage, numerous schools for different social classes, a publishing house, and institutions for the care of the indigent, all of which were designed to contribute to the spiritual reform of society through the transformation of individual lives (doc. #185). Francke managed to get a group of like-minded professors appointed to the faculty of the University of Halle and established this institution as the chief training ground for future Pietist leaders. He enjoyed a very positive reputation at the court of the King of Prussia and benefited greatly from the support given him by the Prussian nobility. Francke also contributed to the spread of Pietism within the Lutheran churches of Scandinavia. This in turn led to the first Lutheran efforts at foreign missions, for it was the King of Denmark who provided the financial support for Francke to send missionaries from Halle to Tranquebar on the southeast coast of India in 1706 (see Ch. 9. doc. #212). Württemberg, in southwestern Germany, became the other major region in which Pietism established an enduring influence. Although it had ties to the work of Spener and Francke, Württemberg Pietism nevertheless developed a character quite distinct from the north German Pietist movement centered at Halle. Whereas Pietism in Prussia established a close relation with the state and gained a significant

LUTHERAN PIETISM (1670–1750)

following among the upper classes, Pietism in Württemberg was predominantly a middle-class and peasant movement that tended to be less politically assertive. Although Pietism maintained a strong popular character in the southwest, it also gained intellectual respectability as a result of its extensive influence among teachers at the University of Tübingen and the nearby cloister school at Denkendorf. In contrast to the Pietist professors at the University of Halle, whose educational focus was mostly practical and experiential, these academic Pietists recognized the value of critical theological study. Their contributions to the field of biblical interpretation were particularly notable. The most prominent figure in the history of Württemberg Pietism was Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752), a dedicated pastor with a wide following among the common people who also gained an international reputation as a scholar for his work in the area of text criticism. Disturbed by the proliferation of new versions of the Bible that he considered unreliable, he devoted much of his life to the preparation of a critical edition of the New Testament. In the process, he developed an important set of principles for use in determining which of the variant readings in ancient manuscripts of the Bible was most trustworthy (Vol. 2, doc. #265). The Pietists were primarily interested in finding guidance in the Bible for their daily lives, but they also frequently manifested a strong interest in eschatological speculation. Spener’s optimism about the future was based on his belief that Christ would reign on earth for a thousand years before the last judgment, and other more radical Pietists such as Eleonore von Merlau Petersen claimed to have divinely inspired insights into the meaning of the book of Revelation (doc. #188). Bengel shared these interests but used historical research and linguistic analysis in his efforts to discover the future workings of divine providence. The results of his exegesis were quite controversial, for he attempted to correlate the symbolism of the book of Revelation with a whole series of historical events, including the efforts at church reform carried out by Johann Arndt and Philip Jacob Spener (doc. #186). On the basis of some elaborate mathematical calculations, he also reached the conclusion that the second coming of Christ would take place in 1836. The Orthodox Lutherans generally abstained from such chiliastic predictions and pointed to them as evidence that the Pietists had an aberrant theology that could not be reconciled with traditional Lutheranism. Valentin Ernst Löscher (1673–1749),

217

author of Timotheus Verinus, the best-known Orthodox critique of Pietism, described the movement as an illness that threatened the well-being of the churches. Among the most dangerous symptoms of this illness were chiliasm, perfectionism, indifferentism, and enthusiasm. Löscher charged that the Pietists reintroduced good works as a condition for salvation and expected more of a change in people’s lives than was realistically possible. In their criticisms of Orthodox polemics, he perceived an indifference to the fundamental articles of Lutheran belief and in their stress on religious experiences a tendency toward fanatical mysticism. Löscher concluded that Pietist theology and practice would lead to schisms within the Lutheran church or illegitimate alliances with other confessional groups (doc. # 195).

Fig. 8.1. Valentin Ernst Löscher (1673–1749).

Löscher’s charges hold true for some Pietists more than others. Several of the original members of Spener’s conventicles did, in fact, withdraw from the Lutheran church and form their own separatist sect, and some of those who separated from the church, such as Eleonore von Merlau Petersen, were preoccupied with their prophetic visions and private ecstasies (doc. #188). Radical Pietists such as Gottfried Arnold (1666–1714) were clearly more influenced by medieval mysticism and the theosophy of Jacob Böhme than they were by the theology of

218

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Luther. Arnold kept his distance from organized Lutheranism throughout most of his life because he considered it to be so corrupt, yet in his later years he moderated his judgments and became a Lutheran pastor. Another prominent Pietist, Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf (1700–1760), never explicitly rejected his Lutheran background but came to believe that each church tradition possessed some valuable insight that contributed to a fuller understanding of Christianity (doc. #194). Although he had been ordained as a Lutheran minister, Zinzendorf devoted his energies to the formation of a new religious community among Moravian refugees in Germany and used this Moravian church as a starting point for the promotion of fellowship between Christians of various confessional backgrounds. The Lutheran authorities banished him from Saxony between 1736 and 1747 for introducing religious novelties and teaching false doctrine. During this period of exile he traveled to North America and the West Indies and became an important promoter of world missions. Zinzendorf agreed to become a bishop for the Moravians in 1737 and persuaded them to pledge their fidelity to the Augsburg Confession. He established a new headquarters for the church in London, but after the Moravians were given legal recognition in Saxony in 1749, he was able to return to his estate at Herrnhut to spend the final years of his life. In response to Orthodox critics, most Pietists within the Lutheran churches sought to disassociate themselves from the radicals. Spener took precautions to prevent the development of separatism and went to great lengths to prove his loyalty to the theology of Luther and the Lutheran confessions (doc. #177). Francke and his associates at the University of Halle responded point by point to the charges made by Löscher and suggested to the Orthodox that the Pietists posed far less of a threat to the church than the new currents of rationalist thought that were gaining ground in Germany. Bengel expressed respect for some of the accomplishments of Count Zinzendorf but also wrote a lengthy critical evaluation of his piety and theology that deepened the gulf between the Moravians and the Lutheran Pietists. Despite the controversial nature of the Pietist movement, it was never repudiated so categorically as the Philippist party had been in the late sixteenth century. Pietism contributed much to the revitalization of religious life throughout Germany and Scandinavia and in some regions became more influential than the perspective associated with Lutheran Orthodoxy. The Orthodox and Pietist Lutherans coexisted

in mutual suspicion until the second half of the eighteenth century, after which time they gradually discovered a greater degree of commonality in their shared opposition to the deism and atheism of the Enlightenment. PHILIP JACOB SPENER (1635–1705) Toward the end of his life, Spener collected and published several volumes of letters and papers that had been written in response to inquiries from other people. In these Theological Reflections, he defended himself against his critics, evaluated the writings of others, and offered concrete advice to people who had questions about theology, piety, or morality. Two of the following selections show both his respect for Luther and his assessment of some of the reformer’s limitations. They show his concern to relate the Pietist reform movement to traditional Lutheranism and his eagerness to lead the Lutheran church in new directions in response to new problems. The selections on conversion and questions of personal conduct show his insistence on a transformed life but also his concern to avoid simplistic judgments about what should be considered normative. 177. AN EVALUATION OF MARTIN LUTHER From Spener TB 266–67, trans. Eric Lund. I continue to believe that Luther was a dear man of God for the sending of whom we cannot thank God enough as much on account of the blessed work of the Reformation, his struggle with the papacy, his many useful writings as on account of his incomparable German translation of the Bible. I am also certain that Luther never taught anything harmful in his articles of faith. All of this I confess and believe. On the other hand, it is not inconsistent that I consider Luther to be a man whose writings are to be regarded far differently than the inerrant writings of the prophets and apostles. For I find that in secondary matters that do not exactly touch on the foundation of faith, one cannot make acceptance of his opinions necessary; indeed, I do not always follow them myself. Although he had an excellent gift for translating the Scriptures such that few among the old fathers could match him in his spirit, it still remains certain that he also sometimes faltered in his explanations and sometimes did not see what others coming after him saw. I call his translation an incomparable work in comparison to which I do not consider any

LUTHERAN PIETISM (1670–1750)

219

previous translation to be equal or preferable. It is not a contradiction, however, to admit that his interpretation of various passages can clearly be shown to be the wrong meaning and that others who came after him found more light in those texts. Still I gladly confess that the gift of Luther was greater that those who came after him and that they could not nor would not have come so far if Luther had not illuminated the way for them. A giant is always tall and a dwarf small, and no comparison can be made between the size of the two of them, but when the dwarf stands on the shoulders of the giant, he still sees farther than the giant because his stature is higher. It is no wonder, then, when a dwarf that is some teacher far from equal to Luther now many times sees something in Scripture that Luther himself had not seen. Still this would not have been seen if he had not already been raised so high by Luther. Luther remains the universal teacher, but sometimes the student observes one or another thing that the teacher has overlooked. . . . The fact that our church unfortunately stands at this time in a troubled and miserable state lies clearly before our eyes, but I do not believe that the cause of this is that the teachings of Luther are not accorded their proper worth. May the Almighty be thanked that we still have the teachings of Luther at this hour in the church without the exception of a single article of faith; may God allow it to remain so in the future. Rather, the deficiency consists in this, that while the pure teachings of Luther have endured, the pure, true faith that he always praised in his writings has for the most part not remained, but the illusion has developed that where one possesses the true and pure teaching of Luther, one has salvation already from the same. This security and unbelief that unfortunately prevail so powerfully along with the true teaching is the reason why God’s wrath holds us by the throat. If that is not changed, God may well also deprive us of the pure doctrine which we do not put to right use and may let the papacy in many places again gain the upper hand. May God give us here a right knowledge of this state of affairs in order to escape from future wrath.

to stress with excellent force the doctrine of the saving power of faith, which had been neglected since the time of the apostles, and to make known how we must be justified through faith and thus by divine grace without any mixing in of works. The reason for this emphasis was that God had called him to the reform of the church at a time when such teaching about grace had been almost entirely extinguished and when consciences had for some time been directed toward good works. Thus he did not face coarse, secure people such that he had to direct his chief aim to the subduing of security, but for the most part he found persons who were hungry for the consolation of the gospel, who had been made anxious long enough by the teaching of works and who had needed this gospel for a good long time because the teaching of works was so well known to them. On the other hand, especially because efforts had long been made to insert good works into the action of justification, he chiefly contested this error.

178. WHETHER LUTHER URGED WORKS ENOUGH (1688)

When Luther speaks at various times of faith and works, he appears to raise up the one only and entirely reject the other. Nevertheless, where all his writings are considered together at one time, it is clear that what he is really opposing is the delusion of their working together with faith for salvation. When all of his words are considered in light of

From Spener TB 258–60, trans. Eric Lund. Now concerning our Luther: the dear man to be sure also had a great measure of grace in other respects, but his chief gift was this, that he was given

Fig. 8.2. Copper Engraving of Philip Jacob Spener by Bartholomäus Kilian (1683).

220

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

this intention and when one passage is clarified by another, then all will be set right. The dear man, however, also in many places (for proof one need only open to the sermon on the Wednesday after Easter in his Church Postil) earnestly stressed godly living as much as one can do: but not from the law and only as a duty to which we must be driven, but much more in the sense that it is a never-absent fruit of true faith. The divine faith by which a person grasps the grace of God thus also brings about a new birth in the same man and makes him into someone entirely different, so that henceforth he cannot help but do good, not due to the coercion of law but because of a new type of spirit that simply considers works to be pleasing to God but not those that are forced by law. Where such works do not follow, true faith is not there but only a human dream and thought in the heart that is never experienced in the ground of the heart, as Luther says in the golden forward to the Epistle to the Romans. Our blessed Martin Statius1 in his tract on Luther’s Christianity notably points out from his words how devoutly the dear man also taught about the power of faith in life. If he speaks about works, then, sometimes more harshly than would seem appropriate, this should be understood to pertain to the abuse of works and the inserting of them into justification. [Similarly] we must remember how harshly dear Paul himself sometimes spoke about divine law, not rejecting the law as such but the misuse to which the false apostles put it. Luther may not have said much about the special testing of every virtue, as far as I recall, but we should take to heart what he said in general about the character of true works, how they must come forth from within, namely, from faith, from rebirth, and from the power of the Holy Spirit. The basis for all this is shown in the little book on nature and grace that I put together. But the reason why holiness of life must be dealt with more now is because we live in a time when people, from misunderstanding, mostly misuse the gospel and the doctrine of faith. Therefore, we should not speak much now against works when hardly anyone thinks to join works to justification and when most consider them to be neither possible nor necessary, but we must much more earnestly struggle against this error, which is no less dangerous than the other. We should mostly extol the power of faith, which is active through love and holy living, although we do not want to forget, on the other hand, that such holy living is not that which saves us but only faith itself. Although Luther emphasized the one aspect in his time, he did not forget the other.

Divine teaching always remains the same at all times, but sometimes one aspect of it must be earnestly impressed upon some people and at other times some other aspect. When we read the writings of Paul and James and do not rightly see their intention, we might well think that they were truly opposed to each other, which is nevertheless not so. Where we consider all such matters rightly in the fear of God, we will much more take delight in our God’s wisdom in the distribution of his gift than be disturbed if everyone does not speak in the same way about it at all times. May the Lord open our eyes more and more to know all aspects of his wise rule; may he stand powerfully by us in all our struggles; let us feel the witness of the Holy Spirit more and more, strengthen us in the inner man against all weaknesses of the outer man, and give us as much power as is necessary for the praise of God and service to our neighbor. 179. WHETHER EVERYONE OUGHT TO KNOW THE HOUR OF HIS OR HER CONVERSION (1690) From Spener TB 197–98, trans. Eric Lund. . . . I come now especially to the other question, whether it is clearly necessary that a man should know the time and hour of his conversion. Some may have adopted this idea from some English authors, but I am not in agreement and simply cannot unite with them on this matter. For those who have persisted for a long time in public evil and blasphemous living, I willingly admit that it is almost impossible that they should not know the actual time of their repentance and conversion, because the change is so evident. At the same time, I also do not want to deny that for others who have lived an ethical life but still according to the world and outside of grace, it may happen that they are stirred through a sudden occasion and that God presently carries out his work in them such that again a strong change is noticeable enough in them. But I also maintain that it is possible that for such people who have lived for a long time in the past in an ordinary way and have thought themselves to be good Christians (discovering only subsequently that all was not right with them in that condition), our good Father may begin his work gently and advance it in such a way that first the literal being becomes alive and after that the new being increases little by little. When finally such a man becomes aware of being quite other than he had been and finds the difference to be entirely evident,

LUTHERAN PIETISM (1670–1750)

he praises divine grace but cannot say at what time so to speak the break-through in his life happened. Since nothing can be brought against this from God’s Word, believers should not make weak, but upright hearts have scruples about the genuineness of their repentance when it is not possible to determine the exact time of it. As for the actual experience to which Christian hearts might on the other hand appeal, I consider it weak to conclude that because one person has experienced the leading of God in a certain way, it follows that therefore also all others have been or must necessarily be led in the same way. In this and all other similar things God retains his free hand to deal with each one in whatever way seems appropriate to his goodness and wisdom. Therefore I consider the description of the conversion of one or another person according to all particulars to be useful, but the misuse of the same can also be harmful. One person finds in every divine leading much evidence of divine goodness and wisdom to the praise of God and our own strengthening. But another, when some feel scruples because they have not found it to be the same in them, wants to place their rebirth in doubt or because God did not carry out the same process as with them, wants to hold them in suspicion because of this. On the other hand, I am at peace when the witnesses and proofs of true rebirth are encountered by me or another, even though I cannot reckon well the type and order of the divine work. It is enough for me to feel the wind blowing powerfully even though the first blast was not observed by me. 180. ON TOBACCO (1691)

Fig. 8.3. A leaflet against smoking, Germany, Europe, seventeenth century.

From Spener TB 484–85, trans. Eric Lund. We come now to special questions, the first of which concerns the cultivation of tobacco. I am not in agreement with the dear brother [who brought up this issue]. It is not merely a question of the plant

221

itself, which is as much a creation of God as any other, but of its use by humans. And although it cannot be doubted that tobacco is mostly unnecessary and is used in a sinful manner, I still hear from doctors as well as other people (I do not know of this from my own experience nor have I used it) that moderate use is beneficial to the health of certain people and may almost be necessary for some; for example, those who serve on ships and likewise those in war who cannot get healthy food. Thus, tobacco has its benefits, but while one place and land are well suited to supplement its nourishment when a moderate quantity is cultivated and prepared, in another place it is seductive when tobacco brings money into the land. Indeed, I know places that gain most of their income from tobacco—it is being mishandled this way in the Netherlands. Since tobacco, then, is, as such, a useful plant, the abuse of the same, however much it has gained ground, does not make the cultivation or preparation of it sinful so long as this does not contribute in itself to the abuse. No less than with the preparing of wine, the brewing of beer, or the distilling of brandy, it may not be considered wrong, even though the number who misuse it is not much less than those who employ it rightly. 181. ON DANCING (1680) From Spener TB 487, trans. Eric Lund. Where one speaks of dancing in the abstract and as an idea, one cannot say that it should be clearly forbidden. The movement of the body according to a certain melody or rhythm cannot be considered sinful in itself but remains a neutral matter. So it was not sinful when in 2 Samuel 6:24 David danced with all his power before the ark of the Lord and Solomon in Ecclesiastes 3:4 accorded dancing its appropriate time. . . . But since we must not base a judgment in every case merely on how it can be considered in the abstract but rather on how we find it in practice, I note that now in this case the issue is not the theory or idea of the matter but what we encounter and commonly see happening. We cannot simply expect that people will keep dancing within its proper bounds. So when we speak of the dancing that is common in our time, I do not see how it can be excused since much sinfulness creeps in along with it....... We know that we Christians are obliged to give an account of all that we do or permit, of our speech, behavior, and work before a strict judge. We should

222

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

not do anything that does not contribute to the honor of God or that is not useful to our neighbor in spirit or body or necessary to us and beneficial to our own apparent advantage. When something does not have such an inducement, it may not pass approval before God. Now, I do not see how dancing can be related to any one of these rubrics, for it is merely an idle thing, useful neither to body nor soul, that gives free play to the vanity of the senses and fleshly lusts.

From Philip Jacob Spener, Pia Desideria Desideria, trans. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964), 31, 32, 37, 87–89, 92–97, 103, 107, 108, 115, 116. Foreword . . . Where one sees distress and sickness, it is natural to look about for remedies. The precious spiritual body of Christ is now afflicted with distress and sickness. Since in certain respects it is committed to the care of every individual and at the same time to all and sun-dry together, and since we must all be members of the body and hence should not regard affliction anywhere in the body as alien to us, it is therefore incumbent on us to see to it that medicine that is suited to its cure be found and applied. . . . Let us begin by putting ourselves at the disposal especially of those who are still willing to accept what is done for their edification. If everybody in his own congregation makes provision for these above all others, they may little by little grow to such a measure of godliness that they will be shining examples to others. In time, then, by God’s grace we may also gradually attract those who at present seem to be lost in order that they, too, may finally be won. . . . [Editor’s note: The first two sections of the treatise describe the corrupt conditions within society and the reasons why Spener has hope for better times.] [Part III] [Proposals to Correct Conditions in the Church] 1

Fig. 8.4. Title page of Spener’s Pia Desideria, published 1676.

182. PIA DESIDERIA (1675) Spener’s Pia Desideria, the most famous of his many writings, first appeared in 1675 as a preface to a new edition of the postil sermons of Johann Arndt. Later it was published separately. The following brief excerpt concentrates on his proposals for church reform.

Thought should be given to a more extensive use of the Word of God among us. . . . It may appear that the Word of God has sufficiently free course among us inasmuch as at various places (as in this city) there is daily or frequent preaching from the pulpit. When we reflect further on the matter, however, we shall find that with respect to this first proposal, more is needed. . . . If we put together all the passages of the Bible that in the course of many years are read to a congregation in one place, they will comprise only a very small part of the Scriptures that have been given to us. The remainder is not heard by the congregation at all, or is heard only insofar as one or another verse is quoted or alluded to in sermons, without, however, offering any understanding of the entire

LUTHERAN PIETISM (1670–1750)

context, which is nevertheless of the greatest importance. . . . It should therefore be considered whether the church would not be well advised to introduce the people to Scripture in still other ways than through the customary sermons on the appointed lessons. . . . It would not be difficult for every housefather to keep a Bible, or at least a New Testament, handy and read from it every day or, if he cannot read, to have somebody else read. Then a second thing would be desirable in order to encourage people to read privately, namely, that where the practice can be introduced the books of the Bible be read one after another, at specified times in the public service, without further comment (unless one wished to add brief summaries). . . . For a third thing it would perhaps not be inexpedient (and I set this down for further and more mature reflection) to reintroduce the ancient and apostolic kind of church meetings. In addition to our customary services with preaching, other assemblies would also be held in the manner in which Paul describes them in 1 Corinthians 14:26-40. One person would not rise to preach (although this practice would be continued at other times), but others who have been blessed with gifts and knowledge would also speak and present their pious opinions on the proposed subject to the judgment of the rest, doing all this in such a way as to avoid disorder and strife. This might conveniently be done by having several ministers (in places where a number of them live in a town) meet together or by having several members of a congregation who have a fair knowledge of God or desire to increase their knowledge meet under the leadership of a minister, take up the Holy Scriptures, read aloud from them, and fraternally discuss each verse in order to dis-cover its simple meaning and whatever may be useful for the edification of all. . . . 2 Our frequently mentioned Dr. Luther would suggest another means, which is altogether compatible with the first. This second proposal is the establishment and diligent exercise of the spiritual priesthood. Nobody can read Luther’s writings with some care without observing how earnestly the sainted man advocated this spiritual priesthood, according to which not only ministers but all Christians are made priests by their Savior, are anointed by the Holy Spirit, and are dedicated to perform spiritual-priestly acts. Peter was not addressing preachers alone when he wrote, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood,

223

a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” . . . Every Christian is bound not only to offer himself and what he has, his prayer, thanksgiving, good works, alms, and so forth, but also industriously to study in the Word of the Lord, with the grace that is given him to teach others, especially those under his own roof, to chastise, exhort, convert, and edify them, to observe their life, pray for all, and insofar as possible be concerned about their salvation. If this is first pointed out to the people, they will take better care of themselves and apply themselves to whatever pertains to their own edification and that of their fellow men. . . . 3 Connected with these two proposals is a third: The people must have impressed upon them and must accustom themselves to believing that it is by no means enough to have knowledge of the Christian faith, for Christianity consists rather of practice. Our dear Savior repeatedly enjoined love as the real mark of his disciples (John 13:34-35; 15:12; 1 John 3:10, 18; 4:7-8, 11-13, 21). . . . Indeed, love is the whole life of the man who has faith and who through his faith is saved, and his fulfillment of the laws of God consists of love. . . . For this purpose, as well as for the sake of Christian growth in general, it may be useful if those who have earnestly resolved to walk in the way of the Lord would enter into a confidential relationship with their confessor or some other judicious and enlightened Christian and would regularly report to him how they live, what opportunities they have had to practice Christian love, and how they have employed or neglected them. This should be done with the intention of discovering what is amiss and securing such an individual’s counsel and instruction as to what ought now to be done. . . . 4 Related to this is a fourth proposal: We must beware how we conduct ourselves in religious controversies with unbelievers and heretics. . . . We must give them a good example and take the greatest pains not to offend them in any way, for this would give them a bad impression of our true teaching and hence would make their conversion more difficult. . . . If God has given us the gifts that are

224

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

needful for it, and we find the opportunity to hope to win the erring, we should be glad to do what we can to point out, with modest but firm presentation of the truth we profess, how this is based on the simplicity of Christ’s teaching. At the same time, we should indicate decently but forcefully how their errors conflict with the Word of God and what dangers they carry in their wake. All of this should be done in such a way that those with whom we deal can see for themselves that everything is done out of heartfelt love toward them, without carnal and unseemly feelings, and that if we ever indulge in excessive vehemence, this occurs out of pure zeal for the glory of God. Especially should we beware of invectives and personal insinuations, which at once tear down all the good we have in mind to build. . . . 5 Since ministers must bear the greatest burden in all these things that pertain to a reform of the church, and since their shortcomings do correspondingly great harm, it is of the utmost importance that the office of the ministry be occupied by men who above all are themselves true Christians and then have the divine wisdom to guide others carefully on the way of the Lord. It is therefore important, indeed necessary, for the reform of the church that only such persons be called who may be suited and that nothing at all except the glory of God be kept in view during the whole procedure of calling. . . . However, if such suitable persons are to be called to the ministry, they must be available, and hence they must be trained in our schools and universities....... The professors could themselves accomplish a great deal here by their example (indeed, without them a real reform is hardly to be hoped for) if they would conduct themselves as men who have died unto the world, in everything would seek not their own glory, gain, or pleasure but rather the glory of their God and the salvation of those entrusted to them, and would accommodate all their studies, writing of books, lessons, lectures, disputations, and other activities to this end. . . It would be especially helpful if the professors would pay attention to the life as well as the studies of the students entrusted to them and would from time to time speak to those who need to be spoken to. The professors should act in such a way toward those students who, although they distinguish themselves in studying, also distinguish themselves in riotous living, tippling, bragging, and boasting of academic and other preeminence (who, in short, demonstrate

that they live according to the world and not according to Christ) that they must perceive that because of their behavior they are looked down upon by their teachers, that their splendid talents and good academic record do not help by themselves, and that they are regarded as persons who will do harm in proportion to the gifts they receive. On the other hand, the professors should openly and expressly show those who lead a godly life, even if they are behind the others in their studies, how dear they are to their teachers and how very much they are to be preferred to the others. In fact, these students ought to be the first, or the only, ones to be promoted. The others ought to be excluded from all hope of promotion until they change their manner of life completely. . . . 6 In addition to these exercises, which are intended to develop the Christian life of the students, it would also be useful if the teachers made provision for practice in those things with which the students will have to deal when they are in the ministry. For example, there should be practice at times in instructing the ignorant, in comforting the sick, and especially in preaching, where it should be pointed out to students that everything in their sermons should have edification as the goal. I therefore add this as a sixth proposal whereby the Christian church may be helped to a better condition: that sermons be so prepared by all that their purpose (faith and its fruits) may be achieved in the hearers to the greatest possible degree. . . . The pulpit is not the place for an ostentatious display of one’s skill. It is rather the place to preach the Word of the Lord plainly but powerfully. Preaching should be the divine means to save the people, and so it is proper that everything be directed to this end. Ordinary people, who make up the largest part of a congregation, are always to be kept in view more than the few learned people, insofar as such are present at all. As the catechism contains the primary rudiments of Christianity, and all people have originally learned their faith from it, so it should continue to be used even more diligently (according to its meaning rather than its words) in the instruction of children, and also of adults if one can have these in attendance.......

LUTHERAN PIETISM (1670–1750)

183. LETTER TO A FOREIGN THEOLOGIAN CONCERNING THE COLLEGIA PIETATIS (1677) Soon after Spener began to hold his conventicle meetings in Frankfurt, some clergy and civil magistrates charged that they were a threat to the unity of the church and the maintenance of social order. Rumors spread that people neglected family responsibilities and church meetings to attend and women in particular were being allowed to preach. In 1677 Spener attempted to dispel such rumors by writing “A Letter to a Foreign Theologian,” which contains the following description of the origins and activities of the conventicles. From Philip Jacob Spener, Sendschr Sendschreiben eiben an einen Christeyffrig Christeyffrigen en außländischen Theolog Theologum um (Frankfurt: Zunner, 1677), 44–53, 62–64, 72–75, trans. Eric Lund. Now as for concerns about my house-practice or what is commonly called the collegium, I need nothing more that an opportunity to tell about the way in which it came to be held. It had its beginning in 1670 in August as a result of the following occasion. Some godly friends . . . had complained to me for some time about how all conversation and talk in ordinary life was so corrupt that one could seldom come away from social gatherings without a violated conscience. Even when those wanting to claim the name of Christ and be called Christians came together, one never heard anything spoken about except things belonging to this world, for the most part merely frivolous and sinful things, criticisms of other people, buffoonery, unseemly jokes, and other such things that go under the name of pastimes and amusements, without any concern that one might thereby be falling into sin. . . . They wished to have the opportunity to come together occasionally with others of a godly disposition to speak with each other in simplicity and love and to find in such conversation among themselves what they sought for in vain elsewhere. I could not contradict the complaint of those whose conduct was well enough known, nor could I rebuke or devalue their desire, which I recognized to be consistent with the Word of God and the nature of godliness. Therefore I praised such an undertaking and encouraged them, but due to the suspicion that other unseemly things might arise, I offered to be present myself and to make my study room and house available. I also discussed the matter with one of my col-

225

leagues who shared their concerns, and he no less than I sanctioned the cause. (It did not seem necessary for us to bring the matter before an assembly of all of my clerical colleagues because it concerned a private practice.) . . . We also did not explicitly consult any magistrate since no private practice needed a public confirmation. . . . Now concerning the nature of this gathering, our plan was that when we got together, which ordinarily happened to be two times a week, I would first give a short prayer, calling upon God and asking for his grace. Then I read something from a book, after which we spoke together about it, observing everything in the reading that was useful for the upbuilding of life and the strengthening of simple faith. We observed no special order among us and did not consider that to be necessary. As ordinarily happens among friends, it was left that one speaker was allowed to continue until he stopped, after which another could speak. . . . We lived in hope that through such means we would receive among us not only wholesome knowledge of God and zeal for godliness but also that when all became more accustomed to speaking about good things, they would be able to converse in an edifying manner on other occasions among other people. It was also the intention that such a holy and close friendship would be established among these Christian souls that one could learn from another how far he had come along in his Christianity so that the fire of love would blaze more and more among us, and from this a more ardent desire would be kindled to upbuild each other at every opportunity and to stimulate others around us. In this way, we read through the blessed Dr. Lütkemann’s Foretaste of Divine Goodness, Bayly’s famed Practice of Piety, and the reliable theologian Nikolaus Hunnius’s Epitome of Beliefs.2 After two years we set aside the books by human authors that we read at the beginning and in childlike fashion simply read the Bible. . . . Now, because we came together twice weekly, on Monday I started by repeating the content of the publicly held sermon from the day before so they would hear it a second time and so better bring it into their understanding. At the same time, it was possible to offer more explanation, and if someone felt uneasy about something, there would be an opportunity to ask a question about it. After that, we turned to the reading of the Gospel as far as we could get. When we came together on Wednesday, we spent the whole hour or time on the text dealing with it in the following way. I went on from where we left,

226

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

also mentioning related texts, parables, and stories. I read one verse after another, observing the simple meaning of the words or what seemed to be useful for edification in it. When I stopped, I waited awhile in case someone wanted to call something to mind. This provided a good opportunity for some edifying discussion of the material. But if all were silent, I would go on to the next verse. We focused on the simple literal understanding of the text or considered its use in the practice of Christianity, noting especially any life rules we found in the text that were not generally observed. We also considered how the same should be endorsed and how they could be put into practice with the help of divine grace. . . . Now, as for the people who attended these house gatherings, at the beginning there were few of us and mostly learned people. But now there are people from many different classes and ages, learned and unlearned, noble and common, students of theology, lawyers, doc-tors, merchants, craftsmen, simple people. . . . There were also quite a few Christian women, wives and unmarried young women, but they were separated from the others so that one could not see them, although they could hear everything. It was not granted to them to interject or to ask questions, and at no time would any of them have dared to do this. Thus in the house fellowship we conformed to the apostolic command in 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2. Now, as for the others, namely, the men, they mostly listened, though a few among them also spoke or shared something with the group. Those who talked along with me were almost all students of theology or people who had studied. There were others who had not studied, but their contribution consisted mostly in asking a question or mentioning the attraction of some words in Scripture that they considered useful. . . . I also ask those who might consider such practices to be foreign or improper in the Lutheran church or dangerous to consider again what our dear and worthy Luther wrote (in “The German Mass” [cf. doc #76]): “The third kind of service that a true Evangelical Church Order ought to have should not take place publicly among all sorts of people, but among those who earnestly want to be Christians and profess the gospel with hand and mouth. They would perhaps meet by themselves in some house in order to pray, read, baptize, receive the sacrament, and do other Christian works. In this manner those who do not lead Christian lives could be identified, reproved, reformed, expelled, or excommunicated, according to the rule of Christ in Matthew 18. . . . In short,

if one had the people and persons who truly wanted to be Christians, the arrangements and method could quickly be made. But right now I cannot and do not desire to set up such a congregation or assembly because I still do not have the people or per-sons to accomplish it, nor do I see many who insist upon it. But if it comes about that I am urged to do this and I cannot in good conscience refuse, then I will gladly do my part and help as best I can.” Lest one think that the dear man was hasty here and only said this once, we should know that he repeated this thought at other times. Here we see that the dear man proposed to do more than we do or desire to do, and was prepared to do whatever was necessary where he had competent people. I admittedly confess that I was worried about the possibility of a schism or separation in such a case, so I considered it to be necessary to do whatever I could to prevent this from happening in the church. On the other hand, I ultimately hope that if this proposal can be practiced without separation from the church, it will be accepted and it will be recognized that Luther would at least not be against it. . . . I also do not see how such practices can be opposed when unwarranted fears about various dangers can easily be avoided. The church has no need to be anxious about those who remain pure in the simplicity of Christ and desire more and more to become children of the Lord and only prepare themselves to do what almost all religious groups consider to be necessary. AUGUST HERMANN FRANCKE (1663–1727) 184. SERMON ON RENEWAL (1709) Francke preached this sermon in 1709 in Halle on a lectionary text for the seventh Sunday after Trinity. It reveals the Pietists’ preoccupation with sanctification more than justification and shows Francke’s concern for an ongoing process of spiritual growth, not just with a decisive conversion event. From August Hermann Francke, Schr Schreiben eiben und Pr Predigten edigten, Bd. 10: Pr Predigten edigten II II, ed. Erhard Peschke (Berlin: DeGruyter, 1981), 374–97, trans. Eric Lund. Text: Romans 12:1, 2 Beloved in the Lord! When Holy Scripture teaches us that we should once more be renewed by Christ to the state that we lost through the Fall into sin, this word, “renewal,” takes in a very broad concept that

LUTHERAN PIETISM (1670–1750)

includes all of these parts: call, illumination, rebirth, justification, union with God, and sanctification. And when these parts of the entire work, which is commonly called renewal of the image of God, are mentioned, then the last part, namely, sanctification, has a special significance. By this it is understood that when a person is called through the Gospel, illumined with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, reborn, and united with God through faith, then this person must also steadily and unremittingly apply himself to sanctification so that he might from day to day be more and more cleansed from every defilement of the flesh and the spirit and carry on with sanctification in the fear of God, as it is stated by Paul in 2 Corinthians 7:1. For this occasion we should comment on this topic out of our text for the day.

Fig. 8.5. Portrait of August Hermann Francke by unknown artist.

227

DE STUDIO RENOVATIONIS OR ON RENEWAL AND HOW A FAITHFUL CHRISTIAN SHOULD APPLY HIMSELF TO IT First Part If now, beloved in the Lord, our task for today is to treat the Studio Renovationis, or the Study of Renewal, and how it must be found 1) in the intention of the heart and then 2) in steadily continuing practice, we discover that what the first entails is expressed in the first verse of our text: “I admonish you, dear brothers, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable worship.” This little verse contains much within itself, and everyone should diligently consider and take notice of these words of Paul so that they might be thoroughly understood. Once this is done, he is more able to go into his own heart, examine it, and find out whether he has such an intention of the heart that is called for and expressed by Paul in this verse. . . . [Editor’s note: Each phrase is discussed, and the first part then concludes with the following summary.] Paul wishes that everyone who finds consolation in the truth of Christ and proposes to gain eternal salvation should truly consecrate himself to God the Lord and offer himself entirely to his possession. His goal in this world should no longer be to seek after his own interests, his own honor, his own riches, profit, or needs, his own pleasure, ease, or the like, but rather the intention of his heart must be directed in such a way that all he does in word and deed he does in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by him; whether he eats or drinks or whatever he does is done to the honor of God. These are all the explicit words of Paul, the former in the Epistle to the Colossians 3:17 and the latter in 1 Corinthians 10:31. Now that is the true intention of the heart that everyone must find in himself who devotes himself to renewal. If this fundamental intention does not exist and consequently the person has not truly consecrated and offered himself to the Lord, he is not a righteous Christian, and if he deeply examines himself, he will see that he is nothing other than a hypocrite. . . . Christ has purchased him by giving his own blood as a ransom, but the purchased servant wants to live according to his own will, to serve another lord, indeed the old lord, namely, the devil, the world, and sin, from which Jesus so dearly purchased him by his own blood. How iniquitous and disgraceful this

228

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

is! Each person, if he inspects himself and examines his intention, will find out that in associating himself with Christ he speaks a judgment against himself, that his character is not upright. No one should doubt this because it is expressed here in such clear words, and Holy Scripture itself makes this expectation of us. Otherwise one might imagine that the teacher only demands so much and that it is enough if one only does something good, without offering himself entirely to the service of God the Lord. To the contrary, Holy Scripture so clearly lays down that we should present our bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and acceptable to God. It discloses that worship consists not in going to church, not in going to confession and the Lord’s Supper, not in reading a prayer book or occasionally in the Bible, but rather in consecrating oneself entirely to God and offering oneself to his glory such that in all one’s living and doing one desires to belong to God and wishes nothing to be found within, not even a drop in the veins, which is not consecrated to God as his possession. Yes, one so earnestly hates to find that one’s flesh and blood wishes another way, that one also seeks to overcome this through God’s power, so that one might be found to be a true sacrifice to God. . . . Second Part Now let us also consider, as a second part, the steadily enduring practice of renewal that Paul expects, as it is now explained to us in the following verse: “And do not conform yourself to the world, but be transformed through the renewing of your mind, so that you might discern what is the good, acceptable and perfect will of God.” . . . “Do not conform yourself to the world”: This does not mean that the world eats and drinks and so we should not do that because the world does it; for those are things belonging merely to outward life. Rather, Paul wants to direct us more deeply and show that we should shun those things that stand against the kingdom of God, and surely not only in external form or outward shape and in external representation (which many today tend to think is what these words mean) but rather also from the bottom of the heart, as Peter says: “you should not be conformed to the desires that you had when you lived in ignorance” [1 Pet 1:14]. . . . Further on, Paul says: “Be transformed through the renewal of your mind.” This is the second thing that is expected in the practice of renewal. It is called μεταμορφώστε, “be entirely changed through the renewal of your mind.” We certainly see that it is not doing enough for Paul if one is simply not conformed to the world in outward matters. Rather, he

demands much that is greater, higher, and deeper in a person’s heart, namely, that one should “be entirely changed,” for that is the teaching here of Paul. One might perhaps think that if he says “be transformed,” this should be in outward matters. So that one might not conclude that it only concerns outward matters, he says here “through the renewal of your mind.” The mind should be entirely other, or it should be thoroughly changed in the person. . . . Furthermore, Paul says, “So that you might discern what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.” This is the third matter that Paul associates with the practice of renewal. He wants a person to investigate and seek to know, and also hunt for that which is the acceptable and perfect will of God. For when one has consecrated and offered himself to God the Lord or has sought from the heart to devote all the powers of his body, soul, and mind to the service of God, and to apply himself rightly to God’s glory, it results from this that the man, according to the same inward ground and intention of his heart, will seek in all things whatever is in conformity with God’s will. For him, this involves more than knowing and understanding how to differentiate between what is and is not the will of God. Rather, because he has offered himself to the service of God, he also seeks, now that he knows the will of God, to do and practice it. . . . Now, when the Holy Spirit fills the heart of a person more and more with his gifts and there is consequently a steady practice of goodness, then it is easy to discern that a person does the will of God more perfectly than he did in the beginning and that he is more and more equipped for all good works, as Paul also says in 2 Timothy 3:17 “that the man of God” (who not only rightly grasps the will of God from Scripture but also lets it lead him farther and farther through divine truth) “might be perfect, equipped for all good works.” But this does not mean that this person would no longer have any temptation to sin, as if he were no longer peccabilis and could not sin, as if he could not be taken advantage of by his own flesh and blood. All these inclinations are present in a person as long as he abides in this earthly dwelling. But this is the meaning, stated in a comparative way: one who is said to do the will of his Lord can have another above him who does it still better, just as one can be a master but still have many masters above him, while in comparison with an apprentice and journeyman he is called a master because he has a superiority over them. Thus it also is with Christianity within which someone is called perfect, not in the sense that sin has been completely taken away from him and out

LUTHERAN PIETISM (1670–1750)

of his mortal flesh so that he no longer has to deal with temptation, but rather because he is more practiced in the way of God than a beginner. So speaks the Holy Scripture. . . . Yes, in Christianity the strongest and most stalwart person should also still grow in power and strength as long as he lives, and there is no goal in sanctification set before him, until the end of his life, which cannot and should not still be surpassed. Insofar as this goal is in keeping with the acceptable and perfect will of God, the greatest virtues one receives from God are always used for greater growth. That is also the understanding of Paul in our text, that all of a person’s spiritual powers must increase; his faith must always become stronger, his love purer, more ardent, and upright, his hope for eternity more and more firm, and the fear of God, which is the beginning of Christianity or of true wisdom, as the Scripture says, must also always increase. . . . When a sailor propels his ship against the current, his arms must certainly be stretched out in order to row well, and all necessary work must be applied earnestly so that the ship can break through the power of the current and reach the intended harbor. But if he lets down his arms and gives up on the work, the ship will soon be driven back by the current and moved downstream. So it happens also with a person because sin always adheres to him and makes him sluggish, according to Hebrews 12:1. A special and unremitting earnestness is needed for a person to move forward and become more closely united with God. Nevertheless, a person has this consolation that he does not effect this by his own powers but rather by the Holy Spirit, who strengthens him. . . . If someone wants to blow a feather upwards, as long as this feather is kept up in the air, the easier it is to make it go higher. But if one decides to rest a little and lets the feather fall to the earth, it picks up an impurity that makes it difficult to raise it upwards again and, by one’s breath, to drive it heavenwards. So it is also with the spirit of a person. If the spirit or mind of a person strives for what is heavenly and eternal, the heart will be more heavenly and spiritually inclined, and it will also be ever easier for him to hold to God and to be more closely united with God....... O Lord, . . . give us the powers of your Holy Spirit such that we may be truly metamorphosed and so reshaped in our hearts, Jesus, that you establish your own form within us and henceforth we do not live but you live in us. May we actively and powerfully experience without ceasing, in the ground of our

229

hearts, the godly life that you lead, sitting at the right hand of the majesty of God. . . . 185. THE FOOTSTEPS OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE (1709) The following text shows that Francke did not start out with a master plan when he began to develop the charitable and evangelistic institutions at Halle. He was convinced, however, that God had been continuously at work to help establish them and make them succeed. From August Hermann Francke, Seg Segensvolle ensvolle Fußstapf ußstapfen en des noch lebenden und waltenden Gottes entdecket durch eine Nachricht von dem Wäysen-H äysen-Hause ause und übrig übrigen en Anstalten zu Glaucha vor Halle (3d ed.; Halle: Waisenhaus, 1709), 2–3, 5–9, 12–16, 19, 2, 101, 104, 105, trans. Eric Lund. Chapter One 1. It was formerly the custom in Halle and its suburbs for people to specify a particular day during which the poor should come at the same time every week to their doors to request alms. Since Thursday happened to be the day in my neighborhood (being pastor at Glaucha), the poor frequently assembled before my door on that day for this purpose, and for some time I had bread distributed to them. But it soon came into my mind that this would be a desirable opportunity to help the souls of these poor people as well through the Word of God, since they, being for the most part grossly ignorant, are in the habit of getting involved in much evil. One day, as they waited at my door for alms to satisfy their physical needs, I let them all come into the house, and, placing the adults on one side and the youth on the other, I began in a friendly manner to question the young people from Luther’s Catechism about the principles of their Christian religion. The older persons only listened as I spent about a quarter of an hour in this catechetical exercise. I concluded with a prayer and then, according to custom, distributed the gifts among them, telling them in addition that in the future they should receive both spiritual and physical provisions in the same way at my house, which they accordingly did. The practice was begun about the beginning of the year 1694. 2. Since I found such gross and shocking ignorance among the poor, I scarcely knew where I should begin to impart to them a firm ground for their Christian faith. I was troubled for some time

230

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

by thoughts about how I might more forcefully help them, considering that a very great harm arises for a Christian commonwealth when many people go about like cattle without any knowledge of God and divine things. This is especially the case when so many children, on account of their parents’ poverty, are never sent to school and so never get any education to speak of. They grow up in the grossest ignorance and surrounded by such evil that in their later years they are good for nothing and so betake themselves to stealing, robbing, and other evil deeds. . . . 5. [A little while later, I] fastened a box in the living room of the parsonage, with these words written over it: 1 John 3:17, “If anyone has worldly goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart before him, how does the love of God remain in him?” And under it: 2 Corinthians 9:7, “Every man must act according to his own will, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” This was intended to remind those who went in and out or came to me from other places to open their hearts toward the poor. The box was put up in the beginning of the year 1695. . . . 7. About a quarter of a year after the poor box was set up in the parsonage, a certain person put into it, at one time, four thaler and sixteen gröschen. When I took this into my hands, I said, with the joy of faith, “This is now a considerable fund with which some important undertaking should be established; therefore I will begin a school for the poor with it.” I did not confer with flesh and blood about this affair but acted in faith and the very same day made arrangements that books be bought for two thaler. Then I got a poor student to teach the children two hours a day. . . . 8, 9. Around Easter 1695, this charity-school was begun with the small provisions. . . . Soon after Pentecost some of the citizens, seeing that particular care was taken for teaching the poor children, wanted their own children to be instructed by the same master and offered him a gröschen weekly for each child. This obliged the master to teach five hours a day. . . . Several people from outside heard about this undertaking and sent money to support it, and others sent linen to have shirts made so that the students could be persuaded by such benefits to receive instruction more easily. And so our charity school was held throughout the summer and the number of poor and citizens’ children who were taught in it was about fifty or sixty....... 13. At the beginning of the winter . . . I divided the children and gave the children of the citizens one

instructor and appointed another one especially for the poor children. Each of these masters taught four hours a day. . . . 14. But now I saw that the children for whom one had the most hope were to all appearances accomplishing nothing because whatever was accomplished in the school was destroyed again when they left the school. This made me plan to single out some children for fuller care and instruction. This was the first occasion that it came into my mind to attempt to set up an orphanage, even before I knew of any fund to make this feasible. When I informed a good friend of this endeavor, his Christian spirit moved him to bequeath five hundred thaler, the interest from which, amounting to twenty-five thaler, would be paid out each year at Christmas. This has been done ever since. When I saw this blessing of God, I wanted to select one orphan to be maintained by this yearly revenue. But it happened that four fatherless and motherless sisters were presented to me from whom I was to choose one. 16. I ventured, trusting in the Lord, to take all four. . . . The following day, after I had provided for the aforementioned four orphans, two more came in, and the next day, another; two days after this, one more; and eight days later, another was taken in. And so about the sixteenth of November, there were already nine who were committed to the care of several Christian people. For these I appointed a student of theology, whose name was Georg Heinrich Neubauer, to be their overseer, who was entrusted with all things necessary for their maintenance....... And thus we had poor orphans brought together even before we had built or bought a house for them....... 17, 18. As the undertaking was begun in faith, so it was now to be advanced in the same way, without letting rational concerns about future shortages hold it back. . . . I removed the twelve orphans (for that is what their number had become) from the three different houses in which they were lodging and brought them together in the house we bought and expanded. The student who was their overseer soon made arrangements to get beds and other household necessities for them, provided for their food and drink, and saw to it that they were kept clean and in good order. . . . 22. As the first beginning of this work was occasioned by the beggars coming to my door, so afterwards special care was constantly taken not only for children but also for incapacitated old people. And while in the beginning only Thursday was fixed for

LUTHERAN PIETISM (1670–1750)

distributing alms, so afterwards Tuesday was added. They were catechized at the midday hour and then received their charity. 24. Another school was set up in September 1697 for those boys whose parents wanted them to be instructed in the fundamental points of learning. But in the year 1699, on the eighth of May, this school was united with that class of orphans who were taught languages and sciences. To manage them better, they were divided into three classes, each served by a different teacher to instruct them in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew as well as history, geography, geometry, music, and botany. . . . 31. After the Lord had thus provided for the orphans, and given many demonstrations of his fatherly providence over them, he further inclined the heart of an eminent and well-disposed gentleman to make a settlement for the maintenance of some poor widows and to entrust me with the management of this. . . . For these aged widows there is not only appointed a chaplain, of good and pious behavior, to go to prayer with them twice a day, but also a maid . . . to serve them, to buy such things as are necessary for them, and to nurse them if they happen to fall sick. . . .

231

taking of this sort may in some measure actually get rid of this problem, and so the land can expect many benefits, both spiritual and temporal, from its existence. JOHANN ALBRECHT BENGEL (1687–1752) 186. EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE (1740) In addition to his notable book on text criticism, Gnomon of the New Testament [See volume 2, #265], Bengel wrote several books about eschatology. The following excerpt from his interpretation of the book of Revelation, published in 1740, shows his interest in establishing a precise chronology of the history of salvation and the importance he attached to the early leaders of the Pietist reform movement. From Johann Christian Friedrich Burk, Dr. Johann Albr Albrecht echt Beng Bengels els Leben und Wirken (Stuttgart: Johann Friedrich Steinkopf, 1832), 278–94, trans. Eric Lund.

Chapter Five 1. As for the spiritual benefits that may be expected to result from such endeavors, they may easily be deduced from the main purpose of the whole undertaking, which is the salvation of souls to eternal life. Now, as the soul is greater than the body, so the outward care of the body is in no way the chief intention but is used as the means to maintain the soul. . . . 7. In further consideration, cannot these foundations be thought of as schools and seminaries set up for the general good of the whole country? For good workmen are trained in all trades, good schoolmasters, so also, good preachers and counselors who afterwards will think themselves the more obliged to be of service to everyone because they have experienced the special care of God in their childhood and have been educated with all diligence. And the high authorities of the land cannot only hope that they will be loyal and desirable subjects but can also expect that through such well-educated subjects many others will be led away from a criminal life. 8. The country will also be cleared of stubborn beggars, thieves, murderers, highwaymen, and the whole mob of loose people who, for the most part, arise because institutions for the care of the poor and the education of youth are so inadequate. An under-

Fig. 8.6. Portrait of Johann Albrecht Bengel (1865), after older painting.

The whole book of Revelation breaks down into three parts: 1) the introduction, 2) the exposition,

232

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

and 3) the conclusion. The first three chapters form the introduction, and their content is a preparation for what follows. First, the preparation takes place with regard to John. . . . Next, we have the preparation regarding the seven angels (or overseers) of the churches and then at the seven churches themselves....... After these preparations, the Lord speaks anew to John, saying that he would “show him things that must take place after this” (4:1), and here now begins the exposition that opens with the manifestation that all power in heaven and in earth is given to Christ. This is made apparent, first in a general way in chapter 4 and then by the seven seals [chapter 6], the first four of which relate to visible events that commenced soon after the communication of the revelation. The riders on the horses (6:2, 4, 5, 8) are not exactly particular people but rather representations of events taking place soon thereafter in the four regions [of the Roman Empire]. . . . [Editor’s note: The first four seals are associated with military victories and natural disasters during the reign of the Emperor Trajan, AD 98–117.] The three last seals relate to the invisible world, which is likewise under the governance of Christ. First [under the fifth seal, 6:9] appear the martyrs, whose lives were taken by the Roman emperors....... Under the sixth seal (6:12) appear the wicked who have died and wait in terror for the Day of Judgment....... The sealing of the elect in chapter seven may be regarded as a preparation for the all-important seventh seal (when, once again, representatives of the invisible world, namely, angels, appear). . . . The angels (ch. 8) now equip themselves for the full execution of the great commissions given to them, which they then carry out not altogether but one after the other. The trumpet of the first angel (8:7) relates to the Asiatic “earth” and signifies the dreadfully raging revolts of the Jews, which commenced during the reign of Trajan but took place mainly under his successors, especially at the instigation of the false messiah, Bar Kochba. . . . The second, in chapter 8:8, relates to Europe . . . and signifies the invasions of the Goths and other barbarian nations into the Roman Empire. The third, in chapter 8:10, relates to the heretic Arius, who “fell from” the “heaven” of the church through his blasphemous teachings, especially in Africa. . . . The fourth, in chapter 8:12, embraces the whole world, as then known, and signifies the downfall of the old Roman Empire, which in 395 was divided between Arcadius and Honorius and which Alaric, Attila, Genseric, and Odoacer then ravaged, one after another. . . .

The fifth trumpet, in chapter 9:3, relates to the false zeal of the heathen in Persia for their dark teachings because of which they persecuted the Jews severely for seventy-nine long years. . . . The sixth trumpet signifies the slaughter by the Saracens, which began on a small scale under the caliphs Abu Bakr, Omar, Osman, and Ali, but became more and more dreadful, until it was broken up before the city of Rome in 847. . . . In chapter 10 an angel appears who solemnly swears that although the three enemies—Satan, who is now thrown down to the earth; the Beast that rises up out of the sea; and the other Beast that rises out of the earth—will now bring about the third woe, yet, with the impending trumpet of the seventh angel, no further period of 1111 1/9 years will elapse until the consummation of the mystery of God, which was so often foretold by the prophets of the Old Testament [10:7]3 . . . Along with the trumpet of the seventh angel, one hears, in chapter 11:17, the hymn of praise sung by those in heaven concerning the goal and end of the tribulation that is coming upon the earth at that time. Then a new scene of very important things is disclosed. First, there appears, in chapter 12:1, “the woman clothed with the sun,” that is, the church of God and of Christ as it originally took root mainly in Israel and then as it was planted, raised up, spread abroad to the east and the west, and preserved among the Gentiles. It will appear much more glorious in the future, especially when the natural branches (the Jews) will be grafted back again into their own olive tree. . . . The woman’s pregnancy intimates that it began to be evident in the age of Charlemagne that all nations will become her inheritance, and her cries signify the anxious yearnings of the saints for the imminent consummation of the kingdom of God. The great red dragon with seven heads, ten horns, and seven diadems, who sets himself in violent opposition to this approaching consummation, signifies the devil in all his wrath and power [12:3]. His drawing after him of a third of the stars denotes the apostasy of many teachers from the true faith in the years 847–947, when the Manichaean heresy and the reckless life of the church brought about great harm. . . . The flight into the wilderness refers to the movement of Christianity from Asia to Europe, especially to its northern parts, which had, until then, been a spiritual desert in comparison to the lands that belonged to the old Roman Empire, where Christianity had long been upheld [12:6]. . . . The river that the serpent shoots out of his mouth [to sweep away] the woman signifies the Turkish power that was delimited in the

LUTHERAN PIETISM (1670–1750)

Asian “earth” by the crusades and subsequent events [12:16]. . . . The Beast that is mentioned in chapter 13 has a twofold appearance: the first out of the sea and the second out of the bottomless pit. The first appearance is evil and continues for a long while, but the second appearance, though shorter, is worse. This Beast is a spiritual-worldly power that began not long after the second woe, . . . apparently nothing other than the papal hierarchy, which arose above all under Gregory VII and has, in principle if not always in actuality, claimed dominion over all the lands of the earth....... The “war with the saints” [13:7] may be seen in the history of the Albigensians and Waldensians in the thirteenth century, of the Wyclifites and Hussites in the fifteenth, and of the Protestants in the sixteenth and later centuries. . . . The Beast out of the sea lasts for 42 prophetic months or 666 6/9 years [13:5]. . . . I have attempted various calculations: for example, marking the start of this period in 1073, the beginning of the reign of Gregory VII, or 1077, the humiliation of Emperor Henry IV through this pope, or 1080, when Gregory VII named Rudolph as emperor, according to which the end of this period would fall around 1740–50, when the papacy sustained considerable diminution. . . . But I have not reached any precise certainty about this. . . . The other Beast (13:11) rising “out of the earth” (apparently Asia) is the false prophet, the weaponbearer of the first who appears at or after the end of 666 years. It is that power that upholds and defends the power of the pope intrinsically as well as out of its own interest. In the beginning it may be a party or order, but in the last time it may be an individual person. . . . Time will tell whether or not this is the Jesuits (who correspond with the characteristics very well) or perhaps the Freemasons. . . . The tyranny over conscience that the Catholic church has exercised until now is only the prelude to a far worse religious tyranny that will arise when the mark [of the Beast, 13:6] must be accepted, partly as a marking on the body or clothing and partly perhaps as an [authorizing] signature. The three angels who next appear (chapter 14) particularly signify three great messages and also the instruments through whom the messages are brought. The instruments are men who perhaps have special help from the invisible ministry of angels. The first is apparently [Johann] Arndt [14:6]. . . . The importance of Arndt is evident from the extensive circulation of his writings in many lands and in many languages and from the diligent use of them by all

233

true Christians. The second angel is [Philip Jacob] Spener, through whom the study of New Testament prophecy came into fashion [14:8]. The third angel will not be far off. His commission is to warn, with threats of severe punishment, against the inward or outward honoring of the Beast. In his way of thinking, he appears to be nearly related to Arndt and Spener. . . . The images of a harvest in chapter 14:14-20 represent two visitations before the outpouring of the seven bowls [in chapter 16]. In the crop harvest, the righteous are brought into the granary of heaven, and in the vintage harvest, the scornful are brought into the wine-press of wrath. . . . How long it will be until this period takes place cannot be exactly determined. It is enough to know that it will be near. . . . In chapter 15 now follows that sign by which the wrath of God will be accomplished. Up to this point, he had looked upon the enemies with great forbearance, but now he shows his wrath to the utmost. It comes forth swiftly and whatever it strikes, it strikes completely. . . . In chapter 18 the angel appears who most emphatically describes the fall of Babylon. The great debates about the nature of the fulfillment of this prophecy prove that it has still not happened. . . . However, all the traits mentioned in this chapter make it completely clear that no other city can be intended than Rome, the city that has most profusely shed blood, first under the heathen emperors and afterwards under the popes. . . . Chapter 19: After the awful destruction of Rome, there follows another joyful hallelujah in heaven, and John catches sight of the Son of God in the triumphant perfection of his power, who now appears to utterly destroy his enemies upon the earth. . . . A conflict now begins between the Beast, the false prophet, and the Son of God that ends with their being thrown into the lake of fire. . . . The devil now arrives at the third stage of his punishment. First, he lost his principality; under the seventh trumpet he remained awhile in heaven and was then thrust down to the earth. Now he will be cast for a thousand years into the bottomless pit. . . . After the termination of this thousand years, Satan will be loosed again for a short time, but when this time is completed and Satan’s last attempted attack through Gog and Magog is repelled, he will come to the fourth stage of his punishment in the lake of fire. . . . Chapter 21 describes the eternal glory and blessedness of the new universe, where now the New Jerusalem appears. . . . That the New Jerusalem will be a spatial place is entirely certain because we will

234

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

have bodies that must occupy a space. But whether the numerical descriptions of the size of the city are to be taken literally or to be understood with reference to the number of the elect, I will not attempt to determine. . . . ACCOUNTS OF SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES The Pietists frequently collected and published accounts of conversion experiences. Although there is considerable variety among them, certain patterns often reappear. The individual becomes aware of his or her sinful state, goes through a difficult period of struggle with guilt and despair (a Busskampf), and then experiences a breakthrough (Durchbruch) and the beginning of a new life. We see all of these elements in the following account, which was reported in the form of an interview. 187. THE CONVERSION OF THE PEASANT FARMER JACOB SCHNEIDER (1697) From Fortg ortgesetzte esetzte Sammlung Auserlesener-Materien zum Bau des Reichs Gottes Gottes, vol. 5, ed. Joachim Wilcke (Leipzig: Walther, 1736), part 36, 462–65, trans. Eric Lund. How did your conversion come about? Our preacher at Arensfelde, named Herr Richler, was very zealous and gave precise warnings to all hearers. As soon as he noticed someone absent from the church service, we would go to visit him at his house after the sermon and ask him why he had not been in church. Now it happened that once when my servant had skipped the sermon, Herr Richler asked me where my servant was. I said he was at the mill, though I could not remember whether or not this was true. When I went to confession the next Saturday, Herr Richler took me to task on the confessional stool and chastised me before all the people, saying that I had lied to him, that my servant had not been at the mill, and that I and my people were Sabbath-breakers. It annoyed my old Adamic nature that he had chastised me publicly before all of the people and considered me evil, so, although I had gone to confession, I did not partake of communion that Sunday. After the sermon, Herr Richler came to me and chastised me more sharply, saying that I was a scorner of Holy Communion and the Word of God. He wanted to inform the authorities about me so that they would chase me out of the town because I hindered all blessings and worked on Sundays. What happened after that?

O, my dear God faithfully followed me and sought my poor soul. Once when I was plowing in the fields, it became so bad for me that I had to put the plow away and go home. When I came home, I lay on my back on my bed, and as I lay there I saw before me a deep abyss and round about it a barren mountain. Then it seemed as if someone spoke to me: “Jacob, if you do not truly repent and convert yourself, you will go down into the deep abyss.” Because of this I was very anxious and afraid. I told my wife about this and sought consolation from her. My wife went to a neighbor and asked him to come and comfort me in my despair. He came running with his Bible, but it was like a blind man showing others the way. Finally, I had to be silent and say no more. What happened then? Once when I was coming from the fields and wanted to go home, our preacher, Herr Richler, met me at the bridge and spoke to me, saying: “Now, Jacob, how does it stand with you, do you persist in your evil mind? Do you not want to get better and convert to God?” Just as the man said this to me, it became entirely different for me. I could truly feel that my spirit was different, and my hate and anger was all at once changed into such heartfelt love that I would have gladly given him all that I had. How did you conduct yourself after this? I began to pray, and dear God sent me great joy and sweetness and a true foretaste of eternal life so that a thousand times I wished to die right away. Did you remain long in such joy? O, no! I entered into a long repentance-struggle (Busskampf ) through which I had to sweat for a long time. First I came under the law, and for over a year I truly felt the anguish of hell. Now if the least unrighteous thing remained in me, I had to give it up ten times over. Afterwards, I came into the hardest struggle, namely, with disbelief, and this again endured for a year. I could not imagine anything other than that I would be eternally lost and damned. In such great anguish, I once stood under an apple tree in my garden and thought: “Why don’t I go back to the world and live as before, like others who still have hope that they will become holy and do not have such anguish as I have?” But then I thought about what someone once said to me: “Turn back to the world and you will be ten times more chastised.” And so I made a firm determination that I would not go back again, whatever the cost might be. In such anguish, when I felt pure anger and disgrace, I went back to Arensfelde to the preacher to cry out my need to him. While I was under way, I

LUTHERAN PIETISM (1670–1750)

fell to my knees in a field and cried earnestly to God, remonstrating with him about why he had created and upheld me for so long, why he had so dearly redeemed me if I still was so lost. Were you long in this state? I must have spent a year in such anguish until finally dear God brought me into the gospel. I received assurance and certainty that I had forgiveness for all my sins and was a child of God. I still remain this way up to the present time through God’s grace. What was the nature of your former life? O, God have mercy. I lived in such blindness; you can count on that. I went to confession, church, and communion, indeed I was truly zealous about that, and I also led an honorable life. I was diligent in my calling and in my work, but only out of avarice. I respected the authorities, such that they were always at peace with me. However, I was unconverted and not yet reborn. Therefore, I cannot thank God enough that he put up with me so long in my blindness and still rescued me out of my blindness in my advanced years. . . . How does it go with you now that you have begun a different life? I must suffer much. They want to stone me out of the village. As long as I am silent about their way of life they can put up with me, but when I see that their unrighteousness, their hard-drinking, and their dances are not right and no longer participate in such activities, they take offense at me, and if they had it in their power, they would often beat me up. When the preacher criticizes this or that sin of theirs from the pulpit, they always say, “The prayer-knave (BettSchelm) has been informing on us again.” . . . Most people hold back from true repentance and true Christianity because they would have to suffer mockery and scorn. But if we want to obtain a crown, we must be willing to suffer. Therefore, we can rejoice at what our Lord Jesus said in Matthew 5:11, 12: “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.” All mocking names will one day become pearls in our crown. I have suffered much. Prayer-Knave was my best title, but God never leaves us in suffering without consolation. . . . Has God also shown you a special grace? Yes, God led me once into the bridal chamber of the Lord Jesus, where I saw, heard, and tasted very much. But I should not speak about that. One must always remain in humility. . . .

235

188. PETERSEN: DREAMS AND REVELATIONS (1719) Eleanor von Merlau Petersen was one of the most influential women in the early development of Pietism. She and her husband, Johann Wilhelm Petersen, lived in Frankfurt and were married by Spener in 1680. Later, however, they became promoters of Philadelphianism, a movement begun by Jane Leade in England that disassociated itself from all existing churches and nurtured apocalyptic expectations about the eventual restoration of a pure, spiritual church. From Der deutsche Pietismus Pietismus, ed. Werner Mahrholz (Berlin: Furche-Verlag, 1921), 236–45, trans. Eric Lund. . . . The following secrets were disclosed to me during the years of my marriage. In the year 1685 I received for the first time a disclosure about the holy Revelation of Jesus Christ that I had never had thoughts about before, having always passed by such a great book thinking I would understand nothing in it. But as I went one time into my little room and took the Bible into my hand, a phrase from it jumped out at me. I received into my eyes, the words of Revelation 1:3: “Blessed is he who reads and hears the words of prophecy and keeps what is written there, for the time is near.” These words went very deeply into my heart, and I thought to myself, “You have neglected and bypassed the book of holy Revelation, and there are still such great things in it.” And although I excused myself for having passed it by because I thought I would not understand the content, it came into my mind if there were such great promises in such books and also such threats, God would faithfully give me the grace to learn to understand what I should do so that I might participate in such promises and flee what could cast me into such judgment. With this expectation, I fell down before God, imploring him with inner sighs to open the eyes of my understanding for me so that I might know his most holy divine will and he might always find me to be a true doer of his word. As I now rose up from prayer and took before me this blessed book to read, I did not have the least thought that it would be immediately opened to me, but as I began to read I did not feel well, as if my heart were pierced with the light of God, and I understood all that I read. Many Scripture passages that relate to the holy book of Revelation came to mind, and as I looked them up I was very moved and humbled before God that he let such grace happen to me, his lowly maid. I took a

236

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

piece of paper and wrote down the passages in order to harmonize them with what I found in the Apocalypse, thinking that they might escape my memory, and when I had written them down, I went to my dear husband and said, “See what our dear God has opened up for me from holy Revelation.” He took the sheet in his hand to read and was shocked. He also handed me his own written page, still moist, for it was written just that hour. He said to me, “The Lord has truly disclosed to you what he has done to me. Go now; we will show each other again in a little while what the Lord has further revealed to us.” So it happened that when I showed him something the Lord opened up to me, the same was also opened up to him, and similarly when he brought me something, I had also already received it. Then we remembered a vision I had had in a dream in the year 1662, when I was eighteen years old, in which I saw the number 1685 in large golden numerals up in the sky. The first two numbers were quickly covered by the clouds, but both of the other numbers, 85, remained standing. To my right I saw a man standing who pointed to the numbers and said: “See, at that time great things will begin to happen and something should be revealed to you.” This also truly came true, for in the year 1685 great unrest and persecution came about in France, and in the very same year, the blessed one-thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ from holy Revelation was opened to me. PIETIST HYMNS 189. FREYLINGHAUSEN: WHO IS THERE LIKE THEE? Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen (1670– 1739) served as assistant to August Hermann Francke for many years and eventually succeeded him as pastor of St. Ulrich’s Church in Halle and director of the Francke Institutions. In 1704 he published the SpiritRich Songbook, which went through several editions and became the most widely used hymnbook among the Pietists of northern Germany. He wrote fortyfour hymns himself, which have often been considered among the best produced within the Pietist movement. The following “Jesus hymn” (the original German version has fourteen verses) has also circulated widely in the English-speaking world in a freer translation by John Wesley as “O Jesus, Source of Calm Repose.”

From James S. Stallybrass, trans., in Sabbath Hymn and Tune Bo Book ok, ed. John Curwen (London: n.p., 1859). Wer ist wohl wie du 1. Who is there like thee, Jesus, unto me? None are like thee, none about thee, Thou art altogether lovely; None on earth have we, None in heav’n like thee. 4. Love that warmly glowed, Blood that freely flowed; Life that stooped to death to save me, And a deathless being gave me, Bore my guilty load, Brought me back to God! 6. Plant thyself in me, I will learn of thee, To be holy, meek, and tender, Wrath and pride and self surrender: Nothing shouldst thou see But thyself in me. 190. LAURENTI: REJOICE, ALL YE BELIEVERS Laurentius Laurenti (1660–1722), who served for many years as cantor and director of music at the cathedral church in Bremen, is usually associated with the Pietist movement, but his hymns are free of the thematic peculiarities and overindulgent expressions of emotion to which many non-Pietists objected. The following Advent hymn (the original German version has ten verses), composed in 1700, is based on Matthew 25:1-13, the same text that, a hundred years earlier, inspired Philip Nicolai’s famous chorale, “Wake, Awake, For Night Is Flying.” From Sarah Borthwick Findlater, trans., in Hymns fr from om the Land of Luther Luther, 1st series, ed. Jane Borthwick (Edinburgh: Kennedy, 1854). Ermuntert euch, ihr Frommen 1. Rejoice, all ye believers, And let your lights appear! The evening is advancing, And darker night is near. The Bridegroom is arising, And soon he draweth nigh. Up, watch, and pray, and wrestle, At midnight comes the cry!

LUTHERAN PIETISM (1670–1750)

7. Ye saints, who here in patience Your cross and sufferings bore, Shall live and reign forever Where sorrow is no more. Around the throne of glory The Lamb ye shall behold; In triumph cast before him Your diadems of gold! 10. Our Hope and Expectation, O Jesus, now appear; Arise, thou Sun so longed for, O’er this benighted sphere! With hearts and hands uplifted, We plead, O Lord, to see The day of earth’s redemption, That brings us unto thee! 191. HILLER: O SON OF GOD, WE WAIT FOR THEE Philip Friedrich Hiller (1699–1769), the most productive hymnwriter among the south German Pietists, has been called a poetical exponent of the practical theology of his teacher, Johann Albrecht Bengel. He wrote 1,075 hymns, 297 of which were inspired by the prayer book of Johann Arndt. The following hymn (the original German version has four verses) expresses a sense of world weariness and a longing for bliss, feelings that were often part of the Pietist frame of mind. From Joseph A. Seiss, trans., in The Story of Christian Hymnody Hymnody, ed. E. E. Ryden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 124. Wir warten dein, O Gottes Sohn 1. O Son of God, we wait for thee, We long for thine appearing; We know thou sittest on the throne, And we thy name are bearing. Who trusts in thee may joyful be, And see thee, Lord, descending To bring us bliss unending. 2. We wait for thee, ’mid toil and pain, In weariness and sighing; But glad that thou our guilt hast borne, And cancelled it by dying. Hence, cheerfully may we with thee Take up our cross and bear it, Till we the crown inherit. 3. We wait for thee; soon thou wilt come, The time is swiftly nearing;

237

In this we also do rejoice, And long for thine appearing. O bliss ’twill be when thee we see, Homeward thy people bringing, With ecstasy and singing! 192. VON BOGATZKY: AWAKE, THOU SPIRIT OF THE WATCHMEN Carl Heinrich von Bogatzky (1690–1774) was born into a noble Hungarian family. His father, a high-ranking army officer, disowned him when he enrolled as a student of theology at Halle instead of pursuing a career in the army. Limited by poor health, he devoted his life to writing, including the composition of more than four hundred hymns. The following hymn (the original German version has fourteen verses) reveals the strong Pietist interest in evangelization and foreign missions. From Winfred Douglas and Arthur Farlander, trans., in The Story of Christian Hymnody Hymnody, ed. E. E. Ryden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 118. Wach auf du Geist der ersten Zeugen 1. Awake, thou Spirit of the watchmen, Who never held their peace by day or night, Contending from the walls of Sion, Against the foe, confiding in thy might, Throughout the world their cry is ringing still, And bringing peoples to thy holy will. 2. O Lord, now let thy fire enkindle Our hearts, that everywhere its flame may go, And spread the glory of redemption Till all the world thy saving grace shall know, O harvest Lord, look down on us and view How white the field; the laborers, how few! 3. The prayer thy Son himself hath taught us We offer now to thee at his command; Behold and hearken, Lord; thy children Implore thee for the souls of every land: With yearning hearts they make their ardent plea; O hear us, Lord, and say, “Thus shall it be.” 193. WOLTERSDORFF: COME, MY HEART, NO LONGER LANGUISH Ernst Woltersdorff (1725–61) was a pastor in Silesia and founder of an orphan asylum. The following communion hymn (the original German version has thirteen verses) is notable for its graphic description

238

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

of the redemptive suffering of Christ. Such meditations on the blood and wounds of Jesus were even more commonplace in the writings of Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf, the Pietist leader who was involved in the formation of the Moravian church. From J. Salyards, trans., in Collection of Hymns for Public and Priv Private ate Worship fr from om the Ev Evang angelical elical Luther Lutheran an Joint Synod of Ohio (8th ed.; Columbus: n.p., 1872). Komm, mein Herz! 1. Come, my heart, no longer languish, Jesus feeds thee on his anguish: Blood of life divine is flowing, Cool the thirst within thee glowing. Joy is through my spirit streaming; Lo! a God, my soul redeeming, Robes me for a nobler station, Bathes me in his free salvation. 8. Bread most holy! let me bless thee! For he mingles as I press thee, Flesh divine, all rent and riven, Wounds my guilty race has given, As the bliss I feel suffusing, I will taste it, deeply musing How for me my Savior dying, Lowly in the grave was lying. 9. Wine most holy! Let me bless thee! In my kindling soul confess thee: For that blood is in thee glowing, Once for guilty mortals flowing. Quick’ning all my barren spirit, Moves the Savior I inherit. Is there here mysterious seeming? Yet his blood within me streaming! COUNT NICHOLAUS VON ZINZENDORF (1700–1760) 194. ON THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTER AND CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE LIFE OF A CHRISTIAN (1746) This sermon was preached in German in the Brethren’s Chapel in London on September 25, 1746, during Zinzendorf’s period of exile from Saxony. From Nine Public Lectures on Important Subjects in Religion, trans. George W. Forrell. (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 1973), 74-83.

. . . The genuine character of a Christian consists absolutely in this: when he speaks with the Savior, when he speaks with his brethren, when he has anything to straighten out with God the Father, when he needs the ministry of angels, when he shall present himself on the day of the Lord to join in judgment over the living and the dead – then he absolutely does not appeal to his religious denomination, but rather to his nature, to his descent For the most serious objection on that day will be, “I do not know you nor where you come from” (Luke 13:25) . . . Therefore, it is a rule belonging absolutely to the character of the true Christian that, properly speaking, he is neither Lutheran nor Calvinist, neither of this nor the other religious denomination, not even Christian. What can be said more plainly and positively? What reformer, be it Hus or Luther or Wycliffe, or whatever his name might be, would be so presumptuous as to maintain that men are saved because they are his followers? For Paul excludes Christ himself when he says, “Not of Paul, not of Cephas, not of Apollos, not of Christ” (1 Cor 1:12 alt.) . . . It does not matter that men have confessions of faith; it does not matter that they are divided into religious denominations; they may very well differentiate themselves according to their Tropo Paedius (form of doctrine). An upright Christian man can say, I side with Calvin; an upright Christian man may also say according to my judgment I rather side with Luther. But this gives neither the one nor the other the least warrant, the least right to salvation; this only distinguishes him according to his insight and as an honest man among the faithful; it entitles him not to be arbitrarily judged in his manner of acting, in his form, his method of treating souls, and in the outward appearance of his worship. Each thing has its peculiar external form, its external shape, and everything does not look alike. No man has the same point of view as another, but by this means he distinguishes himself innocently and inoffensively. . . . Now then, I have said what a Christian is not, what a person must not presume to comprehend under the name of Christians, in what respect a person must not boast of Christ, what a Christian upon occasion must consider entirely as skybala, as refuse, as Paul calls it (Phil 3:8), whenever it tends to interfere with the foundation, with the main point, even were it good and real in itself or could in a certain sense be valid. . . . Now I come to the other part of my discourse, to the chief circumstances which are found in the case of such a Christian.

LUTHERAN PIETISM (1670–1750)

The character of a Christian, the entrance into this state, and the entire progress in it as well are based on the text which I have read: “Do you love me?” (John 21:16). . . . My friends, it is this: whoever will answer Yes to the Savior’s question, “Do you love me?” must have caught sight of the Savior when the Savior looks into his heart for the first time. This is the order: First the Savior looks at us, and we perceive him; at that moment we have the matter in hand, and the Christian is ready. . . . Once one is involved in the Spirit, one comes into that extraordinary state concerning which John expresses himself thus, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day” (Rev 1:10). And this may happen with more or less sense experience, with more or less distinctness, with more or less visibility, and with as many kinds of modifications as the different human temperaments and natural constitutions can allow in one combination or another. One person attains to it more incontestably and powerfully, the other more gently and mildly; but in one moment both attain to this, that in reality and truth one has the Creator of all things, the fatherly Power, the God of the entire world, standing in his suffering form, in his penitential form, in the form of one atoning for the whole human race – this individual object stands before the vision of one’s heart, before the eyes of one’s spirit, before one’s inward man. And this same inward man, who until how has been under the power of the kingdom of darkness, as soon as he catches sight of his Deliverer, this Deliverer reaches out his hand to him and plucks him immediately out of all corruption; He pulls him out of the dungeon of his prison and places him in the light before his face: “Take heart, my child, your sins are forgiven (Matt 9:2); I will make a covenant with you, that you shall be mine (Jer 31:33); I will be you advocate in judgment, and you shall be allowed to appeal to me, but, will you have me? That is the Crinomenon, the deciding factor. . . . He who in this moment, in this instant, when the Savior appears to him and when he says to him, as to Peter: “Do you love me in this figure?” – he who can say, “You know all things; you know that I love you” he who in this minute, in this instant, goes over to him with his heart, passes into him, and loses himself in his tormented form and suffering figure – he remains in him eternally, without interruption, through all eons; he can no longer be estranged from him. . . .

239

VALENTIN ERNST LÖSCHER (1673-1749) 195. THE SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PIETISTIC EVIL (1718) Löscher taught theology briefly at the University of Wittenberg around the same time August Hermann Francke arrived at the University of Halle. He spent most of his life as a pastor and also served as church superintendent in Jüterbog and later Dresden. His critique of Pietism was first published as a series of columns in a newsletter. They were collected and reissued in book form in 1718 and 1722. Trans. James Langebartels & Robert Koester. (Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1998), 49. Chapter 2 The Special Characteristics of the Pietistic Evil . . . Pietism in general is an evil: but there are also some specific evils. First, there is the pious-appearing indifferentism; by that I mean that the revealed doctrines, faith, the supports serving for the preservation of religion (church constitutions, the symbolical books, polemics, an accurate style of teaching, and church ordinances), even religion itself, have been made indifferent and unimportant, even suspicious and objectionable. Some of these pietistic doctrines and practices were inherently connected with indifferentism, others flowed from it. Second, there is the incipient fanaticism, or crypto-enthusiasm; the means of grace and the ministry have been depreciated, and even revoked, through pietistic doctrines and practices; in their place, coarse enthusiastic and fanatical things were commended, defended and excused. Third, there is the so-called theoretical operatism, or work righteousness; the works of men have been too highly regarded and have been mingled into the basis of salvation, namely into righteousness by faith. Fourth, there is millennialism; many have sought and hoped for the end of Christ’s kingdom of grace and cross, and the beginning of an absolute kingdom of glory in this life. Fifth, there is terminism, which cuts short in this life God’s gracious will to save all. Sixth, there is precisionism; the sharpness of the law has been enlarged and increased, and the inquisition was reintroduced. Seventh, there is mysticism; through pietistic doctrines and practices, false and harmful conceits, if

240

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

only they appeared to be spiritual and holy, were introduced as divine secrets. Eighth, there is perfectionism; pietistic doctrines and practices have led men to overstep the mark, and to introduce a home-made fulfilling of the law and an imagined paradisaical condition in this life.

Ninth, there is reformatism; the present condition of the church has been regarded as completely corrupt, so that a fundamental reformation, or the establishment of a completely different church, is needed. All of these special evils will be treated in more depth below, so that they are less often misunderstood. . . .

9. The Reformation in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe (1523–1738)

Significant political transformations took place in Scandinavia during the 1520s, and these were soon followed by the introduction of major religious changes. In 1397, the Treaty of Kalmar had created a union between three Nordic kingdoms: Denmark, Norway (including Iceland) and Sweden (including Finland). Prompted mainly by a common desire to limit the German influence of the Hanseatic League over the Scandinavian economies, the aristocrats of the Nordic states had agreed to recognize a common king while maintaining their own separate national councils. However, there were continuous tensions between Denmark and Sweden that turned to outright conflict in 1518 when Christian II of Denmark (1481–1559) invaded Sweden to assert his control over the union. The king was victorious in 1520, but the imprisonment and execution of more than eighty Swedish noblemen and bishops in the Stockholm Bloodbath provoked a rebellion. Christian II lost control of Sweden in 1523 and was soon after deposed in Denmark by his uncle, Frederik I (1471–1533). The coronation charter signed by the new Danish king required him to block the spread of the Lutheran movement within his kingdom, but Frederik I was disinclined to suppress the advance of these new religious ideas. Their influence was already evident in Schleswig and Holstein where the new Danish king had been the elected duke, and they had also advanced into Jutland, where Hans Tausen (1494–1561), a monk who had studied in Wittenberg, and other sympathizers in Viborg, began to preach in an evangelical manner (doc. #197). Malmø,

which was then part of eastern Denmark, also became a center for the evangelical movement, and further openness to Lutheranism had been prepared in Copenhagen by the presence there of reformminded humanists such as Paul Hellie, a monk who taught at the university. Frederik I needed the economic and political support of the traditional ecclesiastical aristocracy so he had to act pragmatically, regardless of his sympathies. However, when Tausen was dismissed from his religious order and faced persecution in Viborg in 1526, the king made him his royal chaplain. When the parliament met in Odense in 1527, Frederik persuaded the nobles to declare the independence of the church from the papacy and support the toleration of Lutheran preaching (doc. #196). In 1530, when Christian II began to threaten an invasion to regain his control of Denmark, King Frederik invited the religious leaders to draft a confession to unify the kingdom’s religious stance. Hans Tausen composed the forty-three articles of the Confession of Copenhagen, which bluntly expressed indignation towards the conservative bishops and attacked much of the theology and practice of medieval Catholicism (doc. #198). When Frederik died in 1533, his eldest son, Christian III (1503-1559), completed the establishment of a national Lutheran church. In 1536, he imprisoned the Catholic bishops who had instigated a civil war to block his coronation, and he also confiscated all the property of the church. Johannes Bugenhagen came from Germany to create a church order for Denmark, and the old bishops were replaced by Lutheran

242

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

superintendents. Peder Palladius (1503–1560) who had also studied in Wittenberg, became the first Lutheran superintendent of Zealand (doc. # 200) and later Hans Tausen served as superintendent of Ribe for twenty years. They were the two most influential theological voices in the Danish Reformation. Martin Luther wrote several letters to Christian III to encourage the advance of reform, but he also expressed concern that royal seizure of church property might diminish the resources available to the church (doc. #199). Later, Luther’s widow, Katharina von Bora, would appeal to the king for financial support after her circumstances became difficult as a result of the Schmalkaldic War in Germany (doc. #201). In 1536, Christian III permanently reduced Norway to the status of a province of Denmark and made it subject to the same religious policies. However, it took several years to replace the four Catholic bishops with Lutherans, and Norway did not receive its own church order until 1607. The first few superintendents were Norwegian-born, but afterwards almost all of them were Danes until the 18th century. Iceland also became a dependency of Denmark, but Christian III had to send troops in 1541 to oust the old Catholic bishop of Skálholt. The king successfully pressured the Icelandic assembly to accept a new Lutheran church order. However, the northern part of the island continued to resist religious and political changes. The Catholic bishop of Hólar sent a force southward to oust the new Lutheran bishop of Skálholt in 1550, but he was defeated and beheaded. The first complete Danish translation of the Bible, published by Christian III in 1550 was commonly used in Norway as well as Denmark, and Iceland received its own vernacular Bible in 1584. Gustav Vasa (1496–1560), son of one of the nobles executed in the Stockholm Bloodbath, became the king of independent Sweden in 1523. As in Denmark, the advance of Lutheranism took place during his reign through the influence of priests who had spent time studying in Wittenberg. Foremost among them were two brothers Olaus (1493–1552) and Laurentius Petri (1499–1573). King Gustav faced several rebellions during the early years of his rule and resigned in 1527 as a ploy to muster wider support. The national council, assembled at Västerås, persuaded him to continue as king and also took the first steps to separate the Swedish church from Rome (doc. # 202). A year later, the king compelled the Catholic bishop of Västerås to consecrate three new Lutheran bishops. As a result of this act, the Swedish church became the only branch of Lutheranism that

could claim to have a historic episcopate in apostolic succession, despite the break from Rome. As in Denmark, King Gustav was cautious about making any radical changes in religion. Olaus Petri, however, moved the church further in a Lutheran direction through the liturgical manual he produced in 1529 (doc. # 203). He stressed the importance of worshiping in the vernacular language so that the people could understand the service. In 1526 he translated the New Testament into Swedish, and in 1530 he also published the first Swedish hymnal. Relations between Olaus Petri and the king were often strained because Petri was critical of the king’s efforts to gain full control over the church. Petri were impeached in 1536 but reconciled with the king in 1540. Olaus’ brother, Laurentius, became the first Lutheran archbishop of Uppsala in 1531 and served in that position until his death forty-two years later. His major contribution was the Church Order of 1571, during the reign of Gustav Vasa’s son, Johan III (ruling 1568–1592). This fixed in place various ritual changes that had been made since the start of the Swedish Reformation and generally endorsed a Lutheran understanding of the sacraments (doc. # 204). However, the document made no references to Luther and did not speak in detail about many theological beliefs. After Laurentius Petri’s death in 1573, King Johan III, who had married a Polish princess, revealed his high church sympathies and opened new negotiations with the pope. He introduced another ritual for the Mass which incorporated more elements of the Roman liturgy. He allowed Jesuits to enter Sweden, and some believed he secretly converted to Catholicism. However, he required certain religious concessions before making a complete reconciliation with Rome and became so disillusioned that he dismissed the Jesuits from Sweden in 1580. When Johan III died in 1592, Sweden was briefly ruled by his brother, Karl, Duke of Södermanland (1550–1611). As regent, he urged the church leaders to clarify the identity of the church before Johan’s son Sigismund, a committed Catholic, returned from Poland where he had been elected king in 1587. The clergy gathered at the Uppsala Assembly in 1593, restored the Church Order of 1571, rejected “popish heresies,” and, for the first time, gave their approval to the Augsburg Confession (doc. # 205). The Swedish estates supported Karl against Sigismund and deposed the heir shortly after his return to Sweden in 1598. Karl IX became king in 1604 and was succeeded in 1611 by his son, Gustavus Adolphus, who would play

THE REFORMATION IN SCANDINAVIA AND EASTERN EUROPE (1523–1738)

an important role in the defense of Lutheranism during the Thirty Years War. After the dissolution of the Union of Kalmar, Sweden retained control of Finland and also attempted to extend its influence over the Baltic region. The Teutonic Knights from Germany had controlled the territory known today as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland since the high Middle Ages. When the crusading order declined, the northern states came together as the Livonian Confederation in 1435, and in the southern region the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland formed a commonwealth with a shared hereditary ruler. Russia, Poland, Sweden and Denmark all attempted to dominate the Baltic area, and Sweden kept extending its control over Estonia and Livonia from 1561 until 1721, when the region was finally integrated into the Russian Empire. As in the cases of Denmark and Sweden, scholars returning from Wittenberg initiated the Reformation in Finland. Chief among these was Mikael Agricola (ca. 1508–1557) who translated the New Testament into Finnish in 1548 (doc. # 206). The Swedish king, Gustav Vasa divided Finland into two diocese in 1550 and made Agricola and Paavali Juusten (1516–1576), another Wittenberg student, the two bishops of Turku (Åbo) and Viipuri (Viborg). By the 1520s, Lutheranism had already entered the Baltic region through the influence of German merchants. Martin Luther wrote several letters to the Livonians, offering them advice about how to deal with internal dissension (doc. #207). Lutheranism became the majority movement in the northern Baltic states, but the situation was much more complex in Lithuania and Poland. After 1550, Protestants there were divided among Lutheran, Calvinist and Bohemian Brethren churches. (There were also some adherents of the anti-trinitarian views spread by Laelius Socinus.) After the resurgence of Catholicism during the Counter-Reformation, the major Protestant groups sought protection against repression by working out a stance of mutual respect in 1570 in the Consensus of Sandomierz (doc. # 208). However, further efforts to unify non-Catholics in Poland failed. Lutherans who supported the Formula of Concord withdrew from the Consensus in 1580. There were efforts again, in 1645, near the end of the Thirty Years War, to work out religious co-existence in Poland, but negotiations at the Colloquy of Thorn failed, and disagreements especially about the Lord’s Supper caused the Lutherans and the Reformed to go their separate ways. There were continuous interactions between Ger-

243

many and Scandinavia as the Reformation unfolded, and even though the dynamics of change were different in the Nordic countries, new developments associated with Lutheran Orthodoxy and Pietism also influenced the Scandinavian churches. At first, there was widespread sympathy for Melanchthon’s humanistic moderation in both Denmark and Sweden. Niels Hemmingsen (1513–1600), the most important Danish theologian of the second half of the sixteenth century, who was internationally influential because he wrote his books in Latin, showed strong leanings towards some of Melanchthon’s more controversial theological stances. When Hemmingsen began to teach a crypto-Calvinistic understanding of the Lord’s Supper in the 1570s, GnesioLutherans in Germany called upon the Danish king to suppress the influence of Philippism (doc. # 209). Hemmingsen was suspended from his professorship in Copenhagen and recanted his view of the Lord’s Supper, but he continued to be influential within the Danish church for the remaining twenty years of his life. Hemmingsen wrote on a wide range of topics, both theological and pastoral, including popular belief in witchcraft, a matter of considerable concern in Scandinavia as well as Germany in this period. He took seriously the possibility that the devil gave power to sorcerers and also condemned people who consulted with practitioners of the “cunning arts” either to cause harm to others or to find healing from various afflictions (doc. # 210). The German Lutheran princes also urged the Scandinavian monarchs to endorse the Formula of Concord as the fullest expression of Lutheran beliefs. All of the Nordic churches eventually accepted the Augsburg Confession, but King Frederik II of Denmark viewed the Formula of Concord as unnecessarily elaborate and potentially divisive (doc. #211). Sweden did not officially accept the full Book of Concord until the new church laws of 1686. Despite these signs of resistance to theological precision, there was a general trend towards Lutheran Orthodoxy in Scandinavia in the early seventeenth century. In Denmark, the most prominent defenders of clearer doctrine were Hans Poulsen Resen (1561–1638) and Jesper Brochmand (1585–1652), who served successively as bishops of Zealand. Johannes Rudbeckius (1581–1646) played a similar role in Sweden. The Scandinavian kings did not welcome being pressured by German princes and theologians and often viewed doctrinal vagueness as a valuable way to maintain unity within their national churches. However, they came to the aid of the German Protestants during the Thirty Years War for various reasons.

244

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Early setbacks for the Protestant armies increased apprehension about the revitalization of Catholicism, and their interests in expanding political and economic power also convinced them of the indirect advantages they might reap by intervening in Germany. King Christian IV of Denmark (ruling 1596–1648) entered the war first in 1525 but was soundly routed. When troops of the Catholic emperor occupied a large part of Denmark, the king formed an alliance with King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. In the Treaty of Lübeck in 1629, Denmark agreed to withdraw from the war in return for the restoration of its territories, but Gustavus Adolphus invaded Germany in 1530 and, after a series of astonishing victories, came to be seen as the great savior of the Protestant cause. His death in battle in 1632, deflated expectations, but Swedish troops continued to participate in the war until its end in 1648. (See more in chapter 4) In Germany, many clergy felt that the Thirty Years War had contributed to widespread moral and spiritual decay in society. A similar sentiment became common in the Scandinavian countries through the circulation of German devotional literature (e.g. Johann Arndt) and later through contacts with Halle Pietism. The influence of August Hermann Francke became particularly strong in Denmark during the reigns of King Frederik IV (ruling 1699–1730) and his son, Christian VI (ruling 1730-1746). In 1705, Frederik IV established a partnership with Halle to send missionaries to the Danish colony of Tranquebar in southeast India (doc. #212). In 1714 he also founded a missionary college in Copenhagen, which sent the first Lutheran missionaries to Lapland and Greenland. Under Christian VI, clergy with sympathies for Pietism were favored for appointments to bishoprics. Most notable among these was Erik Pontoppidan (1698–1764), who was the court preacher after 1735 and later bishop of Bergen. Pontoppidan’s Truth onto Godliness, an explanation of Luther’s Small Catechism published in 1737, had a strong influence on Norwegian and Danish piety for the next 200 years (doc. # 213). His book, Mirror of Faith (German: 1727, Danish: 1740) described the possibility of an experience of assurance, almost mystical in nature, and suggested how it could be nurtured (doc. #214). Many of the most beloved hymns of Scandinavian Lutheranism also come from the period of Orthodoxy and Pietism. In 1666, one of Iceland’s greatest poets, Hallgrímur Pétursson (1614–1674), composed a set of fifty hymns reflecting on episodes in the passion of Christ (doc. #215). Thomas Kingo, the bishop of Funen (1634–1703), left a lasting mark on

the Danish church through his early penitential spiritual songs and his church hymns about Gospel stories, the sacraments and the major festivals such as Easter. His much-loved morning and evening hymns expressed joy over the gift of life and also the need to prepare for the end of life (doc. #216). Women did not have as many outlets for expression as men, but Norway’s first published poet, Dorothe Engelbretsdatter (1634–1716) was encouraged to write hymns by Thomas Kingo. This daughter and wife of Lutheran pastors in Bergen published her first collection of poems in 1678 and continued to add to it until the last edition contained 70 hymns (doc. #217). Haqvin Spegel (1646–1714), who was a bishop from 1685 until 1714, is one of Sweden’s most favored hymnwriters. The new hymnbook he produced in 1695 contained 56 of his hymns, 25 of which were inspired by the book of Psalms (doc. #218). Denmark’s most celebrated Pietist hymnwriter, Hans Adolph Brorson (1694–1764), served as bishop of Ribe for the last twenty-five years of his life. In 1732 he published a number of Christmas hymns that are still used by many Lutheran churches. (doc. #219). Another collection he published in 1739 contained sixty-seven of his own hymns and translations of others by German Lutheran Pietists. His hymns about the death of Jesus also contain imagery reminiscent of Moravian piety. DENMARK/NORWAY 196. DENMARK: AN EDICT OF TOLERATION—THE ORDINANCE OF THE DIET OF ODENSE, 1527 B. J. Kidd. Documents Illustrative of the Continental Reformation. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), 234. (1) Henceforth every man shall enjoy freedom of conscience. No one shall be at liberty to ask whether a man is Lutheran or Catholic. Every man shall answer for his own soul. (2) The King extends his protection to the Lutherans, who hitherto have not enjoyed such full security and safe-conduct as the Catholics. (3) The marriage of ecclesiastics, canons, monks, and other spiritual persons which for several centuries has been forbidden, is now allowed; and everyone is free to choose whether he will marry or remain celibate. (4) In future, bishops shall no more fetch the pall

THE REFORMATION IN SCANDINAVIA AND EASTERN EUROPE (1523–1738)

from Rome: but after they have been duly elected by the chapters possessed of the right, they shall seek confirmation from the Crown. 197. HANS TAUSEN: LETTER TO BISHOP JENS ANDERSEN OF ODENSE (1529) In the year he wrote this letter, Tausen, the leader of the Danish reformers, moved, at the king’s request, from Viborg to Copenhagen. When Tausen persuaded the king to commit to Lutheranism in 1536, bishop Jens Andersen Beldenak was imprisoned. Later he married and lived the final thirty years of his life as a wealthy lay nobleman. Hovedverker av den Kristne Litter Litteratur atur fr fraa Kirkef Kirkefedr edrene ene til nutiden. Vol. 4, Fra Ref Reformasjonstiden ormasjonstiden I Norden (Oslo: Luthersitftelsens Forlag, 1931), 83–85, trans. Eric Lund. Aha, Sir Jens Andersen. How hard it must be for you to assert that you are a bishop by God’s grace. O no, unfortunately not by God’s grace but by God’s great wrath and glowing anger. Because of our ingratitude and diverse sins, God has deprived us of our right pastors and plagued us with you and your sort, who under such a high and holy name brandish your powerful and mighty tyranny over us and contrary to the nature of a true bishop set yourselves over us, both as divine and secular princes. You want to reign over both soul and life contrary to all law. And as a sign of this you call yourselves “we” and allow both yourself and your fellow bishops to be called “gracious lords”, like other worldly princes – quite obviously in opposition to Christ’s commandment (see Matthew 20; Luke 22)! Christ did not give us apostles and bishops to rule and reign over countries and kingdoms, to torment and tax the poor common people, to collect such chests of goods as you do, but only to preach the holy gospel with words and good Christian examples: Therefore, he also called them apostles, that is human messengers, a name that you have not appropriated for yourselves, for you realized full well that you were not sent or called by God to such power or worldly honor, but rather you have plotted with friend and friend’s friend, and have purchased all this yourselves with the pope and the princes, so that you now have come so high! And thus you have called yourselves bishops, that is “watchmen” or” overseers”, who should rightly support the poor Christian common people with eternal food, and even personally yourself preach and teach the word of God, to enlighten the blind, teach the erring, admonish the negligent, con-

245

sole those who are perplexed or grieving and with all diligence ensure that the word of God goes as it should, so that it roars and boils everywhere, and false teachings do not in anywhere. But see, you do not take the trouble to do this . . . ! You are certainly bishops and overseers in your own manner: with the left eye you are constantly on the lookout for these worldly things and take especially good care of your great interest and riches, you subpoena, you excommunicate, you quarrel and torment. . . . Yes, you study and rack your brains about this, and you take great pains day and night so that your properties shall grow and nothing shall be taken away from you – in that way, you can to be sure be called bishops and overseers. But you have not learned this from the Holy Spirit in the Holy Scriptures, which set completely different requirements for a bishop: Paul wants him to be holy and capable, not a drunkard, but sober, a husband of one wife and likewise chaste, cultivated and loving, and upholding proper morals, being manly and conducting himself as the best do. He should be fair, not stingy with money, not go in for hypocritical advantage or seek his own benefit. He should be grounded in the Holy Scriptures, able to give good advice and sound teaching, and capable of punishing adversaries. He should have faithful, obedient children who are of unimpeachable character in business dealings and honest in all ways, and should as well be able to provide for his own house. He should also care for the poor, put a roof over their heads and indeed serve all who need it with life and goods. See, you should be adorned with such qualities, for then we could consider you as bishops according to grace of God, even if you carry neither these high hats nor gilded silver staffs. 198. DENMARK: CONFESSIO HAFNIENSIS (THE CONFESSION OF COPENHAGEN), 1530 The Confession of Copenhagen was drafted by Hans Tausen and presented to the Danish National Assembly. It was more polemical than the Augsburg Confession. After setting forth 43 positive articles of belief, it listed the following condemnations. Erik Pontoppidan. Annales ecclesiae danicae diplomatici (Copenhagen: A. Möllers Wittwe, 1741), Book 6, Chapter 3, 836-845, trans. Eric Lund.

246

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Fig. 9.1. Portrait of Hans Tausen as a young man by unknown artist.

26. We believe and say that the true Christian Mass is nothing other than a solemn remembrance of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ and also the love of the father, in which the body of Christ is eaten and his blood is drunk, with the certain pledge that through him we attain the forgiveness of sins. 27. So also we believe and say that true worship does not consist in outward singing, reading or soul ceremonies, in adornments, apparel, shaved heads, oil or other outward holy things which are taught by the ignorant clergy and admired and believed by the simple people. 28. Where the Supper of Jesus Christ is held and celebrated among the living as God has prescribed, Christians must receive both the body in the bread and the blood in the wine for their benefit as living persons. 29. We also believe and teach that the true Christian church has a single sacrifice, namely Jesus Christ, offered once for all sinners, perfectly on the cross. He may not be sacrificed again as the blasphemers of God do in their masses for the living and the dead. 30. We also believe and teach that the sacraments and the gospel, the reading of scripture and all singing by the church assembly must be held in the language that the common people understand so that they are thereby awakened to praise and thanksgiv-

ing and can confirm it from their hearts and minds with the addition of Amens. . . . 35. Of vigils, masses and other ceremonies held for our brothers and sisters who have died in Christ, we find nothing in scripture. The only vigils which the old fathers held, were not to help the dead but for the comfort and encouragement of the survivors so that they might learn to disdain earthly life and hope for salvation in eternal life. 36. True Christian bishops or priests, which are the same thing, are nothing other than preachers and servants of the pure word of God who must, at the risk of the loss of their own salvation, share and promulgate it among the people and not mix with the worldly and proud or fight and lead soldiers. . . . 37. We also believe and teach that all people, both the religious, as they are called, and the secular, in whatever estate they are, much be subservient to the princes and secular authorities and honoring laws, customs and Christian decrees and privileges which are not contrary to God and are fruitful for the general welfare. Whoever opposes them we consider unchristian. . . . 43. We also believe and teach that the head of the true, holy Christian church and assembly is only Jesus Christ our savior, and no other creature in heaven or earth. From Christ the head all life, health, salvation, refreshment and all benefits come to its members, namely all Christians. . . . . . . By the king’s majesty and the authority of the royal council, Hans Tausen and some other preachers from the disciples of Luther have described the whole of Christianity in the above articles and have cried out against evils, especially in the following articles: 1. The holy church has erred for thirteen or fourteen hundred years, that is since the time of the apostles. 2. All old church customs, commandments, ordinances and habits, as well as fasts, differences in clothing, food, and ceremonies and dignities of offices are to be scorned and abolished. 3. All righteousness is merely from faith alone. 4. God esteems no good works and considers none suitable for salvation, no matter how beautiful they may appear, and no matter how they may accord with human or divine commandments. 5. Humans have no free will and all that happens in the world happens because it must and cannot be other than as it is. .

THE REFORMATION IN SCANDINAVIA AND EASTERN EUROPE (1523–1738)

6. Therefore what we do or allow does not rest in our power. 7. It is unchristian to invoke the saints of God or venerate the bones and images of the saints. 8. There is no purgatory after death and no suffering which will then be diminished. 9. There are only two sacraments: baptism and the body of the lord. All others are fraudulent human inventions. 10. To withhold the blood of Christ in the chalice from the laity is contrary to the teaching and example of Christ. 11. Therefore all the bishops and priests are thieves, rogues and traitors who have robbed the laity of the help of the sacraments. 12. All Christians, of both sexes, are priests. 13. There is no outward or visible priesthood. 14. Therefore, all those who are baptized in Jesus Christ are free to consecrate the body of God and do all that particularly concerns the priests and servants of the church. 15. The Roman bishops who are called popes, with their teachings and hypocrisy, have been Antichrists and opponents of Christ since the death of the apostles. 16. It is proper for all priests to be married, and if their wives die, it is possible to marry again if it pleases them. 17. Therefore all the consecrated and ordained bishops and priests are not of God, but are papists. 18. Therefore the celibacy of the priests is a fund of the devil which serves the greed and advantage of the bishops. 19. The Mass is not a sacrifice, and the New Testament has no visible sacrifice. 20. Therefore, if the priests hold mass in the Roman way, they are doing a cursed work, sin severely, awaken the wrath of God, and crucify Jesus Christ, the Son of God, again. 21. The mass must never be used other than for those who receive the sacrament – not for others who are living, let alone the dead. 22. Therefore all soul masses, prayers, alms, fasts and other things used for the service of the dead are falsehoods and deceive the people. 23. It follows that the tithes, church rents and other

247

foundations which belong to the churches, cloisters and prebendaries, look like an unjust increase through which the priests and monks with their greed and hypocrisy rob many Christian princes and lords of their goods. 24. No eternal vows may bind the conscience. Therefore cloister life is an error and deceit which has little agreement with true teaching or godliness. 25. Therefore all cloisters should be destroyed and abolished, and all vows rescinded because it is godless to consider them obligatory. . . . 199. LUTHER: LETTER TO KING CHRISTIAN III OF DENMARK (DECEMBER 2, 1536) From Walch XXIb, 2127-2128, trans. Eric Lund. Cf. WA Br. 7. # 3112. 602-603. Most powerful and serene high-born prince and gracious king, I have gladly examined your majesty’s writing and am pleased that you have eradicated the [Catholic] bishops (who cannot stop persecuting God’s Word and confounding secular regiment). I want to do the best I can to help explain and answer. I also humbly request that the spiritual resources that you wanted to have placed under the crown be put aside so that the churches might still be well and properly supplied from them. For if they are dispersed and torn apart, how shall the preachers be sustained? I admonish you (perhaps unnecessarily, though our people have been moved to inform us of some examples) to keep in mind that there are many who would like to take everything and where God has not given us pious princes, who think with all seriousness and faithfulness, there could be many parishes that are laid to waste. If Satan also carried some of this out in your land, may God help your majesty to consider the needs of the church. Consider the divine word, and all who now or in the future will learn from it how to be made holy and to enter eternal life. It is all about the word. May Christ our dear lord, be with your majesty now and eternally. Amen. 200. PEDER PALLADIUS: THE PRECIOUS TIME OF GRACE (1541) Palladius became the first Lutheran superintendent (bishop) in Denmark. This sermon was recorded in his Visitation Book in which he described the reli-

248

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

gious situation in the kingdom after the Reformation. Hovedverker av den Kristne Litter Litteratur atur fr fraa Kirkef Kirkefedr edrene ene til nutiden. Vol. 4, Fra Ref Reformasjonstiden ormasjonstiden I Norden (Oslo: Luthersitftelsens Forlag, 1931), 115–21, trans. Eric Lund. Above all things you should know how to take care of the time you have now to live here on the earth. Remember that our Lord Jesus wept over the people of the city of Jerusalem because they were not careful about their time. He told how it would go for them [Matt 24:2] – and so it did forty years later: human blood flowed out of all the gates in Jerusalem and not one stone was left standing on another other throughout the city only because they would not cherish the time when he visited them. Others, however, came to him from afar and were (still) with him on the third day and listened to him, so he had to give them food before each of them went to his own home lest they hunger while on the road. Now here you sit in the parish and have only a short walk to your parish church. You know you are able to hear the same that Christ himself taught, and yet you will not take heed of the time and go so far in search of the word of God and teaching about your salvation. Do you not deserve to be punished by God? Do you not deserve to become a pitiable wretch? Yes, do you not deserve to starve in both life and soul? There are many who believe that if they can only get food and full platters here on earth, if they can just come above their fellow Christians, – that is the most important. It is insignificant to think about their salvation – that is soon arranged. Yes, my friend. Go only 8 or 14 days without tasting food or drink, and see how well your body will do. So you can know what it will do to your soul when you are away for long from the word of God and will not take heed of your time. We should take heed of four times. The first is the time of grace or our lifetime. The second is our time of death, the third our judgment or the time of reckoning, and the fourth is the time of joy or torment.. We need to notice and pay attention to these four because there is great power in them. . . . We should give strict attention to and above all care for the first time as we are now in it, so that we can reap what will comfort our poor soul in the future. For this is the only time that is important, but there will surely come another time. If you have diligently heard God’s word in this present time, all is well for you. However, if you have despised or scorned it,

then you shall see how the nasty devil will come in to your heart and get you to fall into despair about your life and soul, just as one puts out a light. . . . There were among the poor fishermen one by the name of Hans Bendtsøn, born in Odense, my old disciple of blessed memory. He and some others shouted to their comrades and said: “Dear brothers and good neighbors, let us not fall into despair because we will die in this water. Now let’s see, if we have ever heard the word of God in our lifetime, it will now apply. We see certain death before our eyes; here we must remain; it cannot be otherwise.” And then they began to sing the song that we now sing before the sermon: “Now we pray the Holy Spirit.” It was sung from the heart. When that was done, they sang the hymn over their own death that we sing over a body when we bury it: “With joy and peace we now go forth” There was fully little gladness among those who would see this flesh and blood or had seen where they were going. But the joy was in their hearts and they rejoiced that they had frequently heard the word of God in the full strength of their days. Therefore they could put their faith in it and console themselves with it. . . . 201. KATHARINA VON BORA LUTHER: LETTER TO THE KING OF DENMARK (OCTOBER 6, 1550) This letter was written four years after Martin Luther’s death. Life became difficult for his widow during the Schmalkaldic War. She thought about moving to Denmark to live under the protection of the king. Erik Pontoppidan, Annales ecclesiae danicae diplomatici (Copenhagen: A. Möllers Wittwe, 1741), Book 7, Chapter 3, 307–8, trans. Eric Lund. Most serene highness, most mighty and gracious king and lord, I subserviently plead for you [King Christian III] to accept my letter, considering that I am a poor widow and that my lord, Dr. Martin Luther, of blessed memory in Christendom, faithfully served and provided all kindnesses to your royal majesty. Now, your royal majesty was a gracious help to my dear man, giving him 50 thalers yearly. For this, I humbly give thanks and diligently pray to God for your royal majesty. But since I and my children now have less help and the unrest of these times brings many difficulties, I ask your royal majesty to mercifully give help and provide for us. I doubt that your royal majesty has forgotten the burdens and work

THE REFORMATION IN SCANDINAVIA AND EASTERN EUROPE (1523–1738)

of my dear man. Your majesty is also one of the few kings on earth who can give refuge to poor Christians. And so, God will, without doubt, give special gifts and blessings to your royal majesty on account of such deeds that are shown to poor Christian preachers and their widows and orphans, and I therefore will faithfully and earnestly implore you. May Almighty God prove gracious to your royal majesty, her majesty the queen and the young princes. From Wittenberg, dated October 6, 1550. Katharina, surviving widow of Dr. Martin Luther SWEDEN/FINLAND 202. SWEDEN: THE ORDINANCES OF VÄSTERÅS, 1527 The Recess of Västerås made the king the head of the Swedish church. The 24 Ordinances dealt with related administrative and fiscal matters. B.J. Kidd. Documents Illustr Illustrative ative of the Continental Ref Reformation ormation. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), 234–36. (1) Vacancies in the parish churches are to be filled up by the bishop of the diocese. If, however, he appoints murderers, drunkards, or persons who cannot or will not preach the Word of God, the King may expel them and appoint other persons who are more fit. (2) Where a parish is poor, two of them may be joined together, though not if such a step would be an injury to the Word of God. (3) All bishops shall furnish the King with a schedule of their rents and income of every kind. From these schedules he shall determine the relative proportions for them to keep and to hand over to the Crown. (5) Auricular confession must be given up as already commanded, and an account must be rendered to the King of all fines imposed. (9) Since it has been decreed that the King, and not the bishop, is to receive all fines imposed in cases within ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the provosts may hereafter hold court just as the bishops have done hitherto, and shall render an account of their doings to the King. (11) Priests shall be subject to temporal laws, and temporal courts, in all disputes of their own and of their churches, concerning property, torts, or contracts, and shall pay to the King the same penalties as laymen. But all complaints against the clergy for

249

non-fulfillment of their priestly duties shall be laid before the bishop. (13) Since it has been found that mendicant friars spread lies and deceit about the country, the royal stewards are to see that they do not remain away from their monasteries more than five weeks every summer and five weeks every winter. Every friar must get a license from the steward or burgomaster before he goes out, and return it when he comes back. (15) When a priest dies the bishop is not to defraud the priest’s heirs of their inheritance. Priests shall be bound, in regard to their wills, by the same law as other people. (16) If a man has sexual intercourse with a woman with whom he is engaged, he shall not be punished, since they are already married in the eye of God. (18) The sacrament shall not be withheld from any one for debt or other reason. The church or priest has a remedy in court. (19) Fines for adultery and fornication belong to the King, not to the bishop. (20) The Gospel shall hereafter be taught in every school. (21) Bishops shall consecrate no priest who is incompetent to preach the Word of God. (22) No one shall be made a prelate, canon, or prebendary unless he has been recommended by the King, and his name submitted to the King. 203. OLAUS PETRI: SWEDISH CHURCH MANUAL OF 1529 Two years after this liturgical manual was prepared, the language of worship was changed to Swedish. Olaus Petri, The Church Manual of Olaus Petri etri, trans. O.V. Anderson. Rock Island IL: Augustana Book Concern, 1948. Up to the present time, it has so happened, dear Christian Reader, that all that has been done in the Christian Church according to God’s commandment concerning sacraments and so forth has been in a foreign language, contrary to the mind and purpose of God, made known through His chosen Apostle Paul, who does not desire that anything shall take place in Holy Christendom unless it be for edification. Now, of course, nothing can promote the edification of the congregation unless it be understood. And because a foreign language has been used, such edification has never resulted, and not that alone, but it has come to pass that the outcome is hardly better than a farce,

250

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

bringing God’s Word and Sacraments to mockery and great contempt, which would never have happened if the language which we all understand had been used. This every sensible person must admit. Thus it has happened regarding Baptism. The minister in baptizing has spoken to the godfather and godmother in Latin, which they did not understand. Nevertheless they were expected to answer. They were required on behalf of the child to say, “I renounce,” and yet they did not know what it was they were to renounce or forsake. The minister inquired concerning faith, and they were expected to say that they believed, and still they did not know what that faith implied, since they did not understand the language in which they were being questioned. What is this but a sort of farce?… And since the procedure has been so senseless in this matter, I think it is to be feared that God has permitted it to bear its fruits accordingly. It is very little apparent in the child as it is growing up that it has received God’s grace in baptism so as to lead a good life. Indeed, according as we have prayed, so the child has received grace, which is readily seen in the fruits. And when one objects and advises such persons to the effect that baptism and other such acts performed in Christendom should be conducted in an intelligible language, then we receive the answer: Well, there were wise people like you before, you should have come sooner, and other such sarcastic words which one must hear in reply to the good and Christian advice we give. We heartily agree with them that there have been many intelligent people before us. But they must also admit that before our time there were many foolish people as well as now. . . . And inasmuch as a foreign language has been used, innumerable abuses have sprung up and many things are found in the Latin manuals, missals, and breviaries, which do not at all serve the purpose for which they have been used. And many parts are directly contrary to the Word of God as every sensible person can readily perceive who will examine them according to Scripture. Therefore, in order that hereafter things may be done more properly than has been the case heretofore, as God has given the grace, I have undertaken to issue a little handbook in Swedish, and particularly for the reason that at the Council which this very year was held at Örebro it was suggested that the Sacrament of Baptism might well be administered in the Swedish language, and that some instruction should be published for the benefit of the sick who ask to be prepared for their death, in order that the untutored clergy might have some guidance in their ministration to those who are

on their deathbed. These two matters having been treated by the Council, I have therefore taken the opportunity to prepare several items. I have not in all respects followed the Latin Manual to the letter, because this handbook has not agreed with Scripture as it should. I hope, nevertheless, that this Swedish Manual shall agree more closely with the Word of God than the other. Nor have I set forth as many prayers as the Latin Manual contains, since it seems to me unnecessary, because God does not look for many words in our prayers; rather He forbids us the use of many words. He desires a pure heart along with our prayers. Still, I do not here lay down any rule by which one has to be bound solely to the form I have proposed for these prayers. He who desires to make use of all the prayers which are in the Latin Manual, I permit him to do as he desires, as long as the prayer is not found to be contrary to Scripture. But this I would advise anyone to whom my advice might be of value, that he should translate such prayers into Swedish, in order that the whole congregation might understand what is said, since such prayers take place on behalf of the congregation. If they are to be one in heart and mind before God, together with the minister who offers the prayer, then they must certainly understand the meaning of that which they together with him request of God. And it would be quite helpful if the minister, who shall read such prayers, gave the whole congregation an admonition before lie begins the prayer, that they pray and join with a pious heart in the same prayer with him; and then he should read the prayers slowly and intelligibly so that the whole congregation can be aroused to godliness and ask with a full heart that for which they pray. Then the congregation can give assent to the minister and say, “Amen” thereto, that is: So be it. Accordingly, in this my manual I have also retained almost unaltered the ceremonies or practices which have been observed heretofore, such as in themselves have not been contrary to God’s Word, but I have eliminated the abuses which were pointed out in the aforementioned Council, in accordance with the conditions in this country, where the people have heretofore heard very little of God’s Word. And it would be very beneficial if the ministers knew how to instruct the people that they avoid regarding the ceremonies too highly. Because we have many ceremonies and practices in the administration of the sacrament which the sacraments themselves can well afford to be without: thus salt, chrism, oil, candles, and white robes are used in baptism. Formerly milk, honey or wine were also used in baptism. These ceremonies are more of an ornament to baptism than of

THE REFORMATION IN SCANDINAVIA AND EASTERN EUROPE (1523–1738)

any special efficacy, because baptism itself is just as good if such ceremonies are not there, since in fact they were not used in early Christendom. The same is true relative to several other such matters. I have also given a form for extreme unction, since it has for a long time been greatly abused. The sick have been anointed unto death and not unto life, contrary to the practice of the apostles. For they used costly water or ointment to heal the sick, and then lifted their prayers to God that He would restore the sick to health. They did not anoint anyone with the intention that such unction should be a “viaticum” for him, or a shield between the devil and his soul, or that it should blot out his sin, because that would have interfered with the function proper to faith. For they used such anointing solely for bodily healing, as the prayers pertaining thereto in the Latin Manual testify. Since there have been so many abuses, and further, since one does not have such ointment as the apostles used, it would be in fullest accord with Scripture if such unction were eliminated. But where this cannot be done, one must spare the weak and teach them how they should rightly interpret this unction, so that they do not overestimate its power. For this reason I have inserted at that place a brief explanation of it, and have presented in addition a special form of unction which may in a measure be claimed to be consistent with Scripture, provided it is used in the sense I have indicated. . . . Therewith I place this Swedish Manual at the disposal of all Christians, so that each may use it as far as he likes, no one being compelled to do so. But this I certainly dare to say that that which has been presented will be found to be in closer agreement with Scripture than the Latin Manual, even though for the sake of the weak, I have permitted many parts to remain which otherwise could easily have been omitted. But God give us all His holy grace to remain steadfast in His Word. Amen. 204. LAURENTIUS PETRI: THE SWEDISH CHURCH ORDER OF 1571 Eric E. Yelverton, An Archbishop of the Ref Reforormation: Laur Laurentius entius Petri Nericius, Archbishop of Uppsala, 1531-73. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1959).

251

Concerning the Lord’s Supper, Commonly Called the Mass Forasmuch as in times past there has been very considerable abuse and error in respect of this most worthy Sacrament of our Lord Jesus Christ’s Supper, there are two matters which concern us especially in this. The first is that we should have a right understanding thereof; afterwards that this same Lord’s Supper should be used in a proper and Christian manner, as its peculiar quality and nature require, and as Christ himself has instituted it. The right understanding of this Sacrament is that we here receive with bread and wine the very Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, as also the words clearly run: “This is my Body, also, This is my Blood.” But it belongeth to the proper use thereof that we eat and drink it in the Lord’s remembrance in honest and manifest company with other Christian men. Masses shall likewise not be celebrated except there be some at least present who will receive the Sacrament. And forasmuch as one observes how the folk, who are more wont to hear Mass, gaze upon and worship the Sacrament than to use it rightly by eating and drinking (as notwithstanding the command of Christ is), are very slow and unwilling thereto, Priests shall diligently admonish their parishioners that as true Christians they conform themselves thereunto. And there are in addition many causes wherefore a Christian man shall often approach the Sacrament, all of which would be too long to enumerate here. This however may be now said: where the heart of man is so consumed that he cannot rightly and earnestly reflect upon his sins or heartily call upon God for the forgiveness of sins, then he cannot much value the consolation which the Sacrament has for him. And there is no doubt but that this is the true reason why the old custom was changed, whereby formerly there was a continual use of the Sacrament in the Congregation; for when the folk began in this way to be cold and dull of heart, so that they regarded not their sins nor this sublime comfort, nor understood what true prayer to God can achieve, they also dispensed with the proper daily use of the Lord’s Supper, as is still the case today. . . . For it is likewise easy to understand that whosoever has not a hearty desire for the Supper of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that he gladly and often comes thereto, can neither have a right idea of and repentance for his sins, nor any true prayer and thanksgiving to God, and therefore no forgiveness of sins. For thus says the Lord, “To this man will I look, even to

252

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembles at my word” [Isaiah]. . . . Where it does happen that on those days when Mass is wont to be regularly celebrated none are desirous to receive the Sacrament, as does often happen now (may God amend it), then it is better that Mass be not celebrated, but something else put in its place, namely some godly Psalms, Sermon and the Litany, whereby the folk may be awakened to godliness and so made better. It must not be assumed from this that it would be good for a Christian Congregation that on some Holydays Mass should be omitted; but, evil though it be, we must choose to forgo the Lord’s Supper rather than it be prepared and no advantage taken thereof; especially since it can come to pass by slow degrees that when the Sacrament in the Mass is prepared, it is partaken of neither by the Priests, who cannot always be fit to receive it, nor by the Congregation, for that were a grievous and dreadful sin and a mockery of the Lord which can in no wise go without retribution. Some are accustomed to teach that, though a man do not receive the Sacrament, he is not therefore present in vain; for (say they) he is even so partaker of the prayers and thanksgiving, which are comprised therein, yes indeed spiritually of the Sacrament itself. Such may well be the case, nevertheless concerning those prayers and thanksgivings which are used in the Mass, since they commonly refer to the Sacrament and the gift which is thereby given, the man who receives the Sacrament has the better opportunity of doing this, namely of praying and thanking God. But, however that may be, surely it cannot but be that when the Lord’s Supper is celebrated, there must indeed be some who will eat and drink; for if food is provided and no guests are present who will partake thereof, that is a vain thing and to no purpose. But that such guests shall never be wanting, it must of necessity be that now at the least one party in the Congregation and then another dispose themselves thereto, and make use of the Sacrament. Whereunto also the Priests must diligently and discreetly exhort the folk, so that if through the folk’s neglect the Mass should fall into disuse, it should not be their fault. . . . Votive Masses, as they have by custom been called, shall no longer be celebrated for the purpose that has been, namely as an offering for sin. Otherwise, where folk befit themselves by true godliness to receive the Sacrament having been awakened by some particular reason or pressing need, they shall not be denied it on any holyday or weekday. Masses shall not be celebrated for the dead, or those

that have been called Propitiatory Masses or others; for such traffic in Masses is contrary to the proper use of the Sacrament, which has been instituted not for the dead, but for the living. . . . When the Priest shall celebrate Mass in the Congregation, he must first and as far as possible ascertain who and how many they be that will receive the Sacrament; for the people also, who intend to come, shall signify this either the evening before or on the morning of the day of the Mass, so that the Priest shall know how much to prepare. So also shall he examine such as present themselves, that none be permitted who for some noteworthy impediment are not qualified; for since all are forbidden to approach unworthily, so is it especially enjoined upon the Clergy that they give not the Sacrament to them that are unworthy thereof, casting precious pearls before swine, and making themselves partakers of their sin....... Nevertheless when someone cometh forward to receive the Sacrament, who has not notified his intention beforehand, if he knoweth of no special hindrance thereto and perceives not but that he does know the Christian meaning thereof, the same shall in no wise be repelled or importuned from the Sacrament. . . . The Sacrament shall likewise not be given to anyone who cannot give a reason or motive wherefore he approaches thereunto, or cannot rehearse the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Commandments, etc. Also not to children younger than nine or at the least eight years, for younger children can have little exact knowledge of the Sacrament; nor to lunatics, so long as they are out of their mind. . . . Nor also to them that have absented themselves from the Church for six months or a year, albeit they are without any legal impediment. . . . 205. THE DECREE OF UPPSALA (1593) Although Sweden had separated from the Catholic Church already in the 1520s, it didn’t officially declare allegiance to the Augsburg Confession until the Uppsala Synod. Henceforth, only Lutheran Christianity could be practiced in the kingdom. The Bo Book ok of Conc oncord, ord, Vol. 2: Historical Intr Introduction, oduction, Appendixes and Indexes Indexes, ed. Henry Jacobs (Philadelphia: The United Lutheran Publication House, 1908), 334–37, trans. and revised by Eric Lund. We, Karl (Charles IV), by the grace of God hereditary prince of the kingdom of Sweden . . . and we, the undersigned counsellors of the kingdom, bishops

THE REFORMATION IN SCANDINAVIA AND EASTERN EUROPE (1523–1738)

and clergy, who have been assembled at this meeting in Uppsala, make known and openly confess, before those who are present and absent, that since there has been, as is well known, must strife and disagreement in our fatherland, Sweden, during the past years concerning matters of religion, and thereby great dissension and disgrace has occurred, and as we have learned from example and experiences in foreign countries and otherwise that nothing is to a kingdom more injurious than strife and discord, and nothing more beneficial and wholesome, more binding the heart together, than unity and agreement, especially in religion; . . . it was by our unanimous desire and consent decided that there should be here in Uppsala, a general gathering of the principal estates of the kingdom, high and low, learned and lay, during this year, 1593, on the Lord’s Day, February 25, for the purpose of establishing an agreement in matters of Christian doctrine, church ceremonies, church discipline, a legal election of archbishops and other bishops, and several other points considered necessary and useful. Wherefore, in the name of the Holy Trinity, we have, on the day before mentioned, after a sincere supplication to God Almighty and a devout, careful and diligent consideration, adopted unanimously and voluntarily the following resolutions: First, that we all unanimously abide by the pure and saving Word of God, found in the writings of the holy prophets, evangelists and apostles; that in all our churches is shall be taught, believed and confessed that the Holy Scriptures were given through the Holy Spirit, and that they contain completely everything belonging to the Christian doctrine concerning God Almighty and our salvation, concerning virtue and good works, and that they are a foundation and support to a pure Christian faith, a canon whereby to judge, discern and prevent all disagreement in religion; that no explanations by the holy fathers or others are necessary, whoever they may be, who have added that which is not in harmony with the Holy Scriptures; that no man is allowed to explain God’s Word according to his own mind, in which respect or regard or approval shall be given the highness, reputation or authority of any person; that nothing but the Holy Scriptures, as it has been said before, [shall have this authority]. Moreover, we consent and acknowledge that we will abide by the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian symbols, and also by the oldest and true Unaltered Augsburg Confession, which was delivered by Electors and States to Charles V, at the great Diet of Augsburg, 1530.

253

Likewise, we acknowledge and will keep that religion both in doctrine and ceremonies printed in the ritual of 1571, and which prevailed in the kingdom during the latter part of the reign of our blessed king Gustav, of blessed memory and in high favor with God, and during the lifetime of our blessed archbishop, Lars Petri Nericiani the elder [Laurentius Petri]. But as there are retained in it some ceremonies which are used at the administration of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, such as the use of salt, candles and the elevation of the Host, also moving the missal from one corner to the other of the altar, and ringing of bells at the elevation of the Host – all of which have been laid aside in most of the Evangelical churches because they have been much misused, and more evil has come from the abuse than good from a right use of ceremonies. . . . Therefore, it is publicly and unanimously decided that all pastors, and also bishops in their visitations, shall diligently teach the people and admonish them faithfully not to abuse the ceremonies. Should they find that the abuse cannot be abolished unless the ceremonies be dispensed with, then may the bishops, with a few from each chapter in every diocese, convene with others of the most learned of the clergy, and consider, consult, and decide upon how these ceremonies before mentioned, may in time, without offense and tumult, and with quietness, be laid aside....... In regard to the liturgy which has been used by some of the clergy in the kingdom, and which has been found to be a root and cause of much evil and disturbance in matters of religion within the kingdom, and since it has been shown by the Word of God that it is in every respect superstitious, and in reality conformable to the Popish mass, which is offensive, opposed and derogatory to the merits of Christ our Savior, serving as a gate and entrance for other horrible Popish heresies, – we have completely and sincerely, with heart and mouth, disapproved said liturgy and all its evil consequences in doctrine, ceremonies, discipline, or whatever it may be called, and unanimously and earnestly pledged ourselves never to receive, approve or use it. Neither shall we receive or approve any other Popish doctrines or heresies, whatever they may be called, but reject them all together as human devices, contrived for worldly honor, dominion, power and riches, through which men are often misled. Likewise, we reject entirely the heresies of the Sacramentarians, Zwinglians, Calvinists and Anabaptists, and all other heresies, whatever be their

254

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

name, which we at no time will approve or agree to....... And although it should not be tolerated or allowed that such should settle in the kingdom who hold false doctrines and are not one in faith with us, in order that they may not lead others astray, yet that trade and commerce may not be hindered, we agree that those who have any heretical doctrines shall not be allowed or permitted to hold any public meetings in houses or otherwise; and in case any should be found guilty of that or of speaking evil of our religion, that shall be duly punished. And in order that it may be known and manifest to all what we at this meeting have considered and decided upon, it shall, as early as possible, be printed and published. . . .

Fig. 9.2. Etching of Mikael Agricola (ca. 1510–57) by artist Albert Edelfelt (19th Century).

206. MIKAEL AGRICOLA: PREFACE TO THE FINNISH NEW TESTAMENT (1548) In 1536, Agricola went to Wittenberg to study the art of translation with Luther. He had to establish an orthography and create new words in order to render the New Testament into the inchoate Finnish language. Michael Agricola, Der Ref Reformator ormator Finnlands (Helsinki: Akateeminen Kirkjakauppa, 1941), 123–27, trans. Eric Lund.

Now, dear Christian reader and good Finn, resident of Tavastland or Karelia,1 or whatever a friend of the Lord Jesus you may be, the books of the New Testament, half from Greek and half from Latin, German, and Swedish are being conveyed to you in Finnish, to the extent that the Spirit and grace of the Lord Jesus has given us gifts. Since the language of this country has previously been utilized little or almost not at all in books or letters, take this as it is, with pleasure for the Lord’s sake. And you should also know that the New Testament was written in Greek by the holy evangelists and apostles, except for the gospel of St. Matthew and the letter of Saint Paul to the Hebrews, which are said to be written in the Hebrew language. But when Christianity and Christendom came to Rome and Italy, the books were translated into Latin, which is the language spoken there. And now that Christianity and Christendom have come from there to Germany, England, Denmark, Sweden and also here and to other provinces which have been subordinate to the Roman Church, the Holy Bible, the Word of God, worship of God, and the liturgy in these countries, and here too, have hitherto only been offered in Latin. Every worship service should be held in every country in its own language, so that, just as Christ came to save everyone, the words which he taught us for our salvation might be understandable to everyone and nothing will be concealed, as it has been so far (with great risk to the soul). . . . This is because some of the clergy who have hitherto been the shepherds of the congregation, understood little and some almost nothing of Latin, and even now (so much worse) you find many stupid fools seated in holy positions (may God have mercy on us and improve this) who are wicked and have been very badly taught but still teach their people. And some, moreover, have little or no desire to prepare sermons or to teach the poor people to say the Lord’s Prayer, let alone to read the greater portion of Christian doctrine, though it is the supreme duty of the clergy to teach the people the catechism and God’s Word. Some are so deceitful or ambitious, mercenary or envious that they neither exercise the duties of their own office nor allow others to speak God’s words. . . . Now, so that no pastor or teacher in the future can shirk his obligation to teach or cover his laziness with the fact that he knows neither Latin nor Swedish, the New Testament has been translated simply, according to the text that the apostles and evangelists wrote. There will also be some explanations in the margins or sometimes at the end of chapters, so that those who have a little interest in the

THE REFORMATION IN SCANDINAVIA AND EASTERN EUROPE (1523–1738)

understanding of the Holy Bible might understand the text more fully and proclaim it to others. . . . Perhaps some words might appear alien and unpleasant at first hearing, but they will sound more graceful over time. If this translation does not please everyone, let the all-wise judge read it, as St. Jerome wrote to Pammachius in De optimo genere interpretandi, where it says among other things: Simplex translatio potest errorem habere, non crimen. (It is possible for a simple translation to have errors, but never mistakes of a criminal proportion.) If some friend of God understands it better in the future, let him translate it again, but he should see to it that he does not become angry. Let every wise and learned man, be he a priest, chaplain or scholar, and all of the people, in their proper callings, respect the words of God that are written in this book, keep them steadfastly before their eyes, remember them, and always live by them onto eternal life so that Jesus Christ may preserve us all. Amen. THE BALTIC REGION 207. LUTHER: A CHRISTIAN EXHORTATION TO THE LIVONIANS CONCERNING PUBLIC WORSHIP AND CONCORD (1525) LW 53, 45–50, trans. Paul Zeller Strodach & Ulrich Leupold. Cf. Walch 10: 258–63 and WA 18:417–21. . . . I have heard from reliable witnesses that faction and disunion have arisen among you, because some of your preachers do not teach and act in accord, but each follows his own sense and judgment. And I almost believe this; for we must remember that it will not be any better with us than it was with the Corinthians and other Christians at the time of St. Paul, when divisions and dissension arose among Christ’s people. . . . This causes confusion among the people. It prompts both the complaint, “No one knows what he should believe or with whom he should side,” and the common demand for uniformity in doctrine and practice. In times gone by, councils were held for this purpose and all sorts of rulings and canons made in order to hold all the people to a common order. But in the end these rulings and canons became snares for the soul and pitfalls for the faith. So there is great danger on either side. And we need good spiritual teachers who will know how to lead the people with wisdom and discretion.

255

For those who devise and ordain universal customs and orders get so wrapped up in them that they make them into dictatorial laws opposed to the freedom of faith. But those who ordain and establish nothing succeed only in creating as many factions as there are heads, to the detriment of that Christian harmony and unity of which St. Paul and St. Peter so frequently write. . . . Therefore, we will deal with factions in our times as St. Paul dealt with them in his. He could not check them by force. Nor did he want to compel them by means of commands. Rather, he entreated them with friendly exhortations, for people who will not give in willingly when exhorted will comply far less when commanded. . . . Accordingly, I also shall exhort. First, I exhort your preachers with the same words as St. Paul, that they would consider all the good we have in Christ, the comfort, the encouragement, the Spirit, the love, the mercy, and in addition the example of Christ. In praise and thanksgiving for all these gifts, let them so conduct themselves that they establish and preserve unity of mind and spirit among themselves. . . . Now even though external rites and orders – such as masses, singing, reading, baptizing – add nothing to salvation, yet it is unchristian to quarrel over such things and thereby to confuse the common people. We should consider the edification of the lay folk more important than our own ideas and opinions. Therefore, I pray all of you, my dear sirs, let each one surrender his own opinion and get together in a friendly way and come to a common decision about these external matters, so that there will be one uniform practice throughout your district instead of disorder – one thing being done here and another there – lest the common people get confused and discourage. . . . But at the same time a preacher must watch and diligently instruct the people lest they take such uniform practices as divinely appointed and absolutely binding laws. He must explain that this is done for their own good so that the unity of Christian people may also find expression in externals which in themselves are irrelevant. Since the ceremonies or rites are not needed for the conscience or for salvation and yet are useful and necessary to govern the people externally, one must not enforce or have them accepted for any other reason except to maintain peace and unity between men. . . . Receive this my sincere exhortation kindly, dear friends, and do your part to follow it as well as you can. . . .

256

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

208. THE CONSENSUS OF SANDOMIERZ: FORMULA OF RECESSUS (1570) The translation is from the shorter Latin version of the Consensus. Trans. Jaroslav Pelikan “The Consensus of Sandomierz: A Chapter from the Polish Reformation” in Conc oncordia ordia Theolog Theological ical Monthl Monthlyy 18: 1947, 825–37. . . . First. As both we who in the present synod have published our confession and the Bohemian Brethren have never believed that those who adhere to the Augsburg Confession feel otherwise than piously and orthodoxly about God and the Holy Trinity, also the incarnation of the Son of God and our justification and other principal articles of our faith; so also those who follow the Augsburg Confession have openly and sincerely confessed that they, on the other hand, know of nothing in the confession of our churches or that of the Bohemian Brethren concerning God and the Holy Trinity, the incarnation of the Son of God, justification, and other primary articles of the Christian faith which would be contrary to the orthodox truth and the pure Word of God. And therefore we have mutually and unanimously promised according to the rule of God’s Word that we shall defend this mutual consensus in the true and pure religion of Christ against papists, against sectarians, against all the enemies of the Gospel and the truth. Moreover, as far as the unfortunate difference of opinion on the Lord’s Supper is concerned, we agree on the meaning of the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, as they have been orthodoxly understood by the fathers, and especially by Irenaeus, who said that this mystery consists of two elements, namely, an earthly and a heavenly one. Nor do we assert that those elements or signs are bare and empty; we state, rather, that at the same time by faith they actually exhibit and present that which they signify. Finally, to put it more clearly and expressly, we have agreed to believe and confess that the substantial presence of Christ is not merely signified, but that the body and blood of the Lord are represented, distributed, and exhibited to those who eat by the symbols applied to the thing itself, and that the symbols are not at all bare, according to the nature of the sacraments. But lest the diversity of manners of speaking bring forth another controversy, we have decided by mutual consent in addition to the article which is inserted into our confession, to add the article of the Confession of the Saxon Churches on the Lord’s Supper,

sent to the Council of Trent in 1551, which we acknowledge as correct and have accepted. . . . We have decided to be bound by this holy and mutual consensus, and have agreed that just as they regard us, our churches, our confession published in this synod and that of the Brethren as orthodox, so also we shall treat their churches with the same Christian love and acknowledge them as orthodox. We shall avoid the extreme and impose utter silence upon all bickering, disagreement, and controversy by which the course of the Gospel is impeded to the great offense of many pious people and from which there comes a severe calumny by our adversaries and contradiction to our true Christian religion. Rather let the occasion be provided to strive for public peace and tranquility, to exercise mutual charity; we should also offer our labors for the building up of the church in our fraternal union. . . . THE AGE OF ORTHODOXY AND PIETISM 209. HEMMINGSEN: THE SUPPER OF OUR LORD (1574) Elector August of Saxony sent a copy of Hemmingsen’s theological summa to King Frederik II of Denmark to show him that crypto-Calvinism had penetrated his country. The second document shows how Denmark’s most famous theologian had to recant in order to avoid punishment. Pressure from German Lutherans still forced the king to dismiss him from his professorship. From Syntagma institutionum christianarum (Möllemann: Radaevm, 1581), 242–45, trans. Eric Lund. 1. The Supper of our Lord (the other sign of grace in the New Testament), in which bread and wine are distributed as symbols (symbola) of the body and blood of the Lord, is our sacrament through the sacrifice of Christ’s redemption. 2. Or, the Lord’s Supper of the Lord is the seal of the promise of the gospel, namely, that by which God seals those who believe with all the benefits, which the son has earned for us by his obedience, the delivery up of his body, and the shedding of his blood. Therefore it is said in the words of institution: This is my body which is given for you; this is my blood which is shed for many, and this cup is the new covenant in my blood. 13. In the first place, then, the Lord’s Supper was the sacrament instituted as a memorial of the body of Christ delivered for us and the blood of the same

THE REFORMATION IN SCANDINAVIA AND EASTERN EUROPE (1523–1738)

which was shed for many for the remission of sins....... 14. Secondly, the Lord ‘s Supper is the sacrament of incorporation into the body of Christ. For, did not Paul say: “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ [I Cor. 10:16]”? ..... 15. The application of this incorporation into the body of Christ does not required attachment to the physical body but rather spiritual union through faith. . . . 16. Thirdly, the Supper of our Lord is a sacrament of our spiritual education in the body of Christ. For through baptism we are washed by the blood of Christ and in the Last Supper we are washed and regenerated by the body and blood of the Lord. 17. Again, beware lest you think carnally with the Capernites. Therefore, distinct modes of eating must be distinguished. There is another eating which is only sacramental, and purely spiritual, at the same time sacramental and spiritual, which is necessary by the institution by Christ, that is for a legitimate use of the Supper. 23. What? Is the Lord’s body which has been given for us and the blood poured out for us, really and substantially, in the Lord’s Supper? It is, indeed, but not by reason of place. In fact, if you look for the place, the body of Christ is in heaven; but by reason of faith the word is legitimately used with regard to the Supper of Christ. For this faith uniting us with the Son of God, causes what is much more difficult, the joining of the body and blood of Christ to the bread and wine, which we eat and drink. Indeed, it is the power of faith, to join what is most remote. Therefore, where faith is not present, there is no sacramental union. . . . HEMMINGSEN: LETTER OF REVOCATION (1576) From Erik Pontoppidan, Annales ecclesiae danicae diplomatici (Copenhagen: A Mollers Witwe/Anchersen, 1741), Book 7, Chapter 3, 455, trans. Eric Lund. I, Niels Hemmingsen, servant of the gospel from the royal university, believe and confess that the body of Christ was given for us and his blood was shed for us for the forgiveness of sins and is certainly also presented and received in the sacrament of the holy Supper of Christ, in accordance with his initiation. And therefore I say that the body and blood of Christ is present. It is my opinion that that one should under-

257

stand this presence according to the sound or meaning of the word, without any doubt. Or, to express it more clearly, I believe that the presence of the body and the blood of Christ is not only signified as Zwingli and his followers think, but is certainly and truly present, as Augustine speaks, and in a heavenly and divine way that surpasses all natural reason, as Luther writes.

Fig. 9.3. Portrait of Niels Hemmingsen by unknown artist (16th century).

210. HEMMINGSON: ADMONITION CONCERNING THE SUPERSTITIOUS BLACK ARTS (1575) This treatise was first published in Latin and circulated internationally. Niels Hemmingsen, Vermanung ermanungee von Dem Schwartzkünstlerischen Aberglauben, das man sich daf dafür ür hüten sol, den Liebhabern des unverf unverfelschten elschten Gottesdienstes zu gute, Lateinish im Jahr Jahree 1575 geschrieben, Newlich verdeudschet vnd in Druck gef efertig ertiget, et, geschrieben durch Nic icolaum olaum Hemming (Wittenberg: Hans Krafft, 1586), 30, 114, trans. Eric Lund. Magical superstition is everything that the devil does through a person, with all sorts of words, signs, figures, or pictures, whether that person has made a bond with the devil or not. I mean by the word Magia, the black arts, or sorcery, all that is forbidden

258

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

in these words in Deuteronomy 18:10: “No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits or who seeks oracles from the dead.” Second Question: Whether or not practitioners of the black arts are able do something and bring about something. I answer clearly. God would not have forbidden the magical arts in his commandments if those who practice them could not do anything. For the wise God cannot give a commandment concerning those things that who are imaginary or nonexistent. But let this also be understood: The wizards can do no magical works at all by their own powers. The words, signs, short sayings, and other things they use have no power unless the devil insinuates himself into a person to seduce him into error or to confirm him in some error. . . . But it is also evident that the word and signs or other magical weapons have no power (in themselves). One must confess that Satan is acting in the people who undertake such things, if they misuse God’s word to their own ruin. For nothing is more pleasing to the devil than to drive people against God’s word. Third Question: Whether or not sorcerers can cause illnesses or heal and dispel them through their arts? I reply to this question briefly. It is a great sin to harm or cure by means of magic, because it is no more allowed to do something good by the power of the devil than it is to do evil. You are turning away from God and giving yourself to the devil. . . . Fourth Question: Whether it is excusable for those who do not know magic to look for help from wizards, thinking that they will be delivered from a sickness through magic. . . . God’s law in Leviticus 20(:6): “If any turn to mediums and wizards, prostituting themselves to them, I will set my face against them and will cut them off from the people.” . . . God explicitly says that he is angry with both and will cut off from the people through the authorities both the wizards and the ones who use their art. As the saying goes: Big thieves are exhibited in gold chains and iron chains hang on the small thieves. . . . How can someone love God and depend on one who is an enemy of God? Therefore, David said: love the lord and hate evil. [Psalm 97:10]. . . . Of the Different Forms or Types of Black Arts Divination Just as the prophet among the people of God

received prophecies from God (for as I Peter 1:21 says: No prophecy ever came by human will but through the movement of the Holy Spirit) so the black art of divination is from the devil. The devil makes an effort to imitate God like an ape and discloses what will happened and makes known what has not yet been revealed. However, the devil does this not to serve people but to inflict harm on them....... There is a great difference between what God knows beforehand and what the evil spirits know....... Augury or Signs Received from Birds [Explanation omitted] Delusions and the Power of Suggestion (Augenverblendung) [Explanation omitted] Maleficium This commonly means all efforts to do harm to another or unfairly injure them. . . . A magician makes an image of a body out of wax and stabs all the limbs that are meant to be harmed. These images are blessed with a ceremony and stored away in a hidden place so that they might injure an enemy whenever they please. If they want to punish the enemy’s hand, they stab or burn the hand of the image. If they want to injure the head they strike or burn the head. . . . If a witch wants to kill an enemy’s cow she buries some kind of image in the ground which in itself has no power to harm an animal. A witch picks up shovels of water and casts them into the air to make a rainstorm. . . . Curses [Explanation omitted] Conclusion . . . One must combat the devil and his members with earnest prayers because nothing frightens the devil so much as serious prayers that flow from a godly heart. . . . I also want to refute the error of those who do not want the secular authorities to do anything about magic. Those who think the secular authorities should not make judgments about magical things do not understand that the government has the authority to deal with both tablets of the Ten Commandments. . . . Whoever says that there are no laws in the Kingdom of Denmark about magical matters should hear God’s word, which is higher than all human law. “[Exodus 22:18]: “You should not permit a witch to live.” . . .

THE REFORMATION IN SCANDINAVIA AND EASTERN EUROPE (1523–1738)

259

211. REJECTION OF THE FORMULA OF

212. INSTRUCTION OF KING FREDERIK IV

CONCORD BY KING FREDERIK II (1580)

OF DENMARK TO THE FIRST PIETIST MISSIONARIES (NOVEMBER 17, 1705)

From Erik Pontoppidan, Annales ecclesiae danicae diplomatici (Copenhagen: A Mollers Witwe/Anchersen, 1741), Book 7 Chapter 3, 481–84, trans. Eric Lund. Frederik II, by God’s grace King of Denmark, Norway . . . : The book called the Opus Concordiae [Book of Concord], which has been available for a long time in other lands, has now come out in print and we have been given an exemplar. Since in the same book will be found some teachings which are foreign and unknown to us and our churches, which could easily destroy the unity that, praise be to God, has been upheld until now, if the book should spread about here in our kingdom and become common, and if it is not examined in good time by the authorities, we do not doubt that it will be found by people in this kingdom who will be moved towards novelty and disunity. We earnestly command that all booksellers here in the land who are in the practice of introducing books, not introduce, sell or deal with the so-called Concordia books in our realm, unless they want to forfeit their possessions and property and be cut off from life without mercy. And also if you notice foreign book dealers come in, warn them before they display their books that they must not distribute or sell any of these books in the local realm at the risk of loss of their books and all else that they have with them. Likewise, for the sake of all preachers in your district and those who preside over schools, write to them telling them not to let this book be found in their possession unless they want to be removed from their calling and profession and punished without mercy for not respecting the commands and orders of the authorities. If you want to be pleasing and loving to God and us and would do what your office requires, you will work hard to see that this does not happen, and if we find that you fail to do this we will decree that someone be put in your place who will do that inspection and uphold what his office requires. As a Christian authority we strive to uphold pure teaching and unity in this realm in which we were brought up and have lived until now, and therefore we also seek to hinder and fend off whatever disturbs peace, tranquility and unity and can mislead others. Let nothing we have commanded be neglected. Written and sealed on July 24, 1580 by Frederik II

Tranquebar, on the southeast coast of India, had been a Danish colony since 1624. When King Frederik sought missionaries to convert the native population to Christianity, his court preacher referred him to Francke. This document relates to the commissioning of one of the first two German missionaries. From J. F. Fenger, History of the Tranquebar Mission sion, trans. Emil Francke (Tranquebar: Evangelical Lutheran Mission, 1863), 309–11. We, Frederik IV, King of Denmark and Norway . . . , do in our royal favor desire that Mr. Henry Plütschau, born in Mecklenburg, whom we have resolved to send to Eastern India as a missionary, should with all submission conduct himself on his voyage out to and there in India, until our further royal orders. 1. He shall, on the whole voyage out, betake himself with all diligence to those on board ship who have been in Eastern India, ere this, and who are somewhat acquainted with the native language in order that he may learn from them something of that language. 2. Having by the grace of God safely arrived in the country, he shall, in the name of Jesus, heartily calling upon the same, at once begin the work for which he is sent out and shall labor among the pagans, as existing circumstances shall make it practicable. 3. Although it is of some help to improve the little rest of the knowledge of God, which men still have by nature, and thus to lead them to the knowledge of God that he has revealed in his Word—and it is left to the missionary himself to judge when and in what manner this may be done with advantage—yet he shall always specially betake himself to God’s Word, not doubting that God will make the power laid therein prove effectual among the heathens. 4. He must hold and handle there in Eastern India nothing besides the holy doctrine as it is written in God’s Word and repeated in the symbolic books of this realm after the Augsburg Confession and teach nothing besides it. And as Christ himself began his prophetic ministry by preaching repentance and commanded his disciples to preach repentance and remission of sins, so also he must follow the same course. 5. He has to instruct the ignorant in the first principles of the Christian doctrine with all possible sim-

260

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

plicity, so that the needful foundation may be laid the earlier. 6. In order that the poor blind heathens may understand that the missionary himself has in his heart what he teaches, he must always show himself a pattern of good works, so that also by this his conduct they may be won over. 7. He shall not forget daily to pray for the cooperating grace of God and for everything required that he may perform his office faithfully and carefully and to call upon God in the name of Jesus, that he would bless our Christian undertaking with abundant and happy successes to the salvation of many souls, and that he would grant to our whole royal house the reward of this pious work with every needful blessing for this life and the life to come. 8. He shall keep good friendship also with the Evangelical pastors of the place and shall gather from them, as from men acquainted with the country, all kinds of useful information. 9. He shall be content with what we in our royal favor have granted him for his annual pay and support and not take any money from the people for the performance of his official duties. 10. Whenever a ship leaves India for this country, he shall send letters therewith, reporting to us according to his Christian conscience with all submission concerning his office, its successes, and its hindrances. In the same way, he may add his proposals suggesting how this new undertaking, which cannot be perfect at once, might perhaps be better arranged in future. 213. PONTOPPIDAN: TRUTH ONTO GODLINESS—AN EXPLANATION OF LUTHER’S SMALL CATECHISM (1737) From Explanation of Luther’s Small Catechism atechism, ed. H. U. Sverdrup (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1900), trans. Emil Gunerius Lund. 370. What is understood by the entire sanctification? Sometimes it denotes both regeneration, justification and renewing; sometimes it denotes only the daily renewing. 371.What is regeneration or the new birth? The same as the impartation of the living faith, or awakening from the spiritual death, conversion and translation from darkness to light, from Satan’s power to God. 372. Can you tell me something about the change which takes place through regeneration?

Through regeneration the state of a man’s heart becomes changed, inasmuch as there is created in the understanding a new light, and in the will a new power, desire, and yearning. John 3:6. 373. By what means is regeneration brought? In little children, by water and the Spirit in the Sacrament of Baptism. John 3:5. Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. But in adults, who have fallen from the grace of Baptism, it is wrought by God’s Word. I Peter 1:23. 374. Is it altogether necessary to salvation to be born again? Yes; certainly. John 3:3. 375. Whereby can a person know whether he has been born again? It is known by the change of his heart and by the new gifts of grace. Ezekiel 36:26. 376. What then does a person really obtain by regeneration, which he did not already have? He obtains the true, living faith, which apprehends Christ. John 1:12, 13. 377. What is the true, living faith, which is given in regeneration? Faith is the flight of a penitent soul to the grace of God through the merit of Christ, which is eagerly accepted, appropriated and built upon with trustful confidence. 378. How many parts, therefore, really belong to the true faith? Three, namely: 1. A living knowledge of God and of His will. John 17:3. Romans 10:14. 2. A living approval or assent. Hebrews 11:1. 3. A living appropriation of the grace of God in Christ, whether it shows itself in an ardent longing after Christ, or in a firm assurance of grace. Romans 8:33, 34. Matthew 5:6. Galatians 2:20. 379. What is a dead faith? A dead faith is a false imagination, which the impenitent entertain in regard to receiving grace, although they will not repent. James 2:26. 380. Have the impenitent no true faith? No; their faith is dead, when it does not change the heart and weaken the natural depravity. 381. Whereby can I know whether my faith is living or dead? By its powerful operation in the heart, which is love to God and our neighbor. James 2:18. Acts 15:9. 382. Is the true faith always and in all persons equally strong? No; at times it is very weak and hardly dares to

THE REFORMATION IN SCANDINAVIA AND EASTERN EUROPE (1523–1738)

appropriate to itself the grace of God, but still has a hearty longing alter it. Mark 9:24. 383. Whereby is it known that weak faith is a true faith? By a profound longing after grace and a hatred of sin. 384. Is God well pleased with such weak faith? Yes, if it is only true and sincere. Matthew 5:3, 6. 385. What benefit does a person derive from that faith, which he obtains in regeneration? He becomes righteous by faith, that is, participant of Christ’s righteousness. Romans 5:1.

Fig. 9.4. Portrait of Erik Pontoppidan by unknown artist (18th Century).

386. What is justification? That God, by grace, imputes Christ’s righteousness to a penitent and believing sinner, acquits him from sin and its punishment, and regards him in Christ, as if lie had never sinned. 2 Corinthians 5:21. Romans 3:24, 28. 387. Is such a justified soul, then, in a truly happy and better state than formerly? Yes; certainly. Psalms 32:1, 2. 388. What is the daily renewal? The continual putting off of the old man, or the laying aside of sin, and the putting on of the new man, or daily progress in that which is good. Ephesians 4:22-24. 389. Why is this renewal designated as daily?

261

Because it ought to be continued all the days of our life. 2 Corinthians 4:16. Philippians 3:12. 214. PONTOPPIDAN: THE MIRROR OF FAITH (TROENS SPEIL) (1727/1740) A German version of this book first appeared in 1727 and a Danish-Norwegian version came later in 1740. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1927), 89–91, 96, 132, 185–91. Second Part – Chapter One . . . It is one thing to believe, another to know, feel, and be sure that we believe. The latter is not necessary unto righteousness and salvation, but indeed unto rest and assurance for a troubled heart, for whose particular consolation and enlightenment I am discussing this subject. A close study of this matter seems to me to show that this reflexio, or the knowing and perceiving of a firm faith, is of two kinds. First, a rational reflection by which a believer tests himself whether he is in the faith, searches and questions himself according to the Word of God to see whether he finds in himself the essential elements of faith: knowledge, assent, and confidence, and particularly the fruits of faith: love, obedience, etc., then he arrives at the correct conclusion: You have faith, you are a believer. We may call this a rest in faith which is active and is based on a rational conclusion. The second kind of reflection is more receptive and supernatural, far above all powers of nature and reason. Here the believer contributes absolutely nothing, but receives and experiences the powerful impression of the Holy Spirit, which in some incomprehensible manner places in him the pledge of the heavenly heritage, gives him in the depth of his heart an exceedingly sweet and consoling assurance of his state of grace, and also in this manner testifies powerfully with the spirit of the believer himself that he is a child of God. The former reflection may be found in any believer whenever he chooses to subject himself to a serious self-examination, unless he is still a child whose mental and sensory powers are as yet untrained, or it takes place in a moment of affliction which makes him suffer from sadness and melancholia and thus for a time deprives him of this consolation. This active reflection, I say, can be made at any time by any believer, and the assurance resulting therefrom may be had; for this is nothing but the general examination recommended by Paul (2 Cor

262

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

13:5). But the latter reflection, which the Holy Spirit bestows as a peculiar and particular grace, which is wholly supernatural and to which man contributes nothing, but simply permits himself to be treated—this reflection is not general, nor is it meted out in an equally perceptible degree to all believers, so that they might obtain consolation therefrom. . . . . . . There may be some who will not accept the wholly supernatural rest in faith mentioned above, simply because it seems to lead into the so-called mystical theology, and because some writers who have, not without reason, been objects of suspicion but who have been called mystics, tell about an inner light, an inner feeling, glory, and sweetness which, according to an external and incomplete description, seems to resemble this reflex faith, but really is as different from it as night from day, as falsehood from truth. In my opinion it is a very dangerous thing to pronounce such a rash judgment on the highly varied and incomprehensible works of the Holy Spirit. The fact that Satan disguises himself and appears as an angel of light, is that any reason why God’s legitimate gifts of grace should be suppressed? Some counterfeit coins are passed along with the genuine ones, but is that any reason why both should be rejected? Are we to doubt the genuineness of the luminaries in the sky because someone has seen will-‘o-the-wisps? And though Satan builds his chapel close up to the Church of God, does not the Church of God remain the same anyway? It is to be feared that many who in false zeal trot out their heedless judgments on things which are far too lofty for them, make the following words of Peter come true: They rail in matters whereof they are ignorant (2 Pet 2:12). . . . The heavenly and wholly divine rest in faith ..... is the abundant shedding of the love of God, the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, a majestic beam of grace, a contemplation of God, wine of heavenly joy, a divine fire from above, a spark from eternity, a flame of love, a flash of lightning from the sanctuary of God, a gently cooling breeze, a penetrating fragrance, a divine embrace, a kiss from the Son, a holy and lovely fellowship with the Bridegroom, wine of joy, and everlasting river of pleasures flowing out from the throne of the Lamb, a foretaste of the wedding of the Lamb, a heavenly, hidden manna, an anointment with the oil of gladness, a white stone with the new name—and whatever descriptions, mostly allegorical may be used for describing something that is indescribable. Chapter Seven . . . I think the direct inward witness of the Holy Spirit, or the reflex power of faith, is by far the most

profitable; therefore it is indeed worthwhile to make efforts to attain to and enjoy, if it please God, the perceptible foretaste of heaven even here on earth. For this purpose it is most profitable: First, we must by the aid of God perform a more careful and thorough heart-cleansing than we perhaps have done before. God did not give to the people of Israel a taste of the delicious manna until the Egyptian meal was all used up; likewise He will not send you the heavenly consolation from above until you, as far as possible, have given up the loose thoughts and sinful lusts. . . . Secondly, prayer is a means of making headway in this exercise, Jesus Himself having taught us to sigh: Thy Kingdom come. Our heavenly Father surely wants us to ask Him for this grace in a childlike spirit. If I were to ask one who has experienced little or nothing of this profound mystery: Have you ever entreated God urgently and earnestly to grant you this grace? Have you, like Jacob, wrestled with God in prayer for it? The chances are that he should have to confess that he had hardly thought of it, not to mention such a thing as energetically beseeching God to grant it to him. . . . The third means of promoting the growth of grace is known to be earnest meditation on the Word of God and a devout use of the Holy Sacrament. The word of faith carefully masticated in the mouth of faith makes the inner man strong and robust. According to the command of Christ, we are to work for the meat which endureth and which, though imperceptibly, gives strength. . . . The Holy Sacrament, which is truly the essential body and blood of Christ, also contributes materially to this. For it is recognized as a chief means of spiritual enlightenment, strengthening and refreshing the inner man, provided it is used worthily, diligently, and prayerfully. I do not doubt but that many souls must confess, to the glory and praise of their Jesus, that by receiving and while receiving His body and blood they have perceived in their inmost powers a great strengthening and multitudinous emotions. Among these means must also be mentioned, fourthly, the singing devotion, which makes use of beautiful spiritual hymns on such subjects as: The Praise of God, the Love of Jesus, Union with Him, Joy in the Holy Spirit, the Eternal Life Which Is to Come, etc. Of this singing devotion we may fittingly say: When I am plunged in painful grief, My song and prayer bring swift relief; The Holy Spirit makes me sure The grace of God shall e’er endure.

THE REFORMATION IN SCANDINAVIA AND EASTERN EUROPE (1523–1738)

Singing may be looked upon as double prayer, partly because the slow pronunciation of the words leaves more time for reflecting on them, partly because the sweet melody has a mysterious power to move the heart and kindle devotion. Furthermore, in this connection special mention must be made of meditation, or a quiet contemplation of God’s manifold benefits conferred upon all men in general and a few in particular, as is best known to each individual. Of very high rank is meditation on the blissful Gospel about Jesus Christ, which has saved our miserable souls. One of the chief reasons why people taste so little of the divine inward joy is that they often pay more attention to the Law than to the Gospel. (I do not speak of the unconverted, who have nothing to do with the consolation of the Gospel, but still remain under the Law and wrath, until they by means of penitence and faith may attain to the freedom of the Gospel). But we are called evangelical Christians because we should live in the Gospel as in our proper element. Like the birds in the air and the fish in’ the water, our souls should by each breath, so to speak, inhale God’s love and kindness from the Gospel and swim about, as it were, in the boundless ocean of divine mercy which is opened to us in the Glad Tidings of the grace of God in Christ Jesus. Verily, our heart ought to force its way to the power of a truly divine joy; if we sincerely took the Gospel to heart and permitted it to pervade all our powers, if we pondered it night and day, if we awoke and went to sleep with it, if we performed our work with it, and dipped our morsel in it, if our coming in and going out were thus arranged, it would surely prove its true power upon us. . . . EARLY SCANDINAVIAN HYMNS 215. ICELAND: HALLGRÍMUR PÉTURSSON (1614–1674) It was long common for religious families in Iceland to read these 50 poems during Lent. Like the 14 step Catholic devotion known as the Stations of the Cross, each poem meditates on the succession of events in Christ’s journey from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross. The original Icelandic hymn has 22 stanzas. Trans. Gracia Grindal. (Unpublished) Salmur 44: The Seventh Word from the Cross

263

1. He called out from his place so high As strength ebbed from his body “My Spirit I commit,” he cried, “Into your hands, dear Father.” 2. Good Christian soul reflect upon Your Lord’s most bitter dying. His words could well be studied long They’re medicine for healing. 3. Our Jesus gripped by cruel pain Weighed down with every heartache Yet in that gloom when death still reigns He called upon his Father. 4. Our Lord is thereby teaching you That when afflictions tempt you That God our Father, kind and good Will help the ones who trust him. 5. Because of Christ you have the right To call the Lord your Father. The cross is heavy, but is light When all its griefs are gathered. 6. Just like a Father’s caring for A child who’s sick and ailing, God in his mercy will do more And nurse our every failing. 9. If you desire at life’s dire end To find your soul a haven To rest there under God’s great hand, Then follow his commandments! 13. Each dawn and dusk do not forget To make this your confession, “With all my heart I now commit Into your hands my spirit.” 14. Then you for certain are assured Should death be set to harm you Your soul with mercy can be sure Your Father’s hands will hold you. 216. DENMARK: THOMAS KINGO (1634–1703) Kingo wrote fifteen morning and evening hymns. This one from his first collection of spiritual songs thanks God for the daily renewal of life and asks for guidance to make good use of this gift. J. C. Aaberg. Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark (Des Moines, IA: Committee on Publication of the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 1945), 34, trans. Paul Christian Paulsen. Nu rinder solen op 1674

264

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

1. The sun arises now With rays most tender, It paints the mountain brow With rosy splendor. In faith, my soul, now lift your voice in singing To God, your gladness show, Your hearts with joy aglow And praises ringing. 2. Like countless grains of sand Beyond all measure, And wide as sea and land Is Heaven’s treasure Of grace, which God anew each day will give us, For like a gentle rain, Our lives of sinful stain Each morning bathes us. 3. God has throughout the night My bed surrounded With angel hosts of light And pow’r unbounded; So I in calm did rest in peaceful slumber Until from deep repose The light again arose From darkness somber. 4. Lord, keep my soul today From sin and blindness; Surround me on my way With loving-kindness And fill my heart, O God, with joy from heaven; I then can ask no more. My future is secure, By Wisdom given. 5. Lord, You know best my needs, My pains You’re sharing; Your Word and grace now feeds The lamb You’re bearing. What more could I desire with You deciding The course which I now take? I follow in the wake Where You are guiding!

Fig. 9.5. Title engraving of Taare-Offer (1685), a collection of poems by Dorothe Engelbretsdatter, showing the author.

217. NORWAY: DOROTHE ENGELBRETSDATTER (1634–1716) There are many Lutheran morning and evening hymns. The Kingo hymn relates to the start of the day and this one to the end of the day. The full text is 20 stanzas. The format shows the influence of Baroque preaching which often meditates on the work of God and concludes with a practical application to daily life. Pr Preaching eaching fr from om Home: The Stories of Eight Luther Lutheran an Hymnwriters (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2017), 60-61, trans. by Gracia Grindal. Dagen viger og gaar bort 1678 1. Daylight fades and dies away, Twilight darkens, skies turn grey. Valleys lose the yellow sun, Darkest night is soon begun. 2. Slowly time which seems to pass Quickly empties out our glass. Death is ever at our heels, Endless night before us wheels. 3. I grow older every day Dusk reminds me on my way .

THE REFORMATION IN SCANDINAVIA AND EASTERN EUROPE (1523–1738)

As I take my wand’ring stave Nearer to my narrow grave. 4. Now the sun has slipped away Dusk takes over every place, So all things will change and shift Till we make our final trip.

265

Such delicate beauty hath spread,– The flowers which to-day are so fragrant, Tomorrow are faded and dead;– Oh why, then, should earthly cares fret thee? Thy Father will never forget thee, Nor fail to provide thee with bread.

5. O dear soul, do not forget To confess your sin and guilt. You are Adam’s sinful heir Caught in webs that make you err. 6. You cannot be quit of day Without falling on your way. Rise and pray to God above Who abides in heav’n with love. 7. Pray for grace, repent your sin, Open up your eyes and weep, Do not let him get away Till he blesses you today. 218. SWEDEN: HAQVIN SPEGEL (1645–1715) This hymn, encouraging trust in God, is based on Matthew 6:25-34, part of the Sermon on the Mount. From The Hymnal and Order of Service Service. (Rock Island, IL: Augustana Book Concern, 1937), #445. Vi kristna bör tro och besinna 1686 1. We Christians should ever consider What Christ hath so graciously taught; For He who hath made us His children Would have us retain in our thought How little things earthly do merit, Lest we, who should heaven inherit, The heavenly prize leave unsought. 2. All nature a sermon may preach thee; The birds sing thy murmurs away; The birds, which, nor sowing nor reaping, God fails not to feed day by day; And He who those creatures doth cherish, He never will leave thee to perish; Or art thou not better than they? 3. The lilies, nor toiling nor spinning, Their clothing how gorgeous and fair! What tints in their tiny robes woven, What wondrous devices are there! All Solomon’s stores could not render One festival robe of such splendor As the modest field lilies do wear. 4. If God o’er the grass and the flowers

Fig. 9.6. Portrait of Hans Adolph Brorson by artist Johan Hörner (1756).

219. DENMARK: HANS ADOLPH BRORSON (1694–1764) Brorson wrote seven Christmas hymns. The standard Danish hymnbook version of this hymn has eight stanzas. Ev Evang angelical elical Luther Lutheran an Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2006), #286, trans. Harriet Reynolds Krauth Spaeth. Her kommer dine arme smaa 1732 1. Your little ones, dear Lord, are we, and come your lowly bed to see; enlighten ev’ry soul and mind, that we the way to you may find. 2. With songs we hasten you to greet, and kiss the ground before your feet. Oh, blessed hour, oh, sweetest night That gave you birth, our soul’s delight. 3. Oh, draw us wholly to you, Lord,

266

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

and to us your grace accord; true faith and love to us impart, that we may hold you in our heart. 4. Until at last we, too, proclaim,

with all your saints, your glorious name; in paradise our songs renew, and praise you as the angels do.

Notes

CHAPTER 1 1. Aristotle, Ethics 2.1: “We become just by doing just acts.” 2. Gabriel Biel, Sententiarum 2, dist. 28k: “Man can by his own nature, through free will, fulfill divine precepts according to the substance of the act but not according to the intention of Him who gave the precept, which is a consequence of our salvation.” 3. John Duns Scotus (c.1265–1308), an English Franciscan philosopher, and Gabriel Biel (c.1420–95), an important defender of the via moderna (nominalist scholasticism) in Germany. 4. A dualistic sect that began in Persia but was prominent in North Africa during the early centuries of Christianity. 5. There were rumors that Tetzel had committed adultery with a married woman, but there is no archival evidence in Innsbruck about a trial or sentencing for such an offense. 6. The Elector had a passion for collecting relics and displayed about 19,000 fragments of the saints at the All Saints’ Foundation in Wittenberg. He had received a papal privilege to offer those who came to visit the collection up to 1,900,000 days of indulgence. 7. A story circulated among the Lutherans that Johann Tetzel had been asked by a knight whether a person could receive a letter of indulgence for a future sin. Tetzel supposedly agreed to this. Soon thereafter the knight came back and robbed him of all the money he had collected. 8. The Council of Konstanz (1414–17) ended the late-medieval papal schism that had prompted the Bohemian reformer Jan Huss to criticize abuses of papal power. Huss received a safe-conduct to attend the Council to defend his views, but, once there, he was declared a heretic and burned at the stake. 9. The Greek Orthodox Church and the other churches of the East rejected Western claims about the unique authority of the bishop of Rome. As a result the two branches of Christianity repudiated each other in the Great Schism of 1054.

268

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

10. If a serf died, the other members of his or her family were obligated to compensate the lord for the loss of this person’s labor services. CHAPTER 2 1. One sermon for Epiphany is 173 pages long in the Weimar edition or 128 pages long in the American edition. Any attempt to deliver the entire sermon from which the excerpt in this chapter was taken would have required at least an hour and forty-five minutes. Luther’s own evaluation of the postil is found in WA 23:279, lines 13–14 (LW 37:147). 2. “A Brief Instruction on What to Look for and Expect in the Gospels,” trans. E. Theodore Bachmann, LW 35:123. 3. Hans-Joachim Köhler, “Die Flugschriften der frühen Neuzeit,” in Werner Arnold et al., eds., Die Erforschung der Buch und Bibliotheksgeschichte in Deutschland (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1987), 325. 4. Paul Russell, Lay Theology in the Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 6; Mark U. Edwards Jr. Printing, Propaganda and Martin Luther (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 17; Miriam Chrisman, Conflicting Visions of Reform (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities, 1996), 2–4; Steven Ozment, “Pamphlet Literature of the German Reformation,” in Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research (St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1982), 85–98. CHAPTER 3 1. “Quadragesima” is the name given to the first Sunday in Lent (so-called because it is almost forty days before Easter). Cross Week is also called Rogation Week and refers to the days between Rogate Sunday and the feast of the Ascension, forty days after Easter. On Rogation Days, special prayers were traditionally recited to promote spiritual renewal. These included the three days before the Ascension. St. Bartholomew was commemorated on August 24. CHAPTER 5 1. See The Book of Concord, ed. Theodore Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959), 222. 2. The story is found in 2 Maccabbees in the Apocrypha. After the revolt of Judas Maccabbeus, the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes tortured and killed a mother and her seven sons for refusing to violate the Jewish law which forbade the eating of pork. 3. Johannes Cochlaeus (1479–1552) was a prominent Catholic controversialist whose works included the extensive, critical biography of Luther noted in chapter two (doc. #70). Georg Witzel (1501–73) became a Protestant through Luther’s influence but reverted to Catholicism when he concluded that the Protestants lacked true piety.

NOTES

269

4. Amsdorf based this claim on passages such as the following from Luther’s 1535 lectures on Galatians (Luther’s Works, vol. 26, trans. Jaroslav Pelikan [St. Louis: Concordia, 1963], 36): Because my sins are so grave, so real, so great, so infinite, so horrible, and so invincible that my righteousness does me no good but rather puts me at a disadvantage before God, therefore Christ, the Son of God, was given into death for my sins, to abolish them and thus to save all men who believe.

5. Origen (185–254 CE) was one of a number of theologians from the early church whom the Philippists cited in support of their mild synergism. The Gnesio-Lutherans also respected these early writers but were not averse to pointing out their errors on this issue. 6. Flacius has in mind the sermon on Luke 2:21 in Luther’s Church Postil, WA 10/1:1, 508. CHAPTER 6 1. Quenstedt calls all of the Swiss Reformers “Calvinists,” ignoring some differences in their thought. Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531) was the first reformer of Zurich. 2. Erasmus (1469–1536) was the leading Christian Humanist of the sixteenth century. Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) was a prominent Jesuit philosopher of the Counter-Reformation. Theodore Beza (1519–1605) was successor to Calvin as leader of the Reformation in Geneva. 3. Hollaz gives the standard definition of the communication of majesty: “The Son of God truly and really communicates the attributes of his own divine nature to the assumed human nature in consequence of the personal union, for common possession, use, and designation.” 4. Peter Martire Vermigli (1500–1562) was an Italian monk who converted to Calvinism and wrote extensively on the Eucharist. CHAPTER 7 1. Kaspar Schwenckfeld (1489–1561) was a Silesian Spiritualist who questioned the value of Baptism and believed that the Spirit of God could guide individuals apart from the Scriptures. Andreas Osiander (1498–1552) was an associate of Luther who taught that sinners are not only declared righteous by imputation but also made righteous by the indwelling of the righteousness of Christ. Valentin Weigel (1533–88) was a Lutheran pastor who became controversial because of his criticisms of the church and his mystical theology. He emphasized the internal testimony of the Spirit more than the record of revelation in the Scriptures. 2. Johann Gerhard, Schola Pietatis (Nürnberg: Endters Tochter, 1736), 223, 224. CHAPTER 8 1. Martin Statius (1589–1655) was a pastor in Danzig who was best known for producing volumes of selections from the writings of other people. In addition to his selections from Luther, he published a very popular volume of excerpts from the devotional writer Stephan

270

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Praetorius (1536–1603). 2. Joachim Lütkemann (1608–1655) was a disciple of Johann Arndt. See chapter seven. Lewis Bayly was an English Puritan. His Practice of Piety was the most widely read English devotional book after John Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress and was very influential in German Pietist circles. On Nicholas Hunnius, see chapter six. 3. Bengel associated a precise number of years with certain terms in the book of Revelation as a result of calculations derived from the importance of the numbers 666 and 1000 in the book. He decided that a prophetic month is 15 and 6/70 years, a “time” (καιρός) lasts 111 1/9 years, and a “period” (κρόνος) equals 1111 1/9 years. CHAPTER 9 1. Tavastialand (now Häme) is a province in southwestern Finland and Karelia is a province in southeastern Finland.

Bibliography of English-Language Resources

GENERAL WORKS ON LUTHERAN HISTORY AND THEOLOGY Bergendoff, Conrad. The Church of the Lutheran Reformation: A Historical Survey of Lutheranism. St. Louis: Concordia, 1967. Bodensieck, Julius, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church. 3 vols. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1965. Gassmann, Günther, ed. Historical Dictionary of Lutheranism. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2001. Gritsch, Eric W. A History of Lutheranism. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002. Gritsch, Eric W., and Robert W. Jenson. Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976. Hillerbrand, Hans, ed. The Encyclopedia of Protestantism. New York: Routledge, 2004. Lueker, Erwin L., ed. Lutheran Cyclopedia. Rev. ed. St. Louis: Concordia, 1975.

GENERAL WORKS ON THE REFORMATION Bossy, John. Christianity in the West, 1400–1700. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Brady, Thomas A., Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, eds. Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Cameron, Euan. The European Reformation. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991. Eire, Carlos M. N. Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450–1650. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. George, Timothy. Theology of the Reformers. Nashville: Broadman, 1988. Greengrass, Mark. The Longman Companion to the European Reformation, c. 1500–1618. London: Longman, 1998. Hillerbrand, Hans J., ed. The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation. 4 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Lindberg, Carter. The European Reformations. 2nd ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation. New York: Viking, 2003. McGrath, Alister E. The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation. New York: Blackwell, 1987. ———. Reformation Thought: An Introduction. 4th ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Ozment, Steven. The Age of Reform (1250–1550): An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980. Reardon, Bernard M. G. Religious Thought in the Reformation. 2nd ed. New York: Longman, 1995. Stjerna, Kirsi. Women and the Reformation. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2009.

272

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Whitford, David M. Reformation and Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Research. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2008. ———, ed. T&T Clark Companion to Reformation Theology. London: T&T Clark, 2012.

CHAPTER ONE: CRISES AND CONTROVERSIES DURING MARTIN LUTHER’S LIFETIME (1483–1546) PRIMARY SOURCE MATERIALS Hillerbrand, Hans J., Kirsi I. Stjerna, and Timothy J. Wengert. The Annotated Luther. 6 vols. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015–17. Janz, Denis R., ed. A Reformation Reader: Primary Texts with Introductions. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999. Karant-Nunn, Susan C., and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, eds. Luther on Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Lindberg, Carter, ed. The European Reformations Sourcebook. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Lull, Timothy F., and William R. Russell, eds. Martin Luther: Basic Theological Writings. 3rd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012. Pelikan, Jaroslav, and Helmut Lehmann, eds. Luther’s Works. 55 volumes. Philadelphia: Fortress; St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–86. Wiesner-Hanks, Merry. The Renaissance and Reformation: A History in Documents. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

LUTHER BIOGRAPHIES Brecht, Martin. Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation. Translated by James Schaaf. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985. ———. Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church. Translated by James Schaaf. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993. ———. Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining the Reformation. Translated by James Schaaf. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990. Edwards, Mark U., Jr. Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics, 1531–46. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983. Gritsch, Eric W. Martin: God’s Court Jester. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983. Kittelson, James M. Luther the Reformer. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986. Lohse, Bernhard. Martin Luther: An Introduction to His Life and Work. Translated by Robert C. Schultz. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986. Marty, Martin. Martin Luther: A Life. New York: Penguin, 2008. Oberman, Heiko A. Luther: Man between God and the Devil. Translated by Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Wicks, Jared. Luther and His Spiritual Legacy. Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1983.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE RESOURCES

273

LUTHER’S THOUGHT Althaus, Paul. The Ethics of Martin Luther. Translated by Robert C. Schultz. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972. ———. The Theology of Martin Luther. Translated by Robert C. Schultz. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966. Barth, Hans-Martin. The Theology of Martin Luther: A Critical Assessment. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013. Ebeling, Gerhard. Luther: An Introduction to His Thought. Translated by R. A. Wilson. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970. Janz, Denis R. The Westminster Handbook to Martin Luther. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2010. Kolb, Robert, Irene Dingel, and L’ubomír Batka. The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Lienhard, Marc. Luther, Witness to Jesus Christ: Stages and Themes of the Reformer’s Christology. Translated by Edwin H. Robertson. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1982. Loeschen, John R. Wrestling with Luther: An Introduction to the Study of His Thought. St. Louis: Concordia, 1976. McGrath, Alister E. Luther’s Theology of the Cross: Martin Luther’s Theological Breakthrough. New York: Blackwell, 1985. 2nd ed., Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. McKim, Donald K., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

CHAPTER TWO: THE DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM MESSAGE Chrisman, Miriam Usher. Conflicting Visions of Reform: German Lay Propaganda Pamphlets, 1519–1530. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996. ———. Lay Culture, Learned Culture: Books and Social Change in Strasbourg, 1480–1599. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. Edwards, Mark U., Jr. Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Matheson, Peter, ed. Argula von Grumbach: A Woman’s Voice in the Reformation. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995. Russell, Paul A. Lay Theology in the Reformation: Popular Pamphleteers in Southwest Germany 1521–1525. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Scribner, Robert W. For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994. Strauss, Gerald. Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.

CHAPTER THREE: THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORM PROPOSALS Hsia, R. Po-chia. Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe, 1550–1750. London: Routledge, 1989. Karant-Nunn, Susan C. Luther’s Pastors: The Reformation in the Ernestine Countryside. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 69. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1979.

274

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Senn, Frank C. Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. Steinmetz, David C. Reformers in the Wings. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971. Tolley, Bruce. Pastors and Parishioners in Württemberg during the Late Reformation, 1581–1621. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE CHURCH’S STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL (1546–1648) Gagliardo, John G. Germany under the Old Regime, 1600–1790. London: Longman, 1991. Hughes, Michael. Early Modern Germany, 1477–1806. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Manschreck, Clyde Leonard. Melanchthon: The Quiet Reformer. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1975. Parker, Geoffrey. The Thirty Years War. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. Stupperich, Robert. Melanchthon. Translated by Robert H. Fischer. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965. Wilson, Peter. From Reich to Revolution: German History, 1558–1806. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

CHAPTER FIVE: FACTIONALISM IN THE LATE REFORMATION (1546–80) Bente, Friedrich. Historical Introductions to the Book of Concord. St. Louis: Concordia, 1921. Jungkuntz, Theodore R. Formulators of the Formula of Concord: Four Architects of Lutheran Unity. St. Louis: Concordia, 1977. Klug, Eugene F. Getting into the Formula of Concord: A History and Digest of the Formula; Historical Notes and Discussion Questions. St. Louis: Concordia, 1977. Kolb, Robert. Andreae and the Formula of Concord: Six Sermons on the Way to Lutheran Unity. St. Louis: Concordia, 1977. ———. Confessing the Faith: Reformers Define the Church. St. Louis: Concordia, 1991. Kolb, Robert, and James A. Nestingen, eds. Sources and Contexts of the Book of Concord. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. Kolb, Robert, and Timothy J. Wengert, eds. The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000. Lentz, Harold H. Reformation Crossroads: A Comparison of the Theology of Luther and Melanchthon. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1958. Raitt, Jill, ed. Shapers of Religious Traditions in Germany, Switzerland, and Poland, 1560–1600. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.

CHAPTER SIX: THEOLOGY IN THE AGE OF ORTHODOXY (1580–1700) Elert, Werner. The Structure of Lutheranism. Translated by Walter A. Hansen. St. Louis: Concordia, 1962. Kolb, Robert, ed. Lutheran Ecclesiastical Culture, 1550–1675. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Preus, J. A. O. The Second Martin: The Life and Theology of Martin Chemnitz. St. Louis: Concordia, 1994. Preus, Robert D. The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism. 2 vols. St. Louis: Concordia, 1970–72. Schmeling, Timothy, ed. Lives and Writings of the Great Fathers of the Lutheran Church. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2016.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE RESOURCES

275

CHAPTER SEVEN: SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE AND HYMNODY Arndt, Johann. True Christianity. Translated by Peter Erb. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist, 1979. Lund, Eric. “The Second Age of the Reformation.” In Christian Spirituality: Post-Reformation and Modern. Edited by Louis Dupré and Don E. Saliers, with John Meyendorff, 213–39. New York: Crossroad, 1989. ———, ed. Seventeenth Century Lutheran Meditations and Hymns. New York: Paulist Press, 2011. Rittgers, Ronald K. The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Sattler, Gary R. Nobler than Angels, Lower than a Worm: The Pietist View of the Individual in the Writings of Heinrich Müller and August Hermann Francke. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989. Strom, Jonathan. Orthodoxy and Reform: The Clergy in Seventeenth Century Rostock. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999.

CHAPTER EIGHT: LUTHERAN PIETISM (1670–1750) Brown, Dale W. Understanding Pietism. Rev. ed. Nappanee, IN: Evangel, 1996. Erb, Peter C., ed. Pietists: Selected Writings. New York: Paulist, 1983. Fulbrook, Mary. Piety and Politics: Religion and the Rise of Absolutism in England, Württemberg, and Prussia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Gawthrop, Richard L. Pietism and the Making of Eighteenth-Century Prussia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Lindberg, Carter, ed. The Pietist Theologians. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. Olson, Roger E., and Christian T. Collins Winn. Reclaiming Pietism: Retrieving an Evangelical Tradition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015 Sattler, Gary R. God’s Glory, Neighbor’s Good. Chicago: Covenant, 1982. Shantz, Douglas. An Introduction to German Pietism: Protestant Renewal at the Dawn of Modern Europe. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. Stein, K. James. Philipp Jakob Spener: Pietist Patriarch. Chicago: Covenant, 1986. Stoeffler, F. Ernest. German Pietism during the Eighteenth Century. Studies in the History of Religions 24. Leiden: Brill, 1973. ———. The Rise of Evangelical Pietism. Leiden: Brill, 1965.

CHAPTER NINE: LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA AND EASTERN EUROPE 1520–1738 Fell, Michael. And Some Fell into Good Soil: A History of Christianity in Iceland. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. Grell, Ole Peter, ed. The Scandinavian Reformation: From Evangelical Movement to Institutionalisation of Reform. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Larson, James L. Reforming the North: The Kingdoms and Churches of Scandinavia, 1520–1545. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

276

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Lausten, Martin Schwarz. A Church History of Denmark. Translated by Frederick H. Cryer. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002. Murray, Robert. A Brief History of the Church of Sweden. Stockholm: Diakonistyrelsens Bokförlag, 1961. Scribner, Bob, Roy Porter, and Mikuláš Teich, eds. The Reformation in National Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Skarsten, Trygve R. The Scandinavian Reformation: A Bibliographical Guide. St. Louis: Center for Reformation Research, 1985.

Sources and Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 1 Fig. 1.1. Wikimedia Commons / Cranach Digital Archive / gallerix.eu. Fig. 1.2. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 1.3. Wikimedia Commons / Kunstsammlungen Bremen. Fig. 1.4. Courtesy of the Richard C. Kessler Reformation Collection, Pitts Theological Library, Candler School of Theology, Emory University. Fig. 1.5. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 1.6. Public Domain. Fig. 1.7. Public Domain. Fig. 1.8. Courtesy of the Richard C. Kessler Reformation Collection, Pitts Theological Library, Candler School of Theology, Emory University. Fig. 1.9. Public Domain. Fig. 1.10. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 1.11. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 1.12. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 1.13. Wikimedia Commons / The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. Fig. 1.14. Wikimedia Commons.

278

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

CHAPTER 2 Fig. 2.1. Wikimedia Commons / Torsten Schleese. Fig. 2.2. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2.3. Staats-und Stadtbibliotek Augsburg. Fig. 2.4. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2.5. ALKENSTEINFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo. Fig. 2.6. Ivy Close Images / Alamy Stock Photo. Fig. 2.7. Luther Reformation Research Library Flug. I, Fiche 1294, Nr. 3335 VAULT. Fig. 2.8. Luther Reformation Research Library Flug. I, Fiche 1294, Nr. 3335 VAULT. Fig. 2.9. Luther Reformation Research Library Flug. I, Fiche 1294, Nr. 3335 VAULT. Fig. 2.10. Luther Reformation Research Library Flug. I, Fiche 1294, Nr. 3335 VAULT. Fig. 2.11. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2.12. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2.13. Wikimedia Commons / aus der Bibliothek des evangelischen Predigerseminars in der Lutherstadt Wittenberg. CHAPTER 3 Fig. 3.1. Courtesy of the Richard C. Kessler Reformation Collection, Pitts Theological Library, Candler School of Theology, Emory University. Fig. 3.2. Public Domain. Fig. 3.3. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 3.4. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 3.5. Wikimedia Commons. CHAPTER 4 Fig. 4.1. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 4.2. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 4.3. Wikimedia Commons / Photographer bilddatenbank.khm.at.

SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

279

Fig. 4.4. Wikimedia Commons / Bibliothèque de Genève. Fig. 4.5. Wikimedia Commons. CHAPTER 5 Fig. 5.1. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 5.2. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 5.3. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 5.4. Wikimedia Commons. CHAPTER 6 Fig. 6.1. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 6.2. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 6.3. Wikimedia Commons. CHAPTER 7 Fig. 7.1. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 7.2. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 7.3. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 7.4. Wikimedia Commons / www.portraitindex.de/documents/obj/33800342. Fig. 7.5. Historical image collection by Bildagentur-online / Alamy Stock Photo. CHAPTER 8 Fig. 8.1. Wikimedia Commons / http://www.portraitindex.de/documents/obj/33006450. Fig. 8.2. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 8.3. FALKENSTEINFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo. Fig. 8.4. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 8.5. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 8.6. Wikimedia Commons. Oscar Wächter: Johann Albrecht Bengel. Lebensabriss, Character, Briefe und Aussprüche via http://www.google.de/books?id=d8cFAAAAQAAJ.

280

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

CHAPTER 9 Fig. 9.1. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 9.2. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 9.3. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 9.4. Wikimedia Commons / Museum of Natural History at Fredriksborg Castle. Fig. 9.5. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 9.6. Wikimedia Commons.

Permission Acknowledgments

29. page 35 Used by permission of Westminster John Knox Press. 64. page 80 Used by permission of University of Chicago Press. 146. page 178 Used by permission of Concordia Publishing House. 147. page 180 Used by permission of Concordia Publishing House. 148. page 181 Used by permission of Concordia Publishing House. 194. page 238 Used by permission of Wipf & Stock.

Index

absolution. See penance adiaphora (matters of indifference), 98, 129–30, 143–44, 146–50 adultery. See sex afterlife: eternal life, 7, 36, 46, 55, 70, 78, 81, 116, 151, 162–63, 172, 182, 184–97, 199, 210, 231, 234, 246–47, 255, 262; resurrection, 15, 41–42, 70, 76, 77, 80, 115, 146, 166, 168, 197. See also heaven; hell; purgatory Agricola, Johann, xxiv, 6, 36, 51–52 Agricola, Mikael/Michael, 243, 254–55 Alber, Erasmus, 63, 85–86 Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz, 3, 10, 11–14, 57 Albrecht, Count/Duke of Mansfeld, 32, 151 Albrecht, Johann, Duke of Mecklenburg, 132 alliances, xxv, 6, 44–45, 126–27, 132, 135, 217, 244; Protestant Union, 5, 44, 125, 134–35; Schmalkald League, 6, 123, 124, 177 Allstedt, 31–32 almsgiving, 14, 128 Altenburg, Johann Michael, 141 Amsdorf, Nikolaus von, xvii, 124, 131–32, 144, 147, 151–52, 153–54, 269n4 Anabaptists, xxiii, xxvi, 12–13, 46–47, 111, 116–17, 187, 206, 253 Andreae, Jakob, 139, 146, 169 Andreae, Johann Valentin, 139–41 Anfechtung/Anfechtungen, 2. See also conscience; Luther: spiritual crisis Angela of Foligno, 196 Anhalt, 147, 171 Anne, Saint, 1 Antichrist. See apocalyptic thought Antinomian Controversy. See disputations; law and gospel Antiochus IV Epiphanes, King, 268n2 apocalyptic thought, 231–34; Antichrist, 93,

247; Chiliasm, 217; last days, 50, 95, 166, 196; return of Christ, 210 Apostles’ Creed. See confessional documents Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 14. See also scholastic theology Aristotle, 2, 3, 7–8, 15, 24, 42, 145, 160, 170, 171, 267n1 Arndt, Johann, xxvii, 139, 193–201, 195, 203, 205, 213, 215, 217, 222, 233, 237, 244, 270n2 Arnold, Gottfried, xxviii, 217–18 ascetic practices, 1, 195. See also fasting Asper, Hans, 41 Athanasius, 179 Augsburg, 6, 18–19, 64, 99, 133–34; Interim, 124, 127–29, 147. See also Cajetan; confessional documents; diets Augustine, Saint, 75, 174, 179 Augustinian Hermits, 1. See also Luther: monk Baldung Grien, Hans, 10 Baltic Region, xvii, 243, 255–56. See also Eastern Europe; Estonia; Latvia; Lithuania; Livonia; Poland Baltic Sea, 126 Baptism, 47, 110–11, 130; midwives, 111; sponsors (Godparents), 111, 115. See also sacraments Bartholomew, Saint, 268n1 Bavaria, 63, 83, 125, 138 Bayly, Lewis, 215, 225, 270n2 Bechstein, Ludwig, 117 Bellarmine, Robert, 181, 184–85 Bengel, Johann Albrecht, xvii, 217–18, 231–34, 237, 270n3, 279 Bergen, 146, 244 Berlin, 213, 216 Beza, Theodore, 176, 269n2 Bible (God’s Work, Scripture), 66; authority of,

284

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

170–71; clarity/obscurity, 37; inerrancy, 171; text criticism, 217, 231 Biel, Gabriel, 267nn2–3. See also scholastic theology bishops. See church workers Bogatzky, Carl Heinrich von, 237 Bohemia/Bohemians, 20–21, 64, 125, 137, 243, 256, 267 Böhme, Jacob, 217–18 Böhmer, Heinrich, 30 Boissard, Jean-Jacques, 181 Book of Nature, 174, 195 Bora, Katharina von, 4, 242, 248–49 Boyvin, René, 134 Brandenburg, 111, 115, 136, 171. See also elector: Brandenburg Braunschweig, 113–14, 117, 195 Braunschweig-Lüneburg, 44, 114, 137 Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, 193 Bremen, 171 Brenz, Johannes, xvii, 99, 111–12, 113 Brochmand, Jesper, 243 Brorson, Hans Adolph, 244, 265–66 Bucer, Martin, 54, 146 Bugenhagen, Johannes (Dr. Pomeranus), xvii, 45, 51, 56–57, 61, 99, 113, 114, 144, 241 bulls (papal), 92; Cum Postquam, 3, 19; Exsurge Domine, 3, 5, 20, 21–22; indulgence proclamation, 8–9 Bunyan, John, 270n2 burial, 115 Cajetan, Cardinal, 3, 18–19, 184–85 Calixtus, Georg, 170, 171–72, 185–87 Calov, Abraham, 170, 185, 187–88 Calvin, John, 134, 146, 164–66, 269n2; Calvinism, xv, 125, 126, 134, 146–47, 164–68, 169, 170, 171, 175, 187–88, 243, 269n1, 269n4; Crypto-Calvinism, 146–47, 164–68, 243, 256 Calw, 139–40 cardinals, 18, 26, 86 Castle Church (Wittenberg), 7, 16, 101–2, 109–10 catechisms, 62, 68–72, 100, 244, 260–61 celibacy, 4. See also marriage; sex ceremonies, 129. See also feasts; festivals/holy days; holidays

Charles V (Karl), Holy Roman Emperor, 3, 5, 85, 123–24, 126–27, 132–33, 138 Chemnitz, Martin, 146, 169–70, 177, 178–83 Christ: believer’s union with, 191, 210; bridegroom, 17, 68, 201, 210–11, 236, 262; divinity of, 176; indwelling of, 145, 193, 195; mediator/intercessor, 49, 55, 113; model of holiness, 195, 202; presence of, 43, 50, 146, 165, 178, 194, 256; savior/propitiator, 55, 252; union of two natures, 42, 46, 167, 177–80, 187. See also Lord’s Supper Christian II, King of Denmark, 241 Christian III, King of Denmark, 99, 241, 242, 247, 248 Christian IV, King of Denmark, 125, 244 Christian VI, King of Denmark, 244 Christology, 177–78 Chrysostom, 185 church, 46–47, 222–24; authority and power of, 127, 130; bells, 100, 115; consistory, 100, 118; discipline, 55, 204, 253; government, 47, 115; orders/ordinances, 101, 107–8, 109–21, 242, 251–52; polity, 97 (see also bishops; cardinals; church workers; popes); regulations, 47; rites/usages, 45, 100; struggle for survival, 123–41; vestments, 98, 102, 104, 129–31, 147. See also masses; worship church fathers, 19–20, 179 church workers, 94, 99–100, 111, 115–18; bishops, 13, 16, 23, 26, 32, 54, 86, 99–100, 116, 125, 128, 130–31, 173, 197, 241–47, 249, 252–53; deacons/chaplains, 100, 116, 118–19; ministers, 115–16, 127–28, 130, 131, 164–66; organists, 117; pastors/superintendents, 106–9, 116–17; priests, 23, 26, 32, 38, 54, 79, 85–86, 92, 94, 100, 109–10, 112, 118–19, 128, 130, 134, 201, 223, 242, 247, 249, 251–52; sacristan/sexton/küster/ wardens, 30, 117. See also Priesthood Chytraeus, David, 172 Cicero, 175 clergy. See church workers; priesthood Cochlaeus, Johannes, 63, 64, 88–89, 268n3 coercion (forced belief), 154, 220 colloquy (religious dialogue): Marburg, 5, 42–43, 99, 146; Regensburg, 6, 54–56; Thorn, 185

INDEX

communion. See Lord’s Supper concord (religious agreements), 255–56; Book of Concord, 147, 169, 195, 243, 268n1; Formula of, 143, 146–47, 150, 154, 156–58, 161, 163–64, 167–70, 177, 243, 258–59; Swabian-Saxon, 146; Wittenberg, 6, 50–51. See also confessional documents concupiscence. See Sin confession. See penance confessional documents: Apostles’ Creed, 46, 62, 171–72, 177, 187; Augsburg Confession, 6, 44, 45–49, 62–63, 74–75, 98, 137, 143, 147, 177, 183, 218, 242, 243, 256; Consensus of Sandomierz, 243, 256; Consensus Tigurinus, 146, 164, 166; Copenhagen, 245–47; Dresden Consensus, 146, 166; Formula of Concord, 143, 146–47, 150, 154, 156–58, 161, 163–64, 167–70, 177, 243, 258–59; Formula of Recessus, 256; Nicene Creed, 101, 177 confirmation, 115 conscience. See Anfechtung; Luther: spiritual crisis consistory. See church conventicles (collegia pietatis), 203, 216–17, 225 conversion (rebirth, new birth), 188, 190, 215, 216, 220–21, 234–35. See also sanctification councils: Konstanz, 20, 86, 267n8; need for general council, 6, 21, 23, 123, 127, 129, 150; Nicea, 45; Trent, 123, 124, 169, 181–83, 256 Cranach, Lucas, the Elder, 2, 4, 22, 26, 40, 50, 75, 91, 92, 114 Cranach, Lucas, the Younger, 131 creeds. See confessional documents cross/crucifixion, 26, 30, 40–41, 43, 46, 68–69, 74, 76, 77, 83, 92, 110, 116, 129, 166, 194, 198, 201, 209, 211, 246, 263 damnation, 32, 37, 52, 81, 86, 156, 167, 172, 175, 186, 207. See also purgatory dancing, 2, 221–22 Dannhauer, Johann, 171, 215 Danzig, 269n1 death, 63, 82–83 de Bry, Theodore, 93 Decalogue, 12, 48, 76. See also law Denmark, 99, 241–43, 244–49, 263–64, 265–66

285

devil, 6, 50–59, 63, 64, 233, 243 devotional literature, 193–213, 215, 244 devotional practices, 113–14, 193 didactics, 170–75, 177–88 Dietrich, Veit, 64 Diet: of Augsburg, 6, 18–19, 99, 124, 125, 133; of Nürnberg, 85; of Regensburg, 123; of Speyer, 5, 43–44; of Worms, 3, 24–25, 97, 123 disputations: Antinomian, 52–53; Heidelberg, 15–16; Leipzig Debate, 3, 11, 20–21; on righteousness, 162; scholastic theology, 2–3, 8; Weimar, 145, 158–59 doctrine (dogma, assertions), 170–72, 178, 187, 194–95; fundamental articles, 170, 176, 187–88, 217; importance of, 169 Dresden, 53, 99, 146–47, 166, 216, 239 Duns Scotus, John, 8, 267n3. See also scholastic theology Dürer, Albrecht, 12, 148 Eastern Europe, 123, 241–66. See also Baltic Region Eberlin von Günzburg, Johann, 63, 78–80 Eck, Johannes, 3 Edelfelt, Albert, 254 edicts, 244–45; Restitution, 125, 135; Worms, 25, 85 education: schools, 1, 24, 58, 62, 92, 95, 98, 101, 104, 108, 109, 120–21, 153, 161, 166, 216, 224, 231, 259; universities, 24, 170, 224. See also individual universities Eisenach, 1, 4 Eisleben, 1, 6–7, 93, 151, 195 election. See predestination elector: Brandenburg, 133, 135–36, 213; Palatinate (Pfalz), 125, 171; Saxony, 4–6, 11, 44, 99, 126, 131, 134, 146. See also individual Elector(s) end of the world, 6. See also apocalyptic thought Engelbretsdatter, Dorothe, 244, 264–65 enthusiasm, 200, 217, 239. See also Holy Spirit; prophets Erasmus, Desiderius, 5, 35–38, 99, 144, 154, 176, 269n2. See also will: freedom of Erfurt, 1, 2, 8, 141. See also Luther: education of; university of Estonia, 243

286

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

excommunication. See heresy; Luther: excommunication of Eucharist. See Lord’s Supper Europe, xv, 61, 127, 135, 136, 185, 208, 221, 232 exegesis, 41, 63, 173, 217 Exegesis Perspicua, 146, 166–67 extreme unction (last rites, holy oil), 128, 130 Faber, Jacobus, 185 factionalism, 143–68 faith, 48–49, 163–64, 176–77, 181, 193, 195, 196–97, 199–200, 261–63; active in love, 207; faith alone, 21, 39, 46, 48, 55–56, 61, 65, 68, 152, 163, 182, 184–85, 201, 246; trust in God, 2, 45, 80, 177, 208, 265. See also good works; justification false security/laxity, 32, 106, 200, 210 fanatics, 5, 40, 42 fasting, 14, 25, 72, 128 feasts, 59, 160, 268n1. See also ceremonies; festivals/holy days; holidays Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, 125, 137, 212 festivals/holy days, 23–24, 47–48, 79, 98, 101, 105, 107–8, 110, 129–30, 212, 244. See also ceremonies; feasts; holidays Finland, 241, 243, 249–55, 270n1 Flacius Illyricus, Matthias, 124, 143–44, 145–46, 147–48, 152, 158–61, 269n6 Flugschriften, xvii, 63. See also propaganda force. See coercion; violence forgiveness. See justification Formula of Concord. See confessional documents France, 5, 31, 123, 124, 126, 133, 136, 138, 175, 236 Francke, August Hermann, 216, 218, 226–31, 236, 244 Frankfurt am Main, 215 Frederik I, King of Denmark, 241 Frederik II, King of Denmark, 243, 256, 258–59 Frederik IV, King of Denmark, 244, 259–60 freedom (liberty), 28, 33, 38, 52, 77, 102, 133, 147, 244; Christian, 4, 30, 76, 114, 132, 144, 149–50, 197; freedom of the will (see will)

Freylinghausen, Johann Anastasius, 236 Friedrich III, the Wise, Elector of Saxony, 4, 5, 6, 27–28, 44, 99, 124 Gallus, Nikolaus, 147–48 Georg of Anhalt, Duke, 147 Georg, Johann, Duke of Saxony, 125 Gerhard, Johann, 170, 172, 173, 174–75, 181, 183–85, 194, 200–203, 269n2 Gerhardt, Paul, 194, 213 Gnesio-Lutherans, 143–46, 243, 269n5. See also Philippists God, 45–46; hidden and revealed will, 5; kingdom of, 91, 111, 150, 197–200, 204, 228, 232, 260; knowledge of, 159, 172, 174–75, 195, 223, 225, 230, 259–60; merciful calling, 188–89; Trinity, 133, 226, 253, 256; wrath, 24, 32–34, 46, 52, 58, 67–68, 79, 83, 150, 157, 219, 233, 247. See also Christ; grace; righteousness good works, 48–49, 74–75, 150–51, 152, 181; necessity of, 183–85; role in Christian life, 77–78. See also Faith gospel, 68–74. See also law Gottlandt, Peter, 153 government, 47. See also law; nobles; obedience grace, 14, 247–48; mercy, 189; preparation for, 8 Greenland, 244 Gropper, Johannes, 54 Grossgebauer, Theophilus, 194, 204–5 Grumbach, Argula von, 63, 83–85 Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, 125–26, 135–36, 141, 242–43, 244 Gustav Vasa, King of Sweden, 242, 243 Halle, 216, 236 Hamburg, 99, 146, 210, 212 Häme, 270n1 Hannover, 114–15 heaven: right hand of God, 40, 42, 46, 57, 69 Heberle, Hans, 137–39 Heermann, Johann, 194, 211–12 hell. See damnation; purgatory Hellie, Paul, 241 Hemmingsen, Niels, 243, 256–58 heresy/heretics, 3, 4, 11, 20–22, 59, 93–94, 153, 173, 181, 187, 195, 197, 223, 232 Heshus, Tilmann, 145, 155–56

INDEX

Hesse, 116–17, 171 Hesse, Philip of, 116, 124 Hiller, Philip Friedrich, 237 Hoefnagel, Jacob, 136 holidays, 130–31, 268n1. See also ceremonies; feasts; festivals/holy days Hollaz, David, 170, 172–74, 176, 177, 269n3 Holy Communion. See Lord’s Supper Holy Spirit, 73, 76, 93, 104, 262 Hopfer, Daniel, 127 humanism, 185, 241, 243 Hunnius, Aegidius, 170 Hunnius, Nikolaus/Nicholas, 170, 171, 176–77, 188–91, 225, 270n2 Hus, Jan, 40, 105, 267n8; Bohemians (Hussites), 233 Hutter, Leonard, 170 hymns/hymnbooks/hymnody, 62, 72–74, 141, 193–213, 236–38, 242, 244, 263–66. See also worship: music/singing Hyperius, Andreas, 172 Iceland, 241, 242, 244, 263 image: of God, 145; of Satan, 145 images/iconoclasm, 4, 113, 130 imitation of Christ, 193. See also Christ: model imputation of merit. See justification India (Tranquebar), 216, 244, 259 indulgences, xvi, 3, 8–10, 14, 19. See also Ninety-Five Theses insurrection, 25–27; rebellion/revolution, 5–6, 8, 27, 32–34, 50, 137, 241–42. See also violence; war Islam. See Muhammad; Turks Jesuits, 181, 182, 233, 242 Jesus. See Christ Jews, 6, 39–40, 57–59, 89, 94, 111, 118, 123, 131, 149, 158, 216, 232, 268n2 Johan III, King of Sweden, 242 Johann (John) Friedrich/Frederick/Frederich I, Elector of Saxony, the Magnanimous, 44–45, 50, 56–57 Johann Georg, Elector of Saxony, 125 Jonas, Justus, xvii, 45, 99, 117 Julius II, Pope, 9 justification, 46, 54–55, 61, 145–46, 150, 181–85, 188, 189–90, 219; double justifica-

287

tion, 54; forgiveness, 54; reconciliation, 6, 54, 56, 78, 129, 146, 170, 183, 188, 204, 242. See also faith; good works Jutland, 241 Juusten, Paavali, 243 Karelia, 254, 270n1 Karl IX (Charles), King of Sweden, 242 Karlstadt, Andreas Bodenstein von, 4, 5, 98. See also images; law Kempis, Thomas à, 193, 196 Kentzingen, 80–81 keys of the kingdom, 3, 9 Kilian, Bartholomäus, 219 Kingo, Thomas, 244, 263–64 Koran. See Muhammad; Turks Krell, Hans, 53 laity (common people), 104–6; priesthood of all believers, 3, 61, 98, 100. See also nobility; peasants Labadie, Jean de, 215 languages: Dutch, 193; English, 193; Finnish, 254; French, 193; German, 98, 99, 103, 109, 194, 254; Greek, 62, 98, 103, 109, 194, 231, 254; Hebrew, 98, 103, 109, 231; Latin, 98, 99, 103, 109, 193, 194, 231, 243, 254; Russian, 193; Swedish, 254 Lapland, 244 Latvia, 243 Laurenti, Laurentius, 236–37 law: civil law, 132; commandments, 48, 51–52, 62, 65, 68–69, 71, 73, 76, 79, 97, 103–4, 106–8, 112, 117, 182, 198, 202, 210, 216, 246, 252, 258, 263; natural, 33, 76 law and gospel, 6, 51, 52, 61, 184 Leo X, Pope, 3, 8–9 Leipzig, 141, 160–61; debate, 3, 11, 20–21; interim, 124–25, 129–32, 143–45, 147, 150–51 Leisnig, 119–20 Lithuania, 243 Livonia/Livonians, 243, 255–56 Löscher, Valentin Ernst, xvii, 217, 217, 218, 239–40 Lombard, Peter, 2, 14. See also scholastic theology Lord’s Prayer, 62, 70–71, 102–5, 108, 116–17, 252, 254

288

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Lord’s Supper (communion), xvi, 4–6, 39–43, 40, 47, 51, 61, 63, 72, 98, 100–102, 105, 107, 112–13, 124, 128, 146, 164, 167–68, 178, 180–81, 190, 243, 251–52, 256–57; Calvinist view, 269n4; Christology and, 177–78; Sacramentarians, 13, 38, 42, 167, 253. See also masses; sacraments Lotter, Melchior, the Younger, 22 love: fruit of faith, 207 Lübeck, 99, 135, 244 Ludaemilla Elizabeth of Schwarzbur-Rudolstadt, 213 Luther, Martin, 2, 10, 26, 40, 88. Baptism of, 1; birth of, 1; chronology of life, xxi–xiv; crises and controversies, 1–59; death of, 6–7, 169, 248; education of, 1; evaluations of, 92–95, 218–19; excommunication, 21–22, 97; Invocavit Sermon, 4, 28–29, 62; Junker Jorg, 26; marriage of, 4; monk, 1, 3, 4, 10; negotiations with emperor, 43–40; parents of, 1; reformation discovery (breakthrough), 2; sermons and lectures, 7, 14, 59, 61, 64–68, 153; spiritual crisis (Anfechtung), 2; translator, 61; trial, 18–25 Lutheranism, xv, xvii, xxv–xxix, 99, 123–26, 144, 146, 171, 177, 193, 195, 215–18, 242–44 Lütkemann, Joachim, 194, 203–4, 225, 270n2 Maccabbeus, Judas, 268n2 Magdeburg, 1, 10, 124, 143–44, 155, 162, 194 magic, 68, 118, 257–58. See also superstitions; witchcraft Major, Georg, 144, 147; Majoristic controversy, 77, 144–45, 150 Mansfeld, 1; Counts of, 1, 6–7 Marburg. See colloquy; Lord’s Supper marriage, 63, 81–82, 108, 114–15; bigamy, 53–54; divorce, 108; spiritual, 201. See also celibacy; sex Marschalk, Haug, 64, 92–93 Martin of Tours, Saint, 1 Mary, Saint (mother of Jesus), 10, 46, 69, 107, 129–30, 200 masses, 98, 101–6, 130; private, 29, 98. See also church; Lord’s Supper; worship Mathesius, Johannes, 64, 93–95 matters of indifference. See adiaphora (matters of indifference)

Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, 9, 11 Mazzolini, Sylvester. See Prieras, Sylvester (Mazzolini) meat, eating of, 131 Melanchthon, Philip, xvii, 6, 27, 45, 55–56, 62–63, 74–78, 99, 101–9, 113, 124, 125, 143–46, 147, 148, 152, 154–55, 163, 169–71, 172, 243 Menius, Jusust, 151 mercy. See grace merit: Christ’s, 46; treasury of, 3, 16 missions, 101, 216, 218, 232, 237 Moller, Martin, 193 monasticism/monks, 4, 9, 19, 23, 26, 32, 67, 79, 85–86, 153, 244, 247; mendicant houses (friars), 23, 120, 249. See also Augustinian Hermits; Luther: monk Moravians, 218, 244 Moritz, Duke of Ernestine Saxony, 123–25, 131–33 Mörlin, Joachim, 145, 162–63 Moses, 18, 32, 51–52, 64, 66–68, 89, 94, 108, 114, 163, 184 Muhammad, 657, 67. See also Turks Müller, Heinrich, 194, 205–7 Müntzer, Thomas, 5, 31–32. See also war: Peasants’ Murner, Thomas, 63, 87–88 Muslims, 6. See also Turks (Muslims) mysticism, 140, 171, 188, 193, 195, 200–201, 217, 239–40, 244, 262, 269n1 new birth/new creature/new obedience, 46, 55, 64, 83, 94, 144, 151–52, 164, 188–90, 196, 198, 205, 220, 260. See also conversion; sanctification Nicolai, Philipp, 193, 210–11 Ninety-Five Theses, xvi, 3, 16–18. See also indulgences nobles/lords, 3, 22–24. See also tyranny Norway, 99, 241–42, 244–49, 259, 264–65 Nürnberg (Nuremberg), 63, 85, 99, 111, 145 obedience: Christ’s, 164; spiritual (to God), 144, 151 Odense, 241, 244–45, 248 Oecolampadius, Johann, 5, 42, 43. See also colloquy: Marburg; Zwingli

INDEX

ordination, 100, 115–16 Origen, 156, 179, 185, 269n5 orthodoxy, xvii, 147, 169–91, 193–96, 215, 216, 217–18, 243, 244, 256–63; confessional consciousness, 193; contentiousness, 166. See also theological method Osiander, Andreas, 43, 63, 89–91, 111, 145–46, 161–64, 269n1 Palladius, Peder, 242, 247–48 pamphlets, 83–86. See also propaganda papacy. See popes papal bulls. See bulls (papal) Paracelsus, 196 pastoral care, 21, 101, 118–19, 126, 216 pastors. See church workers Paul, Saint, 62, 75, 97, 107, 152, 162–63, 254 Paul III, Pope, 92, 123, 126–27 peace: admonitions to, 5, 32–34 peace treaties: Augsburg, 125, 133–34, 171; Kalmar, 241, 243; Lübeck, 244; Nürnberg, 6; Passau, 125, 135; Westphalia, xxviii, 126, 136–37, 146 peasants. See laity; war Pelagians, 75 Pelikan, Jaroslav, 256, 269n4 penance, 128; absolution, 19–21, 25, 47, 71, 112, 128, 130, 152, 206; confession, xv, 47, 71–72, 111–12, 171, 183–85, 217, 218; contrition, 13–14, 21, 77, 80, 106. See also repentance; sacraments Pencz, Georg, 162 Peter, Saint: Basilica in Rome, 10, 13 Peterson, Eleonore von Merlau, 217, 235–36 Petri, Laurentius, 242, 251–52 Petri, Olaus, 242, 249–51 Pétursson, Hallgrímur, 244, 263 Peucer, Kaspar, 146 Pfeffinger, Johann, 144–45, 155 Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, 5, 6, 44, 53–54, 53 Philippists, 143–46, 218, 243. See also GnesioLutherans philosophy/philosophers, 3, 8, 39, 41–42, 49, 153, 156, 159, 171, 174, 185, 215 pietism/pietists/piety, xv, xvii, 172, 194, 195, 202, 215–40, 243, 244, 256–63 pilgrimage, 23, 48, 79, 120 Poland, 185, 242, 243 polemics, 177–88, 197

289

Pomeranus, Dr. See Bugenhagen, Johannes (Dr. Pomeranus) Pontoppidan, Erik, 244, 260–63 poor, care for the, 119–20 popes, 89–92, 128, 216. infallible teachers, 3; power of, 18. See also Julius II; keys of the kingdom; Leo X; Peter postils, 62, 64–66, 105, 268n1, 269n6 Praetorius, Stephen, 193, 269–70n1 prayer. See Lord’s Prayer predestination (election), 8, 76, 77, 145, 158 Prieras, Sylvester (Mazzolini), 3, 18 priesthood, 3, 26, 58, 61, 98, 100, 128, 223, 247. See also celibacy; church workers; laity; ordination propaganda, 63; pamphlets, 63; satirical, 87–92; woodcuts, 63, 89–91 prophets, 4, 27, 29–30; false, 33, 79, 85, 197, 233; true/biblical, 94–95, 151. See also revelation Protestation at the Diet of Speyer, 5, 44 Prussia, 74, 145, 146, 216 purgatory, 2–3, 9–10, 13–14, 16, 19–20, 22, 186, 247. See also damnation Quedlinburg, 194, 195 Quenstedt, Johann, 170, 172, 174, 175, 188 Raymond of Sabunde, 196 reason (human wisdom), 153, 173–74, 202. See also Bible; revelation rebellion. See insurrection rebirth. See conversion recess. See diets: Speyer reform, 6, 7–18, 61–95, 113–14 reform proposals, 97–121 reformation, xv, xvii, 63, 83–86, 143–68, 193, 241–66 reformers, 6, 25–30 religious agreements. See concords repentance/penitence, 130, 188, 189, 197–98. See also penance Resen, Hans Poulsen, 243 resistance. See insurrection; violence revelation, 173–74, 235–36 revocation, 22, 257 revolution. See insurrection Rhegius, Urbanus, xvii, 114

290

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

righteousness (justice), 145–46, 162, 163–64, 189–90; active or passive, 12; human lack of, 2; imputed, 163; infusion of, 145–46. See also justification; Osiander Rinkart, Martin, 194, 212 Rist, Johann, 212 Rostock, 194, 203–4 Rudbeckius, Johannes, 243 Russia, 243 Sacrament of the Altar. See Lord’s Supper Sacramentarian Controversy, 38–43 sacraments, 47, 100, 129. See also specific sacraments saints, 49; canonization, 24; intercessors/prayers to, 113; invocation of, 113, 128–29; veneration of, 128–29 salvation. See faith; good works sanctification: holy living, 193, 197–98, 202–3; regeneration, 190; renewal, 203–4, 226–29; spiritual growth, 194–95, 205–6, 234–36. See also conversion Satan. See devil satire, 63, 87–92 Saxony, 62, 164–66; Albertine, 11, 53–54, 111–12, 123–24; Ernestine (electoral), 2, 68, 99, 100, 106–9, 111, 115, 117–19, 124, 125, 143, 146; Lower, 125 Scandinavia, xvii, 100, 216, 218, 241–66. See also Denmark; Finland; Norway; Sweden scatology, 64, 91 Schmalkald League. See alliances Schmidt, Johann, 215 Schneider, Jacob (farmer), 234–35 scholastic theology/theologians, 7–8, 170, 174, 267n3; Luther’s critique of, 2–3, 8, 171. See also orthodoxy Schwäbisch-Hall (Imperial City), 99 Schwenckfeld, Kaspar, 269n1 Schwenckfeldianism, 200 Scripture. See Bible; law Scriver, Christian, 194, 208–10 Seisenegger, Jakob, 133 separatism/schism, 218, 267n9 sex, 63, 81–82; adultery, 6, 69, 77, 86, 106, 109, 118, 249, 267n5; chastity, 75, 76, 79, 129, 197, 204; fornication, 8, 77, 118, 249; rape, 118. See also celibacy; marriage

Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland and Sweden, 242 Silesia, 269n1 sin: concupiscence (inclination to sin), 7–8; original sin (fall of Adam), 7, 12, 35, 46, 55, 75, 76, 144–45, 147, 155, 158–61, 176, 197 smoking, 221 social welfare, 101, 195 Socinus, Laelius, 243 Spain, 5 Spalatin, Georg, 20–21, 154 Spegel, Haqvin, 244, 265 Spener, Philip Jacob, 141, 215–18, 218–26, 219 Speratus, Paul, 62, 74 Speyer, 5, 43–44, 85 Statius, Martin, 220, 269n1 Staupitz, Johannes von, 2 Stockholm: Bloodbath, 241–42 Strassburg (Strasbourg), 6, 44, 63, 80, 146, 170–71, 195, 215 Strigel, Valentin, 145, 147, 158–59 Suárez, Francisco, 176, 269n2 suffering, 63, 80–81; persecution, 28, 124, 137, 141, 143–44, 147–50, 236, 241; remedial, 14 superstitions, 130, 164, 257–58. See also bells; magic; witchcraft Sweden, 135, 241–43, 249–55, 265 Switzerland, 5, 146, 164. See also Basel; Zurich; Zwingli syncretism, 185–88. See also Calixtus; Calov synergism, 145, 146–47, 154–58, 269n5. See also will: freedom of synteresis, 8, 174. See also will Tauler, Johann, 196, 198, 200 Tausen, Hans, 241, 242, 245, 246 Tavastialand, 270n1 Ten Commandments, 62, 68–69, 106–7 Tetzel, Johann, 3, 267n5, 267n7 theological method/theology, 74–78, 169–91; prolegomena, 172. See also doctrine; scholastic theology tobacco, 221 tradition. See church fathers transubstantiation, 5, 38, 51, 186. See also Lord’s Supper treaties. See peace treaties

INDEX

Turks (Muslims), 6, 57, 108, 123 Twelve Articles. See war: Peasants’ tyranny, ecclesiastical (papal), 24 ubiquity, 5, 146, 166. See also Christ: presence of Ulm, 6, 44, 137 union with God/Christ, 171, 188, 191, 195, 210, 227 universities: Basel, 195; Giessen, 170; Halle, 216, 217, 218; Helmstedt, 170, 171, 185, 195; Ingolstadt, 63; Jena, 143, 145; Königsberg, 145; Leipzig, 143, 145, 170, 216; Rostock, 194; Strasburg, 170, 171, 195, 215; Tübingen, 170, 217; Wittenberg, 99, 124, 143, 144, 170 Uppsala, 242, 251, 252–54 usury, 59, 118 Västerås, 242, 249 Vermigli, Peter Martire, 269n4 Viborg, 241, 243, 245 violence: use of force, 5 visitations, 99–100, 233, 253 war, 137–41; Peasants’, 4, 30–34, 177; Schmalkald, xvii, 124, 126–34, 143–44, 242, 248; Thirty Years’, xvii, 125, 126, 134–41, 171, 194, 242–43, 243–44; Turkish, 5, 6, 57. See also violence Wartburg Castle, xxii, 4, 25, 64 Weigel, Valentin, 196, 200, 269n1 Wesley, John, 236

291

Westphal, Joachim, 146, 164–65 Westphalia (City), 210 will: bondage of, 5, 37–38; freedom of, 5, 35–37, 47–48, 144, 155–56; synergism, 155–56; synteresis, 8, 174. See also sin witchcraft/witches, 243, 258. See also devil; magic; superstition Wittenberg, 98, 99, 110, 113–14, 118–19, 160–61, 267n6. See also Castle Church; Concord Witzel, Georg, 151, 268n3 Woltersdorff, Ernst, 237–38 women, 80–81 woodcuts, 63. See also propaganda Word of God. See Bible works. See good works worldliness, 194 Worms, 3, 24–25, 85, 97, 123 worship, 108, 206–7, 255–56; lectionary, 62, 226; liturgy, 99–100, 104; Matins/Vespers, 98, 108, 110, 119; vestments, 98, 102, 104, 129–31, 147. See also church; masses Württemberg, 99, 112–13, 139–40, 216–17 Zealand, 242, 243 Zinzendorf, Nicholas von, Count, xxviii, xxix, 218, 238–39 Zurich, 5, 146, 164, 165, 269n1 Zwickau: city/town, 4, 118; prophets of, 4. See also Holy Spirit; prophets Zwingli, Ulrich, xxiii, xxvi, 5, 41, 42–43, 50, 146, 162, 164, 175, 253, 257, 269n1

Lund

Eric Lund is professor emeritus of religion at St. Olaf College. He taught courses on church history and historical theology for thirty-six years and served for nine years as the college’s director of international studies. His publications have covered the Protestant Reformation, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Lutheran spirituality, and the English reformer William Tyndale.

Praise for Volume 1: From the Reformation to Pietism “From the first stages of Luther’s reform movement to the spread of Lutheranism across Europe, this volume sheds light on key issues in Lutheran history and theology. In addition to engaging fascinating works of theology, readers will encounter the practical reasons why people cared about the reform of church and society in their time. This collection also provides a valuable focus on the experiences of Lutherans after Luther, especially during the seventeenth century. This volume will be useful for individuals, discussion groups, and classes who want to explore primary sources about the Reformation and consider its impact on modern life.” Martin Lohrmann Wartburg Theological Seminary “Refining and expanding his splendid collection of documents, Eric Lund employs his extensive understanding of the Lutheran tradition to take readers far beyond the usual canonical texts and figures. The remarkable breadth and careful curation of these materials make this an invaluable resource for students and scholars who seek to explore the richness and diversity of Lutheran thought and life.” Jonathan Strom Candler School of Theology

Mary Jane Haemig Luther Seminary

A Documentary History of Lutheranism T

his unique collection of excerpts from Lutheran historical and theological documents—many translated here for the first time—presents readers with a full picture of how the Lutheran movement developed in its thought and practice. The editor’s judicious selections and helpful introductions acquaint readers with both the enduring characteristics and changing features of this revolutionary Christian movement, always with an eye to how it affected and was experienced by ordinary people. Volume 1 covers the period from the Reformation to the rise of Pietism. Volume 2 analyzes the evolution of post-Enlightenment Lutheranism as it spreads to all the religions of the world.

1 From the Reformation to Pietism

“This book provides evidence not only of the theological insights that animated the Lutheran movement but also of the practical measures that rooted it among ordinary people and ensured its survival and flourishing. One finds here examples of the resources—sermonic, hymnic, and devotional, among others—used by pastors and laity to ground a distinctive Lutheran way of being Christian. Here, one sees evidence, too, of the ecclesiastical measures that helped shape the reformation and subsequent Lutheran expressions. Lund recognizes that to understand the Lutheran movement, one must employ a variety of perspectives, appreciating diverse manifestations and responses to challenges as well as the central unifying theological insights.”

A Documentary History of Lutheranism

Writings that shaped the direction of Lutheranism worldwide

Volume 1

From the Reformation to Pietism

Church History / Lutheranism / American Church History

Eric Lund, Editor

A Documentary History of Lutheranism From the Enlightenment to the Present

ERIC LUND AND MARK GRANQUIST, EDITORS

FORTRESS PRESS MINNEAPOLIS

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM, VOLUME 2 From the Enlightenment to the Present Copyright © 2017 Fortress Press, an imprint of 1517Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email [email protected] or write to Permissions, Fortress Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209. Cover art: © Thinkstock 2017; Cathedral’s Stained Glass by virsuziglis Cover design: Joe Reinke 2-Volume Set Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-1664-9 eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-1665-6 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z329.48-1984. Manufactured in the U.S.A. This book was produced using Pressbooks.com, and PDF rendering was done by PrinceXML.

Contents PREFACE

xvii

CHRONOLOGY OF LUTHERAN HISTORY: FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT TO THE PRESENT

xxi

CHAPTER 1: THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM

1

The Leibniz-Wolff Controversies 220. Leibniz: True Method in Philosophy and Theology (c. 1686) 221. Leibniz: New Essays on Human Understanding (1704) 222. Leibniz: Theodicy (1710) 223. Wolff: Rational Thoughts on God, the World and the Soul (1722) 224. Lange: The False Harmful Philosophy in the Wolffian System (1724) 225. Lange: Outline of Adverse Propositions (1736)

7 7 8 9 9 10

The Neologians—Diminished Supernaturalism 226. Michaelis: Dogmatics —On Revelation (1760)

11

A Lutheran Critique of Deism or Radical Rationalism 227. Semler: Answer to Bahrdt’s Confession of Faith (1779)

12

The Lessing-Goeze Debate 228. Lessing: On The Proof of the Spirit and of Power (1778) 229. Goeze: Something Preliminary against Lessing’s Malevolent Attacks 230. Lessing: Reply to Goeze: Axiomata (1778) 231. Lessing: Education of Mankind (1780)

13 14 16 17

Critical Philosophy and its Lutheran Critics 232. Immanuel Kant: What is Enlightenment? (1784) 233. Kant: Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793) 234. Johann Georg Hamann: Biblical Reflections (1758) 235. Hamann: Excerpts from his Letters—Evaluations of Kant (1781–1784) 236. Hamann: Metacritique of the Purism of Reason (1784) 237. Johann Gottfried Herder: God: Some Conversations (1787/1800)

18 19 22 23 24 25

Rationalist Systematic Theology in the Early Nineteenth Century 238. Julius Wegscheider: Textbook of Dogmatic Theology (1815/1831)

26

239. Ludwig von Gerlach: Rationalism at the University of Halle (1830)

27

Idealist Philosophy of Religion—Christianity and the Absolute Spirit 240. G. W. F. Hegel: Philosophy and Religion—Lectures on Religion (1827)

28

CHAPTER 2: CHURCH LIFE IN GERMANY IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES

31

Lutheran Worship in the Eighteenth Century 241. The Order of the Divine Service in Leipzig (1723) 242. Gerber: A History of Church Ceremonies in Saxony (1732) 243. Bach/Henrici (Picander): Libretto of the St. Matthew Passion (1727) 244. Enlightenment Era Hymns: Gellert (1757) and Claudius (1782)

38 40 41 42

The Impact of the Enlightenment on Piety and Church Participation 245. Rosenmüller: An Argument for General Confession (1788) 246. Ernesti: Sermon on the High Value of Reason (1798) 247. Rosenmüller: The Restoration of Public Worship (1809) 248. Zschokke: Hours of Devotion (1809)

43 43 44 46

Church-State Relations 249. Thomasius: The Right of a Christian Prince in Religious Matters (1724) 250. Friedrich Wilhelm I: Lutheran/ Reformed Disagreements (1726) 251. Friedrich II The Great: Letters to Voltaire on Religion (1736–1776) 252. Friedrich II The Great: On Superstition and Religion (1758) 253. Friedrich Wilhelm II: The Wöllner Edict (1788) 254. Schleiermacher: A Project of a New Church Constitution (1808) 255. Friedrich Wilhelm III: Order on the Union of Evangelical Churches (1817) 256. Friedrich Wilhelm III: The Essence and Purpose of the Union (1834) 257. Friedrich Wilhelm III: Decrees Concerning Old Lutheran Dissenters (1837) 258. Friedrich Wilhelm IV: Formation of the General Synod (1846) 259. Von Bismarck: Reminiscences of the Kulturkampf (1871) 260. The Evangelical League and German-Protestant Interests (1887)

47 48 49 51 51 53 54 55 56 56 57 57

The Church, the State and Social Issues 261. The Christian Social Workers’ Party (1878) 262. Superior Church Council: The Task of the Clergy (1879) 263. Stoecker: What We Demand of Modern Jewry (1879) 264. Naumann: Worker’s Catechism or True Socialism (1890)

58 59 60 60

CHAPTER 3: LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS Principles of Textual Criticism 265. Bengel: Gnomon of the New Testament (1742)

63

68

Enlightenment Reappraisals of Supernaturalism, Biblical Inspiration, and Canon 266. Herder: Concerning the Divinity and Use of the Bible (1768) 70 267. Semler: Treatise on the Free Investigation of the Canon (1772) 71 The Wolfenbüttel Fragments Controversy 268. Reimarus: Fragments—Concerning the Intention of Jesus (1778) 269. Semler: Answer to the Anonymous Fragments (of Reimarus) (1780) 270. Michaelis: Explanation of the Burial and Resurrection of Christ (1783) 271. Lessing: The Religion of Christ (1780)

72 73 74 75

Hegelian Biblical Interpretation 272. Hegel: The Positivity of the Christian Religion (1795) 273. Baur: Christianity as a New Principle (1845) 274. Baur: The History of Dogma from a Speculative Standpoint (1865)

75 76 77

The Quest of the Historical Jesus and Its Critics 275. Strauss: The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835) 276. Strauss: Debates Concerning the Death and Resurrection of Jesus (1835) 277. Tholuck: The Credibility of the Gospel History (1837) 278. Von Hofmann: Interpreting the Bible (1860) 279. Kähler The So-Called Historical Jesus and Biblical Christ (1892) 280. Schlatter: The History of the Christ—The Resurrection (1920)

77 79 79 80 82 84

Messianic Consciousness and Eschatology 281. Weiss: Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God (1892) 282. Wrede: The Messianic Secret (1901) 283. Schweitzer: The Secret of Messiahship (1901) 284. Schweitzer: Results of the Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906/1933)

86 87 88 89

The Demythologization Debate 285. Bultmann: The New Testament and Mythology (1941)

90

The New Quest for the Historical Jesus 286. Käsemann: The Problem of the Historical Jesus (1953) 287. Bornkamm: Jesus of Nazareth (1956) 288. Pannenberg: Jesus’ History and Our History (1960)

CHAPTER FOUR: THE REVITALIZATION OF LUTHERANISM IN NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE

92 94 95 97

Opposition to the Prussian Union 289. Harms: The 95 Theses of 1817 290. Scheibel: Documentary History of the Union of Churches (1834)

101 103

Repristination Theology: Religious and Political Conservatism 291. Hengstenberg: Christology of the Old Testament (1829/1854) 292. Hengstenberg: Scriptural Teachings on Governmental Authority (1831)

104 105

The Pietist Awakening in Württemberg 293. Blumhardt: Sickness of Gottliebin Dittus (1842) / The Awakening Movement in Möttlingen (1845)

106

High Church Confessional Theology: Neo-Lutheranism 294. Löhe: Three Books About the Church (1845) 295. Vilmar: The Theology of Facts vs Theology of Rhetoric (1856)

108 109

The Erlangen Theology: Dynamic Confessionalism 296 Thomasius: The Incarnation as the Self-Limitation of the Son (1853) 297. Von Harless: System of Christian Ethics (1842/1864)

111 112

Mediating Theology 298. Neander: The Proper Method of Treating the History of Dogma (1826) 299. Dorner: The Regeneration of Protestant Theology (1867) 300. Tholuck: The Doctrine of Sin and the Reconciler (1823)

114 115 117

Lutheran Social Action: The Deaconess and Inner Mission Movements 301. Fliedner: Appeal of the Deaconess Institute at Kaiserswerth (1853) 302. Fliedner: The Lack of Practical Theological Education (1831) 303. Wichern: The Inner Mission of Germany (1851) 304. Wichern: Speech to the Wittenberg Kirchentag (1848)

118 119 121 123

CHAPTER FIVE: LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

125

Documents from the Period 305. Account of the Danish Expedition to North America (1619–1620) 306. New Sweden Colony on the Delaware (1647) 307. Saltzburg Lutherans in Georgia (1734) 308. Debate between Muhlenberg and Zinzendorf (1742) 309. Formation of the Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsylvania (1748) 310. The Church Agenda (Liturgy) of 1748 311. Extract from Muhlenberg’s Journal (November 1763) 312. A Lutheran Pastor’s Report on the Revolutionary War (1777–1778) 313. The Diaries of Frontier Evangelist John Stough (1806–1807) 314. Proposed Plan for the Organization of a General Synod (1819) 315. Objections to the General Synod: The Tennessee Synod (1820) 316. Conditions on the Frontier as seen by a Lutheran Leader (1821) 317. American Lutherans and Revivalism (1830–1844) 318. Lutheranism in Canada: The Travels of Adam Keffer (1850) 319. Early Saxon Settlement in Missouri 320. Walther's Presidential Address to the Missouri Synod (1848) 321. Schmucker and “American Lutheranism” (1851) 322. Confessional Reaction to “American Lutheranism” (1849) 323. The Definite Synodical Platform (1855) 324. Objections of the Pittsburgh Synod to the Definite Platform (1856) 325. Walthers’ Proposal for “Free Conferences” (1856) 326. Life in a Frontier Parsonage (1852) 327. American Lutherans and the Abolition of Slavery (1839–1857) 328. Southern Lutherans and the Defense of Slavery (1857) 329. Grievances of Confederate States Lutherans (1863) 330. Observations of a Lutheran Chaplain in the Civil War (1863)

128 129 130 131 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 146 147 148 150 151 151 153 154 154 155

CHAPTER SIX: NINETEENTH CENTURY LIBERAL LUTHERANISM

157

Liberal Theology in the Union Church: The Beginning of a New Approach 331. Schleiermacher: On Religion (1799) 332. Schleiermacher: The Person and Work of Christ (1821/1830)

161 163

The Ritschlian School 333. Ritschl: Justification and Reconciliation (1870/1888) 334. Ritschl: Instruction in the Christian Faith (1875) 335. Herrmann: The Communion of the Christian with God (1886/1895)

164 166 167

336. Harnack: What is Christianity? (1900) 337. Harnack: The Christian Religion in Protestantism (1900) Conservative and Liberal Critics of the Ritschlian School 338. Cremer: A Reply to Harnack on the Essence of Christianity (1901) 339. Schweitzer: The Historical Jesus and the Christianity of Today (1931) 340. Schweitzer: The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906)

169 171

173 174 174

Historical and Cultural Approaches to Religion: The History of Religions School 341. Troeltsch: The Christian Faith (1912/1925) 175 342. Troeltsch: The Social Teachings of Lutheranism (1912) 176

CHAPTER SEVEN: CHURCH STRUGGLES IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

179

Church Support for the War Effort in World War I 343. Wilhelm II: Address to the German People (August 6, 1914) 344. Manifesto of the Ninety-Three German Intellectuals (October, 1914) 345. The Superior Church Council on the Revival of Church Life (1914) 346. Vorwerk: The War’s Lord’s Prayer (1914) 347. Franke: War Sermons (1914) 348. Althaus: The War and our Faith in God (1915) 349. Seeberg: Petition of the Annexationist Intellectuals (1915) 350. Baumgarten: Concerning Annexationist Policies (1917) 351. The Protestant Church Commission (1917): The Reformation Anniversary 352. Declaration of Five Berlin Pastors: A Call for Peace (1917)

185 185 186 186 187 187 189 190 190 191

Post World War I Attitudes: Turmoil during the Weimar Republic 353. The Prussian General Superintendents: Answer to Versailles (1919) 354. The Constitution of the Weimar Republic (August, 1919) 355. The German Evangelical Church Federation (DEK) Constitution (1922) 356. The Declaration concerning the Fatherland by the Kirchentag (1927)

191 192 193 193

Nazism and the German Christian Faith Movement 357. The National Democratic Socialist Workers Party Platform 358. Guidelines of the German Christian Faith Movement (1932) 359. The Principles of the German Christian Faith Movement (1933) 360. German Christian Handbook: Luther and Hitler (1933) 361. Müller: What is Positive Christianity? One Folk, One Faith (1939)

194 194 195 196 197

362. Hirsch: What the German Christians Want for the Church (1933) 363. Althaus: A Word on the Thüringian German Christians (1933) 364. Bormann: The Relation of National Socialism and Christianity (1941)

198 199 200

The German Church Struggle: The Confessing Church and the Resistance 365. The Program of the Young Reformation Movement (1933) 366. The Pastor’s Emergency League (1933) 367. The Aryan Paragraph in the Church and Two Responses (1933) 368. Bonhoeffer: The Church and the Jewish Question (1933) 369. The Confession of Altona (1933) 370. Asmussen: Address on the Theological Declaration at Barmen (1934) 371. Gollwitzer: Sermon about Kristallnacht (November 16, 1938) 372. The Ministry of Women in the Church (October, 1942) 373. Tillich: The Defeat of Nazi Belief (June, 1943)

201 202 203 205 206 207 209 210 211

Church Renewal after World War II 374. The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt (October, 1945) 375. Resolutions of the Council of the EKD on Denazification (May, 1946) 376. The Formation of the EKD and the VELKD (1948)

212 213 213

The Lutheran Church under Eastern European Communism 377. Hromádka: On the Threshold of a Dialogue (1964) 378. Mendt: The East German Church and the Stasi (1995) 379. Kirchentag Theses: The Time for Silence has Passed (Halle, 1988) 380. Prayers for Peace in Leipzig and the Peaceful Revolution (1981–1989)

214 216 218 218

CHAPTER EIGHT: LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

221

The Recovery of Theocentric Religion and the Rejection of Cultural Protestantism 381. Barth: Evangelical Theology in the Nineteenth Century (1957) 225 382. Holl: What Did Luther Understand by Religion? (1917) 226 383. Otto: The Idea of the Holy (1917) 228 Lutheran Responses to Karl Barth’s Dialectical Theology 384. Gogarten: The Crisis of our Culture (1920) 385 Sasse: Lutheran Doctrine and the Theology of Barth (1934) 386. Elert: Law and Gospel (1948)

230 232 234

Demythologizing the Kerygma 387. Bultmann: Demythologizing in Outline (1941) 388. Thielicke: The Restatement of New Testament Mythology (1942)

236 237

Existential Theology 389. Tillich: The Nature of Systematic Theology (1951) 390. Tillich: The Meaning of God and the Reality of Christ (1951–1957)

239 240

Ethics and the Christian Life 391. Koeberle: The Quest for Holiness (1936) 392. Bonhoeffer: The Cost of Discipleship (1937) 393. Sölle: Bultmann and Political Theology (1987)

241 243 245

Christianity and Secularization 394. Bonhoeffer: Religionless Christianity (1944) 395. Gogarten: Secularization and Christian Faith (1953) 396. Sölle: Christ the Representative

247 248 249

History, Faith, and the Resurrection of Christ 397. Pannenberg: How is God Revealed to Us? (1975) 398. Pannenberg: Jesus’ Resurrection as a Historical Problem (1964) 399. Ebeling: The Nature of Faith (1959)

250 252 253

CHAPTER NINE: LUTHERANS IN AMERICA, 1865–2016

255

400. Krauth: Theses on Faith and Polity (1866) 401. Preus: Lectures on the Religious Situation (1867) 402. Question of Pulpit and Altar Fellowship—The Galesburg Rule (1875) 403. Missouri’s Thirteen Theses on Predestination (1881) 404. Ohio’s Four Theses on Predestination (1881) 405. Krauth: On the Controversy on Predestination (1884) 406. Lutheran Worship: The Common Service of 1888 407. The Augustana Synod and the Conflict on Atonement (1872–1878) 408. Statement on Congregational Autonomy (1897) 409. Koren: The Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures (1908) 410. Resolution of the Election Controversy: The Madison Agreement (1912) 411. African-American Lutheranism in Alabama (1915) 412. American Lutherans and the Challenges of World War I (1918) 413. Knubel-Jacobs: “The Essentials of the Catholic Spirit in the Church” (1919) 414. The Minneapolis Theses (1925)

260 261 263 264 265 265 266 267 268 268 270 270 271 272 274

415. A Brief Statement of the Missouri Synod (1932) 416. American Lutherans and the Great Depression (1933) 417. Statement of the Forty-Four (1945) 418. The American Lutheran Conference: Testimony on Faith and Life (1952) 419. Joint Commission on Lutheran Unity’s Statement (1958) 420. Lutheran Church in America: Statement on Race Relations (1964) 421. Statements on the Ordination of Women (1967–1969) 422. The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod: The Seminex Walkout (1974) 423. Lutherans and Episcopalians: Called to Common Mission (1999) 424. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: On Human Sexuality (2009) 425. New Lutheran Denominations: The LCMC and the NALC (2001/2010)

CHAPTER TEN: LUTHERANS IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT 426. The Conventicle Act of Sweden (1726) 427. Hauge: On his Conversion Experience (1817) 428. Johnson: Sanctification and Regeneration of the Sinner (1897) 429. Grundtvig: Christian Faith as Baptismal Confession (1855) 430. Kierkegaard: Attack upon Christendom (1855) 431. Beck: A Defense of the Awakening Movement in Denmark (1901) 432. Schartau: Jesus Only (c. 1800) 433. Rosenius: The Believer Free from the Law (1857) 434. Waldenström: On the Doctrine of the Atonement (1872) 435. Ruotsalainen: Letter to the Peasants (1846) 436. Laestadius: The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness (1852) 437. Nineteenth-Century Scandinavian Hymnody 438. Hallesby: The Challenge of the Cross to Modern Christianity (1929) 439. Aulén: The Nature of the Christian Faith (1947) 440. Nygren: The Nature of the Atonement (1932) 441. Prenter: Faith in God in the Modern World (1964) 442. Pastoral Letter of the Norwegian Bishops (1941) 443. Munk: Christ and Denmark (1944) 444. Vööbus: The Soviet Communists in Estonia (1950) 445. Berggrav: On the Modern State and God (1945) 446. Giertz: On the Catholicism of the Church (1939) 447. Stendahl: The Ordination of Women in Sweden (1985) 448. Wingren: Christianity and Creation (1971) 449. Mannermaa: The New Finnish School of Luther Research (1997) 450. Hegstad: Recent Trajectories in the Church of Norway (2012) 451. Lauha: The Contemporary Church of Finland 2005

275 276 277 278 279 280 282 285 287 288 290 293 298 299 300 302 304 306 306 308 309 311 312 313 315 316 318 319 320 322 323 324 325 327 328 329 330 332

452. Stegeby: The Disestablishment of the Church of Sweden (1999) 453. Secularism in Scandinavian Church and Society (2013)

333 334

CHAPTER ELEVEN: LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

337

Missionary Activities and Attitudes 454. Ziegenbalg: Thirty-four Conferences (1707) 455. Nommensen: The Batak Church in Indonesia (1876) 456. Laury: Survey of the Mission Field: India (1905) 457. Singmaster: The Lutheran Church in Africa (1917) 458. Syrdal: The Relation of the Church to Mission (1967) 459. Scherer: Toward a New Era of Mission (1987)

342 344 345 345 346 347

Namibia and South Africa 460. Open Letter to the Prime Minister of South Africa (June 30, 1971) 461. Nujoma: Struggling for Independence in Namibia (1995) 462. Lutheran World Federation Statement on South Africa (1977 and 1984) 463. Buthelezi: Church Unity and Human Divisions of Racism (1981) 464. Farisani: Diary from a South African Prison (1987) 465. Maimela: Signs of Salvific Activity in African Traditional Religions (1988) 466. Nürnberger: The Church and HIV/AIDS (2003)

348 349 349 350 351 353 354

Tanzania 467. Bukambu: The Participation of Women in Church (1977) 468. Kibira: Has Luther Reached Africa (1983) 469. The Bagamoyo Statement on the Responsibility of the Church (1994) 470. Bangsund: Music Culture and the Tanzanian Church (2007) 471. Maanga: The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, 1963-2013 (2014)

356 357 359 360 361

Ethiopia 472. Tumsa: Serving the Whole Man (1972) 473. Yadessa: The Church in Ethiopia (2001) 474. EECMY Rejection of Same Sex Marriage (2010) 475. Ayana: Lutheranism in Ethiopia (2015)

362 364 365 365

Madagascar 476. The Conversion of Rainisoalambo (1894) 477. Ravelonjanahary the Healer (1932) 478. Spirit-Possession and Exorcism in Madagascar (2006) 479. A Conversion Account from Madagascar (2006)

367 368 368 369

Liberia 480. Payne: The History of My Life in Relation to Martin Luther (1983)

369

The Middle East 481. Younan: The Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (2011) 482. Younan: A Vision of Peace through Justice (2012) 483. Raheb: Palestinian Christians and the Bible (1995) 484. Younan: Beyond Luther—Prophetic Interfaith Dialogue for Life (2009)

370 372 373 375

India 485. Manchala: The Church and the Brokenness of Indian Society (2001) 486. Rajashekar: Lutheranism in Asia (2008) 487. Basumatary: “Tribal” Christians in North India (2012) 488. Vethanayagamony: Stories of Lutherans in South India (2012)

377 378 380 382

Indonesia 489. Confession of Faith of the Huria Kristen Batak Protestan (HKBP) (1951) 384 490. Sihombing and Hutauruk: Indonesia—Challenges and Opportunities (2012) 385 491. Pakpahan: Sharing a Common Story for an Indonesian Context (2008) 386 Papua New Guinea 492. Kamungsanga—The First Baptized Lutheran (1899) 493. Akikepe: Evangelistic Work among the Komba and Selepet People (1922) 494. Mikaele: Letter to the Mission Boards (1932) 495. Bamatengnuka: A Farewell to Ancestral Spirits (1960) 496. A Statement of Faith to Correct False Ideas about Cargo (1966?) 497. Sapom, Noibano, Palso: Two People, Two Ways? (1970) 498. Bishop Zurenuo—The First National Bishop (1973)

388 388 389 389 390 390 391

El Salvador 499. Bishop Gómez: Fire Against Fire (1989)

391

Brazil 500. Schmidt: Lutheran Theology in a Brazilian Context (1989) 501. Altmann: Justification as Liberation (1990) 502. Altmann: The Church and Politics in Latin America (1990)

392 393 395

CHAPTER TWELVE: LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

397

Ecumenical Dialogues and Agreements 503. Anglicans and the Church of Sweden (1922) 504. Lutheran World Convention on Ecumenism (1936) 505. Lutherans and the Formation of the World Council of Churches (1946) 506. Lutheran Comments on the Second Vatican Council (1965) 507. The Leuenberg Agreement (1973) 508. Lutheran-Baptist Dialogue (1981) 509. Lutheran-Anglican Dialogues: A Report (1983) 510. Lutheran-Reformed Dialogues in North America (1984) 511. Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogues in North America (1991) 512. The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Statement on Ecumenism (1991) 513. The Porvoo Agreement (1992) 514. Lutherans and Religious Dialogue in Africa (1996) 515. Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogues (1998) 516. Opponents to Called to Common Mission (1999) 517. The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999) 518. Opponents to the Joint Declaration on Justification (1999) 519. On the Five-Hundredth Anniversary of the Reformation (2015)

401 402 404 405 406 408 409 410 412 413 414 416 417 419 420 422 424

Inter-Religious Dialogues 520. Troeltsch: The Question of World Religions (1923) 521. Söderblom: The Question of Continuing Revelation (1933) 522. Ludwig: Lutherans and Inter-Religious Dialogue (1988) 523. Pannenberg: Theology and World Religions (1990) 524. Luther, Lutherans, and the Jewish People (1994) 525. Braaten: Religious Truth Claims and God’s Salvation (1995) 526. Considerations on Lutheran–Muslim Dialogue (1998)

425 426 428 429 431 431 433

NOTES

437

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE RESOURCES

443

SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

449

PERMISSION ACKNOWLEDGMENT

455

INDEX

459

Preface

This is the second half of a two-volume collection of primary source documents that tracks the development of Lutheranism over five centuries. The first book covered the period from the Reformation to the rise of Pietism (1517–1750). The first part of book two overlaps the period of Lutheran Orthodoxy and Pietism in order to point out the developments in science and philosophy in the seventeenth century that led to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Book one started with an examination of the intellectual and social revolution prompted by Martin Luther’s call for church reform. Book two begins with analysis of an equally important intellectual revolution, the Enlightenment, and the social revolutions that flowed out of it at the end of the eighteenth century. Luther’s call for reform of religious thought and practice shook the longstanding social order dominated by Catholic Christianity. The Enlightenment, the social tensions that developed from industrialization and urbanization in the early nineteenth century, and the expansion of world horizons posed equally shocking challenges to the world–view and religious institutions that had developed during the first two centuries of Lutheranism. The format for this volume is the same as for the first. There is a basic chronological order to the layout of the chapters, but they are also organized around certain themes. Some chapters are clearly focused on developments in thought, while others are oriented towards the description of historical events and the evolution of religious institutions. Since Lutheranism began in the eighteenth century to spread throughout the world, some chapters also concentrate on developments in both thought and practice in specific regions. The prime goal is to make available primary source materials that are essential for the work of historical analysis, but since such materials are often opaque

and fragmentary until they have been interpreted and integrated by secondary sources, each chapter also starts with a short essay intended to provide necessary background information and explanations of how the documents relate to each other. Read together, these twelve introductory essays also provide a concise overview of the history of Lutheranism for those who are approaching the topic with little prior knowledge. Because the volume covers more than three centuries and multiple regions, it has been necessary, more often than not, to provide excerpts rather than complete documents. There is, of course, a danger that selectivity of this sort will distort the reader’s impressions of the available historical evidence. Nevertheless, there is a justifiable trade-off in the adoption of this approach. For general readers and for most students, many excerpted documents make it possible to gain an appreciation of multiple facets of the history of Lutheranism without being overwhelmed by less important details. For researchers who are inspired to read the complete texts (and have the skills to do so in the original languages), references to where the full documents can be found are provided with each selection. A bibliography of secondary sources has also been supplied at the end of the volume to facilitate deeper research. For the centuries since the Enlightenment it is increasingly more complicated to define the essence of Lutheranism. Confessionalists in each age have always adhered closely to the main ideas expressed in Luther’s theology and to statements of faith such as Luther’s catechisms, the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord. However, in the modern era, there have also been many Lutherans who have advocated reassessing the inherited tradition and making adjustments in order to address new issues and new historical situations. The nineteenth century

xviii

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

liberal theologians called this separating the kernel from the husk. This volume takes a flexible approach to defining who should be included as a Lutheran. Since Lutheranism became the established and dominant religion in some regions of Germany and in all of Scandinavia, it provided the religious context in which innovative thinkers who challenged the past usually continued to work. Thus the definition of Lutheranism used for our project is as much sociological as it is theological. If people viewed themselves as Lutherans, they are considered such for purposes of this overall narrative. If Lutheranism strongly shaped the outlook of provocative thinkers before they distanced themselves from it, they may also be included in this collection, especially if their ideas stimulated the debates that preoccupied the attention of more traditional Lutherans over the centuries. Eric Lund prepared the chapters that cover Lutheranism in continental Europe and the non–Western world. Mark Granquist prepared the chapters on America, Scandinavia, and inter–religious dialogue. Chapter one concentrates on the Enlightenment in Germany because German philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel influenced developments in Lutheranism more directly than their counterparts who were active elsewhere in Europe. Many anthologies make the writings of the most innovative thinkers of this period available. This chapter, however, also draws attention to the responses of the various Lutheran critics of rationalism. Chapter two examines how the new currents of thought—and developments in political and social life—impacted worship life and ecclesiastical structures. To avoid making the picture too complex, the primary source materials are drawn primarily from Leipzig in Saxony and the kingdom of Prussia, which became increasingly influential as Germany moved towards full unification in the late 19th century. Focusing on these examples will make clear how much the position of the church in society and the attitudes of its leaders changed over the course of two full centuries. Chapter three is directly connected to chapter one but is more thematically focused on the development of biblical scholarship. From the Age of the Enlightenment to the present, Lutheran scholars have played a very important role in shaping the discipline of biblical studies. The development of scientific views of the world and the creation of more critical standards for determining historical truth during the Enlightenment raised all sorts of questions about the stories

contained in the Bible and the reliability of its portrayal of the person of Jesus. The quest of the historical Jesus became a perennial topic of concern for modern biblical scholars and the evolution of that quest is outlined in this chapter. Special attention is devoted to the debates stimulated by Hermann Reimarus in the eighteenth century and David Strauss in the nineteenth century. It is interesting to see how many traditional assumptions about the Bible and Jesus were called into question but also how many biblical scholars were interested in reconstructive theological work after having shaken up the church by their provocative ideas. Chapters four and six show the diversity of Lutheran thought in the post-Enlightenment period. The celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Reformation in 1817 inspired the Prussian king to bring the Lutheran and Reformed Protestants of his territories into a closer union. This prompted a strong conservative backlash and sharpened the confessional consciousness of many Lutherans. Chapter four looks at the many facets of a revival of Lutheran identity in nineteenth century Germany and at new forms of church work that were proposed to strengthen the role of the church in society. Chapter six, however, looks at the continuing influence of the critical thought of the Enlightenment and the growth of a more liberal wing of German Lutheranism that proposed modern judgments about the essence of Christianity that were less tied to traditional understandings of doctrine. Chapters five and nine show the very different situation faced by Lutherans in America where there were no established churches. The chapters also highlight the perennial challenge of promoting a common consciousness and cooperation among Lutherans who came from many different ethnic backgrounds and had diverse theological persuasions. Their new environment contrasted greatly with Europe, but the American Lutherans also struggled with some of the same issues that created tensions within the Lutheran churches of Europe. Some American church leaders advocated significant adjustments in Lutheran doctrine and practice in order to relate more effectively to the new context in which they were living, while other leaders stressed the perennial importance of the Lutheran confessions and expressed concern about the growing influence of other denominations on the practices of the Lutheran churches. Chapters seven and eight both examine developments in European Lutheranism during the twentieth century. One chapter focuses on how Christian

PREFACE

faith and national or cultural consciousness were interwoven in problematic ways during the periods of the two world wars. The other looks at new theological perspectives that attempted to overcome some of the problems that had developed from widespread Lutheran support for the German state during the wars. Lutheranism, and Christianity in general, has had a slowly diminishing influence in European society, and some of the theological perspectives examined in chapter eight also show how Lutherans theologians and church leaders have sought to respond constructively to that reality. Chapters ten and eleven present an interesting contrast of cultural contexts. Scandinavia Lutheranism, like German Lutheranism, has had significant internal diversity, particularly between sympathizers and critics of Pietism, but perhaps even more than in continental Europe Lutheranism in Scandinavia has maintained a kind of religious monopoly by virtue of the establishment of state churches during the Reformation. Chapter ten shows both the benefits and the problems that have accompanied this special status. By contrast, the various non–Western churches established by Lutheran missionaries since the nineteenth century have all existed as minority groups within diverse religious worlds. Unlike Scandinavia (and Germany) where Christianity and cultural identity have been so closely tied, the non-Western churches are still struggling to figure out how much Christianity can be adjusted to fit with local customs and worldviews. In Scandinavia, the spread of secularism has lessened participation in church life, and campaigns for disestablishment in several countries have threatened to reduce the role of the church in society even more. In the non-

xix

Western world, on the other hand, the Lutheran churches have been growing rapidly to the point that their voices have been increasingly important not only in their local settings but also in the worldwide Lutheran communion. Chapter twelve shows Lutheran participation in ecumenical circles and in inter–faith dialogue. Throughout its history, Lutheranism has co-existed with rival understandings of Christianity and with an awareness that there are other non-Christian religious traditions. In the early centuries, the tendency was to stress the differences between Lutheranism and other religious traditions and to guard against being tainted by outside influences. In the centuries covered in this volume, however, there has been a growing openness within Lutheranism to rethink this relationship with other forms of Christianity and with other religions. This chapter looks at the participation of Lutherans in the modern ecumenical movement and in inter–religious dialogues. There continue to be differences of opinion among Lutherans about other religious traditions but one of the most significant developments of the past century has been the forging of closer relations with other Protestant churches and, perhaps most significantly, with the Roman Catholic tradition from which the Lutheran reformers became separated five hundred years ago. As the world commemorates the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in the year these books are published, we hope that they will contribute to a deeper understanding of the long-term effects of Martin Luther’s reforming efforts and of how the ecclesiastical tradition he founded has been “reformed but always reforming.”

Chronology of Lutheran History: From the Enlightenment to the Present

1619

Danish Expedition to Hudson’s Bay—First Lutherans in North America

1620

Francis Bacon develops scientific method in “Novum Organum”

1624

Lord Herbert of Cherbury articulates the principles of Deism—defends “natural religion”

1637

René Descartes publishes “Discourse on Method”

1630s–40s First Lutherans arrive in North America—New Amsterdam and Pennsylvania 1656

Baruch Spinoza expelled from Jewish community of Amsterdam for his radical view of God

1687

Isaac Newton publishes “Principia Mathematics” on physics and calculus

1705

Gottfried Leibniz published “New Essays on Human Understanding” in response to John Locke King Fredrik IV of Denmark supports Pietism and initiates Lutheran missions in India

1723

Christian Wolff ousted from U. Halle by Pietists because of his deterministic philosophy

1723–53

Johann Sebastian Bach serves as cantor for the churches of Leipzig

1724

Christian Thomasius defends toleration in his political philosophy

1734

Lutherans exiled from Salzburg settle in Georgia

1736–76

King Friedrich the Great of Prussia corresponds with French Deist Voltaire

1740–80

Heyday of the Neologians who try to blend reason and revelation in theology

1740

King Friedrich the Great of Prussia reinstates Christian Wolff at U. Halle

1742

Pietist pastor Johann Albrecht Bengel develops principals of textual criticism in “Gnomon”

1748

Henry Melchior Muhlenberg arrives in Pennsylvania

1771

Johann Salomo Semler publishes controversial critique of the biblical canon

1778

Lessing-Goeze debate after publication of the “Fragments” of Hermann Reimarus

1779

Karl Friedrich Barhdt defends Deism in Germany. J. S. Semler writes critical response

1784

Immanuel Kant publishes “A Critique of Pure Reason”

xxii

1787

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Johann Gottfried Herder defends Spinoza in “God, Some Conversations” Johann Georg Rosenmüller introduces rationalistic changes in Leipzig church practices

1788

King Friedrich Wilhelm II supports the Wöllner Edict censoring rationalism

1793

Immanuel Kant’s “Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone”

1796

Conversion of Hans Nielsen Hauge in Norway

1799

Schleiermacher’s “Speeches on Religion” differentiate it from metaphysics and morality

1817

King Friedrich Wilhelm III unites the Lutheran and Reformed churches of Prussia. Similar unions take place in Nassau, Bavaria, Baden, Saxe-Weimar and Württemberg in next decade Claus Harm’s 95 Theses against the union of churches in Prussia

1820

Formation of the General Synod in the United States

1824

Beginning of German Lutheran settlements in Brazil

1825

First group immigration of Norwegians to United States

1824–31 Georg Hegel’s “Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion” describe absolute religion 1828–29 Mission work begins in Southern and Western Africa 1830–70 “Mediating” theologians attempt to bridge divide of confessionalism and modern thought 1835

Hegelian biblical critic David Strauss publishes controversial “Life of Jesus”

1836

Beginning of the deaconess movement by Theodor Fliedner

1838

Critics of Lutheran-Reformed church unions immigrate to North America

1841

Joint Anglican-Lutheran bishopric established in Jerusalem

1842

Development of the “Awakening” in Württemberg—Johann Christoph Blumhardt

1845

Development of confessional “Neo-Lutheranism’’ through Löhe, Vilmar, Thomasius, Harless

1846

Formation of the General Synod further unifying Protestant church administration in Germany

1847

Formation of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod

1848

Formation of the German “Inner Mission” movement by Johann Wichern

1854

Søren Kierkegaard’s “Attack upon Christendom” in Denmark

1855

Definite Synodical Platform—General Synod’s American Recension of the Augsburg Confession

1860

J C K von Hofmann introduces “Salvation History” concept vs critical biblical research

1861

Beginning of missionary work among Batak people in Sumatra (Indonesia)

1866

Norwegian Lutherans begin missionary work in Madagascar

1867

General Council forms in opposition to General Synod’s “American Lutheranism”

1870

Albrecht Ritschl’s “Doctrine of Justification” establishes the focus of liberal theology

1871

Unification of Germany under Prussia as the Second Reich

1871–76 The Kulturkampf in Germany—efforts to control and limit Roman Catholicism

CHRONOLOGY OF LUTHERAN HISTORY 1871

Formation of the conservative Synodical Conference among some Midwestern Lutherans

1872

Beginning of the Predestination Debate in American Lutheranism

1878

Development of forms of Christian Socialism to counter the influence of Marxism

1886

Beginning of Lutheran missionary work in New Guinea

1887

Intensification of missionary work in Tanzania

1900

Three synods merge into the United Norwegian Lutheran Church in America

1913

Martin Kähler criticizes “Life of Jesus” movement and calls for re-orientation of biblical research

1914

Many German Lutheran theologians come out in support of the Kaiser in World War I

xxiii

Karl Barth initiates “Dialectical Theology” in opposition to liberal theology—development of various expressions of Christian Existentialism 1917

Formation of the Norwegian Lutheran Church in America

1918

Formation of the National Lutheran Council and the United Lutheran Church in America

1919

Weimar Republic dis-establishes the Protestant churches of Germany

1922

German Evangelical Church Federation (DEK) reorganizes German Protestants

1923

First assembly of the Lutheran World Convention in Eisenach, Germany

1925

First World Conference on Life and Work at Stockholm

1926

Formation of the Federation of Evangelical Lutheran Churches of India (FELCI)

1930

Formation of independent HKBP—Batak Protestant Christian Church in Indonesia Founding of the American Lutheran Church (Columbus) Swedish Archbishop Nathan Söderblom awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

1932

Formation of the pro-Nazi “German Christian Faith Movement” in Germany

1933

Pro-Nazi Reichsbischof Müller leads the redesigned DEK under state control

1933

Pastor’s Emergency League organizes opposition to “German Christians”

1934

Drafting of the “Barmen Declaration” and formation of the anti-Nazi “Confessing Church”

1940

Nazi invasions of Norway and Denmark

1941

Rudolf Bultmann launches the Demythologization” debate

1944

Danish pastor Kai Munk executed by the Nazis

1945

German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer executed by the Nazis Soviets take over the Baltic States

1946

Reconstituted Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD) begins new post-war direction

1947

Formation of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF)

1945–70 Debates about Secularization and the “Death of God” 1947

First ordinations of women in Germany (EKD)

1948

First ordination of women in Scandinavia – in Denmark

xxiv

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

1948

Formation of the World Council of Churches

1950

Malagasy Lutheran Church becomes autonomous

1951

Batak Confession of Faith composed (Indonesia)

1952

Albert Schweitzer awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for medical missions in Africa

1953

Second stage of the Quest of the Historical Jesus: Käsemann, Bornkamm

1956

Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria becomes independent

1959

Formation of the self-governing Ethiopian Mekane Yesus church

1960–62 American mergers—The American Lutheran Church (ALC) Lutheran Church in America (LCA) 1963

Seven churches combine as the independent Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania

1965

Bilateral talks with Roman Catholics begin in the US after Second Vatican Council

1970

Beginning of ordination of women in American Lutheranism

1973

Leuenberg Agreement establishes full communion between Lutherans and Reformed in Europe

1974

Issue of biblical inspiration divides the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod – founding of Seminex

1975

Separation of black and white Lutheran churches in South Africa

1977

Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea becomes autonomous

1984

LWF censures white South African churches for feeble resistance to apartheid

1981–89 Peace Prayers in Leipzig guide peaceful resistance – ending in fall of GDR Communism 1988

Formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America by merger of ALC, LCA, AELC

1990s

Debates about homosexuality in the American churches

1991

Post-apartheid cooperation fostered by Lutheran Communion in Southern Africa (LUCSA)

1992

Maria Jepsen—first woman to become a Lutheran bishop, in Germany Controversial election of new bishop creates temporary divisions in Indonesian church

1999

Joint Declaration on Justification—between Lutheran World Federation and Roman Catholicism

2000

Disestablishment of the Church of Sweden Full communion agreement between ELCA, Episcopal, Reformed and Methodist churches

2001

Formation of the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ

2006

Church of Sweden permits blessing of same-sex unions

2010

First ordinations of LGBTQ clergy in the ELCA Formation of the North American Lutheran Church

2015

Joint Lutheran-Roman Catholic guidelines on celebrating the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation

2016

Joint Catholic-Lutheran Commemoration of the Reformation, Lund and Malmö, Sweden, attended by Pope Francis

2017

Year commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation

1. The Impact of Enlightenment Rationalism

In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the main tensions within the Lutheran churches of Europe were between traditional defenders of Orthodoxy and members of a reform movement known as Pietism. Developing themes found in earlier seventeenth century devotional writers, the Pietists became an identifiable faction within the churches by 1675 as a result of the leadership of Philip Jacob Spener (1635–1705), working in Frankfurt and Berlin, and August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), active in Leipzig and Halle. The most distinctive characteristics of the Pietists were their stress on the importance of a personal spiritual transformation or rebirth and their encouragement of disciplined pious practices that contributed to evident growth in holiness. The Orthodox, with their intense concern for the preservation of correct doctrine, as articulated in the Lutheran confessions, often felt that the Pietists threatened the church by encouraging an exaggerated focus on perfectionism and eschatological speculation. They thought the Pietists were too indifferent to some important doctrines and prone to fanaticism due to their interest in the nurturing of personal religious experiences. The Pietists, in turn, often criticized the Orthodox for stirring up tensions within the churches over relatively minor doctrinal issues and for failing to show how the Christian teachings they defended made a difference for daily religious and moral practice.1 While these internal debates occupied many church leaders, new developments in philosophy and science, commencing especially in the United Provinces of the Netherlands and England, began to reshape the outlooks of many in the educated classes throughout Europe. By the start of the eigh-

teenth century, these influences would also begin to have a significant impact on religious life in Lutheran regions. In his 1637 treatise, Discourse on Method, René Descartes (1596–1650) introduced the principle of systematic doubt as the most reliable point of departure for the gaining of certain knowledge. Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) extended Descartes’ method and became controversial for presenting a new conception of God as an infinite divine substance, identifiable with Nature. Both of these philosophers admired the clarity of mathematics and used this field as a model for investigations of other topics such as ethics and theology. They also developed rationalism as a fundamental principle of epistemology, arguing that the most dependable source of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive. A contrasting philosophical tradition developed most notably in England where seventeenth century philosophers and scientists tended to argue that whatever knowledge we have of subjects in dependent on sensory experience. While the rationalists pondered a priori ideas, the empiricists investigated a posteriori knowledge. As early as 1605, Francis Bacon (1561–1626) began to attack false conceptions of truth perpetuated by respect for tradition. In Novum Organum (1620), he advanced the establishment of a modern scientific method by emphasizing inductive reasoning. Careful observation of everyday experience alone was seen as providing a reliable basis for the subsequent development of more general theories about the nature of reality. In the same vein, John Locke (1632–1704) explained, in his Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), how knowledge starts with sensory impressions which are then formed into ideas by the mind. Although Locke still defended

2

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

the reasonableness of belief in God in a treatise he wrote in 1695, the new emphasis on evidence provided by the senses and on the power of reason began to raise questions about the reliability of religious truth claims based on special revelation. Scientific advancements such as the articulation of universal laws of nature in mathematical form by Isaac Newton (1642–1727) also cast doubts upon traditional reports of anomalous events or miracles. Beginning in England, these new developments started to alter perceptions of Christianity. As early as 1624, in De Veritate, Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583–1648) began to focus on what came to be called ‘natural religion.’ Setting aside Christian revelation or argumentation based on sacred texts, he stressed a simplified set of beliefs he perceived to be clearly accepted at all times by “normal” people. These “common notions” consisted of recognition of the existence of God, belief that God was more suitably worshiped by virtuous living than by religious rituals, the assertion that moral failures could be sufficiently expiated by repentance, and a general agreement that there will be divine rewards and punishments after death.2 The English Deists who developed this train of thought further during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, tended at first to view Christianity as one acceptable expression of natural religion. For example, Matthew Tindal published a book in 1730 titled Christianity as Old as Creation, or the Gospel a Republication of the Religion of Nature. However, the Deists shifted the whole basis for evaluating Christianity, and many traditional doctrines no longer seemed important to them. When Deism spread to France during the eighteenth century, it became more common there for writers to draw a sharper contrast between natural religion and Christianity. Rationalism spread to the German–speaking world primarily through the influence of Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716). The son of a professor of moral philosophy, he was raised in an orthodox Lutheran family. However, he was exposed to new trends in thought during his university training in Leipzig and Altdorf and subsequently through meetings with many of the leading philosophers and scientists of his day while on diplomatic missions outside of Germany on behalf of the Elector of Mainz. After a program of self–study, partly guided by the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695), he began to make major contributions to the fields of physics and mathematics. He is credited, along with Isaac Newton, with developing a system of differential calculus (1684). Mathematics fascinated him because of the

“rigorous judgments” it produced. However, after almost being “caught on its siren cliffs” during his youthful days, he came in later years to see the importance of also attending to other fields of study that addressed “the highest good of life,” even if their conclusions were more probable than certain (doc. #220). Employed for most of his life in positions serving the House of Hanover, he wrote extensively about metaphysics, epistemology, logic, theology, jurisprudence and history. When writing about human understanding, in response to John Locke, he acknowledged that there are degrees of knowledge and that the more one moves into matters of speculation that are not supported by direct observation or rational demonstrations the more important it is to avoid immoderate condemnation of those who held different opinions (doc. #221). Always diplomatic about theological matters, he recognized a place for assent to revelation by faith as long as it was not opposed to reason, and he did not discount the possibility of miracles. Leibniz was a lifelong advocate of rapprochement between Catholicism and the different branches of Protestant Christianity. He lamented religious divisions in Europe based on what he considered to be minor points of doctrine, because they had generated wars in the past and made Europe vulnerable to outside threats such as the Turks. His only book–length writing, Theodicy, published in 1710, took a stance that was critical of both skepticism and fideism. His central argument was that the presence of evil in the world is not incompatible with the existence of a beneficent God. If we could comprehend the universal harmony in creation we would see that this is the best of all possible worlds. In the same work, Leibniz described the historical advance of religious insights from the ritualistic orientation of the pagans to the monotheism of the Hebrews to Christianity, which made God an object of love instead of fear. He stated that true devotion consisted more in love on one’s neighbor than in the practice of religious ceremonies (doc. #222). Leibniz never explicitly severed his association with Lutheranism but it was reported that he seldom attended church and received the Lord’s Supper only once during the final nineteen years of his life. For such reasons, some of his more traditional contemporaries called Leibniz ‘Lövenix’, or ‘one who believes in nothing’.3 The German Enlightenment (die Aufklärung) penetrated the universities more extensively through the influence of Christian Wolff (1679–1754), a follower of Leibniz who produced the first complete system of philosophy written in German and was probably the first professor to offer a formal course on calculus

THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM

in Germany. Born into a Lutheran family in Silesia, he studied theology, physics and mathematics at Jena and Leipzig. In 1707, based on a recommendation from Leibniz, he received an appointment as a professor at the University of Halle. His first publications were on mathematics, but he also branched out to lecture on a wide range of topics in practical and theoretical philosophy. Like Descartes and Leibniz, Wolff thought that mathematics provided a model of demonstration that should be applied as much as possible to other fields of study. One of his most important works, Rational Thoughts on God, the World and the Soul (1719), presented proofs of the existence of God and described the world and all things in it as a divinely created machine, composed of parts like a clock, which operate according to a consistent structure. Such a view raised questions about the existence of miracles, and Wolff explicitly argued that the wisdom of God is displayed better in the regularity of the world than through supposed supernatural occurrences (doc. #223). In early eighteenth century Halle, Pietists still dominated the Lutheran faculty of theology at the university. Several professors, led especially by Joachim Lange (1670–1744), were alarmed by the seemingly deterministic tendencies of Wolff’s philosophy and began to write treatises against their colleague (doc. #224 and 225). They intensified their protests after 1721 when Wolff stated in a speech that Chinese and Western ethics were similar and that revelation may consequently not be necessary to determine moral truth. After being censured by the theological faculty, Wolff sought vindication through an appeal to the Prussian king in 1723, but King Friedrich Wilhelm I (1688–1740) sided with the Pietists and ordered Wolff to leave Prussian territory within forty–eight hours or be hanged. Apparently, the king had been persuaded that Wolff’s deterministic viewpoint was especially dangerous because deserters from his army might appeal to it and argue that they could not have acted otherwise. Wolff accepted a professorship at the University of Marburg (a Reformed institution) where he taught, in exile, for the next seventeen years. Wolff, however, accepted a recall to the University of Halle in 1740 when the new Prussian king, Friedrich the Great (1712–1786), who admired his writings, reversed the earlier judgment. This change of fortune provides evidence of how much the intellectual climate was changing in Germany as the midpoint of the eighteenth century approached. Even before the return of Wolff to the University of Halle, the influence of rationalism had seeped fur-

3

ther into its theological faculty. Once of the more important transitional figures was Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten (1705–1757) who served as Lutheran minister of the Market Church in Halle and taught at the university from 1730 until his death. Although he had been raised in Pietist circles, Baumgarten came under the influence of both the method and content of Wolff’s philosophy. He advocated what he called a “true middle way,” defending Christian revelation but also supporting critical analysis of both doctrine and Scripture. Baumgarten took a more historical approach to the study of Christian doctrines and no longer held to the prevailing view that the Bible was inerrant or verbally inspired by God. The so–called Neologians who followed him supported free inquiry and increasingly modified Christian teachings that seemed to be unsupported by reason or of little significance for the practice of morality. For example, Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791), a renowned biblical scholar at Halle and later Göttingen, taught that God provided revelation as a supplement to natural theology because humans were generally slow to grasp truths by reason (doc. #226). While defending revelation, Michaelis also listed rational criteria for determining whether specific claims were true or false. After Baumgarten’s death, the most prominent figure in the theological faculty at the University of Halle for many years was Johann Salomo Semler (1725–1791), a pioneer of critical historical research who transformed the way many European scholars, Lutheran and otherwise, viewed the canon of the Bible and the development of church doctrine.4 The son of a Pietist pastor in Saxony, his mature views were more in keeping with the moralistic theology of the Neologians. Although many of his ideas troubled conservatives within the churches, his writings against Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741–1792) show that the Neologians stopped short of advocating the more radical views associated with the Deists. Bahrdt, Semler’s target, was unquestionably one of the most shocking figures in eighteenth century German church life. The son of a pastor, he too would serve the Lutheran church as a pastor, church superintendent and professor of theology. He was a prolific author, but his disreputable life style and his controversial ideas provoked his dismissal from positions in Leipzig, Erfurt, Giessen and Bad Dürkheim. He ended his life as an impoverished innkeeper living with a mistress in Halle. Bahrdt began his career as a defender of Orthodox Lutheranism but gradually formulated views similar to those held by French free–thinkers such as Voltaire. It was his confession

4

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

of faith published in 1779 that stimulated a rebuttal from Semler (doc. #227). The concessions the Neologians made towards rationalism are evident in the extent to which Semler agreed with Bahrdt. He began his critique by making clear that he wanted to be tolerant of theological opinions different from his own. Furthermore, he suggested that Bahrdt’s confession was rather insignificant since many of its claims were not particularly new. Despite admitting to common ground, Semler took issue with Bahrdt’s total rejection of the doctrines of original sin and the divinity of Christ. When Bahrdt denied divine authorship of the words of the Bible, Semler agreed but still claimed that whatever is true in the Bible has its origins in God. Sometimes quite radical and at other times supportive of churchly theology, Semler seemed duplicitous to some of his colleagues. He sought to reconcile his seemingly contrary dispositions by distinguishing between public and private religion. Semler defended the right of individuals to live in accordance with their personal convictions, but also thought that, for the sake of public order, a state–sponsored church had a right to expect conformity to an established confession in a public setting. In the same year that Semler confronted Barhrdt’s Deism, another extended public debate broke out between Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) and Johann Melchior Goeze (1717–1786). Lessing too was the son of a Lutheran pastor in Saxony. After studying theology and literature at Leipzig and medicine in Wittenberg, he became a prominent playwright and literary critic. Later, while serving as secretary to the military governor of Silesia and as court librarian in Wolfenbüttel, his extensive writings also made him one of the central figures in the development of German theology and biblical studies. To defend toleration and to stimulate discussion of important issues, Lessing began in 1774 to publish “Fragments” from the writings of a recently deceased Deist biblical scholar named Hermann Reimarus. Not agreeing on all points with Reimarus, he supplemented the fragments with short counter–propositions stating his own views. Most notable of these was “On the Proof of the Spirit and Power” (1777), in which he admitted his difficulty in believing accounts of prophecy and miracles. Affirming that “the accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason,” Lessing also expressed uncertainty about the resurrection of Jesus (doc. #228). Goeze, who was the senior Lutheran pastor in Hamburg, the home town of Reimarus, launched a written attack on Lessing’s “Counter–Propositions,”

which extended to eleven pamphlets. He objected to the distinction Lessing made between the letter of the Bible and the spirit of religion and reasserted the infallibility of the Scriptures. Contrary to Lessing, he held that the inner truth of the Christian religion can only be found in the Bible. He did not share Lessing’s doubts about the divinity or resurrection of Christ because he held that the Scriptures supplied a reliable basis for accepting these doctrines (doc. #229). Lessing replied to Goeze’s conservative attacks with his own set of matching pamphlets. His more nuanced view of Scripture differentiated between types of texts, suggesting that not all of them sprang from the influence of the Holy Spirit (doc. #230). He did not deny the existence of divine revelations, but in the last important treatise of his life, “The Education of Mankind” (1780), he argued that they had been offered by God as an aid to the human race while it was still too immature to live by reason. Like Leibniz before him, he saw a progressive development of religion taking place throughout history, associating major advances with the religion of the Hebrews and Christianity. However, more provocatively, he added that he looked forward to the continued working of Eternal Providence in the future and an eventual new step forward, beyond “The Primer of the New Testament,” when human knowledge would finally be perfected (doc. #231). As the Lessing–Goeze debate was coming to an end, the most important German philosopher of the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), was preparing to publish his groundbreaking critiques of reason. Like so many of the main figures in the German Enlightenment, he too had grown up in a Pietist family. Kant studied mathematics, physics and metaphysics at the University of Königsberg and spent most of his life as a professor at the same institution. In 1784, Kant wrote a classic summary of the new spirit of his century: “What is Enlightenment?” (doc. #232). Kant saw humanity finally approaching maturity in his era, emerging from its subservience to outside direction, and showing the courage to think independently. Kant praised the Prussian king, Friedrich the Great, for manifesting tolerance and giving each citizen the freedom to make use of reason. The essay included a critique of leaders of church or state who had in the past sought to keep people tethered like “dumb domestic cattle,” but Kant tempered the essay’s triumphant promotion of the free use of reason with a word of caution about its proper expression in the public sphere. Like Semler, his contemporary, Kant differentiated between the public and private use of reason. Although he

THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM

advocated free use of reason by scholars, he still held that those who function in some official capacity, e.g. pastors or civil servants, must conform their public comments and actions to the standards set by the established organizations they serve. For all his support of living in accordance with reason, Kant’s other major writings posed a challenge to rationalists as well as traditional Christian believers. In 1781, he published “The Critique of Pure Reason” in which he moderated the century’s confidence in reason and empirical science by arguing that we do not have unmediated intellectual access to the “noumenal” world (i.e. “things in themselves”) and that whatever we claim to know of the sensible world is actively shaped by the filtering activity of our minds. As part of this critique, Kant also argued that it is not possible to have knowledge of the existence of God, the soul or the afterlife, beliefs which had been held by Deists as well as Christians. Having stressed both the importance of and the limits of reason, Kant went on in “The Critique of Practical Reason (1788)” and other writings to establish a firm ground for living morally. He insisted that the rational will establishes a foundational moral principle, the categorical imperative, which commands us to live in a certain way. The observance of moral duty, then, became the ultimate focus of his thought. Kant went on to suggest that certain “postulates” of practical reason, namely the existence of God, freedom of the will and the immortality of the soul, are necessary to make the moral life intelligible even though they are objects of faith and not knowledge. These ideas do not play a “constitutive” function in human thinking, but have a heuristic role as regulators of our thought and action. Thus concepts that Kant had dismissed in one context come back into his thought in a new form, with a “regulative” function. At one point, Kant stated that he had deprived speculative reason of its pretensions in the “Critique of Pure Reason” but still acknowledged the practical usefulness of certain concepts that were not provable. In other words, he “had to remove knowledge to make room for belief.”5 While the French Enlightenment became increasingly hostile to religion, the leading figures of the German Enlightenment tended to re–imagine religion rather than dismiss it. For example, in “Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793),” Kant argued that forms of religion based on miracles, mysteries and means of grace were prone to fanaticism and superstition, but he envisaged, in their place, a moral religion, which consisted of “a disposition

5

to fulfil all human duties as divine commands.” He rejected faith in a vicarious atonement, a common notion in traditional Christianity, but still talked of “saving faith” as a hope that one could become pleasing to God by pursuing a moral course of life. Kant had moved far away from the religion of his Pietist Lutheran upbringing but still felt the attraction of some individual and communal practices that would uphold observance of moral duty. These included something like prayer (to awaken the disposition of goodness in the heart), church–going (to share and propagate moral goodness), a ceremony of initiation into a moral community (like baptism) and even a repeated public formality like communion (to unite members into an ethical body) (doc. #233). Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) and Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), who were both closer to the Lutheran church, offered significant rebuttals to Kant’s philosophy. Hamann, like Kant, came from Königsberg in East Prussia. He never completed a university degree and never held a position in academia or the church, but while working as a civil servant in a tax office he produced several writings, some pseudonymously, which had an enduring impact on German theology and philosophy. In response to “What is Enlightenment?” Hamann criticized Kant’s distinction between public and private religion and his praise for Friedrich the Great as a guardian of reason (doc. #234). In his “Metacritique on the Purism of Reason” (1784), he argued that reason cannot be considered independent of all tradition and custom. He also criticized Kant for failing to appreciate the complex nature of language (doc. #235). For Hamann, reason played a role in the recognition of error, but it was not the only “way to truth and life.” He saw God revealed in Nature and “his Word” and argued that both revelations support each other (doc. #236). Herder studied philosophy with Kant at the University of Königsberg. Although a revolutionary thinker in his own right, he spent his life in service to the church as a court preacher and as general superintendent of the Lutheran clergy in the duchy of Weimar. Wolfgang Goethe was partly responsible for his getting the latter appointment in 1776, and his time in Weimar coincided with the city’s golden age as the cultural center of Germany. (Herder lamented, however, that “a minister is only entitled to exist now, under state control and by authority of the prince, as a moral teacher, a farmer, a list–maker, and a secret agent of the police.6) Like his friend Hamann, Herder also wrote a “Metacritique” of Kant’s critiques in which he emphasized the need for careful

6

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

interpretation of language in philosophical analysis and rejected a dualistic separation of reason and sense experience. On the other hand, he defended Spinoza in response to a more fideistic Lutheran philosopher of his era, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819).7 In “God, Some Conversations” (1787) Herder rejected the claim that Spinoza was an atheist and defended an interpretation close to the one previously offered by Lessing (doc. #237). Influenced by Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), Herder manifested features of the dawning Romantic movement in his stress on God’s immanence in the world and in his belief that there was a distinctive folk spirit (Volkgeist) of the German people. Rationalism continued to influence the theological faculties of the German universities, despite the growth of both critical and Romantic currents of thought. Foremost among the early nineteenth century rationalistic theologians was Julius Wegscheider (1771–1849) who taught dogmatics for more than thirty years in Halle. He defended the supremacy of reason, completely rejected supernaturalism, and offered unorthodox reinterpretations of the doctrine of the atonement and the resurrection of Jesus (doc. #238). As had happened at various critical moments in the past, more conservative factions in the church led by Ernst Hengstenberg (1802–1869) and the Halle court director, Ludwig von Gerlach, (1795–1877) complained to the Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm III, who called for a major investigation of Wegscheider and his other liberal colleagues in 1830 (doc. #239). Since a majority of the professors and students at Halle seemed to view the investigation as an infringement of freedom of thought, the minister of ecclesiastical affairs, Baron von Altenstein, defused the situation by letting the rationalists keep their university positions but also promising to fill future academic openings with more orthodox Lutheran theologians. While this battle raged in Halle, another major German philosopher of this era was reaching the end of his career. Georg W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) like Kant, offered a notable reinterpretation of Christianity, but whereas Kant viewed religion primarily as a support for morality, Hegel thought of the doctrinal system of Christianity as an expression in poetic or pictorial form of the knowledge that philosophy presented more purely and abstractly. Hegel first studied theology in Tübingen, but his interest in the issues raised by Kant inspired him to devote himself to philosophy, which he went on to teach in Jena, Nürnberg, Heidelberg, and Berlin. He continued throughout his life to think of himself as a Lutheran

and claimed at times in his letters that Lutheranism provided the theological underpinnings of his philosophical system.8 He stated that, in contrast to the eighteenth century when natural and revealed theology were increasingly placed at odds with each other and when many lost interest in the traditional meaning of Christian doctrines, his goal in his writings was to renew a linkage between theology and philosophy. In his “Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion” (1824–1831) he described stages in the coming to complete consciousness of Absolute Spirit and presented Christianity as the consummate or absolute religion, which makes manifest what Spirit (or God) actually is (doc. #240). Hegel even offered philosophical interpretations of specific Christian doctrines, but his views of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and Redemption through Christ were far removed from the beliefs that prevailed among most practicing Christians of his era. Hegel had many followers, but they eventually split into distinctively different right and left wing factions. Some “Old” Hegelians, like Philip Marheineke (1780–1846), pastor at the Trinity Church and professor of theology in Berlin, attempted to explicate all points of orthodox doctrine in terms of Hegelian philosophy. The more radical “Young” Hegelians, however, rejected the identification of theology with philosophy and became stronger critics of Christianity. David Strauss (1808–1874) in his infamous Life of Jesus (1835), reinterpreted the idea of incarnation as a myth about how the infinite spirit becomes manifest in finite human spirit. (See chapter 3) Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872), suggested in The Essence of Christianity, published in 1841, that religion is an alienated form of human self–consciousness. Between the era of Descartes and Spinoza and the era of Kant and Hegel, Europe had undergone a major intellectual revolution, comparable in impact to the Protestant Reformation initiated by Martin Luther. The next two chapters will continue to explore other repercussions of this revolution. Kant and/or Hegel, especially, would continue to exert an influence on liberals within the churches, but the nineteenth century would also see a major movements of resistance against the new modes of thought and their influence on society. These will also be explored in chapter four and six.

THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM

THE LEIBNIZ–WOLFF CONTROVERSIES 220. GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ: ON TRUE METHOD IN PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY (C. 1686) In this passage from one of his early writings, Leibniz describes the evolution of his interests. It shows the impact of scientific developments taking place in other countries and the fascination in this era with mathematics. From Leibniz—Selections Leibniz—Selections, ed. by Philip P. Wiener. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951), 58–65.

7

the secrets of thinking. The source of human misery lies in the fact that man devotes more thought to everything but the highest good in life. . . . I congratulate myself for my youthful days when I had the opportunity to learn these studies (scholastic theology) also, before my mind was imbued with mathematical studies, and I thus acquired the habit of attending patiently to other studies. . . . It is a wise saying of that distinguished man Francis Bacon: a little philosophy ‘inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.” I say the same to our century; the value of a religious philosophy will be recognized by those who return to it, and mathematical studies will be used partly as an example of more rigorous judgment, partly for the knowledge of harmony and the of the idea of beauty, experiments on nature will lead to admiration for the author of nature, who has expressed an image of the ideal world in the sensible one, so that all studies finally will lead to happiness. 221. LEIBNIZ: NEW ESSAYS ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING (1704)

Fig. 1.1. Portrait of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (engraving, 1768)

As I turned in my zeal for knowledge from the serious study of Holy Scripture and of divine and human law to the mathematical sciences, and was soon delighted by the thoroughly luminous teachings of the latter, I came near to remaining caught on siren cliffs. . . . We have demonstrations about the circle, but only conjectures about the soul; the laws of motion are presented with mathematical rigor, but nobody applies a comparable diligence to research on

The sections of this text that are in quotation marks are quoted directly from John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, written in 1690. In this dialogue, Philalethes approximates Locke and Theophilus is a spokesman for Leibniz. This excerpt shows Leibniz’ interest in religious toleration and the promotion of union between different branches of Christianity. It also shows his concern to establish the criteria for claims to truth. Locke’s starting point is the evidence of experience. Leibniz is more of a rationalist than an empiricist and is also concerned with notions that may not have a sense presentation. From G. W. Leibniz. New Essays on Human Understanding Understanding, trans. & ed. by Peter Remnant & Jonathan Bennett. (Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 1981), 461–464, 475. IV:16 #4 Philalethes: Since, therefore, men cannot avoid exposing themselves to error when they judge, or avoid having differing opinions when they cannot see matters from the same point of view, they ought ‘to maintain peace, and the . . . offices of humanity . . . in the diversity of opinion,’ and not expect that anyone should readily give up a deep–rooted opinion just because we object to it. . . . Theophilus: Really, what we are most justified in censuring is not men’s opinions, but their immoderate condemnation of the opinions of others, as if only a fool or knave could judge otherwise than they do.

8

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

. . . We certainly have the right to protect ourselves against evil doctrines which influence morality and pious observances, but we should not malign people by ascribing these to them without good evidence. ..... In theology censure is carried even further than in other areas. Those who prize their orthodoxy often condemn their adversaries; and are in turn opposed, even within their own sects, by those who are called ‘syncretists’ by their adversaries. The result of this opposition is civil war between the rigid and the yielding within a single sect. However, it is an encroachment on God’s prerogative to deny eternal salvation to those who hold different opinions; and so the wisest of the condemners confine themselves to the peril in which, in their view, these erring souls stand; they leave to the peculiar mercy of God those we are not so wicked that they cannot profit from it, and they believe themselves obliged to make every imaginable effort to remove these people from their perilous position. . . . But as soon as they go beyond this they violate the laws of impartiality. For they should bear in mind that other people, who are just as convinced as they are, have just as much right to maintain their own views and even to propagate them it they believe them important. . . . #5 . . . Phil. We should notice that propositions are of two sorts: those of ‘matters of fact’, which because they fall under observation can rest upon human testimony, and those of ‘speculation’ which are not open to such testimony because they concern things which our senses cannot reveal to us. . . . #6 When a particular fact is ‘consonant to the constant observation of our selves’ and to the uniform report of others, we rely ‘as firmly upon it, as if it were certain knowledge’. And when it conforms with the testimony ‘of all men, in all ages, as far as it can be known,’ this is ‘the first . . . highest degree of probability.’ #9 But ‘when testimonies . . . clash with the ordinary course of nature, or with one another’ the degrees of probability can ‘infinitely vary’. Hence arise the degrees which ‘we call belief, conjecture . . . doubt, uncertainty, distrust’. . . #14 Finally, there is a testimony that is superior to every other kind of assent. It is revelation, that is, the testimony of God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived; and our assent to it is called faith, which ‘as perfectly excludes all wavering’ as does the most certain knowledge. But it is important to ‘be sure, that it be a divine revelation, and that we understand it right’; otherwise one will be exposed to fanaticism and the errors of a wrong interpretation. . . .

222. LEIBNIZ: THEODICY: ESSAYS ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD, THE FREEDOM OF MAN AND THE ORIGIN OF EVIL (1710) From G. W. Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Go Goodness odness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Orig Origin in of Evil. ed. Austin Farrer, (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1985), 50–52. Trans. by E. M. Huggard. The pagans, who inhabited the earth before Christianity was founded, had only one kind of outward form; they had ceremonies in their worship, but they had no articles of faith and had never dreamed of drawing up formularies for their dogmatic theology. . . . Of all ancient people, it appears that the Hebrews alone had dogmas for their religion. Abraham and Moses established the belief in one God, source of all good, author of all things. The Hebrews speak of him in a manner worthy of the Supreme Substance; and one wonders at seeing the inhabitants of one small region of the earth more enlightened that the rest of the human race. . . . It is clear that Jesus Christ, completing what Moses had begun, wished that the Divinity should be the object not only of our fear and veneration but also of our love and devotion. Thus he made men happy by anticipation, and gave them here on earth a foretaste of future felicity. For there is nothing so agreeable as loving that which is worthy of love. . . . It follows manifestly that true piety and even true felicity consist in the love of God but a love so enlightened that its fervor is attended by insight. This kind of love begets that pleasure in good actions which gives relief to virtue and, relating all to God as to the center, transports the human to the divine. For in doing one’s duty, in obeying reason, one carries out the orders of Supreme Reason. . . . One cannot love God without knowing his perfections, and this knowledge contains the principles of true piety. The purpose of religion should be to imprint these principles upon our souls; but in some strange way it has happened all too often that men, that teachers of religion have strayed far from this purpose. Contrary to the intention of our divine Master, devotion has been reduced to ceremonies and doctrine has been cumbered with formulae. . . . Some Christians have imagined that they could be devout without loving their neighbor, and pious without loving God. . . . The old errors of those who arraigned the Divinity or who made thereof an evil principle have been renewed sometimes in our own days: people have pleaded the irresistible power of God when it is a question rather of presenting his

THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM

supreme goodness; and they have assumed a despotic power when they should rather have conceived of a power ordered by the most perfect wisdom. . . .

Fig. 1.2. Engraved portrait of Christian Wolff by Johann Georg Wille (18th century)

223. CHRISTIAN WOLFF: RATIONAL THOUGHTS ON GOD, THE WORLD, AND THE SOUL (1722) From Vernünfftig ernünfftigee Gedancken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen Menschen, (2nd edition). (Halle: Renger, 1722), 297, 617–628. trans. by Eric Lund. #1022 Although God is omnipotent, God cannot make possible that which is impossible. When the essence of a thing is unchangeable it is not possible for it to be changed. . . . #1037 The world and all things that are in it are by their essences the means by which God achieves his intentions. Their essences make them like machines. . . . They are manifestations of the wisdom of God because they are machines. . . . #557 On the World: It should not appear strange if I make a comparison to clockworks or a machine. The world is like a machine. The proof is not diffi-

9

cult. A machine is a composite work whose movements are grounded in a kind of consistent structure. The world is a composite thing whose changes are grounded in a kind of structure. And, therefore, the world is a machine. #1039 If all things in a world happen naturally, they are a work of the wisdom of God. On the other hand, if events occur that have no grounding in the essence or nature of things, they happen supernaturally or through miracles, and a world where all things happen through miracles would be a manifestation of the power rather than the wisdom of God. It follows that a world where miracles are rare is to be esteemed more highly than one in which they happen more frequently. #1040 Miracles require less divine force or artistry than natural occurrences. Miracles merely require the power of God whereas natural occurrences require God’s omniscience (by which he links all things), his wisdom and also his power. Therefore those teachers of the church do not think correctly if they maintain that miracles or supernatural occurrences are greater than the wonder of nature or natural occurrences. #1041 Now because God who has the highest intelligence cannot act without intention, he also cannot set aside his wisdom in his actions. Therefore it is not possible that he would accomplish something through miracles that can happen naturally. The natural way must, as the better way, be invariably preferred. . . . 224. JOACHIM LANGE: HUMBLE AND DETAILED DISCLOSURE OF THE FALSE AND HARMFUL PHILOSOPHY IN THE WOLFFIAN METAPHYSICAL SYSTEM CONCERNING GOD, THE WORLD AND MAN (1724) From Bescheidene und ausf ausführliche ührliche Entdeckung Der falschen und schädlichen Philosophie in dem Wolffianischen Systemate Metaphysic Metaphysicoo Von Gott, der Welt, und dem Menschen Menschen. (Halle: Buchhandlung der Waisenhaus, 1724), 4–16. trans. by Eric Lund. Historical Preview “See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition and the elements of the natural world and not according to Christ.” So Paul warns the Colossian converts to Christ of the abuse of philosophy in the letter he wrote to them (Colossians 2:8). . . . What great harm the misuse of philosophy has done to the church of Christ is well enough known

10

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

from church history. It was already said in the time of Tertullian that philosophy is the father of all heresies. ....... Among the most damaging things is when mathematics is not kept in its proper bounds and the principles of mechanics are applied to spiritual matters, when the world is thought of as a machine and, without any differentiation, all that is in it, and especially humanity, is viewed as part of the world system. . . . This, dear reader, is unfortunately what we must know is happening in our setting in the philosophy of the former professor of mathematics and royal counselor, Christian Wolff. . . . Especially we observe in those who attended his lectures a lack of esteem for the holy word and the holy truths that pertain to the ground and order of our salvation as well as such presumption about the wisdom which they suppose they have worked out through this philosophy. They think they know better than all others. ... It so happened that on July 12, 1721, . . . in a public oration on the harmony between his philosophy and the principles of the Chinese Confucius, he did not hesitate to propose things that were offensive and detrimental to the Christian religion. ..... Because this caused no small offence, the senior of our faculty with five other colleagues took the opportunity, in the university church, to warn him. [When he proposed to publish the oration and subsequently wrote his metaphysics in 1722,] the theological faculty made a detailed presentation in the royal court of the harmfulness of his system. . . .

more . . . and we meet in the soul nothing more than a power to imagine the world. . . . Fourth error: The author considers the creation of the world from the light of nature to be unproven and unprovable and thereby concedes, with the atheists, the eternity of the world. Fifth error: The author, besides the principles already mentioned that lead directly to atheism, speaks the word openly in many ways. . . . His advocacy for atheism is evident further when he expressly says that leading an evil life is merely a misapplication of atheism. . . . He states that the Chinese are atheists but are among the most wise and virtuous people. He holds that one knows God better from the realm of nature and sets Holy Scripture in a position subordinate to the principles of reason. . . .

225. JOACHIM LANGE: SHORT OUTLINE OF ADVERSE PROPOSITIONS IN THE WOLFFIAN PHILOSOPHY CONCERNING NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION (1736) From Vollständig ollständigee Sammlung Aller der derer er Schrifften, Welche in Der Lang Langischen ischen und Wolffischen Str Streitigkeit eitigkeit im Monat Junio 1736 Auf hohen Bef Befehl ehl abg abgef efasset asset worden worden. (Marburg, 1737), 7–23. trans. by Eric Lund. The first error: The author makes man into a double machine. . . . Soul and body are double wheels in the mechanical drive of the world-clock. . . . Second error: When the author considers man a double machine he nullifies all freedom and morality, making all actions of the body and soul necessary. Third error: His description of God and the soul is false. . . . He makes God nothing but an essence which forms the idea of the world and does nothing

Fig. 1.3. Engraved portrait of Joachim Lange (ca. 1750)

THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM

THE NEOLOGIANS—DIMINISHED SUPERNATURALISM 226. JOHANN DAVID MICHAELIS: OF THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE REVELATION GIVEN TO JEWS AND CHRISTIANS (1760) From Dogmatik Dogmatik, 2nd edition (Göttingen: Verlag der Wittwe Vandenhoek, 1784). trans. by Eric Lund.

Fig. 1.4. Portrait of Johann David Michaelis (1790)

First Article: #1 That there is a God who created the world, I presuppose from philosophy and commonly found human understanding. Not only that, there is also a natural religion which can be summarized in the following sentences: 1) God is not indifferent to the well–being of his creation and especially the most noble part, humanity. Rather, he loves it. 2) Therefore the genuine requirements of philosophical

11

morality are transformed from advice to duty through his will and commandments. 3) He punishes the intentional transgression of these commandments. 4) He wills that men know, fear, obey, love and honor him for their own sake. . . . #2 Natural religion, however, has certain deficits, so a divine revelation of the highest grade is most desirable. . . . 1) The truths of natural theology and philosophical ethics corresponding to the law of God can scarcely be learned with any certainty by the learned who apply effort: and there still exists the greater part of mankind who are unlearned. They can grasp a testimony of God and believe, but not through much philosophizing. 2) The human race is so slow in finding truths, even those lying exactly in front of them and so quick, once they have found them to find the evidence to believe them by personal conviction that it would perhaps be thousands of years before the discovery of the necessary truths of religion that God deigned to reveal them to us and give this child’s instruction. . . . 3) I believe, nevertheless, that philosophy can make apparent that we are not merely created for this life but also for a future one but the evidence is not so illuminating that it can give certainty. . . . 4) That God will punish in this world the religion of reason very apparently teaches....... The future life in which God punishes and rewards is actually an essential part of religion, but natural religion gives no full certainty of it. Without this, conscience cannot have enough influence on the will. . . . #3 A divine revelation is to be wished for . . . but false revelations can work to counter–purposes so it is necessary to set forth signs to differentiate between a true and false revelation. . . . The errors of an alleged revelation are of different types: 1) contradictions with sound reason and true philosophy. . . . 2) historical errors. . . . 3) self–contradiction (internal inconsistency). . . . 4) logical errors. . . . 5) false prophecies. . . . #4 A divine revelation (I am not speaking here of a certain oracle or prophecy) must clearly answer the three great questions of the human race if we wish to certify it as a true revelation. 1) Is there another life after this one in which God punishes and rewards? 2) Will God forgive intentional, repeated and continuing sins or not? 3) And on what conditions will he forgive them?

12

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

A LUTHERAN CRITIQUE OF DEISM OR RADICAL RATIONALISM 227. JOHANN SALOMO SEMLER: ANSWER TO BAHRDT’S CONFESSION OF FAITH (1779) Bahrdt wrote his personal confession after settling in Halle where Semler taught. He was already controversial for having issued a theologically radical paraphrased version of the New Testament in 1773. From Joh. Sal. Semlers Antwort auf das Bahrdische Glaubensbekentnis (Halle: Hemmerdeschen Buchhandlung, 1779), 69–104. trans. by Eric Lund. Foreward It is probably not necessary for me to justify in detail why I am issuing a public answer to Bahrdt’s confession of faith. . . . It is certain that a legitimate and desirable tolerance, especially concerning our theological teachings, has long been shown among us. . . . No one among us is disposed to persecute the author. . . .However, it is not evidence of persecution if one straightforwardly and publicly calls this confession historically incorrect, unreliable and intended to outwardly contradict the Augsburg Confession and all the solemn principles of the three religious parties in the Holy Roman Empire; nor if one views the wish for an entirely other union of these three parties through a fourth form of religion as impractical, unnecessary and overly hasty. The freedom to openly disagree with such ideas belongs even more to the right of these churches than the obligation to investigate the truth. . . . His confession consists of ten parts. (Bahrdt: 1) I believe that I and all humans are sinners who need the grace and mercy of God. But, I doubt that we are born sinners or that all humans come into the world with a tendency towards evil. Rather it appears to me that humans are guilty only of their own corruption. . . . (Semler Reply) #2 Concerning this I observe that he is free to doubt whether the moral negation within us can be called an inborn tendency towards sin, just as we are free to affirm that. But we see a great difference from the passage on page 10 where he places the doctrine of original sin among the teachings which do not have any ground in Scripture or in reason and are a cause of disbelief and a harm to salvation for thousands. Here he only says so much—that he doubts that there is an original sin.

Are these one and the same? If he merely doubts why did he write the rest? . . . #3 All theologians of all parties teach that all humans are guilty of their own actual corruption but not of original sin apart from themselves. They also teach that this natural moral disorder brings about, by its uninterrupted effect, a real dominion of sin within us or a knack for sinning. Here he says nothing new or unfamiliar. . . . Grotius said that the matter which is referred to by the name of original sin among us was also known to the heathen. . . .9 Bahrdt: 2) I believe that humans have God to thank for all that is good within them and that all moral goods are due to the grace of God. But, that God effects human improvement and that humans do nothing is contrary to Scripture and rests for the most part on the word “Grace” which most teachers of the church have until now misinterpreted. (Semler Reply:) We want to affirm that it is contrary to Scripture to say that humans do nothing towards their improvement but does this conviction by a person that it is God who effects all good bring about sin and hinder moral good? I think not. . . . This teaching is not a source or cause of disbelief. . . . We say that all good that a Christian does and achieves is a spiritual influence from God. . . . How can this be contrary to Scripture when the content of Scripture contains and sets forth this effect of God? ..... The thing is that humans must, in consideration of all their capability, let a morally perfect direction and movement be effected within them. All good comes from God, whom we must thank, and we also rightly say in this proposition that human improvement is promoted in the Christian by God. . . . (Bahrdt: 5) I believe that God was in and with Christ and that we all, as a result, are bound to honor the Son as we honor the Father. But as for how God was in Christ—whether it was according to the Athanasius’ conception or that of Arius or Sabellius or some other opinion is very indifferent for the purpose of religion which is for the improvement and reassurance of humanity.10 It should not be decided by a church authority but rather left to individual judgment. It appears to me, based on the highest evidence verifiable by reason and Scripture, that Christ and the one God Jehovah whom he calls Father, are very different and that at least Christ should not be called God in the same sense in which Jehovah is called God. . . . (Semler reply) The determination that . . . it is a matter of indifference for the purpose of religion ..... is the writer’s own opinion and cannot in the least make all teachers and Christians judge the same. To

THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM

be exact, the writer is speaking of private religion, of his own inner religion, which he expressly calls the improvement and reassurance of humanity. ..... It must remain entirely free for all Christians to judge for themselves whether this is true. . . . Now if a teacher or member cannot agree with a form of expression he has the freedom to separate from this society and to seek for another worshipping community. (But), all students and learners are not in a position to judge for themselves what they want to learn, so society provides a common instruction. . . . How can a private person view his position so highly that he demands that no outward religious society should differentiate itself any longer from others?. . . Christ clearly and plainly clarified his identity in John 10. . . . The context of the speech is a presentation by Christ of the spiritual relationship of the Messiah. Verse 24: The Jews ask him “Are you the Christ? Tell us straight out.” Jesus answers . . . “Is it a blasphemy if I say that the Son and the Father are one? Judge by what I have performed among you. . . .” The Jews set forth that Jesus is a common man. Jesus says “I am that Messiah, that Son of God, to whom his Father has ascribed the utmost unending moral relationship.” . . . (Bahrdt: 9) That the divine writings of the New Testament contain instruction for the blessedness of humanity which are worthy of all trust and obedience I am certain. But, that God gave all the words in these Scriptures I have never read a satisfying proof. (Semler reply) That all words in Scripture have been given by God has never been a part of Christian belief; neither of the Fathers, nor the Scholastics . . . and in our church it has been fully recognized since the time of Calixtus.11 . . . The doctrinal content of holy Scripture, the truths, have their origin from God but whether the words are also inspired by God is a proposition, not an article of faith. Incidentally, that the collected books of the Old Testament also contain divine instruction for the spiritual blessedness of humanity which is worthy of all trust and obedience (along with the accompanying persuasion of our conscience and experience) belongs here too although the author has written nothing about that.

13

THE LESSING–GOEZE DEBATE 228. GOTTHOLD LESSING: ON THE PROOF OF THE SPIRIT AND OF POWER (1778) From Lessing’s Theological Writings, ed. and trans. by Henry Chadwick. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), 51–56. Fulfilled prophecies, which I myself experience, are one thing; fulfilled prophecies, of which I know only from history that others say they have experienced them, are another. Miracles, which I see with my own eyes, and which I have the opportunity to verify for myself, are one thing; miracles, of which I know only from history that others say they have seen them and verified them, are another. . . . Surely there is no objection to be made against that? If I had actually seen him [Christ] do miracles; if I had had no cause to doubt that these were true miracles; then in a worker of miracles who had been marked out so long before, I would have gained so much confidence that I would willingly have submitted my intellect to his, and I would have believed him in all things in which equally indisputable experienced did not tell against him. . . . But . . . I live in the eighteenth century, in which miracles no longer happen. If I even now hesitate to believe anything on the proof of the spirit and of power, which I can believe on other arguments more appropriate to my age: what is the problem? The problem is that this proof of the spirit and of power no longer has any spirit or power, but has sunk to the level of human testimonies of spirit and power. . . . If no historical truth can be demonstrated, then nothing can be demonstrated by means of historical truth. That is: accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason. I do not for a moment deny that in Christ prophecies were fulfilled; I do not for one moment deny that Christ performed miracles. . . . I deny that they can and should bind me in the least to a faith in the other teachings of Christ. These other teachings I accept on other grounds. . . .

14

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

If on historical grounds I have no objection to the statements that this Christ raised to life a dead man, must I therefore accept it as true that this risen Christ was the Son of God? . . . That, then, is the ugly, broad ditch which I cannot get across, however often and however earnestly I have tried to make the leap. . . . I conclude and my wish is: May all who are divided by the Gospel of John be reunited by the Testament of John. Admittedly it is apocryphal, this testament. But it is not on that account any the less divine.

Bd. 8 Theolog Theologiekritische iekritische Schriften III III. (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1979), 21–26, 169, 176. trans. by Eric Lund. Part I (Reply to Lessing’s Counter–Propositions on the Spirit and the Letter of the Bible)

Fig. 1.6. Portrait of Johann Melchior Goeze (engraving, 19th century)

Fig. 1.5. Portrait of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (18th century)

229. JOHANN MELCHIOR GOEZE: SOMETHING PRELIMINARY AGAINST COURT COUNCILLOR LESSING’S DIRECT AND INDIRECT MALEVOLENT ATTACKS ON OUR MOST HOLY RELIGION (1776) From “Etwas Etwas Vorläufig orläufiges es geg egen en des Herrn HerrnH Hofr ofraths aths Leßings Leßings.. . . feindselig eindseligee Angriff Angriffee auf unsr unsree allerheiligste Relig Religion ion . . . von Johan Melchior Goeze . . . Hamburg . . . 1776 1776.” In Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Werke

. . . Sometime ago a writing came to light of which I, for well–founded reasons, will presently give no close report other than to say that it consists of two main parts: the first part contains fragments which attack the holy Scriptures [Fragments by an Anonymous Writer] and the Counter–Propositions of the editor of the Fragments against the same. . . . My intention presently is not to undertake a precise investigation of the attacks contained in the fragments or to undertake a defense of the Christian religion in its principles. That can and will happen another time. . . . I want presently to engage only in a short analysis of the position taken by the editor that is probably the foundational claim of the Counter–Propositions. . . . (He states:) “The letter is not the spirit and the

THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM

Bible is not religion. Consequently, objections to the letter and to the Bible are not by the same token objections to the spirit and to religion. This is because the Bible obviously contains more than is essential to religion, and it is a mere hypothesis that it must be infallible in all its parts. Also, (he states) there was religion before there was a Bible. Christianity existed before the Evangelists and Apostles had written anything. A long period elapsed before the first of them wrote, and it was a considerable time before the entire canon was complete. Therefore, while much may depend on these writings, it is impossible to suppose that the entire truth of the religion depends on them. . . . The (Christian) religion is not true because the evangelists and apostles taught it. Rather, they taught it because it is true. The written traditions must be interpreted by their inner truth, and no written traditions can give a religion inner truth if it has none.” In this entire passage I do not find a single proposition that, in the context in which it stands, I can regard as correct. To be sure, the editor lays them all out as if they were genuine axioms, but some of them still require much stronger proof, and the rest, constituting the majority, are demonstrably false. It is an essential duty that a worldly wise person rightly and definitely clarify the words that express the main concepts in his sentences and say to the reader without any ambiguity what he means by them and what the reader should therefore think. The editor speaks of letter and spirit, of Bible and religion, without specifying in the least what ideas these ambiguous expressions convey. . . . 1. “The letter is not the spirit and the Bible is not religion.” Both expressions, letter and spirit, here opposed to each other, are expressions which are only intrinsic to the Bible. 2 Corinthians 4:6. In this sense, we find them in no other writer. Here the letter is the law and the spirit is the gospel. Does our editor accept the words in this sense? No. He understands the Bible to be the letter and religion to be the spirit. I commit myself to maintain the opposite, that the letter is the spirit and the Bible is religion, on the grounds that Jesus said: “the words which I speak are spirit and life.” John 6:63. . . . 2. “Objections to the letter and to the Bible are not by the same token objections to the spirit and to religion.” . . . Based on the clarification I have given of the letter and the Bible, of the spirit and religion, which the editor must necessarily accept, I say both the letter and the spirit, the Bible and religion are one. It follows that objections to the letter are

15

objections to the spirit and objections to the Bible are objections to religion. . . . 3. The sentence, “The Bible contains more than belongs to religion,” really contains two propositions, namely that the Bible contains what is essential to religion and the second that it contains more than what is essential. In the first proposition the editor concedes what he has previously denied. If the Bible contains what pertains to religion, so it demonstrably contains the religion itself. . . . 4. “It is a mere hypothesis that the Bible is infallible in all its parts.” No! This is not a hypothesis but an incontestable truth. Either the particulars are given by God or at least approved by him, or they are not. If it is the former, the Bible is essentially infallible. If it is not, it loses all reliability. . . . There are many so–called learned, even in our churches, who state that it is not infallible in its particulars and that the essentials, or what pertains to religion, are nothing more that the principles of natural religion. Christ refutes the Jews from the Scriptures, without restrictions, and says: “they witness to me”. John 5:39. Paul maintains that all Scripture (using this expression according to the well–known understanding that all Jews and Christians have) are given by God and are useful for teaching, for correction, for improvement, and for instruction in righteousness. 2 Timothy 3:16. 5. “There was religion before there was a Bible”. Not before there was a revelation. Unquestionably the revelation did not yet encompass in itself what was later contained in the Bible; but it grasped all that the men to whom it was imparted needed to know concerning the intentions of God, God and the way they should honor him. Revelation and Bible with regard to essentials are the same, while the difference between both is merely in insignificant random things. . . . Thus, the editor’s proposition is patently false. . . . 7. “Although it may be that much may depend on these writings, it is impossible to suppose that the entire truth of the religion depends on them.” The truth of the Christian religion rests in itself and is in accordance with God’s character and will and historical certainty of the facts on which its teachings are partly grounded. All of “our convictions of the truth of the Christian religion” depend on the Bible alone. If the Bible had not been written and handed down to us, would any trace of what Jesus did and preached have remained in the world? . . . 9. “The religion is not true because the evangelist and apostles taught it but they taught it because it was true.” This antithesis is meaningless. The evan-

16

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

gelists and apostles were men who spoke and wrote as they were driven by the Holy Spirit. So the Christian religion is true because of the evangelists and apostles or actually because God himself, taught them. . . . 10. As for the proposition “Written traditions must be interpreted by their inner truth and no written tradition can give a religion an inner truth if it has none.” Good! . . . But from where will he take the knowledge of the inner truth of Christianity except from the scriptural tradition or from the writings of the evangelists and apostles in their bond with the writings of the Old Testament? . . . We recognize the inner truth of the Christian religion only if our grasp of the same is from that which is contained in the scriptural tradition or in the Holy Scriptures. . . . Part IV (In “On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power”, the author states): “The accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason.” (Furthermore, he writes:) If on historical grounds I have no objection to the statements that this Christ himself raised a dead man to life, must I therefore accept it as true that this risen Christ was the Son of God?” . . . The author’s reason balks at the doctrine that God has a son whose essence is identical with his, but this doctrine also belongs to the teachings of Jesus. John 5:21-27; 10: 30-38. Thus it is certain here that the author needs no other grounds for accepting this teaching. And as for the other teachings of Christ, which he accepts on other grounds, none remain but the teachings of natural religion or rational morality, and there will be many others against which his entire reason will balk. 230. LESSING’S REPLY TO GOEZE: AXIOMATA (1778) From Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.. Werke Bd. 8 Theolog Theologiekritische iekritische Schriften III III. (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1979), 131–136. trans. by Eric Lund. Axiom I (Regarding Proposition 3: Bible and Religion) Dear Herr Pastor, . . . are ‘to be’ and ‘to contain’ the same? Are these then entirely identical sentences: the Bible contains religion and the Bible is religion? .....

Axiom II (Regarding Proposition 4: Infallibility of the Bible) “Uncontestable truth.” Really? When this has so often been contradicted and when even now so many disagree? It is contested by many who want to be Christians and are Christians. Admittedly not Wittenbergian–Lutheran Christians, or Christians by Calov’s grace,12 but still Christians and even Lutheran Christians, by God’s grace. . . . Axiom III (Regarding 1: Letter and Spirit) (136) Concerning “The letter is not the spirit and the Bible is not religion.” . . . I think it grazes close to blasphemy if one wants to maintain that the power of the Holy Spirit can be shown to be active as much in the registry of the descendants of Esau according to Moses as in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount according to Matthew. Fundamentally, this differentiation between the letter and the spirit of the Bible, is really nothing other than what other good Lutheran theologians have long made between the Scriptures and the Word of God. Why has Pastor Goeze not first pegged onto them before he makes a poor layman a criminal for treading in their footsteps? Axiom IV (Regarding Proposition 2: “Objections to the Bible are not objections to religion.”) Admittedly, if a state constitution (Landesverfassung) contains no more and no less than the regulations of the land (Landesordnung), whoever wantonly makes objections to the constitution also makes objections to the regulations. But why then are there quite different designations? That one is called something different from the other is public proof that the first is something other than the second. . . . I will clarify with an example. The collection of Hamburg laws by Syndicus Klefeker.13 . . . contains the complete constitution of the city of Hamburg. Can I make no objection to this work without positioning myself against the authority of Hamburg law? Do historical introductions have the strength of law because they are published in one volume along with the laws? How does the pastor know that the historical books of the Bible are not meant to be introductions of a similar kind? Perhaps God has as little need to supply, or even to authorize, these books as the citizens and Council had to grant their special protection to those introductions.

THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM

231. GOTTHOLD LESSING: THE EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE (1780) From Die Erziehung des Menscheng Menschengeschlechts eschlechts. London: Henry S King Co. 1872. trans. F. W. Robertson. That which Education is to the Individual, Revelation is to the Race. Education is Revelation coming to the Individual Man; and Revelation is Education which has come, and is yet coming, to the Human Race. . . . Education gives to Man nothing which he might not educe out of himself; it gives him that which he might educe out of himself, only quicker and more easily. In the same way too, Revelation gives nothing to the human species, which the human reason left to itself might not attain; only it has given, and still gives to it, the most important of these things earlier. And just as in Education, it is not a matter of indifference in what order the powers of a man are developed, as it cannot impart to a man all at once; so was God also necessitated to maintain a certain order, and a certain measure in His Revelation. . . . Although the best of the [Hebrew] people were already more or less approaching the true conception of the One only, the people as a whole could not for a long time elevate themselves to it. And this was the sole true reason why they so often abandoned their one God, and expected to find the One, i.e., as they meant, the Mightiest, in some God or other, belonging to another people. But of what kind of moral education was a people so raw, so incapable of abstract thoughts, and so entirely in their childhood capable? Of none other but such as is adapted to the age of children, an education by rewards and punishments addressed to the senses. Here too Education and Revelation meet together. As yet God could give to His people no other religion, no other law than one through obedience to which they might hope to be happy, or through disobedience to which they must fear to be unhappy. For as yet their regards went no further than this earth. They knew of no immortality of the soul; they yearned after no life to come. But now to reveal these things to one whose reason had as yet so little growth, what would it have been but the same fault in the Divine Rule as is committed by the schoolmaster, who chooses to hurry his pupil too rapidly, and boast of his progress, rather than thoroughly to ground him? But, it will be asked, to what purpose was this education of so rude a people, a people with whom God had to begin so entirely from the beginning? I reply,

17

in order that in the process of time He might employ particular members of this nation as the Teachers of other people. He was bringing up in them the future Teachers of the human race. It was the Jews who became their teachers, none but Jews; only men out of a people so brought up, could be their teachers. ..... As yet the Jewish people had reverenced in their Jehovah rather the mightiest than the wisest of all Gods; as yet they had rather feared Him as a Jealous God than loved Him: . . . they began, in captivity under the wise Persians, to measure Him against the “Being of all Beings” such as a more disciplined reason recognized and reverenced. Revelation had guided their reason, and now, all at once, reason gave clearness to their Revelation. This was the first reciprocal influence which these two (Reason and Revelation) exercised on one another; . . . . . . Every Primer is only for a certain age. To delay the child, that has outgrown it, longer in it than it was intended for, is hurtful. . . . A Better Instructor must come and tear the exhausted Primer from the child`s hands. Christ came! That portion of the human race which God had willed to comprehend in one Educational plan, was ripe for the second step of Education. . . . This portion of the human race was come so far in the exercise of its reason, as to need, and to be able to make use of nobler and worthier motives of moral action than temporal rewards and punishments, which had hitherto been its guides. The child had become a youth. . . . The Greek and Roman did everything to live on after this life, even if it were only in the remembrance of their fellow–citizens. It was time that another true life to be expected after this should gain an influence over the youth`s actions. And so Christ was the first certain practical Teacher of the immortality of the soul. . . . His disciples have faithfully propagated these doctrines: . . . If, however, they transplanted this one great Truth together with other doctrines, whose truth was less enlightening, whose usefulness was of a less exalted character, how could it be otherwise? Let us not blame them for this, but rather seriously examine whether these very commingled doctrines have not become a new impulse of directions for human reason. At least, it is already clear that the New Testament Scriptures, in which these doctrines after some time were found preserved, have afforded, and still afford, the second better Primer for the race of man. For seven hundred years past they have exercised human reason more than all other books, and enlightened it more, were it even only through the

18

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

light which the human reason itself threw into them. ... As we by this time can dispense with the Old Testament, in reference to the doctrine of the unity of God, and as we are by degrees beginning also to be less dependent on the New Testament, in reference to the immortality of the soul: might there not in this Book also be other truths of the same sort prefigured, mirrored, as it were, which we are to marvel at, as revelations, exactly so long as until the time shall come when reason shall have learned to educe them, out of its other demonstrated truths and bind them up with them? . . . For instance, the doctrine of the Trinity. . . . And the doctrine of Original Sin. . . . And the doctrine of the Son`s satisfaction. . . . Education has its goal, in the Race, no less than in the Individual. That which is educated is educated for something. . . . It will assuredly come! the time of the perfecting, when man, the more convinced his understanding feels itself of an ever better Future, will nevertheless not be necessitated to borrow motives of action from his Future; for he will do the Right because it is right, not because arbitrary rewards are annexed thereto, which formerly were intended simply to fix and strengthen his unsteady gaze in recognizing the inner, better, rewards of well–doing. It will assuredly come! The time of a new eternal Gospel, which is promised us in the Primer of the New Testament itself! . . . Go thine inscrutable way, Eternal Providence! Only let me not despair in Thee, because of this inscrutableness. . . . Thou hast on Thine Eternal Way so much to carry on together, so much to do! So many aside steps to take! And what if it were as good as proved that the vast flow wheel which brings mankind nearer to this perfection is only put in motion by smaller, swifter wheels, each of which contributes its own individual unit thereto? It is so! The very same Way by which the Race reaches its perfection, must every individual man—one sooner—another later—have travelled over. CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND ITS LUTHERAN CRITICS 232. IMMANUEL KANT: WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT? (1784) Translated by Thomas K. Abbott (1898). From the Internet Modern History Sourcebook.

http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/ kant–whatis.asp. Enlightenment is man’s release from his self–incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self–incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! “Have courage to use your own reason!”– that is the motto of enlightenment. Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction, nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay—others will easily undertake the irksome work for me. That the step to competence is held to be very dangerous by the far greater portion of mankind (and by the entire fair sex)—quite apart from its being arduous is seen to by those guardians who have so kindly assumed superintendence over them. After the guardians have first made their domestic cattle dumb and have made sure that these placid creatures will not dare take a single step without the harness of the cart to which they are tethered, the guardians then show them the danger which threatens if they try to go alone. Actually, however, this danger is not so great, for by falling a few times they would finally learn to walk alone. But an example of this failure makes them timid and ordinarily frightens them away from all further trials. . . . Which restriction is an obstacle to enlightenment, and which is not an obstacle but a promoter of it? I answer: The public use of one’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men. The private use of reason, on the other hand, may often be very narrowly restricted without particularly hindering the progress of enlightenment. By the public use of one’s reason I understand the use which a person makes of it as a scholar before the reading public. Private use I call that which one may make of it in a particular civil post or office which is entrusted to him. Many affairs which are conducted in the interest of the community require a certain mechanism through which some members of the community must passively conduct themselves with an artificial unanimity, so that the government may direct them to public ends, or at least prevent

THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM

them from destroying those ends. Here argument is certainly not allowed—one must obey. But so far as a part of the mechanism regards himself at the same time as a member of the whole community or of a society of world citizens, and thus in the role of a scholar who addresses the public (in the proper sense of the word) through his writings, he certainly can argue without hurting the affairs for which he is in part responsible as a passive member. Thus it would be ruinous for an officer in service to debate about the suitability or utility of a command given to him by his superior; he must obey. But the right to make remarks on errors in the military service and to lay them before the public for judgment cannot equitably be refused him as a scholar. . . .(a) clergyman is obligated to make his sermon to his pupils in catechism and his congregation conform to the symbol of the church which he serves, for he has been accepted on this condition. But as a scholar he has complete freedom, even the calling, to communicate to the public all his carefully tested and well–meaning thoughts on that which is erroneous in the symbol and to make suggestions for the better organization of the religious body and church. In doing this there is nothing that could be laid as a burden on his conscience. For what he teaches as a consequence of his office as a representative of the church, this he considers something about which he has not freedom to teach according to his own lights; it is something which he is appointed to propound at the dictation of and in the name of another. He will say, “Our church teaches this or that; those are the proofs which it adduces.” He thus extracts all practical uses for his congregation from statutes to which he himself would not subscribe with full conviction but to the enunciation of which he can very well pledge himself because it is not impossible that truth lies hidden in them, and, in any case, there is at least nothing in them contradictory to inner religion. For if he believed he had found such in them, he could not conscientiously discharge the duties of his office; he would have to give it up. . . But as a scholar, whose writings speak to his public, the world, the clergyman in the public use of his reason enjoys an unlimited freedom to use his own reason to speak in his own person. That the guardian of the people (in spiritual things) should themselves be incompetent is an absurdity which amounts to the eternalization of absurdities. . . . If we are asked, “Do we now live in an enlightened age?” the answer is, “No ,” but we do live in an age of enlightenment. As things now stand, much is lacking which prevents men from being, or easily

19

becoming, capable of correctly using their own reason in religious matters with assurance and free from outside direction. But on the other hand, we have clear indications that the field has now been opened wherein men may freely deal with these things and that the obstacles to general enlightenment or the release from self–imposed tutelage are gradually being reduced. In this respect, this is the age of enlightenment, or the century of Frederick. . . . A prince who does not find it unworthy of himself to say that he holds it to be his duty to prescribe nothing to men in religious matters but to give them complete freedom while renouncing the haughty name of tolerance, is himself enlightened and deserves to be esteemed by the grateful world and posterity as the first, at least from the side of government, who divested the human race of its tutelage and left each man free to make use of his reason in matters of conscience. Under him venerable ecclesiastics are allowed, in the role of scholar, and without infringing on their official duties, freely to submit for public testing their judgments and views which here and there diverge from the established symbol. And an even greater freedom is enjoyed by those who are restricted by no official duties. I have placed the main point of enlightenment—the escape of men from their self–incurred tutelage—chiefly in matters of religion because our rulers have no interest in playing guardian with respect to the arts and sciences and also because religious incompetence is not only the most harmful but also the most degrading of all. But the manner of thinking of the head of a state who favors religious enlightenment goes further, and he sees that there is no danger to his lawgiving in allowing his subjects to make public use of their reason and to publish their thoughts on a better formulation of his legislation and even their open–minded criticisms of the laws already made. Of this we have a shining example wherein no monarch is superior to him we honor. . . 233. IMMANUEL KANT: RELIGION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF REASON ALONE (1793) Trans. by T.M. Greene and H.H. Hudson, New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1960. 47–48, 105–108, 180–181.

20

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Fig. 1.7. Portrait of Immanuel Kant (c. 1791)

Book One: On the Radical Evil in Human Nature General Observation: Concerning the Restoration to its Power of the Original Predisposition to Good. ... All religions, however, can be divided into those which are endeavors to win favor (mere worship) and moral religions, i.e., religions of good life–conduct. In the first, man flatters himself by believing either that God can make him eternally happy (through remission of his sins) without his having to become a better man, or else, if this seems to him impossible, that God can certainly make him a better man without his having to do anything more than to ask for it. Yet since, in the eyes of a Being who sees all, to ask is no more than to wish, this would really involve doing nothing at all; for were improvement to be achieved simply by a wish, every man would be good. But in the moral religion (and of all the public religions which have ever existed, the Christian alone is moral) it is a basic principle that each must do as

much as lies in his power to become a better man, and that only when he has not buried his inborn talent (Luke 19:12-16) but has made use of his original predisposition to good in order to become a better man, can he hope that what is not within his power will be supplied through cooperation from above. Nor is it absolutely necessary for a man to know wherein this cooperation consists; indeed, it is perhaps inevitable that, were the way it occurs revealed at a given time, different people would at some other time form different conceptions of it, and that with entire sincerity. Even here the principle is valid: “It is not essential, and hence not necessary, for everyone to know what God does or has done for his salvation;” but it is essential to know what man himself must do in order to become worthy of this assistance. This General Observation is the first of four which are appended, one to each Book of this work, and which might bear the titles, (l) Works of Grace, (2) Miracles, (3) Mysteries, and (4) Means of Grace. These matters are, as it were, parerga (by–works) to religion within the limits of pure reason; they do not belong within it but border upon it. Reason, conscious of her inability to satisfy her moral need, extends herself to high–flown ideas capable of supplying this lack, without, however, appropriating these ideas as an extension of her domain. Reason does not dispute the possibility or the reality of the objects of these ideas; she simply cannot adopt them into her maxims of thought and action. . . . As regards the damage resulting from these morally–transcendent ideas, when we seek to introduce them into religion, the consequences, listed in the order of the four classes named above, are: (1) [corresponding] to imagined inward experience (works of grace), [the consequence is] fanaticism; (2) to alleged external experience (miracles), superstition; (3) to a supposed enlightening of the understanding with regard to the supernatural (mysteries), illumination, the illusion of the “adepts”; (4) to hazardous attempts to operate upon the supernatural (means of grace), thaumaturgy—sheer aberrations of a reason going beyond its proper limits and that too for a purpose fancied to be moral (pleasing to God). . . . Book Three: The Victory of the Good over the Evil Principle, and the Founding of a Kingdom of God on Earth VII. The Gradual Transition of Ecclesiastical Faith to the Exclusive Sovereignty of Pure Religious Faith is the Coming of the Kingdom of God. . . .

THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM

We call the faith of every individual who possesses moral capacity (worthiness) for eternal happiness a saving faith. This also can be but a single faith; amid all diversity of ecclesiastical faiths [or creeds] it is discoverable in each of these in which, moving toward the goal of pure religious faith, it is practical. The faith of a religion of divine worship, in contrast, is a drudging and mercenary faith and cannot be regarded as saving because it is not moral. . . . Ecclesiastical faith fancies it possible to become well–pleasing to God through actions (of worship) which (though irksome) yet possess in themselves no moral worth and hence are merely acts induced by fear or hope—acts which an evil man also can perform. Moral faith, in contrast, presupposes that a morally good disposition is requisite. Saving faith involves two elements, upon which hope of salvation is conditioned, the one having reference to what man himself cannot accomplish, namely, undoing lawfully (before a divine judge) actions which he has performed, the other to what he himself can and ought to do, that is, leading a new life conformable to his duty. The first is the faith in an atonement (reparation for his debt, redemption, reconciliation with God); the second, the faith that we can become well–pleasing to God through a good course of life in the future. Both conditions constitute but one faith and necessarily belong together. Yet we can comprehend the necessity of their union only by assuming that one can be derived from the other, that is, either that the faith in the absolution from the debt resting upon us will bring forth good life–conduct, or else that the genuine and active disposition ever to pursue a good course of life will engender the faith in such absolution according to the law of morally operating causes. . . . If it is assumed that atonement has been made for the sins of mankind, it is indeed conceivable that every sinner would gladly have it applied to himself and that were it merely a matter of belief (which means no more than an avowal that he wishes the atonement to be rendered for him also), he would not for an instant suffer misgivings on this score. However, it is quite impossible to see how a reasonable man, who knows himself to merit punishment, can in all seriousness believe that he needs only to credit the news of an atonement rendered for him, and to accept this atonement utiliter (as the lawyers say), in order to regard his guilt as annihilated,—indeed, so completely annihilated (to the very root) that good life–conduct, for which he has hitherto not taken the least pains, will in the future be the inevitable consequence of this faith and this acceptance of the prof-

21

fered favor. No thoughtful person can bring himself to believe this, even though self–love often does transform the bare wish for a good, for which man does nothing and can do nothing, into a hope, as though one’s object were to come of itself, elicited by mere longing. . . . The acceptance of the first requisite for salvation, namely, faith in a vicarious atonement, is in any case necessary only for the theoretical concept; in no other way can we make comprehensible to ourselves such absolution. In contrast, the necessity for the second principle is practical and, indeed, purely moral. We can certainly hope to partake in the appropriation of another’s atoning merit, and so of salvation, only by qualifying for it through our own efforts to fulfil every human duty—and this obedience must be the effect of our own action and not, once again, of a foreign influence in the presence of which we are passive. For since the command to do our duty is unconditioned, it is also necessary that man shall make it, as maxim, the basis of his belief, that is to say that he shall begin with the improvement of his life as the supreme condition under which alone a saving faith can exist. Ecclesiastical faith, being historical, rightly starts with the belief in atonement; but since it merely constitutes the vehicle for pure religious faith (in which lies the real end), the maxim of action, which in religious faith (being practical) is the condition, must take the lead, and the maxim of knowledge, or theoretical faith, must merely bring about the strengthening and consummation of the maxim of action. ..... Book Four: Concerning Service and Pseudo–Service under the Sovereignty of the Good Principle General Observation (Means of Grace). . . . The true (moral) service of God, which the faithful must render as subjects belonging to His kingdom but no less as citizens thereof (under laws of freedom), is itself, indeed, like the kingdom, invisible, i.e., a service of the heart (in spirit and in truth). It can consist solely in the disposition of obedience to all true duties as divine commands, not in actions directed exclusively to God. Yet for man the invisible needs to be represented through the visible (the sensuous); yea, what is more, it needs to be accompanied by the visible in the interest of practicability and, though it is intellectual, must be made, as it were (according to a certain analogy), perceptual. This is a means of simply picturing to ourselves our duty in

22

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

the service of God, a means which, although really indispensable, is extremely liable to the danger of misconstruction; for, through an illusion that steals over us, it is easily held to be the service of God itself, and is, indeed, commonly thus spoken of. This alleged service of God, when brought back to its spirit and its true meaning, namely, to a disposition dedicating itself to the kingdom of God within us and without us, can be divided, even by reason, into four observances of duty; and certain corresponding rites, which do not stand in a necessary relation to these observances, have yet been associated with them, because the rites are deemed to serve as schemata for the duties and thus, for ages past, have been regarded as useful means for sensuously awakening and sustaining our attention to the true service of God. They base themselves, one and all, upon the intention to further the morally good and are: (l) (private prayer)—firmly to establish this goodness in ourselves, and repeatedly to awaken the disposition of goodness in the heart; (2) (church–going)—the spreading abroad of goodness through public assembly on days legally dedicated thereto, in order that religious doctrines and wishes (together with corresponding dispositions) may be expressed there and thus be generally shared; (3) (in the Christian religion, baptism)—the propagation of goodness in posterity through the reception of newly entering members into the fellowship of faith, as a duty; also their instruction in such goodness; (4) (communion)—the maintenance of this fellowship through a repeated public formality which makes enduring the union of these members into an ethical body and this, indeed, according to the principle of the mutual equality of their rights and joint participation in all the fruits of moral goodness. Every initiatory step in the realm of religion, which we do not take in a purely moral manner but rather have recourse to as in itself a means of making us well–pleasing to God and thus, through Him, of satisfying all our wishes, is fetish–faith. . . . 234. JOHANN GEORG HAMANN: BIBLICAL REFLECTIONS (1758) Trans. by Ronald Gregor Smith. J.G. Hamann, 1730–1788. A Study in Christian Existence. With Selections fr from om his Writings Writings. (London: Collins, 1960), 118, 134–136. I now offer some general remarks, as they occur to me, about divine revelation. God has revealed himself to man in nature and in his Word. The resem-

blances and the connections between these two revelations have not yet been sufficiently discussed or clearly explained, nor pushed to that point of harmony which might open up a broad field for a sound philosophy. In countless instances both revelations must be rescued from the greatest objections in an identical way. Both revelations explain and support one another, and cannot contradict one another, however much the explanations of our reason would like to show contradictions. Rather, it is the greatest contradiction and abuse of reason when reason itself tries to reveal. A philosopher who ignores the divine Word in order to please reason is like the Jews who, the more firmly they seem to cling to the Old Testament, the more stubbornly they reject the New Testament. In them was the prophecy fulfilled that what should have served to confirm and to fulfil their other insights is a stumbling–block and foolishness in their eyes. Natural science and history are the two things on which true religion rests. Unbelief and superstition are based on shallow physics and shallow history. Nature is as little subject to blind chance or to eternal laws as all events are to be derived from personalities and reasons of state. . . . Curiosity is a kind of superstition and idolatry. Socrates, whom the wise of the world have united to call a wise man, confessed that he knew nothing. Solomon, to whom the spirit of God ascribed this title with more justification, has left us in Ecclesiastes a testimony which is even more depressing. Nothing new . . . a sorrow and vexation and nausea to be wise. The father of modem philosophy14 found it necessary to forget, deny and reject all he knew, and regarded this as the only way to find the truth. But this truth was nothing but a structure of errors polished up anew and taken for new. If curiosity is the mother or foster–mother of knowledge, we can easily judge the fruits from the root and the sap. All natural knowledge is revealed. The nature of objects provides the material, and the laws by which our soul feels, thinks, infers, judges and compares, provide the form. Reason is inclined to serve an unknown God, but is infinitely remote from knowing him. It does not wish to know him and what is even more astonishing, when it does know him it ceases to serve him. This is why God discloses himself so late and so slowly, for he knows that the knowledge of him is a stumbling–block and an offence to man, that he is foolishness and a thorn in the flesh to him as soon as he wishes to reveal himself and make himself known to him. . . .

THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM

235. JOHANN GEORG HAMANN (1781–1784) LETTER TO JOHANN GOTTFRIED HERDER (10 MAY, 1781) It may seem surprising that Hamann defends Christianity by appealing to David Hume (1711–1776) since this Scottish philosopher was an arch–skeptic on religious matters. Kant was inspired to write his critiques by Hume’s views on causality and morality. Hamann sides with Hume to point out the limits of reason. Trans. by Ronald Gregor Smith (1960), 243–244. Hume is always my man, because he at least honors the principle of belief, and has taken it into his system. Our countryman [Kant] keeps on chewing the cud of Hume’s fury against causality, without taking this matter of belief into account. That does not seem, to me to be honest. Hume’s Dialogues end with the Jewish and Platonic hope of a prophet who is to come; and Kant is more like a cabbalist who turns an aion into the godhead, in order to establish mathematical certainty, which Hume, excluding geometry, restricts more to arithmetic.15 LETTER TO FRIEDRICH HEINRICH JACOBY (14 NOVEMBER, 1784) Trans by Ronald Gregor Smith. (1960), 248. . . . All metaphysical studies have recently, on account of the Critique of Pure Reason, become almost as loathsome to me as they were formerly on account of Wolff’s Latin Ontology. For me the question is not so much “What is reason?” as “What is language?” It is here I suspect the source of all paralogisms and antinomies can be found which are ascribed to reason: it comes from words being held to be ideas, and ideas to be things themselves. In words and ideas no existence is possible. Existence is attached solely to things. No enjoyment arises from brooding, and all things including the ens entium [being of beings] are there for enjoyment and not for speculation. The tree of knowledge has deprived us of the tree of life and ought not the tree of life to be dearer to us than the tree of knowledge? Do we always want to follow the example of the old Adam rather than see ourselves in his reflection, do we not want to become children, and like

23

the new Adam share in flesh and blood, and take the cross upon ourselves? All the terminology of metaphysics comes in the end to this historical fact, and sensus is the principle of all intellectus. . . . Experience and revelation are one, and indispensable wings or crutches of our reason, if it is not to be lame, and crawl. Sense and history are the foundation and ground however deceitful the former may be, however simple the latter, I prefer them to all castles in the air. . . . LETTER TO CHRISTIAN JACOB KRAUS (18 DECEMBER, 1784) This letter directly addresses Kant’s essay, What is Enlightenment.” Whereas Kant criticized self–imposed immaturity in society, Hamann criticizes the “self–imposed guardianship” of philosophers who elevate themselves above the common people. He also calls the distinction between private and public use of reason “comical.” Hamann’s friend Kraus was a professor of practical philosophy and political science in Königsberg. Trans. by Garrett Green in James Schmidt, ed. What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth–Century Answers and Twentieth–Century Questions Questions. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 145–148. . . . To the Sapere aude! (dare to know) there belongs also from the very same source the Noli admirari! (marvel not). . . .16 So wherein lies the inability or fault of the falsely accused immature one? In his own laziness and cowardice? No, it lies in the blindness of his guardian, who purports to be able to see, and for that very reason must bear the whole responsibility for the fault. With what kind of conscience can a reasoner and speculator by the stove and in a nightcap accuse the immature ones of cowardice, when their blind guardian has a large, well–disciplined army to guarantee his infallibility and orthodoxy? How can one mock the laziness of such immature persons, when their enlightened and self–thinking guardian . . . sees them not even as machines but as mere shadows of his grandeur, of which he need have no fear at all, since they are his ministering spirits and the only ones in whose existence he believes? . . . P.S. My transfiguration of the Kantian definition, therefore, comes to this: true enlightenment consists in an emergence of the immature person from a supremely self–incurred guardianship. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom—and this wis-

24

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

dom makes us cowardly at lying and lazy at inventing—but all the more courageous against guardians who at most can kill the body and suck the purse empty—all the more merciful to our immature brethren and more fruitful in good works of immortality. The distinction between the public and private service of reason is . . . comical. . . . It is a matter, to be sure, of unifying the two natures of an immature person and guardian, but making both into self–contradictory hypocrites is no arcanum (secret) that needs first to be preached; rather, here lies precisely the nub of the whole political problem. What good to me is the festive garment of freedom when I am in a slave’s smock at home? . . . They speak as guardians and must forget everything and contradict everything as soon as, in their own self–incurred immaturity, they are to be indentured labor for the state. Thus the public use of reason and freedom is nothing but a dessert, a sumptuous dessert. The private use is the daily bread that we should give up for its sake. The self–incurred immaturity is just such a sneer as he makes at the whole fair sex, and which my three daughters will not put up with. . . .

first, and last organon and criterion of reason, with no credentials but tradition and usage. But it is almost the same with this idol as it was with the ideal of reason for that ancient. The longer one deliberates, the more deeply and inwardly one is struck dumb and loses all desire to speak. . . . A good many analytic judgments indeed imply a gnostic hatred of matter or else a mystic love of form. Yet the synthesis of predicate with subject (the proper object of pure reason) has for its middle term nothing more than an old, cold prejudice for mathematics before and behind it. . . . It turns the honest decency of language into such a meaningless, rutting, unstable, indefinite something = X that nothing is left but a windy sough, a magic shadow play, at most, as the wise Helvetius17 says, the talisman and rosary of a transcendental superstitious belief in entia rationis (logical beings), their empty sacks and droppings. It is finally understood, by the way, that if mathematics lays claim to the privilege of nobility because of its general and necessary reliability, even human reason itself would have to be inferior to the infallible and certain instinct of insects.

236. JOHANN GEORG HAMANN: METACRITIQUE ON THE PURISM OF REASON (1784) In Kant’s quest for certainty he focused on pure intuitions and pure concepts, arguing that reason must excise all contributions of experience. In this passage, Hamman criticizes Kant’s sense of pure reason as timeless and eternal and his failure to see that it depends on tradition, experience and language. Experience cannot be transcended. Language is characterized by ambiguities. Trans. by Kenneth Haynes in Schmidt. What is Enlightenment? (1996), 155–156. The first purification of reason consists in the partly misunderstood, partly failed attempt to make reason independent of all tradition and custom and belief in them. The second is even more transcendent and comes to nothing less than independence from experience and its everyday induction. After a search of two thousand years for who knows what beyond experience, reason not only suddenly despairs of the progressive course of its predecessors but also defiantly promises impatient contemporaries delivery, and this in a short time, of that general and infallible philosopher’s stone, indispensable for Catholicism and despotism. . . . The third highest, and as it were, empirical purism thus still concerns language, the only,

Fig. 1.8. Johann Gottfried Herder

If it is still a chief question how the faculty of thought is possible—the faculty to think right and left, before and without, with and beyond experience—then no deduction is needed to demonstrate

THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM

the genealogical superiority of language and its heraldry, over the seven holy functions of logical propositions and inferences. . . . 237. JOHANN GOTTFRIED HERDER: GOD, SOME CONVERSATIONS (1787) In contrast to Wolff’s view of God as a skilled mechanic, Herder in his half–philosophical, half–poetical outlook sees God as an immanent life–force in the world. Kant criticized Herder for his lack of logical precision. Trans. by Frederick H. Burkhardt. (Indianapolis: Bobbs–Merrill, 1963), 95–96, 107, 117, 133. Philolaus: Here I am with my Spinoza, but almost more in the dark than I was before. It is plain on every page that he is no atheist. For him the idea of God is the first and last, yes, I might even say the only idea of all, for on it he bases knowledge of the world and of nature, consciousness of self and of all things around him, his ethics and his politics. Without the idea of God, his mind has no power, not even to conceive of itself. For him it is well–nigh inconceivable, how man can, as it were, turn God into a mere consequence of other truths, or even of sensuous perceptions, since all truth, like all existence, follows only from eternal truth, from the eternal infinite existence of God. This concept became so present, so immediate and intimate to him, that I certainly would rather have taken him to be an enthusiast concerning the existence of God, that a doubter or denier of it. He places all mankind’s perfection, virtue and blessedness in the knowledge and love of God. And that this is not some sort of mask which he has assumed, but rather his deepest feelings, is shown by his letters, yes, I might even say, by every part of his philosophical system, by every line of his writings. Spinoza may have erred in a thousand ways about the idea of God, but how readers of his works could ever say that he denied the idea of God and proved atheism, is incomprehensible to me. Theophron: I am glad my friend, that you have found the same thing that I found. . . . However, let us not linger in this astonishment which will clear up of itself when we examine his system. What criticisms have you to make of it? Philolaus: Where shall I begin? Where end? The whole system is a paradox to me. “There is but one Substance, and that is God. All things are but modifications of it.” Theophron: . . . What is Substance but a thing which is self–dependent, which has the cause of its

25

existence in itself? I wish that this pure meaning of the word could have been introduced into our philosophy. In the strictest sense, nothing in the world is a Substance, because everything depends on everything else, and finally on God, who therefore is the highest and only Substance. . . . (97) The substances of the world are all maintained by divine power, just as they derive their existence from it alone. Therefore, they constitute, if you will, appearances of divine power, each modified according to the place, the time, and the organs in, and with which, they appear. In his single Substance, Spinoza thus employed a short formula which certainly gives his system much coherence, but which sounds strange to our ears. . . . Philolaus: I see so many pathetic declamations against Spinoza, which quarreled with nothing but his names “single Substance” and “modifications,” suddenly dwindling to nothing. . . . Theophron: Then you will also find it no blasphemy, when Spinoza calls the Independent Being the immanent and not the transitive cause of all things? . . . Philolaus: . . . You see, my friend, what a fine inference as to the inner unity of the world follows from this. The world is not held together by space and time alone as if by external conditions, but much more intimately by its very essence, by the principle of its own existence, since everywhere only organic forces may be at work in it. In the world which we know, the power of thought stands highest, but it is followed by millions of other powers of feeling and activity, and He, the Self–dependent, is Power in the highest and only send of the word, that is, the primal Force of all forces, the Soul of all souls. . . . As limited beings we swim in space and time. We count and measure everything by them, and rise with difficulty from figures of the imagination to the pure idea which excludes all spatial and temporal measure. If this distinction has been understood, there would certainly not have been so much said of the mundane and extra–mundane God. Still less would Spinoza have ever been accused of enclosing his God within the world and identifying Him with it. His infinite and most real Being is no more the world itself than the infinite of reason is the same as the endless of the imagination. And thus, no part of the world can also be a part of God, because the simplest highest Essence has no parts whatsoever. I now see clearly that hour philosopher has been as unjustly accused of pantheism as of atheism. . . . Theophron: The more true physics advances, the more we depart from the realm of blind power and

26

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

arbitrariness and enter the realm of the wisest necessity, of a goodness and beauty steadfast in themselves. All senseless fear vanishes when on every hand there is discovered the joyous, clear security of a creation in whose smallest point, God with His wisdom and goodness is present in His totality, working according to the nature of each creature with His undivided and indivisible divine power. . . . Philolaus: I wish that Spinoza has been born a century later, so that he might have philosophized far from the hypotheses of Descartes, in the freer and purer light of mathematical, natural science and of a truer natural history. What a different form even his abstract philosophy would have attained! Theophron: And I hope that others will courageously follow on the road which Spinoza opened up in the twilight of those days, namely to develop exact, pure natural laws without becoming concerned in so doing with the particular purposes of God. He who could show me the natural laws by which the phenomena of our so–called dead and living creation, such as salts, plants, animals and men around according to inner necessity and union of active forces in such and no other organs, would have encouraged the most wonderful admiration, love and worship of God. . . . RATIONALIST SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY IN THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 238. JULIUS WEGSCHEIDER: HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS (1815/1831) The Latin version of this work appeared in 1815, the German version in 1831. From Lehrbuch der christlichen Dogmatik Dogmatik. (Nürnberg: Johann Leonhard Schrag, 1831), 42–43, 68, 413–414, 440. trans. by Eric Lund. The Reconciliation of Christianity and Rationalism #11 Since the doctrine (of supernaturalism) is subject to various difficulties, which are made more manifest every day by historical, physical, and philosophical advances of learning, there have been among more recent theologians and philosophers not a few who, even in the investigation and explanation of divine things, thought it right to admit, not only that formal use of human reason (in their method of

exposition), but also the material use (i.e. subjecting particular doctrines to rational inquiry). Thus arose so–called Rationalism, or that rule of thinking, which believes the religious ideas revealed by God through the pure reason of man and, with the preservation of reason as the highest authority, accepts the content of every revelation only if it has been tested by the law of thought and action implanted in man by God. . . . Whoever, despising this supremacy of human reason, stipulates that the authority of a revelation, said to have been communicated to certain people in a supernatural manner, must be obeyed by all means, without any doubt, takes away and overturns the true nature and dignity of humanity. . . . History teaches quite sufficiently how many horrible deeds have been committed under the pretense of the name and the revelation of God among men, through neglect of the cultivation of reason. So it is generally the case that no revelation based on the testimony of another can grant us as secure a conviction as that which proceeds from reason, whose claim is known to a person through self–consciousness. The more religion is planted in and impressed upon the inner consciousness of the human spirit the more certainly will a person put its exhilarating power to the test in the different situations of human life. . . . The Resurrection of Jesus #131 Among recent theologians, many are of the opinion that the entire account of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is to be taken in a moral or allegorical sense as a poetic myth. . . . Semler, in his writing, “Answer to the Fragments of an Unknown” and Spinoza before him, explain the resurrection of Christ as a spiritual, or as Semler calls it, an event in the moral world. According to him, Christ, after his enemies killed his body, was resurrected again in his teachings. . . . According to Spinoza the spiritual sense does not lie in the person of the resurrected but in the concept of death. This should not be taken as a bodily resurrection but as a spiritual and moral one, as in the statement “Let the dead bury their dead.” The person is dead in sinful life and his resurrection is his moral improvement. . . . We maintain that the entire truth of the Christian religion does not depend on this fact. For we know right well that the truth of a religious teaching which someone has presented can in no way be proven by a fact which only a few witnesses know and is clothed, according to the spirit of an uneducated age in a miracle; but that the truth must be presented in accor-

THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM

dance with the principles of sound reason. It comes to this that nowhere is it told that Jesus himself built his teachings on this event as their foundation. The Work of Christ #141 The doctrine of the forgiveness of sins, acquired by humanity through a vicarious sacrifice to God in the death of Jesus Christ, has run into intense criticism especially in more recent times, partly because of the origins of the doctrine, partly from the correctly determined idea of God, and partly due to the proper concepts of guilt and punishment. Firstly it is rightly recalled that the whole representation is based on the comparison of the death of Jesus Christ with the idea of an atoning sacrifice, which was common among almost all uneducated folk and especially among the Hebrews. Jesus Christ himself disapproved of the concept (Matt 9:13 etc.), whence it can be justly concluded that he himself did not teach this dogma as the foremost statement of Christian belief. How is it conceivable that the heavenly father, who determines punishment according to his righteous and generous will, and is free of all anger and hate, can only be moved by the blood and death of a sacrifice. . . . It is just as unclear how a human with a finite nature has, through sinning, contracted an infinite guilt before God that can only be expiated through an infinite atoning sacrifice. Moreover, there exists no reason why God himself, namely the second person of the Trinity, the supreme ruler of the solar system, should, as a fatal necessity, decide to descend in a human body to this earth, a small part of the universe, in order to be crucified by Jews, offering himself as an infinite atoning sacrifice. Why could not God, at the point in time when a person believes that he is ready to prepare his reconciliation, send the message of peace and reconciliation to the adversary and consider him reconciled. 239. LUDWIG VON GERLACH: RATIONALISM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HALLE (JANUARY 16, 1830) From Evangelische Kirchen–Zeitung: Organ der Evangelisch–Lutherischen innerhalb der Preußischen Landeskirche (1830), 38, 40, 46. trans. by Eric Lund. The University of Halle currently has twelve professors, two lecturers, and 818 students of theology. By far the most of the latter find themselves under the

27

influence of two professors, Consistorial Councillor Dr. Gesenius and Dr. Wegscheider. The remaining professors have far fewer listeners. It is, therefore, a very interesting question for the church of Christ, especially in northern Germany, what teachings the majority of students of theology, a significant number of whom become preachers each year, receive from these two men. It is generally known that that Dr. Gesenius and Dr. Wegscheider are open to rationalism and, let it thus be said, oppose and present as erroneous what the evangelical church acknowledges in its confessional writings to be eternal divine truth. ... [For example,] Dr. Wegscheider explains the resurrection of Jesus in his lectures this way. [He states] that Jesus only appeared to be dead, and that it is unphilosophical to explain it other than in a natural way, although the gospel writers with their lack of physiological knowledge and their obsession with miracles considered him to have really died. . . . We ask our readers to place themselves in the position of the hundreds of young men who are continuously imprinted with these teachings while at Halle, and which the majority also come to accept. . . . But for those who are accustomed to despise rationalism as a system that has long ago been demonstrated to be shallow and void, and view is as belonging more to the past than the present, we would like them to consider the extent of the teachings mentioned above and their continuing influence. Also bear in mind that these souls (of students) who remain in the darkness of unbelief although purchased at great cost by the blood of Jesus have not yet been helped in that, for one thing, there are scholarly books that have long disproved the system to which they and their teachers are beholden, and for another, the spiritual needs of people are not met by that shallowness found in their system. If the great contrast of sin and holiness, of damnation and salvation, fills our hearts, we cannot merely look with contempt at different spiritual directions and the false teachings which devastate the church, otherwise the prince of this world will disdain our struggle for the truth. We should not ignore the unbelievers as stupid people, which is very easy to do, but we should win them for the Lord, which only the Spirit of God and the weapons of the word and prayer can put us in a position to do. . . . May the facts reported here, which are not new but still not contemplated enough, finally get the serious attention of all those who hold the church of Christ in our German Fatherland close to their hearts and who lead the important University of Halle. May

28

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

their hearts be awakened through prayer, the word and deed to help heal the wounds which unbelief has inflicted and continues to inflict on the lands that have been so richly blessed by the Reformation.

Fig. 1.9. Portrait of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel by Jacob Schlesinger (1831)

IDEALIST PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION—CHRISTIANITY AND THE ABSOLUTE SPIRIT 240. G. W. F. HEGEL: LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION (1827) From Peter Hodgson, ed. Lectur Lectures es on the Philosophy of Relig Religion ion. (Berkeley: U of California Press, 1988), 152, 154, 156, 158, 159, 166, 180–183. Trans. By R.F. Brown, P.C. Hodgson, J.M. Stewart. Comparison of Philosophy and Religion with Regard to Their Object The object of religion, like that of philosophy, is the eternal truth, God and nothing but God and the explication of God. Philosophy is only explicating itself when it explicates religion, and when it explicates itself it is explicating religion. For the thinking spirit is what penetrates this object, the truth; it is thinking that enjoys the truth and purifies the sub-

jective consciousness. Thus religion and philosophy coincide in one. In fact philosophy is itself the service of God, as is religion. But each of them, religion as well as philosophy is the service of God in a way peculiar to it (about which more needs to be said). They differ in the peculiar character of their concern with God. This is where the difficulties lie that impede philosophy’s grasp of religion; and it often appears impossible for the two of them to be united. The apprehensive attitude of religion towards philosophy and the hostile stance of each toward the other arise from this. It seems, as the theologians frequently suggest, that philosophy works to corrupt the content of religion, destroying and profaning it. This old antipathy stands before our eyes as something admitted and acknowledged, more generally acknowledged than their unity. The time seems to have arrived, however, when philosophy can deal with religion more impartially on the one hand, and more fruitfully and auspiciously on the other. . . . Although it follows upon a period when the antipathy [between religion and philosophy] became once more a presupposition, the present day seems again to be more propitious for the linkage of philosophy and theology. In support of this view two circumstances must be underlined. The first concerns the content, the second the form. With reference to the content, the reproach has usually been brought against philosophy that by it the content of the doctrine of the revealed, positive religion is suppressed, that through it Christianity is destroyed. Only a so–called natural religion and theology has been admitted in philosophy, i.e., a content that the natural light of reason could supply regarding God; but it was invariably considered as standing opposed to Christianity. At present this reproach that philosophy is destructive of dogma has been removed, and in fact the theology of our time, i.e. of the last thirty or fifty years, has on its own part effected this removal. . . . In recent theology very few of the dogmas of the earlier system of ecclesiastical confessions have survived or at least retained the importance previously attributed to them, and others have not been set in their place. One could easily arrive at the view that a widespread, nearly universal indifference towards the doctrines of faith formerly regarded as essential has entered into the general religiousness of the public. For though Christ as reconciler and savior is still constantly made the focus of faith, nevertheless what formerly was called in orthodox dogmatics the work of salvation has taken on a significance so strongly psychological and so very prosaic that only the semblance of the ancient doctrine of the church re-

THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM

mains. In lieu of the former dogmas we now behold in Christ merely “great energy of character and constancy of conviction, for the sake of which Christ deemed his life of no account.” This is now the universal object of faith. Thus Christ is dragged down to the level of human affairs, not to the level of the commonplace but still to that of the human into the sphere of a mode of action of which pagans such as Socrates have also been capable. And so, although Christ has remained the focal point of faith for many people who are religious and also more profound in outlook, it must still seem that the most weighty doctrines have lost much of their interest, faith in the Trinity for example, or the miracles of the Old and New Testament, etc. . . . . . . If now theology no longer places such importance on the positive doctrines of Christianity, or for that matter if through their interpretation these doctrines are enveloped in such a fog, then one impediment to the philosophical comprehension of dogmas drop away, which used to arise from the fact that philosophy was considered to be an opponent of the teachings of the church. If those doctrines have declined so sharply in their interest, then philosophy can operate without constraint in regard to them. . . . The other circumstance that seems to favor the renewed linkage of theology and philosophy concerns the form. Here indeed it is a question of the conviction of the age that God is revealed immediately in the consciousness of human beings, that religion amounts just to this point, that the human being knows God immediately. This immediate knowing is called “religion,” but also “reason” and “faith,” too, though faith in a sense different from that of the church. “All conviction that God is, and regarding what God is, rests, so it is surmised, upon this immediate revealedness in the human being, upon this faith. This general representation is now an established preconception. It implies that the highest or religious content discloses itself to the human being in the spirit itself, that spirit manifests itself in spirit, in my own spirit, that faith has its root in the inner self or in what is most my own, that my inmost core is inseparable from it. This is the general principle, the way in which religious faith is defined in recent times as immediate intuition, as knowledge within me, that absolutely does not come from without. Its effect is utterly to remove all external authority, all alien confirmation. What is to be valid for me must have its confirmation in my own spirit. The impetus can certainly come from without, but the external original is unimportant. That I believe is due to the witness of my own spirit. . . .

29

Theology as such has been reduced to a minimum of dogma. Its content has become extremely sparse although much talking, scholarship and argumentation go on. This tendency is principally directed against the mode of amplification called dogmatics. We can compare this shift in attitude to what was done for the purpose of the Reformation. Then the amplification of the system of hierarchy was contested and the leading of Christianity back to the simplicity of the first Christian era was offered as the defining goal. Similarly, it is basically characteristic of the modern period that the doctrines of the Protestant church have been brought back to a minimum. But despite theology’s reduction of its knowledge to a minimum it still needs to know many things of different sorts, such as the ethical order and human relationships. Moreover, its subject matter is becoming more extensive; the learning displayed in its manifold historical eloquent is highly accomplished. Thus one is engaged not with one’s own cognition but with cognition of other people’s representations. We can compare this bustling about of theology with the work of the countinghouse clerk or cashier, because all the active bustle is concerned with the alien truths of others. . . . Religion is the manner or mode by which all human beings become conscious of truth for themselves. Here we must consider the modes of consciousness, especially feeling and representation, and then also thoughtful understanding. . . . . . . The different forms or determinations of religion, as moments of the concept, are on the one hand moments of religion in general, or of the consummate religion. They are states or determinations of content in the experience and the consciousness of the concept. On the other hand, however, they take shape by developing on their own account in time and historically. Insofar as it is determinate and has not yet traversed the circuit of its determinations, with the result that it is finite religion and exists as finite, religion is historical and is a particular shape of religion. . . . [In Absolute Religion], spirit, being in and for itself, no longer has singular forms or determinations of itself before it in its developed state, and knows itself no more as finite spirit, as spirit in some sort of determinateness or limitedness. Instead it has overcome those limitations and is explicitly what it is implicitly. Spirit’s knowing of itself as it is implicitly is the being–in–and–for–self of spirit, the consummate, absolute religion in which it is manifest what spirit is, what God is; and this religion is the Christian religion. . . .

2. Church Life in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Germany

During the eighteenth century, the Germanspeaking Lutherans of Europe resided within the Holy Roman Empire, which consisted of many states, large and small, loosely overseen by a Catholic emperor. Perpetuating a structure that had been established during the Reformation, the Empire had numerous independent territorial Lutheran churches, which were subject to the authority of various dukes, counts and princes. The Treaty of Westphalia, after the Thirty-Years War (1618–1648), re–enforced the principle that the secular ruler could determine the established religion of his territory. More than ninety of the German states were Protestant, and the largest and most important Lutheran territories were Saxony, Braunschweig–Lüneberg (Hanover), Württemberg, and Brandenburg-Prussia. The enforcement of religious uniformity could be advantageous to the churches, but also became problematic if the ruling family of a territory changed its religious affiliation. Forty-four states switched their confessional stance in the period between the Reformation and 1750.1 The situation was particularly complicated in Prussia whose rulers were Calvinist from 1613 onward although the citizens were overwhelmingly Lutheran. This would increasingly create problems for Prussian Lutherans even though they were not directly forced to change to their ruler’s faith. Napoleon’s conquest of Germany (1801–1806) ended the Holy Roman Empire. After the defeat of the French in 1814, several territories (Bavaria, Saxony, Württemberg and Hanover) reconstituted themselves as kingdoms but Prussia, which had become a monarchy a century earlier in 1701, carried

out a slow process of territorial consolidation, which culminated in the formation of a unified German nation, a Second Empire, in 1871. Imperial Germany continued to portray itself as a Christian nation, and in particular as a Protestant one, but by then the role of the church in society had changed considerably as a result of the intellectual and political developments that had taken place since the start of the Enlightenment. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Lutheranism commanded strong popular support in the German states where it was favored. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that liturgical life was intensifying in various locations after 1680 and most notably in Leipzig, a prosperous commercial city in Saxony, which also contained one of the fifteen Lutheran universities.2 Since historical records are abundant for this city, it can provide us with an especially interesting example of church life in this era. There were vast differences between rural congregations, which lacked resources and were staffed by less educated clergy, and the city congregations in places like Leipzig, which had splendid church buildings staffed by multiple pastors with extensive university training. For the most part, the clergy did not come from the wealthy or noble classes. The sons of pastors often followed in their father’s footsteps, so there were a number of highly respected ecclesiastical dynasties throughout Germany. The clergy were supervised by regional superintendents. A general superintendent oversaw each territorial church as a whole, and there was a consistory composed of clergy and lay leaders, which made decisions about

32

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

religious life—subject to the final approval of the ruler.

Fig. 2.1. Napoleon Bonaparte at the Bridge of Arcole (1796) by artist Antoine-Jean Gros (1771–1835)

In the first decade of the eighteenth century, Leipzig had to open new churches and renovate older ones in order to accommodate the many who came to worship services. The various class divisions within the cities, however, were replicated in church life. In Leipzig, Sunday morning services at the five city churches were attended by the more wealthy and respectable members of society. Servants, laborers and poorer burghers generally attended afternoon services, conducted in the same churches by younger clergy. This system was reinforced by the fact that those who attended the main churches needed to purchase the right to sit regularly in a particular pew. In most churches, the central area of the sanctuary was reserved for women. Men sat around the edges and in the back or in the church balconies. After 1700, wealthy families were also allowed to construct enclosed sections, like opera house boxes, which were curtained for their privacy and heated for their comfort. The primary Sunday service at the St. Thomas and St. Nicholas churches in Leipzig began around 7 a.m.

and generally lasted for three or four hours. Two clergymen officiated at the services as liturgist and lector in addition to the main pastor who preached. Sermons were generally an hour in length and sometimes people arrived late because the sermon was for them the central focus of the service. The Lord’s Supper was also celebrated every week in the two main churches and every two to four weeks at the others. Not all worshippers communed each week because it was expected that parishioners would meet individually with a pastor for private confession either prior to the service or at another set time during the week if they intended to participate. In addition, there were several kinds of services in all of the churches on weekdays (doc. #241). Some included communion but most were simpler prayer services. Each week, there were afternoon services focused on religious instruction. Certain pastors were specifically designated as catechists for school children but there were also services mainly for adults at which the catechism was simply read and accompanied by other prayers and hymns (doc. #241). Music was always an important part of the worship service. Congregational singing had been encouraged since the start of the Reformation, and the early hymns written by Luther and his associates had been supplemented, during the seventeenth century, by many new chorales. By the start of the eighteenth century, however, in major cities like Leipzig, trained choirs presented much of the music. Well–known chorales came to be incorporated into more elaborate sacred cantatas, which also included arias and recitatives. Cantata singers were accompanied by organ and/or groups of instrumental musicians. This musical form was introduced from Italy in the late seventeenth century and adapted for a German sacred setting by a number of famous Lutheran musicians including Dietrich Buxtehude (1637– 1707) in Denmark and Lübeck, Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706) in Erfurt and Nürnberg, Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767) in Hamburg and the pastor/ librettist Erdmann Neumeister (1671–1756) in Hamburg. Georg Friedrich Handel (1685–1759) could also be included in this list though he settled in London after 1714 when the German Elector of Hanover, whom he served, became king of England. For twenty–eight years (1723–1750), Leipzig could lay claim to the most important cantata composer of that era, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). As Cantor of Leipzig, Bach was responsible for all of the musical arrangements in the city’s churches but also served as a teacher at the Latin school of St. Thomas. His duties included the musical training of

CHURCH LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY

around fifty–five boys who were divided into several choirs to sing in four different churches. In addition, he continuously composed new church music and for several years produced sixty to seventy cantatas which were performed one week at the St. Thomas church and the next week at the St. Nicholas church. Usually the first part of this work was presented before the sermon and the second part afterwards. Bach worked with several librettists who supplied the words to be set to his music. He also wrote many of the organ preludes and motets that were part of every service. As director of music, Bach had to please several factions who often disagreed significantly about the place of music in liturgical life. Some members of the city council wanted modern, operatic church music while other councilors and pastors who were Pietists thought that cantors in those days were making music too central to the experience of worship and that too much money was being spent on organs or instrumental music (doc. #242). Bach’s personal religious convictions are difficult to categorize. His library contained many books by devotional writers whose view of the Christian life strongly influenced the Pietists. Some of the libretti he used, supplied by Christian Friedrich Henrici (a.k.a. Picander 1700–1764) share much with the spirit of Pietism in their expressions of anxiety over sinfulness and longing for personal fellowship with Jesus (doc. #243). On the other hand, another librettist he used in earlier years, Erdmann Neumeister (1671–1756) was strictly Orthodox and a critic of the more extreme forms of Pietism. When Bach served as organist in Mühlhausen, before coming to Leipzig, he was more comfortable with the Orthodox clergy than the Pietists because the latter were so unsympathetic to the kind of music he wanted to produce. Before the end of Bach’s career in Leipzig, the rising influence of rationalism also brought with it a new expression of discontent with the elaborate church music he favored. Rationalistic pastors and professors tended to have a very utilitarian and moralistic outlook on church practices and thought that much of the music used in the churches was an unnecessary embellishment. Bach had an extended conflict in 1736 with the rationalistic headmaster of the St. Thomas school, Johann August Ernesti (later professor of theology at the university) because he showed little interest in the musical qualifications of the prefects who were appointed to help Bach manage the students. Bach’s devotional approach to Scripture also clashed with Ernesti’s more scholarly interest in biblical texts as historical documents.

33

When poets influenced by the new thought of the Enlightenment composed hymns for the church the subject matter also tended to be quite different from the sentiments expressed in Bach’s cantatas. For example, Christian Gellert, (1715–1769) who was educated in Leipzig and became a professor of philosophy at the university in 1751, a year after Bach’s death, wrote hymns which celebrated God as creator and praised humanity’s “high reasoning soul” as “creation’s noblest part.” Another prominent poet of the eighteenth century, Matthias Claudius (1740–1815), a Lutheran pastor’s son who studied theology briefly in Jena, is best known for hymns such as “Evening Song” and “We plow the fields and scatter,” which mainly express gratitude to God for the beauty and abundance of Nature (doc. #244). Claudius, a friend of Hamann and Herder, became more distinctively Christian in his later years but manifested the influence of both the Enlightenment and incipient Romanticism in his view that that the spirit of religion could not be constrained by either “the shells of dogma” or the “exuberant leaps of reason.”3 When rationalistic pastors became more firmly in control of Leipzig’s religious life in the latter half of the eighteenth century, a number of changes were made to the liturgy, and the focus of sermons also shifted. This was particular true when Johann Georg Rosenmüller was superintendent of the clergy and president of the consistory in Leipzig (1785–1815). Long-used Latin motets were now excluded from the worship service and, in 1797, a new hymnbook was introduced, which replaced many older hymns with newer ones. Rosenmüller considered it a “veritable torture” to spend hours listening to individual confessions and called for the substitution of a general public confession immediately before communion. This was first introduced in Leipzig in 1787 and became the general practice in 1799 (doc. #245). He stopped wearing traditional vestments such as the chausable and considerably shortened some parts of the liturgy. By the 1780s it was not uncommon for the recitation of the creed to be replaced in some worship services by another musical presentation. Rosenmüller sought to be freed from the constraints of a prescribed lectionary and so, after 1810, whoever was preaching in Leipzig was allowed to pick his own sermon text.4 Over the course of a century, the topics of sermons shifted in many locations. Rosenmüller, who was widely praised for his eloquence, preached a series on the progress that had been achieved in the eighteenth century in diminishing superstition. Johann Joachim Spalding (1715–1804), one of

34

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Berlin’s most notable preachers, offered practical sermons on the need to respect the rule of law and on the importance of listening to the incorruptible voice of conscience. Johann Gottlieb Töllner (1724–1777), one of the most influential Lutheran Neologian, encouraged pastors to preach about the revelation of God in nature.5 Court preacher Günther Gottlieb Ernesti (1759–1797) chose themes such as the characteristic signs of a rational faith, the barriers to self–knowledge, the moral example of Jesus and the true nature of Christian virtue. In his sermon on the high worth of reason, Ernesti celebrated free will as one of God’s great gifts and stressed how much individuals could achieve if they made conscientious use of their innate powers (doc. #246). Sermons on human sinfulness and the significance of the death of Christ as a way to salvation became less common. During the Rosenmüller era in Leipzig the number of worship services decreased, and it became more common to offer the Lord’s Supper in a separate service instead of as a regular part of ordinary Sunday morning worship. These changes did not result only from the instigations of enlightened clergy. They appear to reflect the fact that there was diminished interest among the people in worship and the sacraments. Evidence of this gradual erosion of church participation can be seen in a tract Rosenmüller wrote in response to a young “enlightened” man who questioned the value of public worship altogether (doc. #247). The pastor conceded that a thoughtful individual might find sufficient spiritual nourishment in a private period of reflection and reading, but that especially for the “the great mass of the common people,” public worship was necessary and worthwhile so that their ignorance might be overcome and they might be educated to follow the example of the higher classes. Furthermore, philosophical writings and poetry might be edifying for those who could understand them, but Rosenmüller thought that the common people needed to be protected by the clergy from the more radical writings of the cultured classes. Pastors influenced by the Enlightenment also attempted to offer practical advice to the common people through devotional literature, a genre most popular in the past among the Pietists. One widely circulated new work of edification was Hours of Devotion first published in 1809 by Heinrich Zschokke (1771–1848) a Prussian–born educator and author who spent most of his life in Switzerland. The influence of this book is evident from the fact that it went through twenty–seven editions during his lifetime. Zschokke called Jesus “a higher, more God-

like person than any other mortal” and “our glorious pattern.” In a chapter on faith and works, he criticized those who made religion consist merely in a decent and reputable life and who dismissed anything connected with matters of faith as useless speculation. However, the virtue of faith for him consisted mainly in the consoling conviction that a wise providence governs the world and that there will be a recompense beyond the grave for all those who imitate Jesus and his stress on love, the parent of all virtues. After praising faith as a strong support for morality, Zschokke added that those who expected through faith alone to become just before God, were overlooking Jesus’ comment that those who truly belong to him will be known by their fruits more than a mere profession of faith. (Matthew 7:16). He said, “Virtue without faith is sowing without reaping; but faith without virtue is a barren, fruitless tree” (doc. #248). The advance of such rationalistic influences within the churches depended greatly on whether or not the rulers of the German states gave their support to changes in thought or practice. Many of them took great interest in church affairs but the parties within the churches that influenced them would sometimes shift generationally. Christian Thomasius (1655– 1728), the most influential political theorist in Germany at the start of the Enlightenment supported the right of princes to take a stand on religious issues in their realms but only if this was necessary to maintain peace and order in civil society. Otherwise, he argued, rulers should tolerate a range of religious beliefs even if they personally considered them to be erroneous. Thomasius defended his Pietist colleagues at the University of Halle when they faced criticism from the Orthodox Lutherans, even though his overall outlook was more liberal than theirs. He viewed atheists as a potential threat to the social order but would condone no action stronger than banishment if they ever became a cause of social disturbances (doc. #249). Such banishments did take place near the start of the Enlightenment and most notably in a controversial case involving Thomasius’ university. Friedrich Wilhelm I, the Prussian King, was himself a Calvinist by upbringing, but developed an appreciation for the Lutheran Pietists of his realm because he thought that the ascetic self–disciplined lifestyle they encouraged fit well with his desire to create a modern, orderly, bureaucratized state. The so–called “Soldier–King,” who reigned from 1713 to 1740, also cultivated the Pietists as allies because their encouragement of self–sacrifice helped promote acceptance throughout

CHURCH LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY

society of his quest for unconditional allegiance to the state. When the Pietist professors at the University of Halle called for the dismissal of their colleague, Christian Wolff, whose rationalistic philosophy seemed to them to border on atheism, the king supported them and had Wolff banned from Prussia in 1723 (see chapter 1). On the other hand, Friedrich Wilhelm I favored greater religious toleration regarding the matter of relations between the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Prussia. In his mind, the differences between the two theological traditions amounted to little more that “a preacher’s squabble” (doc. #250). The Orthodox party within the Lutheran church strongly disagreed with this claim, but both the Pietists and the Enlightened thinkers, in varying degrees, were more concerned with how people lived and acted than with the finer points of doctrine that they confessed. When Friedrich II inherited the Prussian throne (ruling 1740–1786), the Pietists fell out of favor. Deeply alienated from his authoritarian father and strongly influenced by the new thought circulating in his era, Friedrich the Great called Christian Wolff back to Prussia to teach once again at the University of Halle. For many decades, the king corresponded with some of the leading figures of the French Enlightenment, and most notably with Voltaire, who lived several years in Berlin as his guest. In his letters to Voltaire, Friedrich the Great often expressed outright hostility towards Christianity, portraying the clergy as despotic oppressors who professed “revolting dogma.” He rejected the divinity of Christ and called the idea of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper an atrocious “absurdity” (doc. #251). In his memoirs the king mocked Luther as a superstitious fanatic and belittled the “mystical strictness” of the later Pietists. In his mind, Leibniz and Thomasius had contributed a greater service to humanity than any of the religious leaders. He also praised his own family for calming religious strife and allowing various religious groups to live within their territories without persecution (doc. #252). The critical philosopher Immanuel Kant agreed with this view of the Prussian royal family and explicitly lauded Friedrich the Great for his support of the Enlightenment (chapter 1, doc. #232).

35

Fig. 2.2. Portrait of King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia (1713) by artist Samuel Theodor Gericke (1665–1729)

When Friedrich Wilhelm II succeeded his uncle on the Prussian throne in 1786, the orientation of the state toward the churches reversed once again. Although the new king’s personal life was notoriously dissolute, he was strongly influenced by a close advisor, Johann Christoph von Wöllner (1732–1800), a pastor turned statesman who had previously served as his religious tutor. Wöllner’s theological training at Halle had made him initially favorable towards rationalism but he became progressively mystically–minded and ultimately concluded that the new forms of theology and biblical studies were “entirely contrary to the spirit of Christianity.” He persuaded the king to issue an edict in 1788, which perpetuated toleration of several forms of Christianity in Prussia but required Lutheran and Reformed clergy and professors to repudiate the “delusions of new–fangled teachers” and conform to the doctrines

36

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

contained in their official church confessions (doc. #253). Among those affected by the new wave of censorship was Immanuel Kant, who was not allowed to publish Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (doc. #233) in Berlin and who had to pledge to the king that he would no longer write about religion. Johann Semler, who had walked a fine line between support for Christianity and rationalism, was a strong defender of the Edict (doc. #227). The Edict may have been motivated in part by theological or moral concerns but it also represented an attempt by the Prussian state to enforce more social control. The king may have seen Wöllner’s proposed restrictions as a way to maintain a balance between the different confessional groups in Prussia, thereby promoting social stability.6 The next king, Friedrich Wilhelm III (ruling 1797–1840), instigated an even more inflammatory state intervention into the administrative affairs of the church. By an edict issued in 1817 he officially united the Lutheran and Reformed churches of his realm into one coordinated ecclesiastical organization (doc. #255). This action complemented other attempts to promote Germany unity after the defeat of Napoleon and was seen by the Prussian authorities as a fitting way to mark the three hundredth anniversary of the Reformation. A movement in this direction had long been contemplated and had been advocated by Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), the leading liberal theologian of Prussia at the start of the nineteenth century, as a remedy for the widely–noticed decline in public involvement in worship and spiritual practices (doc. #254). The creation of the United Evangelical Church did not completely merge the Lutheran and Reformed churches. Each congregation was allowed to adhere to its confessional particularities as long as it accepted the governance structure required by the king. However, many conservative Lutherans viewed this as an oppressive endorsement of doctrinal indifference. The formation of the Prussian Union Church and similar Lutheran–Reformed unifications in Nassau (1817), Bavaria (1818), Baden (1821), Saxe-Weimar (1827), and Württemberg (1827), prompted a reawakening of confessional consciousness in many of the Lutheran territorial churches.7 This Neo–Lutheran movement developed various manifestations, reflecting the fact that there were a variety of theological orientations among its supporters, but it continued to be a significant force within the churches throughout the nineteenth century. Pietists and Orthodox Lutherans who had earlier been at odds also came closer together to work against the

influence of rationalism, and by 1850 they had significantly diminished its influence among pastors and in church government. (See chapter 4) The conflict in Prussia worsened when King Friedrich Wilhelm III called for a revision of the liturgy to be used by the churches in the new union. He expressed alarm at the emergence of “separatist disorders” and presented the implementation of a common liturgy as a well–intended effort to remove arbitrariness and confusion in worship (doc. #256). When the king prohibited home worship gatherings by the dissenters and imposed fines for any other religious ceremonies conducted without the approval of the authorities of the Prussian Union Church, some strictly orthodox Lutherans saw no alternative but to emigrate to North America or Australia (doc. #257).8 The next king, Friedrich Wilhelm IV (ruling 1840–1861) made a few concessions to the “Old Lutherans”: allowing some of them to depart and permitting the formation of a small separate “Evangelical Lutheran Church of Prussia” in 1845. However, he also tightened up the organization of the Prussian Union Church by creating a multi-layered synodical structure to provide oversight of all the church provinces (doc. #258).

Fig. 2.3. Photograph of Otto von Bismarck (1863)

CHURCH LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY

After the unification of Germany in 1871 and the coronation of the Prussian king, Wilhelm I, as the Kaiser of a new Second Empire, the main point of religious tension shifted to Protestant–Catholic relations. Overall, 62% of the population of the German Empire was Protestant, and 36.5% was Catholic. Catholics were the dominant religious group in several southern and western regions, and a Center Party had been formed to defend Catholic interests in the new state. Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) the skilled political strategist who served as Chancellor of the Empire from its founding until 1890 continued to be concerned about the potential threats posed by France and Austria, Catholic nations who fought wars with Germany just prior to its unification. He also began to harbor doubts about the loyalty of the Catholic population within Germany. Bismarck had become more devoutly religious through the influence of his Lutheran Pietist wife and viewed the rise of the German Empire as an act of Divine Providence. Closely associated with a religiously conservative group of aristocratic politicians who feared the spread of atheistic Marxism and fought hard to suppress the campaigns for more popular sovereignty that had periodically erupted into periods of social unrest in nineteenth century Europe, Bismarck strongly identified the true spirit of Germany with Protestantism. The Declaration of Papal Infallibility at the First Vatican Council in 1870 contributed to a broader anti–Catholic feeling among German Protestants and prompted Bismarck to initiate the “cultural struggle” (Kulturkampf) against Catholicism (doc. #259). Beginning in 1871, he ordered closer supervision by the state of Catholic schools, suppressed the Jesuit Order and required all Catholic priests to pass a state cultural exam. Bismarck punished bishops and priests who refused to comply with these regulations and removed Catholics from the higher ranks of civil service. Later, when Bismarck needed the support of the Center Party in the fight against Marxism he began to relax some of the antiCatholic laws. However, there continued to be pressure groups within the Protestant churches such as the Evangelical League for the Protection of German-Protestant Interests, that sustained an “energetic defense” against Catholicism and attempted to bring the fragmented territorial churches together into a closer evangelical alliance to fight back against “the unity of Rome” and the spread of “the materialism and indifferentism of this age” (doc. #260). By the start of the First World War, the League had over half a million members. The movement towards German unification also

37

coincided with the industrialization of German society. Rapid urbanization disrupted the connection of families to traditional community structures and contributed to the process of secularization. Many families no longer felt that the church contributed anything to their lives and church participation dropped significantly, especially in the north. By 1883 only 44% of the Protestants in Saxony participated in the Lord’s Supper. In Berlin, where only 15% were active communicants, 80% of marriages were legalized in registry offices instead of the church and 45% of children were unbaptized.9 Church–related organizations like the Inner Mission movement had already been formed in 1848, a year of revolution in Europe, to address the hardships created by economic and social change, but many in the urban working-class viewed the church as an ally of the industrialists, the bankers and the monarchy.10 (See chapter 4) As the appeal of Marxism grew, Chancellor Bismarck instituted anti–socialist laws that outlawed trade unions and banned left–wing organizations seeking “the overthrow of the existing political or social order.” Some church leaders, however, hoped for more constructive responses and became politically active in order to create an alternative to secular socialism. Chief among them was Adolf Stoecker (1839–1905) the court preacher in Berlin who founded the Christian Social Workers’ Party (Christlichsoziale Arbeiterpartei) in 1878 as a rival to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which had been formed in 1869 (doc. #261). Stoecker called Social Democracy “unpractical, unchristian and unpatriotic” but called upon the state to implement legislation that would diminish the gap between the rich and poor. Bismarck, always capable of pragmatism, changed course in the 1880s and gave support to Stoecker’s call for a form of state socialism to counter the influence of Marxism. Germany became the first modern European welfare state, offering a number of protective social programs including old age pensions, unemployment insurance and medical care. The Kaiser, however, thought that the clergy should only concerned themselves with spiritual ministry. The Superior Church Council (Oberkirchenrat) that governed religious affairs agreed, claiming that Jesus and the disciples had not attempted to redesign social systems (doc. #262). In 1890, the same year that Bismarck lost power, Stoecker was dismissed from his position as court preacher and forced to refrain from involvement in political activity. He went on to form the Evangelical Social Congress (Evangelisch-Soziale Kongress), which held annual conferences in a further

38

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

attempt to “bring the educated and the workmen together” to examine social problems from the perspective of the Gospel. In this effort he was aided by one of the foremost liberal Lutheran professors of that day, Adolf Harnack, who later served as the organization’s president (1902–1912). Other liberals who offered support were Ernst Troeltsch and the prominent sociologist, Max Weber (see chapter 6). There was, however, another more controversial side to Stoecker’s campaign for social reform. In 1879, the same year that he formed the Christian Social Workers’ Party, he lashed out at “the despicable power” of Jewish capitalists. He advised Christian Germans to protect themselves against the Jews, whom he called an alien race within Germany that had abandoned God to serve mammon (doc. #263). For this and other reasons, the liberal theologians who had supported his Evangelical Social Congress asked him to relinquish any leadership role in the movement in 1896. This was one of the first expressions of an anti-Semitic strain within the German churches that would later resurface, to disastrous effect, in the twentieth century. Among those who broke with Stoecker was Friedrich Naumann (1860–1919), a Lutheran pastor from Frankfurt who began a new campaign to promote economic equality and better working conditions for laborers. He too opposed Social Democracy—because it weakened individual freedom—but presented a more liberal social philosophy than Stoecker who was dependent on the aristocracy for support and thus quite uncritical of the established structures of government. Naumann felt that it would be more effective to build the Kingdom of God on earth through reform of the whole social order than through the evangelistic and charitable work among the poor done by the Inner Mission. In 1896, he helped form a short-lived political party called the National Social Union (Nationalsozialer Verein), which advocated “a national socialism on a Christian basis” (doc. #264). He served as a representative in the Reichstag from 1907 to 1918 and, after World War I, founded the liberal German Democratic Party, which played an important role in the formation of the Weimar Republic. For Naumann, like many of the other liberal theologians of his era, social liberalism was not seen as incompatible with support for the monarchy and a strong nationalistic spirit. He authored one of the

most widely read political manifestos of his era, a book entitled Middle Europe, which supported the political integration of all of Central Europe including Scandinavia and Eastern Europe into an economic and political block led by Germany. Like Naumann, most of the Protestant clergy in Germany, theologically conservative or liberal, supported the war aims of the Kaiser in the First World War. (This topic will be further covered in chapter 7.) LUTHERAN WORSHIP IN THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 241. THE ORDER OF THE DIVINE SERVICE IN LEIPZIG (NOVEMBER 1723) Bach summarized the order of worship as follows in marginal notes on the score for Cantata 61. From Hans David Arthur Mendel, Christoph Wolff, eds. The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998), 113.

Fig. 2.4. Nineteenth century engraving of portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach by August Weger (1823–92) of Leizig

CHURCH LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY

39

Fig. 2.5. Etching of the St. Thomas Church (Thomaskirche) in Leipzig (ca. 1700)

The First Sunday in Advent: Morning Service Prelude Motet (in Latin) Prelude on the Kyrie—performed in a concerted manner Collect intoned before the altar Reading of the Epistle Singing of the Litany Prelude on (and singing of) the Chorale Reading of the Gospel Performance of the principle music: cantata Singing of the Creed The Sermon including prayers of absolution and intercession

After the Sermon, singing of several verses of a hymn Words of Institution of the Sacrament Performance of music (probably the second half of the cantata) Singing of chorales until the end of Communion Weekly Church Services in Leipzig From Martin Petzoldt. “Liturgy and Music in Leipzig’s Main Churches,” in Die Welt der Bach Kantaten Kantaten, ed. Christoph Wolff, vol. 3: Johann Sebastian Bachs Leipziger Kirchenkantaten (Stuttgart/Weimar/Kassel: Metzler/Bärenreiter, 1999).

40

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM 6:00 AM

7:00

11:30

1:30 PM

Main Service

Noon Sermon

Vespers

All Churches

Alternate Weeks All Churches

Early Service

Weddings

Weddings

Minor

Catechism

Nikolas Church

Nikolas Church

Nikolas Church

Prayer Hour

St. Peter’s

Sunday

Monday

2:00

Thomas Church Tuesday

Early Service

Confessions

Confessions

2:00 Catechism

Major

Thomas Church

Nikolas Church

Nikolas Church

Thomas Church Prayer Hour Nikolas Church

Wednesday Communion

Thursday

Confessions

Confessions

Catechism

Nikolas Church

Thomas Church Thomas Church

Communion

Weddings

Thomas Church

Thomas Church Thomas Church St. Peter’s

Weddings

Nikolai Church 2:00 Catechism

Minor Prayer Hour Nikolas Church

Friday

Penitential Service

2:00 Major

5:00 Bible Instruction

Nikolas Church

Prayer Hour

St. George

Thomas Church Saturday

242. CHRISTIAN GERBER: A HISTORY OF CHURCH CEREMONIES IN SAXONY (1732) Christian Gerber (1660–1731) was a Pietist pastor who was educated in Leipzig but spent most of his life elsewhere in Saxony at the church in Lockwitz near Dresden. His history of liturgical life in Saxony, from which this excerpt is taken, provides a rich but opinionated source of information about church practices. From Günther Stiller. Johann Sebastian Bach and Liturg Liturgical ical Lif Lifee in Leipzig Leipzig. trans. by Herbert Bouman, Daniel Poellot, Hilton Oswald. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1984. Appendix 8 & 9, 263–64. Holy Communion in early 18th century Saxony Before we approach the Holy Supper, we first make our confession in the confessional, and after receiving the absolution we proceed to the Holy

Vespers Sermon Both Churches

Table of our most bountiful Savior. This more sacred Supper. . . . we celebrate according to the order and institution of our Lord with the greatest devotion and reverence, and during it the servants of God exercise the greatest care so that in the distribution of it neither any of the consecrated bread nor any of the wine is dropped or falls to earth. . . . At Holy Communion, when the Consecration takes place, all communicants kneel before the altar, and when they have received the Sacrament, each again kneels at the altar and offers a prayer of thanksgiving for the precious meal of mercy he has tasted. This is all very commendable and a credit to our worship service. . . . Concerns about Musical Innovations People are not satisfied with one organ. In many a church there have to be two of them, so that a person is inclined to say: “What is the use of this rubbish?” I am fully aware that he will receive little thanks who makes a remark about unnecessarily large and

CHURCH LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY

expensive organs and likewise about church music, for people are so used to these things that they think worship cannot exist without them or that it at least suffers great damage when organs and instrumental music are omitted. Indeed, many people think of these things as no less than an essential or indispensable ingredient of the service, but they are not that at all, for worship consists of praying, singing, praising, and hearing or considering the Word of God, and for that organs and other instruments are not necessary. ..... And when a great deal of money is spent for the works of a large organ and the organists produce so loud and raucous a sound on them in the church that one is in danger of becoming deaf and the singing can be understood little or not at all because of the sound of the pipes, that certainly is an abuse that ought to cease. Many organists make it a habit to let their artistry be heard by playing long preludes, but this is not only an annoyance to hear, but it also is a waste of time, and the service is prolonged. And many an organist and schoolmaster is so headstrong and obstinate that he insists on his own way and will let no one tell him anything. . . . But even if music kept in modest bounds may achieve a lasting place in the church, especially since blessed Dr. Dannhauer considers it a decorative element of the service,11 though it is not endorsed by all theologians, it is certainly well known that it is practiced with excess, that a person may feel inclined to say with Moses, “You have gone too far, sons of Levi,” (Numbers 16:7) for it often sounds so very worldly and theatrical, like music that would be more suitable for the dance floor or the opera. . . . 243. JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: SAINT MATTHEW PASSION BWV 244 (1727) The St. Matthew Passion is the second sacred oratorio for Good Friday that Bach composed. It was first performed in Leipzig in 1727 or 1729. Christian Friedrich Henrici (pen name: Picander), a poet and civil servant, was one of five or six librettists who worked with Bach. Text by Picander based on Matthew 26–27. From Henry Drinker, ed. Texts of the Chor Choral al Works of Johann Sebastian Bach in English Translation anslation. Vol. 3 (Privately distributed by The Association of American Colleges – Arts Program. New York: 1943), 379–414.

41

(18) Recitative (Soprano) Alas, my heart is bathed in tears that Jesus’ dread departure nears, yet doth his Testament my soul uplift, His flesh and blood, o precious gift, bequeathed to me to keep and cherish, As he was true on earth to those who loved him to them was faithless never, so loves he all his own forever. (19) Aria (Soprano) Lord, my heart I gladly grant thee, My heart will I gladly, yea gladly grant thee. Enter there I ask of thee. Deep in it would I implant thee within it. Though this earth to thee be small and though to thee earth be small thou shalt be my all in all, more than earth and heaven to me. (28) Recitative (Bass) The savior falling down before his father, thereby has raised up me and all, from our curse and fall, uplifted us and gained us mercy. He is prepared to drink the bitter, bitter cup, death’s chalice with all the sins of mortals filled and brimming o’er with hate and malice, for thus it was that God hath willed. (29) Aria (Bass) Gladly will I, fear disdaining, I will gladly drink the cup without complaining, drink it as my savior did. By his lips, with milk and with honey flowing, all its shame and bitterness has been rid, sweetness on its dregs bestowing. (69) Recitative (Alto) Ach Golgotha, accursed Golgotha! The Lord of glory they in shame are crucifying. The blessed redeemer of mankind, is spat on, tortured and maligned. Of earth and sky, from him derived; the sinless now for sin is dying; and so no cheer my soul may find. Ach Golgotha, accursed Golgotha! (74) Recitative (Bass) At even, sweet, cool hour of rest, was Adam’s fall made manifest. At even ends the savior’s cross and pain;

42

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

at even came the dove again, with leaf of olive in her bill. O lovely hour so cool and still; Our peace with God is evermore assured, for Jesus hath his cross endured. His body rests in peace. Ach, thank him ever, never cease, Soul, think thou of thy savior, lying yonder, O holy thought, O precious though to ponder!

9 Man, on whose frame thy fearful hand Such skill could so bestow; Man, whose high reasoning soul can stand, And ask his God to know;

(75) Aria (Bass) Let my heart be pure as thine. There a precious grave I make thee, dwell thou there, whom I adore, evermore, there is sweetest rest betake thee. World away, world away, come Jesus mine, world away, come Jesus mine.

11 Oh, praise him still, thou soul of mine; And praise him yet again; O God our Father, praise be thine! Let all things say “Amen!”

244. ENLIGHTENMENT ERA HYMNS Christian Fürchtegott Gellert: Hymn to the Creator (1757) Gellert was seen as the pioneer of a new school of hymn-writers whose poems had a strong didactic element. They were appreciated by both conservatives and liberals, Protestants and Catholics. Trans. by George Bishop. Poems oems. (Hartford: Brown & Gross, 1868), 147–148. Die Ehre Gottes aus der Natur 1 O my Creator, when thy might, The wisdom of thy ways, Thy love which sheds on all its light, My wondering heart surveys. 2 I know not, while amazed I bow, The song I ought to raise: My God, my Lord, my Father, thou Must teach me how to praise. 3 Where’er my raptured eyes are turned, Thy wonders I descry; The heavens, with radiant gems adorned, Lift up their praise on high. 6 O God of might and majesty! O God, thy boundless love, Far as the clouds stretch o’er the sky, Its mantle spreads above.

10 Man, made a king on earth to move, Creation’s noblest part, In his own mold can daily prove How good and great thou art.

Matthias Claudius Hymn: We Plow the Fields and Scatter (1782) Claudius’s poems were not specifically written for church use but came to be used as hymns. From C. S Bere. Garland of Songs Songs. (London: Boosey & Co., 1861), trans. by Jane M. Campbell. Wir pflügen und wir streuen 1 We plow the fields and scatter the good seed on the land, but it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand, who sends the snow in winter, the warmth to swell the grain, the breezes and the sunshine, and soft refreshing rain. 2 You only are the maker of all things near and far. You paint the wayside flower, you light the evening star. The wind and waves obey you, by you the birds are fed; much more to us, your children, you give our daily bread. 3 We thank you, our creator, for all things bright and good, the seed–time and the harvest, our life, our health, our food. No gifts have we to offer for all your love imparts, but what you most would treasure – our humble, thankful hearts.

CHURCH LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY

THE IMPACT OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT ON PIETY AND CHURCH PARTICIPATION 245. JOHANN GEORG ROSENMÜLLER: AN ARGUMENT FOR GENERAL CONFESSION (1788) From Günther Stiller. Johann Sebastian Bach and Liturg Liturgical ical Lif Lifee in Leipzig Leipzig.. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1984). 265. Trans. Herbert Bouman, Daniel Poellot and Hilton Oswald Private Confession in the strictest sense, in which each penitent must recite his confession and the preacher must speak the absolution of each individually, brings with it great inconvenience and basically has no advantage. . . . For the preacher it is veritable torture when he must spend most of the hours of the day on which he should study his Sunday sermon in hearing confession and pronouncing the absolution and thus must keep on speaking until he is practically ready to faint. Let us say he has a hundred or even more penitents. Either he must repeat the same thing over and over 30 or 50 times or, if he wants to say something different to each one, he will in the end really say nothing at all, unless he is a genius. . . . General confession has a great advantage over the private confession. . . . The preacher can more carefully prepare himself for an edifying and moving address. Each penitent has the advantage of hearing a complete and edifying message, whereas in the few minutes that can be allotted to the private confession practically nothing is said. . . . Many people who heretofore were either kept from the Holy Communion entirely by the irksome procedures of private confession or at least turned up only very seldom would attend more diligently if general Confession were allowed to them. 246. GÜNTHER GOTTLIEB ERNESTI: SERMON ON THE HIGH WORTH OF REASON (1798) G. G. Ernesti (1759–1797) was educated at Jena and served for many years as Lutheran court preacher for the Duke of Saxe–Hildburghausen in Thuringia, near Erfurt and Weimar. He was not related to the Ernesti who came into conflict with Bach in Leipzig. From Pr Predigten edigten über die gewöhnlichen Sonn-und Festtags-Ev esttags-Evang angelien elien des ganzen Jahrs Jahrs. (Hildburghausen: Hanisch, 1798). trans. by Eric Lund.

43

Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity on Matthew 6:24-34 God, the more we ourselves come to know our own nature, the more we feel ourselves moved to praise your wisdom and to offer thanks for your goodness. You have created us in your image and sought to restore it again through Jesus, your son. You gave us a rational spirit so that we might understand and worship you, and a heart that can love and honor you. Let us earnestly and steadily ponder this great benefit which you have granted us above all other living creatures on earth, and thereby be encouraged to maintain our high worth above all non–rational creatures by a purposeful use of it. And, especially through the lively feeling of worth which you have created in all of us may we strengthen and fortify childlike trust in you. . . . . . . Our text today contained an expressive proof of how Jesus through an observation of this type seeks to make his instruction useful for the understanding and the heart of man. Christ warns his hearers in the text against an immoderate and anxious concern for bodily nourishment and for that reason directs their attention to the beneficial measures that God has undertaken to preserve the animals. See, he says, the birds of the air do not sow or reap or gather into any storehouse and yet their heavenly father nourishes them. Are you not of more value than they? Here Christ grounds his encouragement not to care anxiously for earthly sustenance on the superiority of humans over the animals. And in what does this superiority consist? Merely and only in the powers of the rational soul. Jesus could not have meant anything other than this here. It is reason that raises man above all his fellow creatures on earth towards similarity with the creator. The true meaning in this speech of Jesus lies in nothing other than this: the birds do not sow or harvest or gather because thought and inventiveness to do so is lacking in them. Only humans have the capacity to think, to compare and to judge. They are consequently far superior to others. You should recognize and feel this, your high superiority, and have stronger confidence in that which distinguishes you so evidently. The argument Christ uses here to warn humans against anxious concern points to the great abilities of the rational soul, which God has bestowed on humans. In this way, Jesus opens up for us a wide field of important considerations concerning the high superiority of reason. People do not always think and judge entirely rightly about this matter. Often they depreciate these

44

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

divine gifts too deeply and desire, for example, that man not use them at all in matters of religion. They are satisfied with a blind faith. Often one also forgets that reason, through the instructions of Jesus and through his religion, has gained a light that was formerly unknown. The words of this text: Do not be like them—are in and of themselves, and especially in the context in which they occur, highly instructive for us. Jesus teaches here, entirely openly, that the reason of man gives him a very high worth and that in the knowledge of the most important truths of religion it is entirely essential. To convince you that this is the real teaching of Jesus and that it leads to some important results should be the subject of our talk today. ..... Learn to feel in a more lively way your true worth and the superiority which you have as a man and you will never be able to doubt that, by a conscientious use of your powers, you will be able to rely on the benefits provided by our heavenly father. And how enlightening the evidence must be that Jesus presents here if we use this experience as an aid and consider how much man is capable of if he applies his own thoughts to all his affairs and undertakings. What unbelievable things could be achieved. Nature is surely an inexhaustible resource for our preservation, and God has everywhere provided for the comfort and pleasure of the rational inhabitants of the earth. But was it not the diligence of man, bound with thought, that made him the lord of the earth, so to speak? Was it not reason that put humans in the position to procure their sustenance in the most desolate regions and turn wastelands into fertile plains? . . . It was God’s will that humans should open up more and more new sources of blessing for themselves through the use of their reason. . . . (863) Humans never find any limits in the progress of their thinking reason, always seeking new opportunities to excite their reflections and multiply their knowledge so that they can improve their condition. . . . Does not Paul himself expressly say in Romans 1:19–20 that humans are led through the use of their reason to know the existence of God? . . . Who will not conclude from these remarks, from the clear statement of the Holy Scriptures, that reason is also entirely indispensable for the knowledge of important religious truths. What truth can be more important that this one—that there is a God! . . . Jesus and his Apostles also expressly teach that reason and religion stand in the most intimate alliance with each other . . . (867). Nothing dishonors a Christian more than a blind faith. That opens the gates, as the tragic history of all ages proves, for the most impudent dis-

belief and the coarsest superstition and was one of the most tragic reasons that Christendom before the Reformation was so disfigured that one could barely recognize it. No! Test often the grounds on which your faith rests. Think often about God, free will and your obligations. Use every opportunity that your thoughts provide to firm up your convictions and enrich your knowledge. This way your virtue will become ever purer, your obedience to God and Jesus ever more constant, and your trust in God our Father ever more powerful and unswerving. . . . 247. JOHANN GEORG ROSENMÜLLER: WHETHER THE RESTORATION OF A DETERIORATED PUBLIC WORSHIP SERVICE AMONG THE PROTESTANTS IS NECESSARY AND WORTHWHILE (1809) From Ob die Widerherstellung des verf verfallenen allenen öff öffentlichen entlichen Gottesdienstes unter den Pr Protestanten otestanten nothwendig und wünschenswerth sey? (Leipzig: Adam Friedrich Böhme, 1809). trans. by Eric Lund.

Fig. 2.6. Portrait of Johann Georg Rosenmüller (1810)

Friends and admirers of Christianity have, until now, always believed that the restoration of the public worship service, when it has deteriorated, is necessary, and they have wished for the same. (But) in an essay [by an anonymous writer, which appeared in the General Gazette of the Germans, 1809, number 5] it is declared to be unnecessary and undesirable, and this appears to me to be alarming. Here I will

CHURCH LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY

analyze the foremost points of the essay and offer my thoughts on them. . . . The author still values an inner reverence for the highest Essence and considers it necessary. But he has an entirely other judgment about outward worship. So he continues, “If the question is whether outward and public worship (cultus) is absolutely necessary for religiosity and especially whether the restoration of public worship, which has declined among the Protestants, is necessary and desirable, I must state that I am not convinced by the affirmative arguments I have read.” . . . If the great mass of the people accede to this opinion, the few who until now are still found in our assemblies for worship will gradually exclude themselves. On Sundays and holidays we will preach to empty pews and in the end no more preachers will be needed. Thus, we maintain that the restoration of the outward, public worship service is absolutely necessary for religiosity in general. We know well that public worship of God is not religiosity or piety in itself. That has been said often enough in our times and even in public preaching. We also believe that individual persons in special cases and circumstances can make up for the lack of public practice of devotion through their own reflection and reading. But we cannot conclude the same for the entirely of the church community from the case of these few individuals. On the whole, public worship is taken to be and remains one of the foremost means of nurturing inner reverence for God. If it deteriorates so also does inner religiosity, and Christianity itself goes more and more into decline. One need only look at history in order to be convinced of this truth. . . . The writer, however, counters us, saying that what was once necessary is no longer the case because the times have changed incredibly. There are now far more educated people in all classes than in any previous time. He will allow us to agree with the customary view that restoration of worship is necessary and worthwhile, but he admits that what he has read so far about this has not convinced him. . . . Nevertheless, we will hear the author out. He writes: “I do not doubt that outward public worship still has its worth, especially for the great mass of the people. I only doubt that this worship is essential and especially that it has the same worth that it formerly had. . . .” By ‘the great mass of the people’ the author understands the middle and lower classes consisting of the common citizens, the craftsmen, the country people, the day laborers, and servants. If public worship only had worth for these (and I believe that it has an exceedingly great worth

45

for them) then those who feel they can do without it should still participate in it out of love for their fellow human beings. They should not scorn the weaker by showing contempt for public worship, which is one of the most important and almost the only means to ennoble their spirits and hearts. For it is known that the lower and middle classes respect and follow the example of the higher and educated classes. . . . (Until recently) the Bible has been read very zealously even by princes and the great people. Postils and prayer books, even though they are many times imperfect, have not been without their use. Pious feelings and personal resolutions were prompted by daily use of them. Communal daily morning and evening prayers were neglected by almost no one, even in the foremost families. On Sundays, between the two services, families held a house devotion with the reading of a sermon. . . . One could scarcely go through any street without hearing spiritual songs in passing. Also (here) in Leipzig these customs took place in many families. Worship in the home was bound up with public worship and thereby pious sentiments were awakened and nourished. Now, of course, the situation is entirely different, and one would perhaps make oneself laughable if the restoration of these customs should be recommended. . . . Good philosophical writings and good works of poetry can provide a pleasant spirit of enjoyment for a certain class of people. Who will deny that? But, I ask whether Christian sentiments can be promoted by such writings alone and whether the use of the same is adequate for this purpose. I will only ask: which philosophy will promote ennoblement of the spirit? Certainly not the most recent ones, which want to transform religion into poetry. Such poetic religion would lead us back again to the dead mechanics of a sensual worship, the complete rule of a powerful and intolerant hierarchy and all the nonsense of fanaticism. . . . Fundamentally, philosophical writings are not understood by the common man, when they are given into his hands. He will also not buy them, for many are content if only they can acquire a Bible for themselves and their family and a good songbook. Popular writings in which Christianity is intentionally disfigured or even entirely scorned do not only come into the hands of city dwellers but also frequently into those of country people. Such include the writings of (Karl) Bahrdt and others written in a Barhrdtian manner, in which the history of Jesus is transformed into a novel and presented in a detrimental light. Many country pastors have long lamented that such writings circulate in their

46

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

communities and are read with great delight. . . . Among the so–called educated or more cultivated classes such writings are frequently read, especially among the young people. Such frivolous people may still be instructed well about Christianity in schools or at home by tutors, but the good impressions that they have received are weakened and suppressed through the reading of such writings, and their inclination towards sensual pleasures is strengthened. The vaunted culture of our times is for the most part nothing other than refined sensuality because of which no feeling for the divine or eternal can arise. ..... The youth must not only receive good and fundamental instruction in Christianity through the formation of their minds and hearts but their elders and superiors must also seek to protect them with every possible diligence so that they are not ruined through harmful readings and bad company. Their elders must see to it that the same are encouraged to attend public worship. All who assert a claim for spiritual betterment must go first with their own good example. They make themselves parties to the sins of others and contribute not a little to the decline of Christianity if they do the opposite and perhaps speak scornfully of our arrangements for worship. I am firmly convinced that the restoration of worship, which has declined among Protestants, is worthwhile and necessary if there is to be improvement little by little. . . . I thank God that I have been allowed to experience so many things that give me hope for a better future, if only truly enlightened and righteous people seek to uphold and promote the good things of our age. . . . 248. HEINRICH ZSCHOKKE: HOURS OF DEVOTION FOR THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CHRISTIANITY (1809) Trans. by E. I. Burrow (London: CJG & F Rivington, 1860). Chapter Seven: Faith and Works When I observe the sentiments, lives, and actions of a certain portion of my fellow-men and especially of those who have enjoyed a more liberal education, who are reckoned of the better informed and more enlightened ranks, I perceive, that a great shyness with regard to everything that is called a point of Faith is prevalent among them. . . . Thus it becomes more and more fashionable to make religion consist

in a merely decent and reputable life. . . . Another effect of this widely spread laxity of principle, is—that the public worship of God is despised and omitted. .....

Fig. 2.7. Portrait of Heinrich Zschokke from his autobiography Eine Selbstschau (1842)

So it is—but I am a Christian; and the question must not remain indifferent to me. . . . Has the great Founder of my religion needlessly insisted so often, so loudly, so earnestly, on the apprehension of Faith? . . . No! Jesus and his inspired disciples preached, not without reason, Faith and its saving power. Were the bare dictates of reason, and a natural sense of duty . . . sufficient to solve all the contradictions of this life, to give consolation to the suffering, and hope to the despairing—why did Jesus Christ appear? . . . What are your virtues, your good works, without an inward steadfast Faith in God the Father, in God the “Rewarder”? . . . Without Faith no true virtue can exist—because virtue is more, must be more, than mere worldly prudence. . . . Those virtues which Jesus Christ requires—virtues which ennoble your spirit, must be exercised independently of worldly motives. . . . But without Faith such a disposition of soul cannot be matured. Without Faith in the revelation of Eternity and the immortality of the Soul, such self–sacrificing virtue would be accounted foolishness. Faith alone sanctifies! Not the bare will of rea-

CHURCH LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY

son—which is far too weak to encounter the storm of rebellious passions. Faith sanctifies—that is to say—the conviction of our calling to a high destiny—the conviction of a recompense beyond the grave is alone capable of rendering our virtue something more than mere worldly prudence. . . . Arise then, my spirit, and cleave to this Faith—it is that which strengthens thy virtue, and preserves it. ..... Through Faith alone is true elevation of soul attainable. . . . Chapter Eight: Works and Faith . . . The weak mortal needs a strong support to prevent his falling, and becoming the prey of a sinful propensity, of which he will afterwards, perhaps, in vain repent. And this support, this protection against the force of temptation, is his Faith. When his reason is subdued, this will yet deliver him. . . . But whilst I acknowledge the wondrous, saving power of Faith, I must not deny the worth of Virtue. Virtue without faith is sowing without reaping; but faith without virtue is a barren, fruitless tree. Those, therefore, act unwisely and contrary to the doctrine of Jesus Christ, who treat all good deeds as useless, and direct our attention to faith alone. They imagine that a virtuous course conduces little to salvation; that by faith alone we are justified before God; that the blood of Jesus, and his merits, or the intercession of the saints, will alone cleanse us from sin—if we have lived ever so profligate a life. Woe to those who hold such doctrine! . . . This is not Christianity; it is a wicked abuse of that which is most holy. “Not by their profession of faith shall ye know those who belong to me”, saith Jesus to his disciples, “but by their fruits.” . . . (Matthew 7:16) Such wrong and ruinous ideas of the alone–saving power of faith, and of the little worth of virtue, arise sometimes out of a misunderstanding of particular passages of Scripture; at other times out of the inconsiderate zeal of such preachers, who suppose that they must preach only, and without intermission, on matters of faith, in order to prevent the decay of vital Christianity. These short-sighted people do not consider, that virtuous men are more inclined to religion that wicked men—they do not consider, that if, by proper instruction and explanation of their duties, men be led to do the will of God, they will then also be more disposed to cultivate in their hearts faith in Jesus and his word. . . . We must not be astonished, therefore, at the decline of sound religion which is observable in some towns and villages. It proceeds in the lower classes

47

less from their supposed enlightenment, than from deterioration of morals and corruption of heart. For, as it is impossible that there should be true virtue without faith, so it is equally impossible that there should be any true faith without rectitude of mind and manners. . . . We should live as if we could be justified only by our works, as if we could earn heaven by our virtue; and we should die as if we could obtain eternal salvation only through the merits of Jesus Christ and the mercy of our God. In both these views there is no delusion; in both is sacred truth. . . . CHURCH-STATE RELATIONS 249. CHRISTIAN THOMASIUS: ESSAY SIX: ON THE RIGHT OF A CHRISTIAN PRINCE IN RELIGIOUS MATTERS (1724) This essay was published in Halle in 1724 in Miscellaneous Philosophical and Juristic Essays. Trans. Ian Hunter, Thomas Ahnert, and Frank Grunert in Christian Thomasius. Essays on Church, State and Politics olitics. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007. Accessed October 6, 2015. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1926. 6. For as long as there is discord and unrest in the world as well as lack of piety and mistrust in God, there must also be civil authorities. Once men have ceased to trust in God, the authorities are the divine order, as are the physician and surgeon for as long as men are unhealthy and imperfect. 7. Accordingly, who resists the authorities resists God’s order. . . . 9. All prerogative rights of a prince have the preservation of the common peace as their purpose. 10. That conduct of subjects which can neither hinder nor promote the common peace is not subject to the prerogative right of a prince. . . . 68. The duty of a Christian prince insofar as he is a man, is to do good for other men in accordance with his capacity. Insofar as he is a prince, his duty is to protect peace–loving men and to punish those who disturb the peace. Finally, insofar as he is a Christian, his duty is to restrain his desires with the prayed-for assistance of divine grace and, by means of this same grace, to do more good to all men (including his enemies) than he is otherwise obliged to do according to natural law, and in general to place everything in God’s will. 69. Since all those who want to hinder him in the

48

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

exercise of his duty do wrong and anger God, the right of a Christian prince consists in the fact that he is justified in calmly fulfilling his duty, without regard to the obstacles placed in his way, with true trust in God’s assistance, and in punishing the unruly if they are his subjects. 70. With regard to other peoples of a different faith, a Christian prince has no power to wage war on them for the sake of religion. 71. But he can defend himself with force if another prince who, having no right over him, refuses to respect his religious freedom. . . . 74. As far as his own subjects are concerned, it is agreed and follows from the preceding that a Christian prince may not compel them to his religion, not a single one of them, let alone all. 75. As a prince cannot compel his subjects, so he must tolerate them, because for people who live in a society, there is no other means between these two. 76. He is obliged to tolerate their doctrines, even if they are erroneous, and the religious customs they hold sacred, even if these deviate from his. . . . 80. The prince is not obliged, however, to tolerate those doctrines that, under the pretext of religion, directly disturb the general peace and calm, and overturn common human duties. . . . 83. Neither is a Christian prince obliged to tolerate religious groups whose religion requires them to obey above their own prince, another man or association not under their prince’s dominion. It does not matter whether this man or this association is in Constantinople, Rome, Wittenberg, or anywhere else. 84. Neither is a Christian prince obliged to tolerate an atheist, or him who denies the creator of the world and his providence. For the prince must always expect that if the atheist dares to give free reign to his desires and their exercise in secret, he will not respect the laws and peace of the commonwealth, but will rather disturb these. 85. Those, however, whom a Christian prince is not obliged to tolerate—for the reasons already advanced—he is not justified in repressing with civil punishments. [He is not justified] either as a Christian or as a man, for these statuses give him no right of punishment. But neither is he [justified] as a prince, because the doctrines advanced by the above–mentioned people, while they are dangerous in the sense that they could easily violate the common peace, yet, as doctrines, they have still not done so, since they remain within the domain of doctrine without actually issuing in external actions—assuming that such doctrine is not itself real action.

86. In this case, the right of a Christian prince goes no further than that he is not obliged to tolerate such people, but is in fact justified in ordering them to leave the republic. This right, however, does not automatically entail a duty, especially if the command to leave were to place the commonwealth in danger. . . . 90. If there is a split (or differences of opinion) in the religion of the prince or the subjects—for there is no religion in which divisions do not occur on account of doctrine or practices—the prince should not take this as an opportunity to suppress his subjects’ religion with force, or to treat the split as breaching the peace of the commonwealth so as to drive out the dissenters. Instead, he should see if through gentle persuasion peace–loving people on both sides can overcome this division and, if not, he should tolerate them in accordance with the preceding propositions, and prevent both parties from abusing and maligning each other. 91. For the prince has no right in religious matters to decide differences in religious opinion through a legal judgment capable of being executed by force. [He may not claim this right] either as a man or as a Christian (because these statuses give him no right of coercion), or as a prince, because differences in religious opinions and practices do not hinder the common peace. . . . 95. In fact, with regard to religious customs commanded by God, or which his subjects believe to be commanded by God, the prince can command or change nothing. Otherwise, he would either be superior to God or else engaging in religious coercion. But when it comes to arrangements viewed by his subjects’ confession as commanded by God, or to circumstances and customs which his subjects’ confession itself views as a matter of choice, he can dispose over these, making laws and ordinances, and altering them. 250. KING FRIEDRICH WILHELM I OF PRUSSIA (1726) SEPTEMBER 10, 1726, LETTER TO MICHAEL ROLOFF, PROPST OF THE NIKOLAIKIRCHE IN BERLIN Trans. Eduard Vehse in Berliner Hof–Geschichten of–Geschichten. (Düsseldorf: Eugen Diederichs Verlag, 1922), 93. The difference between our two evangelical religions is really a preacher’s squabble, which is only superficially a big matter. If one examines them, they have the same faith in all fundamentals, such as the election of grace as well as the Lord’s Supper. The

CHURCH LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY

only trouble is that from the pulpit the preachers make a sauce, one more sour than the other. God forgive them all for they will give account at the judgment of God for stirring up the school rats to create discord about the true word of God. Those who are truly spiritual preachers say that people should be tolerant of one another and seek only to add to the glory of Christ. They tell us to love our neighbors as ourselves, live and act in a Christian manner and only rely on Christ’s merits. Who are the blessed? Don’t ask, “Are you Lutheran or are you Reformed?” Will he call out “Have you kept my commandments?”, or “Have you been a good disputant?” He will say “Away with the latter into the hellish fire prepared for the devil,” but to those who kept his commandments he will say, “Come to me in my kingdom where you will be welcomed with much joy.” God gives his grace to all of us so that all his evangelical children may keep his commandments, and God sends to the devil all who cause disunity. May God the Almighty Father help us, through the bitter death of our savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

49

When Voltaire faced persecution in France, he went to live in Potsdam/Berlin from 1750–1753, until he had a falling out with the king. Trans. Richard Aldington in Letters of Voltair oltairee and Frederick the Gr Great eat. (New York: Brentano’s, 1927), 20, 21, 31, 46, 97, 115, 373. The First Letter to Voltaire (August 8, 1736) That taste for philosophy which you display in your writings encourages me to send you a translation I have made of the accusation and justification of M. (Christian) Wolff, the most celebrated philosopher of our day, who has been cruelly accused of irreligion and atheism because he carried light into the most shadowy recesses of metaphysics and because he treated this difficult subject in a manner as elevated as it was clear and precise. Such is the destiny of great men: Their superior genius ever leaves them naked to the poisoned darts of calumny and envy. I am now having translated a Treatise on God, the Soul and the World, which emanates from the pen of the same author. It shall be sent you, Sir, as soon as it is finished, and I am sure you will be struck by the force of evidence in all its propositions, which follow each other geometrically and are connected together like the links of a chain. . . . Letter to Voltaire (November 4, 1736)

Fig. 2.8. Portrait of the young Friedrich II of Prussia by artist Antoine Pesne (1736)

251. KING FRIEDRICH II (THE GREAT) OF PRUSSIA: LETTERS TO VOLTAIRE Friedrich the Great corresponded with the French philosophe, Voltaire, for over forty years, beginning when he was still only the Crown Prince of Prussia.

. . . As touching theologians, it seems to me they are all alike, of whatever religion or nation they may be; their object is always to claim despotic authority over men’s consciences; this suffices to make them persecute all of us whose noble temerity dares to unveil the truth; their hands are always armed with the thunderbolt of anathema to crush this imaginary phantom of irreligion which, as they assert, they combat ceaselessly, but under the name of which in effect they combat the enemies of their fury and ambition. Yet, according to them, they preach humility, a virtue they have never practiced, and call themselves the ministers of a God of peace whom they serve with a heart filled with hatred and ambition. Their conduct, so incompatible with the morality they preach, in my opinion is itself sufficient to discredit their doctrine. . . . Letter to Voltaire (February 8, 1737) . . . Metaphysical questions are above our capacity. We try vainly to guess at things which exceed our

50

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

comprehension; and in this ignorant world the most probably conjecture passes for the best system. Mine is to adore the Supreme Being, solely good, solely merciful, who by that alone deserves my homage; to soften and console, as much as I can, those human beings whose miserable condition is known to me, and, for the rest, to throw myself on the will of the Creator who will dispose of me as seems good to Him and from whom, whatever happens, I have nothing to fear. I believe that this is very nearly your own confession of faith. . . .

obey without knowing them; otherwise, God would be an idle spectator of nature, the world would be governed according to men’s caprice, and He whose power formed the universe would have become useless since it was peopled by weak mortals. I confess to you that since we must make either the Creator or the created a passive being I decide in favor of God. It is more natural that God should do everything and that man should be the instrument of His will than to image a God who creates a world, peoples it with men, and then remains with folded arms subjecting His will and His power to the whimsies of the human mind. Suppose an American or some other savage sees a watch for the first time; he will think the hand which marks the hours has the liberty of moving by itself and he will not even suspect that it is moved by hidden works; still less will he suspect that the watchmaker designed it to accomplish precisely that movement. God is this watch–maker. The works with which He has composed us are infinitely finer, more subtle and more varied than those of the watch. Man is capable of many things; and, since the art is more hidden in us, and since the principle which moves us is invisible, we concentrate upon that which strikes our senses most, and that which causes all these works to move escapes our weak eyes; but none the less it was His intention to destine us precisely to what we are. He has none the less willed that all our actions should relate to a whole, which is the support of society and the good of the whole human race. . . . Letter to Voltaire (June 1738)

Fig. 2.9. François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), known as Voltaire, French Enlightenment writer and philosopher. Pastel by artist Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704–88).

Letter to Voltaire (December 25, 1737) . . . I see first of all that a creating Being must be wise and powerful. Since He is wise He willed the plan of the universe in His eternal intelligence and since He is all–powerful He carried it out. From that it necessarily follows that the Author of this universe must have had an object in creating it. If He had an object, all events must contribute towards it. If all events contribute towards it, all men must act in conformity with the Creator’s designs and their actions can only be determined by them according to the immutable laws of these designs, which they

To speak with my ordinary frankness, I must confess that anything regarding the Man–God displeases me in the mouth of a philosopher, of a man who should be above popular errors. . . . I think it is better to keep a profound silence with regard to the Christian fables, which are canonized by their antiquity and the credulity of absurd and insipid people. . . . Letter to Voltaire (March 19, 1776) It is true, as you say, that the Christians grossly plagiarized the fables invented before them. I can forgive them the virgins on account of several beautiful pictures the painters have made of them; but you will admit that neither antiquity nor any other nation has imagined a more atrocious and blasphemous absurdity than that of eating God. It is a most revolting

CHURCH LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY

dogma, insulting to the Supreme Being, the height of madness and folly. . . . 252. FRIEDRICH THE GREAT: ON SUPERSTITION AND RELIGION (1758) This essay appeared in the king’s Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg, written in 1758. From “Von dem Aberglauben und der Religion” in Friedrichs des Zweiten gedruckte Werke I. (Berlin: Decker & Sohn, 1790), 337–340. trans. by Eric Lund. Part 3: Religion after the Reformation The Reformation could not destroy all errors. Although it opened the eyes of the people to an infinite amount of superstition, it still retained many others. The human spirit has such an incomprehensible propensity for error. Luther, who did not belief in purgatory, accepted ghosts and devils in his system. He maintained that Satan appeared to him in Wittenberg, and he dispelled him with an inkpot to the head. There is almost no nation that has not been infected by such preconceptions. The courts and even more so the people have their heads full of witchcraft, divination, ghosts and devils. . . . Since Luther caused a church schism, the popes and the emperor made every possible effort to bring about a reunion. The theologians of both parties met at Augsburg [1530] and at the Thorn conference [1645], and every meeting of the Reichstag deliberated about the religious situation. Still all these attempts were useless. Finally a brutal and bloody war took place and repeatedly broke out. . . . The Prince Electors of Brandenburg navigated through this unrest with wisdom. They were moderate and patient. . . . Friedrich Wilhelm (Prince Elector 1640–1688) who had acquired provinces with Catholic subjects under the Peace of Westphalia did not persecute them. He allowed some Jewish families to dwell in his states and granted them a synagogue. The Reformed made various attempts to persecute the Lutherans in Brandenburg. They used the favorable disposition of the king to establish themselves in villages that had formerly been Lutheran. This proves sufficiently that religion does not stamp out human fanaticism and that servants of the church are always ready to suppress their opponents as soon as they gain the upper hand. To the shame of human understanding, one must confess that even at the beginning of a century as

51

enlightened as the eighteenth, all kinds of laughable superstition have been retained. . . . Of all the learned who have made Germany shine, Leibniz and Thomasius have rendered the greatest service to the human spirit. They have shown the way to reach the truth. They challenged all kinds of preconceptions, appealed to analogy and experience in all their works, and acquired a host of disciples. Under Friedrich Wilhelm’s reign (King of Prussia 1713–1740) the Reformed were peaceable and religious strife stopped. The Lutherans took advantage of this tranquility. (August Hermann) Francke, one of their preachers, established a school in Halle where young theologians could be educated and as a result an entire swarm of priests came forth from there. This brought about a sect of strong Lutherans. . . . They are protestant Jansenists who distinguish themselves from others by their mystical strictness. Since then, all sorts of Quakers have appeared: the Zinzendorfers, the Gichtelians,12 each sect more laughable than the next, which, because they so exaggerate some principles of the early church, degenerate into reprehensible abuses. (They practice common property ownership, ignore class distinctions, and, according to some, even share wives in their gatherings.) All these sects live here [in Prussia] in peace and contribute nonetheless to the good fortune of the state. 253. FRIEDRICH WILHELM II: EDICT CONCERNING RELIGION IN PRUSSIAN LANDS (THE WÖLLNER EDICT) (JULY 1788) From the German text in Uta Wiggermann. Wöllner und das Relig Religionsedikt: ionsedikt: Kirchenpolitik und kirchliche Wirklichkeit im Pr Preussen eussen des späten 18. Jahrhunderts Jahrhunderts. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 593–598. trans. by Eric Lund. Introduction Hereby know that long before our accession to the throne we had already observed and remarked how necessary it would one day be to pay attention (again) to the Christian faith of the Protestant Church in the Prussian dominions, following the example of our predecessors and especially of our deceased grandfather (Friedrich Wilhelm I), to take measures to preserve it and partly re–establish its original purity and authenticity and also to repress, as much as we can, infidelity and superstition. By this means an end can be brought to the corruption of

52

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

the fundamental truths of the Christian religion and the moral degeneracy which are consequences of it. In so doing, our faithful subjects will at the same time be given convincing proof of the intention of their sovereign regarding their most important concern, namely, full liberty of conscience, undisturbed tranquility and assurance of safety in observance of the faith of their fathers and the religious confession they have adopted, as well as protection against all who might interfere with their divine service and religious constitution. Having regulated the most urgent affairs of the state and made various necessary and beneficial new arrangements, we will now wait no longer in earnestly considering this other important duty and will, by the present edict, publicly make known our unalterable will on this subject.

Fig. 2.10. Portrait of Friedrich Wilhelm II while still crown prince (1765) by artist Frédéric Reclam

#1 We command and order that all three chief confessions of the Christian religion, namely Reformed, Lutheran and Roman Catholic, should be maintained with their existing constitutions and should be protected in all our lands in accordance with the many edicts and regulations adopted by our blessed ancestors. #2 The Prussian States with their accustomed tolerance should furthermore maintain all the other sects and religious parties and should not apply the

least pressure on conscience at any time as long as each remains restful and fulfills the duties of citizens of the state. . . . #3 All proselytization of any sort should be forbidden. We do not want the clergy or other people of different religious parties to depart from their particular doctrines and opinions on matters of faith nor should they entice or attempt to persuade those who are not of their confession to adopt them. . . . #7 Already for some years before our accession to the throne we observed with chagrin that many clergy in the Protestant churches have allowed themselves entirely too much freedom in their view of the doctrinal concepts of their confession. Various essential elements and principle truths of the Protestant church and the Christian religion have been generally repudiated, and they have assumed in their way of teaching a tone that is entirely contrary to the spirit of Christianity, finally shaking the very pillars of the Christian faith. They are not ashamed to warm up the miserable and long since refuted errors of the Socinians, Deists, Naturalists and other sects and to spread them with much audacity and impudence among the people under the misused name of “Enlightenment.” They have demeaned the authority of the Bible as the revealed word of God and distorted, twisted or even entirely rejected belief in the mysteries of revealed religion in general. Above all else, they have viewed the redeeming work and atonement of the Savior as suspicious or even unnecessary, thereby bewildering people and casting scorn on the entire foundations of Christianity. We want now, absolutely, to control this mischief in our lands since we hold it to be one of the first duties of a Christian prince to insist that Christianity, the merits and excellence of which have long been proven beyond all doubt, be protected against all falsification and restored, in all its high dignity and original purity as taught in the Bible and determined in the creeds. Thereby the poor masses will no longer be exposed to the delusions of new–fangled teachers, and millions of our subjects will not be made unhappy by being robbed of serenity during their lives and consolation on their death-beds. #8 As sovereign and sole lawgiver of our state, we demand and order that any clergyman, preacher or school teacher of the protestant religion shall be dismissed and even more severely punished if he shall be found guilty of undertaking to spread the errors listed in #7 or any other such errors in the performance of his duties or in any other way either publicly or secretly. They must remain true to the general measure,

CHURCH LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY

norm and rule of the three main confessions . . . which the so–called enlightened have allowed to be abandoned. Every teacher of Christianity in our land who confesses one of these three confessions must teach the doctrines. If he teaches any other thing than the creed he has accepted he is punishable by the civil laws and cannot with propriety hold his office any longer. If he has ceased to believe in the creed he once accepted he may resign. However, from our great love of liberty of conscience, we are willing that the clergy now in office who may be known to be unfortunately more or less infected by the errors set forth in section 7 should remain quietly in their charges, but in the instructions they give their flock the rule of doctrine must always be kept sacred and inviolable.

Fig. 2.11. Portait of Friedrich Schleiermacher from the German annual handbook by Karl Büchner (1838)

254. FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER: A PROJECT OF A NEW CONSTITUTION FOR THE PROTESTANT CHURCH (1808) Schleiermacher, who is often called “The Father of Modern Liberal Theology” was actually ordained into the Reformed branch of the Prussian Union

53

Church. Throughout his career he was both a professor and a preacher. His influence on Lutheran theology will be examined further in chapter 6. From text in Ernst Rudolf Huber and Wolfgang Huber. Staat und Kirche im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Dokumente zur Geschichte des deutschen Staatskirchenr Staatskirchenrechts. echts. Bd. I : Staat und Kirche vom Ausgang des alten Reichs bis zum Vor orabend abend der bürg bürgerlichen erlichen Revolution. (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1973), 564. trans. by Eric Lund. That our church structure is in a deep decline cannot be denied. Lively interest in public worship and spiritual practices has almost entirely disappeared, the influence of religious sentiments on ethics and on moral judgments is scarcely perceptible, a lively relationship between the preachers and their congregations is as good as dissolved, church oversight and discipline have fully perished, valuation of the worth of the entire spiritual estate has been in continual decline, and the view of their essential purpose has been afflicted by a dangerous lethargy. The basis for all these maladies lies in some past failings that have been with us since the Reformation. While previously the church had emancipated itself too much from the state and even elevated itself about the state, since then it has become too subordinated to the state and the view that it is only an institution of the state for certain purposes has gained the upper hand. Therefore, all ecclesiastical relationships are judged too much according to principles of external law and authority whereby its true spirit must necessarily get lost. The allocation of spiritual positions through the authority of state officials has certainly put an end to many abuses, but has, on the other hand, created a careless, lax, and inappropriate way of operating. The composition and form of consistories has led them further and further away from their purpose, and the more the members get used to being regarded as servants of the state the more they lose sight of the essence and purpose of the church. Improvement in particulars or mere demonstration of respect of the church by the state in order to enhance public opinion of it will not help. The latter can itself be dangerous because it might open a new game of intrigue and nourish empty vanity. Help can only come from a new constitution or rather the restoration of the old constitution, appropriate for our time. . . . In order to bring about unity and to make sure that trivial details do not interfere with an overall improvement, it is thoroughly necessary that the ecclesiastical difference between Lutherans and

54

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Reformed be entirely superseded and that the Protestant Church in this state become completely one. With a view to doctrine, this poses little difficulty because far greater differences prevail among the teachers of each of these confessions than between the two confessions themselves. With a view to practice, there is just as little difficulty, because in one and the same confession practices in various settings are very different and provisionally in each congregation practices could be left as they have been. The entire unification as far is it is necessary for our purpose would already be achieved by a statement that no religious change would be constrained, if anyone, preacher or layperson, passed from a congregation of one certain rite to that of another or switched between either. The essence of the new constitution would consist of the clergy being suitably divided into a number of synods that would gather at certain times in order to discuss church affairs. All synods in a province would stand under a bishop and some respectable theologians assigned to him, and everything pertaining to inner church discipline and order, to the filling of pastoral positions and the improvement of worship in all of its parts would depend upon them. To unite the bishops themselves again under an overall spiritual head would be entirely against the spirit of Protestantism, but perhaps the prospect should be kept open that in urgent cases a general synod could be assembled from the deputies of all bishoprics under the authority of the king. . . . 255. KING FRIEDRICH WILHELM III: CABINET ORDER CONCERNING THE UNION OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCHES IN PRUSSIA (1817) From text in Ernst Rudolf Huber—Wolfgang Huber, Staat und Kirche im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert . Dokumente zur Geschichte des deutschen Staatskirchenrechts. Bd. I. (1973) #259:576–578. trans. by Eric Lund. Already my enlightened forefathers who now rest in God, the Prince–Elector Johann Sigismund, Prince–Elector Georg Wilhelm, the Great Prince Elector, King Friedrich I, and King Friedrich Wilhelm I, as the history of their reigns and their lives shows, had an interest in uniting the two separated Protestant churches, the Reformed and the Lutheran, into one Evangelical Christian Church in their lands. Honoring their memory, I gladly affiliate myself

with their intention and wish to bring into being a God–pleasing work to the glory of God and for the well–being of the Christian Church in my states. This effort faced insurmountable difficulties in the past due to the predominance of an unfortunate sectarian spirit, but now there is a better spirit which sets aside non–essentials and holds fast to the main matters in Christianity about which both confessions are united. I wish to see a beginning of this during the forthcoming secular celebration of the Reformation. Such a truly religious union of the two churches, separated only by external differences, is in conformity with the major purpose of Christianity; it suits the spirit of Protestantism, it promotes an ecclesiastical sense, it is salutary for domestic piety; and it is the source of many useful improvements in churches and schools that have often been obstructed by the differentiation between the confessions. No more obstacles stand in the way of this salutary, long wished for, and often vainly attempted unification, in which the Reformed Church does not change over into the Lutheran Church nor vice versa but both become newly invigorated as one in the spirit of their holy founders, as soon as both parts seriously and honesty, in a true Christian spirit want it. Through this act we would worthily express our obligatory gratitude to Divine Providence for the inestimable blessings of the Reformation and honor the memory of their great founders by the continuation of their immortal work. But as much as I must wish that the Church might share this carefully considered conviction with me, respecting their rights and freedom, I am far from wanting to intrude and command or impose something regarding this matter. This union only has a true value if there is no place in it for coercion or indifferentism, if it derives purely from the freedom of personal conviction, and if it is not just an association in external form, but in the union of hearts, having its roots and vitality in accordance with real biblical principles. Just as I, in the spirit of the upcoming commemoration of the Reformation, will celebrate the union of previously Reformed and Lutheran Court and Garrison congregations into one Evangelical Christian congregation and will enjoy celebrating the Lord’s Supper with the same, so I hope that my own example will have a beneficial effect on all Protestant congregations in my lands and will prompt broad emulation in spirit and in truth. I leave the external appropriate form of the union to the wise management of the consistories, the pious zeal of the clergy and their synods, convinced that the congregations will

CHURCH LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY

gladly follow them in a pure Christian spirit, and that where regard is only directed seriously and sincerely towards the essentials and the great sacred matter itself, without all unfair secondary intentions, the form can also easily be found, and the outer (form) will simply, gracefully and truly emerge by itself from the inner (spirit). I wish that the promised time will no longer be distant, when, under one common shepherd, all will, in one faith, one love and one hope, form one flock.

Fig. 2.12. Portait of Friedrich Wilhelm III by unknown artist (ca. 1830)

256. KING FRIEDRICH WILHELM III: CABINET ORDER CONCERNING THE PURPOSE OF THE UNION AND AGENDA (1834) From text in Huber (1973), #262:582–583. trans. by Eric Lund. It has aroused my justifiable displeasure that an attempt has been made by some opponents of the

55

Church’s peace to lead others astray through misinterpretation and incorrect views, which are biased with regard to the nature and purpose of the Union and liturgy. To be sure, it is hoped that by the power of truth and common judgments of so many well–informed people this unfair attempt will be unsuccessful overall, and that by making timely execution of the instructions I have issued on this day, I will succeed in eliminating separatist disorders and that even the few who have been deceived by false pretenses will return from going astray. However, since a proper assessment of the matter at issue will assuage the apprehension that arises from an anxious conscience, it is expedient to acknowledge, as I have on repeated occasions, the main principles that have guided the introduction of the liturgy and the promotion of the Union. The Union does not propose or imply an abandonment of the established confession of faith, nor has it abolished the authority of the confessional writings of the Protestant denominations. Assent to it expresses a spirit of moderation and forbearance according to which differences on specific teaching points of either confession can no longer be regarded as a reason to forsake external ecclesiastical fellowship. Accession to the Union is a matter of free choice, and therefore it is an erroneous opinion that the introduction of the renewed liturgy was necessarily linked to agreement to the Union or indirectly effected by it. . . . The Agenda [the book recording required forms of worship] is connected to the Union only in so far as its prescribed order of worship and recorded forms for religious acts can come into application without offense and complaint for the joint promotion of Christian piety and godliness in those communities which consist of both related confessions. Its only purpose is to establish and hold fast to an order for public worship and for the official activities of the clergy that corresponds to the spirit of the confessions and is based on the authority of the Protestant agendas from the early days of the Reformation, and to keep away all harmful arbitrariness and confusion. Hence the claims of those who resist from dislike of the Union and the liturgy are seriously and vigorously dismissed as inadmissible.

56

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

257. KING FRIEDRICH WILHELM III: DECREES AGAINST THE OLD LUTHERAN DISSENTERS (1834) CABINET ORDER OF MARCH 9, 1834 PROHIBITING RELIGIOUS PRACTICES OUTSIDE THE CHURCH From text in Huber (1973), #268: 607. trans. by Eric Lund To eliminate doubts about the extent to which gatherings for religious exercises outside the Church are permitted and about what the law of the land states establishes as punishments for transgressions, I declare that worship in homes is allowed only for members of the house father’s family and the people living with him, who are subject to his discipline. Any gathering for religion exercises outside of the church that exceed these limits and are conducted without soliciting permission from the consistory of the church province are prohibited. DECLARATION CONCERNING PRETENTIONS TO PERFORM OFFICIAL CLERICAL ACTS (1837) From text in Huber (1973), #269:607–608. trans. by Eric Lund. In order to remove the doubts raised about the applicability of the law of the land to the presumptuous performance of official clerical acts I hereby determine that a fine of up to fifty dollars or imprisonment up to six weeks shall occur if people who have not received official ordination to the ministry presume to conduct any ceremonial acts, especially the administration of Holy Communion or the performance of confirmation, a wedding or a baptism. CABINET ORDER CONCERNING THE EMIGRATION OF THE LUTHERAN SEPARATISTS (JANUARY 2, 1837) From text in Huber (1973) #270:608. trans. by Eric Lund. With regard to the proposal included in your report that the Lutheran separatists in Neumark, Silesia, the Grand Duchy of Posen and in Pomerania not be allowed to emigrate, I agree for now and approve the specific reasons for your refusal. It is still important to emphasize that they have shown by their con-

duct that they merit being abandoned to their fate. They have given no hearing to previous instructive admonitions and have delusively attempted to refute them, as is evidenced by their statements that they are subject to no church order, and want to evade the same completely. This will never be allowed. The state would not be disadvantaged by their emigration, but for the family members, who would undoubtedly be implicated in the misery awaiting them in distant parts of the world, we must show paternal clemency and avert the misfortune of those who could not act independently and would be compelled blamelessly to share the perilous lot of their fathers and relatives. 258. KING FRIEDRICH WILHELM IV: DECREE ESTABLISHING THE GENERAL SYNOD OF THE OLD PRUSSIAN UNION (1846) From text in Huber (1973) #272:613–616. trans. by Eric Lund. The conditions of the evangelical church of the nation have already, for a number of years, attracted the special attention of its esteemed protectors and patrons. . . . (In 1814 after the defeat of Napoleon) a special commission, formed from the most respected clergy, was seated and invited proposals for the vigorous revival of the Church in all its relations. The commission proposed the restoration of consistories as Protestant church authorities and the establishment of district and provincial synods, combined with the prospect of a future general National Synod as advisory bodies of the Church. After the death of the late monarch, these plans were taken up by the now reigning king in a comprehensive spirit and further promoted for the growing life of the Evangelical Church in all its relations. In 1843, an appointment of district synods was arranged, pursuant to existing bodies, to advise the clergy of each diocese about the needs of the Church, under the presidency of their superintendents. These district synods have endeavored, firstly, to create a clear picture of the state of relationships within the church community in their districts, but then to suggest how and by what means an improvement of perceived weaknesses can be effected. . . . The opinions of the district synods have been preserved in its full integrity and forwarded for processing to a higher level of synodical consultation. This was done by the calling together of provincial synods at the end of 1844. . . . The process of development has advanced so far in this way that the appointment of a general national synod is currently

CHURCH LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY

emerging as its conclusion. Through this synod, the advice which has emerged from the lower church districts can be summarized and submitted to the wisdom of the supreme protectors and patrons of the church. His majesty the king has already expressed his highest intention on several occasions, and most recently at the conclusion of the parliament this past year. At this time, the definitive decision has been made, and the convening of an evangelical General Synod for the whole kingdom will be held under the chairmanship of the Minister of Religious Affairs at Pentecost this year in the nation’s capital. The Synod will be formed not only of representatives of the eastern provinces, but also of the Rhine province and the province of Westphalia, and will thus keep the interests and needs of the Evangelical Church of the whole land in view. The following will participate in the General Synod: Spiritual members: the assembled General Superintendents, Bishop (Ruhleman) Eylert, the four court preachers and the military chaplain–provost; in addition, the six assessors and the six recording secretaries of the provincial synods, and finally six professors of theology from the six universities of the land.

Fig. 2.13. “Between Berlin and Rome,” with Bismarck on the left and the pope on the right, from the German satirical magazine Kladderadatsch, 1875

Secular members: the eight presidents of the provincial consistories, six evangelical law professors from the six universities of the land, and finally three lay members from each of the eight provinces. The Synod will hereafter be made up of seventy–five members, evenly divided as much as possible among the clergy and the laity. . . . The Minister is Religious Affairs is simultaneously entrusted with the task of determining the procedural rules and the agenda for the synodical meetings.

57

259. REMINISCENES OF THE KULTURKAMPF [THE CULTURE STRUGGLE] (1871) From Otto von Bismarck. Gedanken und Erinnerung nerungen en, Bd. 2 (Stuttgart/Berlin: J.G. Cotta, 1915), 162–164. trans. by Eric Lund. . . . It is impossible to establish a firm limit to Rome’s claims upon countries that have parity and a Protestant dynasty. Not even for purely Catholic states. The ancient conflict that has waged between priests and kings cannot be successfully brought to a conclusion at the present day, and particularly not in Germany. Before 1870, it had come about that the position of the Catholic Church in Prussia was excellent and more favorable than in most of the purely Catholic countries, and this was recognized by the Curia. In our internal politics, especially in parliamentary politics, we can trace no signs of this confessional satisfaction. Long before 1871, the faction led by the Reichensperger brothers13 persisted in opposition to the government of the Protestant dynasty, and yet their leaders did not incur any personal stigma as disturbers of the peace. In every arrangement, Rome will regard a Protestant dynasty and Church as an irregularity and a disease which it is the duty of their Church to cure. If human life in general consists of a series of struggles, it is especially the case in the mutual relations of independent political powers, for which no appointed tribunal exists that is capable of enforcing judgments. The Roman Curia, however, is an independent political power, possessing among its irremediable characteristics the same propensity to run rampant that is innate in our French neighbors. In its struggles against Protestantism, it has always the aggressive weapons of proselytism, and ambition at its disposal, which no concordat can quiet; it tolerates no other gods besides itself. . . . 260. THE EVANGELICAL LEAGUE FOR THE PROTECTION OF GERMAN-PROTESTANT INTERESTS (1887) From Aufruf zur Gründung des Ev Evang angelischen elischen Bundes zur Wahrung der deutsch–pr deutsch–protestantischen otestantischen Inter Interessen essen vom 15. Januar 1887 in Karl Kupisch, Quellen zur Geschichte des deutschen Pr Protestantismus, otestantismus, 1871–1945 (München: Siebenstern Taschenbuch Verlag, 1960), #7:56. trans. by Eric Lund. The German Protestant Church, and with it our German Fatherland, are threatened by grave dangers.

58

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Through the so–called Kulturkampf and the nature of its settlement, we see the power of Romanism increased to the highest level. Actively and with stubborn persistence, using all the tendencies antagonistic to the German character, it has pursued its objectives. . . . The greater moderation and peacefulness, which it now affects, has also served as a way to obtain further advantages. . . . In contrast to the powerful unity of Rome, German Evangelical Christianity remains sadly fragmented. The disintegrating regional churches are linked by so loose a bond and furthermore so shut off from each other that a common evangelical consciousness is stunted. . . . While we fall out over internal church issues, the enemy who seeks to destroy us, inexorably strides forward. . . . The spread in influential circles of concepts of parity and tolerance give welcome help to the Romanists, and the materialism, to which entire classes of our people have succumbed, as well as religious indifferentism, have paved the way for their rule. Such a situation calls for the setting of great goals and a comprehensive remedy. All who have a heart for our church and are imbued with the conviction that only fidelity to the divine Word and the ultimate victory of evangelical truth can empower our people to fulfill their world–historical calling, must unite in the future for collective work and a common struggle. Considering this, Protestant men from all regions of Germany, varied professional positions, and different political groups within the churches have already in October of this past year reached out their hands to call their co–religionists to activate an evangelical alliance whose purpose is to safeguard the interests of German Protestants. The program of this league is as follows: The Protestant League professes that Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, is the sole mediator of salvation and pledges itself to the principles of the Reformation. The tasks of the league are twofold. It will protect Protestant interests in all areas against the growing power of Rome, combat the interference of the same through speaking and writing, but also extend a hand to all who aspire to true catholicity and Christian freedom from within the bosom of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, it will strengthen the common consciousness of Protestant Christians against the indifferentism and materialism of this age, cultivate internal peace in opposition to the crippling factionalism of church parties, and revive or extend exchange between members of the different regional churches. To fulfill this task, each member of the league will undertake to contribute his part. Evangelical believers and fellow countrymen! The

Kulturkampf draws to a close. But the struggle with Rome continues; it will continue “so long as there is a heretic in the country” or, as we now say, until the truth of the Gospel has victoriously penetrated all of Germany. The Protestant people must take up this fight with united and sustainable force. Anticipation is an energetic defense. At every turn, it must keep track of the undermining work of the Jesuit spirit. Falsifications of history, suspicions of our church, the stunting of its rights, in particular the behavior of the Roman clergy in matters of mixed marriages and the upbringing of the children issuing from these marriages. Likewise, it must systematically combat compliance with Roman arrogance, stemming from a false concept of parity, and must also bring to light and publicly identify any kind of denial of the Protestant faith. . . . The most important task is our collaboration on the healing of its own internal damages. To make our evangelical people mindful again of the whole extent of the blessings of the Reformation: the pure gospel of the grace of God in Christ, the universal priesthood, freedom of faith and conscience, liberation from the bondage of superstition. To carry to the widest circle the conviction that the present power and greatness of Germany is caused by the Reformation, and that its future depends on the preservation of those goods and the eventual complete victory of the Gospel. THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL ISSUES 261. ADOLF STOECKER: PROGRAM OF THE CHRISTIAN SOCIAL WORKERS PARTY (1878) From text in Kupisch (1960), #11:72–74. trans. by Eric Lund. General Principles The Christian Social Workers Party stands on the grounds of Christian faith and love of king and Fatherland. It rejects the present Social Democracy as unpractical, unchristian and unpatriotic. It aims to be a peaceful organization of workers in order to pave the way for necessary practical reforms, together with other factors of political life. It pursues a goal of reducing the gap between rich and poor and the bringing about of greater economic security.

CHURCH LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY

59

262. THE TASK OF THE CLERGY [CONCERNING THE DANGER OF THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT] (1879)

Fig. 2.14. Photograph of Adolf Stoecker (ca. 1890) by Loescher and Petsch Hof-Photographen

Particular Demands—Help from the State Worker organizations: The introduction of obligatory specialized trade associations throughout the whole empire with a corresponding regulation of apprenticeships, obligatory arbitration courts, pension schemes for widows, orphans, invalids and the elderly, authorization of trade cooperatives to represent the rights of workers over against their employers Protection of workers: Prohibition of work on Sunday, abolition of work by children and married women in factories. Normalized workdays, efforts to internationalize worker protection laws, protection of workers from adverse health conditions at work and home, restoration of usury laws. Taxation: Progressive income tax as a counterbalance to existing or future indirect taxes, progressive inheritance tax, a stock market tax, a high luxury tax. Demands of the Clergy: Loving and active participation in all efforts which are aimed at increasing the physical and spiritual well–being, as well as the moral and religious stance of all the people.

From Anspr Ansprache ache an die Geistlichen und Gemendekirchenr Gemendekirchenräte äte betr betreff effend end ihr ihree Aufg ufgabe abe geg egenüber enüber den aus der sozialistischen Beweg Bewegung ung entstandenen Gef Gefahr ahren en February 1879 in Kupisch (1960), #12 74–75. trans. by Eric Lund. It is the calling of the clergy to bring the Gospel of peace to all without distinction, and their charge to prepare the way for the kingdom of God on earth and to preach the word of reconciliation carries with it, more particularly, the duty to exercise caution and restraint with regard to participation in the passionately agitated political and social life of the present. Hardly anything could be more damaging to the influence of the officially organized church, not only among the more educated sectors of the population, than an attempt by the church to use its commitment and its institutions as resources for the purposes of certain political parties. . . . Their first and most important task, to the same degree for the upper as for the lower (clergy), is to awaken the operation of the mind, which connects people in benevolent and active love for a common purpose, and to make known to all, the wealthy as well as the needy, that the order of life for the exchange of goods which conforms to the Kingdom of God is the only path to prosperity and peace. By contrast, it is not the concern of the servants of the church to establish or support economic or socio–political theories in the name of Christianity. They do not keep within the limits of their profession if they make demands, on the basis of the Gospel, for national legislation for a different apportionment of public taxes and charges, for a reduction of the length of military service, likewise if they assert an obligation of authorities to procure relief for the unemployed or provide for frail and infirmed workers from public resources, or if they recommend a new scheme of ownership structures, in the name of Christianity, as a remedy against social calamities. The Lord and the apostles had no lack of opportunities in their time, no less than in ours, to support a redesign of social systems out of religious motives. But they stayed away from that. They left the existing facilities in the state and society unchallenged, called obedience to the existing government, even a heathen one, a divine order, declined to play the role of arbitrator in matters of ownership, and pun-

60

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ished the idleness of the work–shy as a heartless use of earthly goods. . . . 263. ADOLF STOECKER: WHAT WE DEMAND OF MODERN JEWRY (1879) From Unser Unseree Forderung orderungen en an das moderne Judentum in Kupisch (1960), #13:76–78. trans. by Eric Lund. We have fought our battle under the battle cry: Combat the excessive power of Judaism. Some still do not favor this slogan; but we have read things in the last few days that we have convinced us that we are clearly on the right track with our fight against the despicable power of the Jews. We will wait and see whether our Jewish fellow citizens will find the right measure of modesty, discipline and orderliness. If not, we must intensify our struggle. . . . Here we present our first demand and ask: Show a little more modesty! We do not deny that Israel supported knowledge of a personal God as a sacred flame in ancient times until Christ came and introduced the more perfect faith, a richer concept of God and a higher truth. But it is a historical fact that the people of Israel fell back over and over again into the grossest idolatry, which God could only curb for short periods of time by sending powerful personalities. It was not the merit of the Jews, but rather the grace of God that preserved the doctrine of one God in the world. . . . This is their undoing that they failed to (recognize) Christ, they lost their divine course, abandoned their high mission and ran after idols of gold. According to the decisive either–or of the Lord Jesus: “You cannot serve both God and mammon,” they have neglected the ways of God. . . . The Jews are and remain a nation within the nation, a state within a state, a tribe from an alien race. In the end, all immigrants are absorbed into the people with whom they live; but not the Jews. They oppose the Germanic essence with their unbroken Semitic characteristics; they oppose Christianity with their cult of rigid laws or their hostility to Christ. We therefore cannot condemn them; so long as they are Jews, they cannot be otherwise. But we must protect ourselves with a clear knowledge of the dangers that lie in such a mingling.

264. FRIEDRICH NAUMANN: WORKER’S CATECHISM OR TRUE SOCIALISM (1890) From Arbeiterkatechismus oder der wahr wahree Sozialismus in Kupisch (1960), #15:79–83. trans. by Eric Lund.

Fig. 2.15. Photograph of Friedrich Naumann (1886) by Eduard Blass Wwe. in Chemnitz

. . . We say that the political equality is already in itself a valuable asset, but it can and should be used to ensure greater economic equality. Economic equality, i.e. equality of possessions, is lacking nowadays in an entirely astonishing way. . . . What our God created, he also wants to sustain. So long as thousands are gambled away nightly or frittered away on loose women, while a seamstress must work for 8 pennies an hour with tired eyes and emaciated white fingers until 2 clock at night just to avoid falling into public indecency, the call for economic equality will not be silenced. . . . We are well aware that the soul may be saved without equitable distribution. We also know that equality will never be perfectly achieved, but we speak freely in front of everyone; as it is now, it cannot remain. We write on our banner: Greater Equality. . . . In addition to the word Equality we place the word Freedom. . . . What kind of freedom do we want? . . . If the worker has more income, more possessions, in short a more comfortable life, he is

CHURCH LIFE IN EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY

also thereby freer, that is, he is no longer dependent on the wishes, whims and demands of other people; he is more his own master. Who would begrudge him that? Therefore, let us seek after such freedom. Freedom and Equality! Yes, Freedom and Equality, not Freedom without Equality, no Equality without Freedom. . . .

61

Social Democracy speaks of freedom and equality. It means equality without individual freedom. But in our well–considered request we ask for: equality that retains personal freedom, freedom that does not make a laughingstock of equality.

3. Lutheran Biblical Scholarship and Debates about the Historical Jesus

Since the beginning of the Reformation, the Bible has been the unrivaled foundation for Lutheran preaching and theology. It has functioned, as well, as the primary practical guide for daily living for both the clergy and the laity. The awakening of a critical spirit during the Enlightenment presented significant challenges to the way Lutherans had interpreted Scripture and led to the establishment of the modern academic discipline of biblical studies. Lutheran scholars, especially at German universities, were some of the most formative influences on the development of this field, and many of them also addressed questions about how the results of historical–critical study should be correlated with the church’s theology and practice. However, while Lutherans may have continued to agree about the importance of the Bible, the issues raised in the course of scholarly debates produced a noteworthy divergence in Lutheran beliefs about the nature of its inspiration and the historicity of its content. Renaissance scholars across Europe had called for a return to the study of ancient sources (ad fontes) and, in their investigations of early texts in their original languages, had also developed an interest in establishing principles to determine the authenticity of manuscripts. This was the first step in the emergence of historical criticism. The northern humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) was particularly important for applying this approach to the Bible. In 1505 he exposed the differences between the Latin Vulgate translation of the New Testament used by the church and the original Greek version. Then in 1516, he published his own Greek edition of the

New Testament, which was accompanied by extensive notes on textual problems. This effort interested and benefited Martin Luther, whose work as a professor at the University of Wittenberg centered on the interpretation of Scripture. When Luther began to criticize the theology and practice of the medieval church in 1517 he defended his alternative proposals by contrasting what the Bible said with what subsequent human authorities taught. Whereas medieval church leaders tended to read the Bible in light of tradition, Luther came to believe that the Bible was the sole medium of divine revelation. For him, the Bible as a whole was a unity. Both Old and New Testament contained Law and Gospel, revealing God’s demands and promises. All of Scripture proclaimed both the need for grace and the saving work of God through Christ. Luther insisted that the plain meaning of Scripture should always be sought and that allegorical interpretations of texts, so common in medieval exegesis, tended to be too arbitrary. Yet, he also read the Old Testament christocentrically or typologically, seeing references to Jesus in prophecy and the foreshadowing of redemption in prior events. In this sense, Luther’s view of the Bible was pre-critical, but he also recognized some of the problems that would later be at the center of Enlightenment debates about the Bible. With regard to the traditional canon of Scripture, Luther argued that not all biblical books were equally inspired by the Holy Spirit. His criterion was the extent to which each testified to Christ. As he saw it, this was lacking not only in Esther, part of the Old Testament, but also in the epistle of James in the New Testament.

64

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Both seemed to him to be more Jewish than Christian. Luther also questioned the traditional authorship attributed to some books, arguing, for example, that Ecclesiastes was not written by Solomon. He also doubted that all of the laws in the Pentateuch originated with Moses. Although Luther usually tried to find an explanation for factual discrepancies in the Bible, he stated that parallel accounts in Kings and Chronicles could not be reconciled and that the prophets sometimes made mistakes about secular events. Luther never taught that the Scriptures were verbally inspired, but firmly believed that we hear God’s Word through the Bible, especially when it is the basis for oral preaching. During the seventeenth century, Lutheran theologians attempted to provide more precise formulations about the nature of biblical inspiration. Faced by Catholic theologians who argued that Scripture could not stand alone apart from tradition, and Protestant radicals such as the Socinians who rejected scriptural arguments for doctrines such as the Trinity, the Lutheran dogmaticians during the Age of Orthodoxy stood more firmly than Luther for the position that there were no errors in Scripture, even in minor matters. From Johann Gerhard (1582–1637) in the 1620s through to Abraham Calov (1612–1686) and Johann Quenstedt (1617–1688) in the 1680s, most Lutheran defenders of the Bible believed in plenary, verbal inspiration. One of the few exceptions was Georg Calixtus (1586–1656) the controversial “syncretistic” theologian from Helmstedt, who argued against an equally pervading inspiration. He made a distinction between revelation (revelatio) from God about the true nature of salvation and divine direction (assistentia), which kept the biblical authors from writing what was not true about incidental details and historical facts. The Lutheran Pietists generally held to the high view of plenary inspiration though Philip Jakob Spener (1635–1705) was more open to the idea that God had inspired the biblical writers rather than their exact words (see volume 1, chapters 6 and 8). In the late seventeenth century the standard Lutheran view of the Bible began to be challenged by a number of writers outside of Germany. As early as the 1640s, Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), a Dutch legal scholar with Arminian sympathies, published careful textual studies of both the Old and New Testament, which raised questions about when and by whom certain biblical books had been written. In 1670 the Dutch philosopher, Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) cast doubts on the authority of the Bible by elevating reason above revelation and by arguing

that the Bible should be studied in the same way that any other book is studied. Richard Simon (1638–1712), a Catholic priest in France, saw evidence against the reliability of the Bible as sole source of theology in the fact that there were so many variant readings in the manuscripts upon which Protestant Bible editions were based. The earliest Lutheran contributions to modern scientific and historical study of the Bible focused on the last of these issues: the determination of a reliable text. Various Pietist scholars contributed to textual criticism by undertaking careful philological study of the biblical books and by developing criteria for evaluating variant readings in the earliest manuscripts of the Bible. The Pietist August Hermann Francke (1663–1727) made Halle an important center for the study of languages that facilitated Bible exegesis. Another Pietist pastor in Württemberg, Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752), published “Gnomon of the New Testament” in 1742, which established seventeen critical principles to apply to determine the most trustworthy version of a disputed text (doc. #265). He also published an improved Greek version of the New Testament to replace the discredited textus receptus. It included an apparatus criticus, which listed variant readings and also classified manuscripts into various related groups. In other regards, Bengel’s view of the Bible contrasted strongly with the increasingly skeptical spirit of the eighteenth century. His confident conviction that the Bible contained revelation inaccessible to reason led him to speculate about eschatology and to make the calculation that the second coming of Christ would occur in 1836 (see volume 1, chapter 8). As the Enlightenment advanced in Germany, three major approaches to the Bible formed in opposition to each other. The most radical of the rationalists repudiated supernaturalism and formulated reasons to set aside the traditional authority of the Bible. Conservatives of various sorts, defended traditional claims about the Bible and offered counter-arguments against the rationalists. A third group, which increased as the century progressed, attempted to steer a middle course between the other two positions, often accepting new proposals presented by the rationalists while also attempting to formulate them in a way that they did not threaten the essence of Christianity. One of the early formative defenders of the third approach was Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), the General Superintendent of the Lutheran churches in Saxe–Weimar. He saw that the narrative accounts in the four gospels could not be perfectly harmonized

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

and suggested that each had a particular purpose related to the setting from which it emerged. He was one of the first proponents of the claim that Mark was the earliest Gospel and suggested that behind all of the written accounts there was an original oral gospel. Herder had a highly developed literary and historical sensibility. Thus he drew attention to the various literary forms present in the gospels and also valued them as interesting records of the evolutionary development of humanity. God may reveal an unfolding plan for humanity through the biblical books but they were written by human beings—on earth not in heaven—and should be read in a human way. God speaks through the writers, not instead of them. Thus, Herder had no problem with admitting that the Bible contained some mistakes concerning history and science (doc. #266). Johann Salomo Semler (1725–1791), who headed the theological faculty at the University of Halle for many years, pushed in a more controversial direction in his 1771 book: “Treatise on the Free Investigation of the Canon.” Semler offered substantial rebuttals to the views of the most radical rationalists, but also suggested that Christians need not slavishly adhere to the long-standing biblical canon because not all books were still useful or necessary. Like Herder, Semler had a strong sense of historical development and held that later generations had a right to question decisions made in the past (doc. #267). For him, any materials that did not conform to the teachings of Jesus should no longer be considered authoritative. To explain how the Bible could still be seen as the Word of God even though it contained conflicting and seemingly obsolete viewpoints, Semler developed a theory of accommodation, which claimed that God adjusted the truths of revelation over time to the capacity of people to comprehend them. Jesus too had to accommodate his message to the unenlightened perspectives of his hearers. This is why he used myths or metaphors and spoke as if there were demons to be cast out. Semler and Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791), his colleague for a while in Halle, have been considered the pioneers of scientific study of the Bible in Germany. Although both of these Neologians had put away conservative notions such as the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture, they were not the most revolutionary voices of their day.1 The publication by Gotthold Lessing of the so–called “Wolfenbüttel Fragments” between 1774 and 1778 set off a far more extensive and controversial debate about the reliability of the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus. Lessing did not identify the author of these seven

65

selections, but later it became known that they had been written by Hermann Reimarus (1694–1768), professor of oriental languages at the Academic Gymnasium in Hamburg, who had not dared to disseminate his viewpoint during his lifetime. Reimarus, who was the son of a Lutheran pastor and had studied theology at Jena, relinquished belief in miracles and prophecy after reading rationalistic philosophy and writings about the Bible by English Deists. As he saw it, Jesus was a Jewish preacher of repentance who did not intend to found a new religion. Jesus looked forward to the coming of the Kingdom of God and came in time to see himself as a kind of messianic figure. After his death in Jerusalem, his disciples fraudulently claimed that he had risen from the dead and maintained that he would return again someday to establish a messianic kingdom in which his followers would gain wealth and power. According to Reimarus, their Christian religion bore little relation to the original moral focus of Jesus’ teachings (doc. #268). In a lengthy response to this theory, published in 1780, Semler argued that the teachings of Jesus were, to the contrary, quite different from the law–focused piety of the Pharisees. As for Reimarus’ doubts about the resurrection, Semler admitted that there was no irrefutable proof of its occurrence. He added, however, that, in any case, the moral content of Jesus’ teachings was the more essential tenet of Christianity (doc. #269). Michaelis responded with a direct effort to defend the resurrection. He acknowledged that Reimarus had uncovered discrepancies in the gospel accounts of the event but stated that, since the writers were not infallibly inspired by some kind of divine miracle, it is not surprising that their memories might differ. He still held the resurrection to be a tenable belief because the apostles all agreed that they had actually seen the risen Jesus (doc. #270). As for the disseminator of the Fragments, Lessing did not agree in all respects with Reimarus, but shared his skepticism about the historicity of the resurrection. Lessing also agreed that the religion of Jesus was something different from the religion about Jesus invented by his followers (doc. #271). In the early nineteenth century, the philosophical idealism of Georg W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) had a strong influence on biblical studies as well as theology. Hegel himself described Christianity as the consummate religion because he thought the unity of divine and human, or spirit and body, found expression in the idea of a God–man, who, according to the Bible, appeared historically in Jesus. When Hegel reflected directly on the historical Jesus, he main-

66

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

tained, like Immanuel Kant, that Jesus had elevated religion by focusing on obedience to moral law instead of sacred rituals. Like Semler, he thought that Jesus has accommodated his message to the level of understanding of his contemporaries. Hegel also shared with Lessing and the rationalists the belief that Christianity had later become a “positive” religion, appealing more to the supernatural than the natural and introducing external ordinances that distracted from the moral focus of the religion of Jesus (doc. #272).2 Hegel’s abstract analysis of historical and philosophical progress became a central organizing theory for some of his Christian followers, who applied the dialectic of synthesis emerging from contradictions to the development of church history. This is especially true of the writings of Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860). The son of a Lutheran pastor, Baur served himself as a pastor and tutor from 1814 until 1826 when he became a professor at Tübingen. There, he founded a school of thought, which presented Christianity as a universal form of religious consciousness emerging as a natural development from the opposing cultures of the Jews and Gentiles. For him, Christianity is not the result of a miraculous intervention of God in history through the descent of the Son of God, but rather the product of a long period of conflict; “a link in the chain of history” (doc. #273 and 274). Baur denied that there were interruptions in the natural order of things so he rejected the historicity of the miracles reported in the gospels. One of Baur’s students at Tübingen, David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874) continued the application of Hegelian categories to the analysis of Christian theology and further enhanced the claim made by Baur and others that the biblical books contained extensive mythical material. Though Reimarus might be considered the originator of the quest of the historical Jesus, it was Strauss more than anyone else who stimulated the debates that continued to unfold for the rest of the nineteenth century. After finishing his university studies, Strauss served briefly as a pastor and then became an instructor at the Protestant seminary in Maulbronn. He returned to Tübingen in 1832 to teach philosophy but eventually had to leave academia because of his provocative writings about the life of Jesus. After reading the transcript of a series of lectures on the life of Jesus presented by Friedrich Schleiermacher in Berlin, Strauss felt compelled to offer his own more critical study. In 1835, he published the first edition of “The Life of Jesus Critically Examined,” which distinguished between various kinds of myth and boldly asserted that the

gospel narratives were largely mythological, including the account of the resurrection of Jesus. Rationalistic efforts to provide a naturalistic interpretation of what happened were as misguided, in his mind, as the conservative position which viewed the resurrection as literally historical (doc. #275 and 276). Strauss, however, was not intending to be purely destructive in this account. In the second volume of his work, he proposed a dogmatic recovery from the collapse of the historical view of the gospels through the use of Hegelian categories. Following Hegel he maintained that “the infinite spirit” found its full existence in the unity of divine and human natures, but instead of seeing this taking place in a historical individual, he saw God becoming man in the “whole race of mankind.” To use Hegel’s terminology, the story of Jesus as the God–man was a religious image or representation (Vorstellung) while the idea of the “incarnation” of Absolute Spirit in humanity was the clearer philosophical concept (Begriff). The publication of the book inspired a pamphlet war and even Strauss’ mentor, Ferdinand Christian Baur and other liberal theologians disassociated themselves from his thorough–going mythological interpretation of the gospels. Strauss refined and defended his views in a series of additional books, but was denied a position at the University of Zurich to which he had already been elected because he had become so controversial. A representative example of the response of the conservatives and moderates within the Lutheran churches can be seen in the book written against Strauss in 1837 by August Tholuck (1799–1877), a professor with pietistic sympathies who taught in Halle. Tholuck defended “The Credibility of Gospel History,” and treated Strauss’ book as a pantheistic repudiation of Christianity which, though it claimed to be presupposition–less, actually worked from certain philosophical preconditions that ruled out arguments for the historicity of gospel narratives before they were even considered. Dismissing the book as a rehash of Reimarus, Tholuck continued to uphold the incarnation, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus (doc. #277). Notable among the other church figures who spoke out against Strauss were Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg (1802–1869) and Johann Neander (1789–1850) at the University of Berlin. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, a number of theologians associated with the revival of confessional Lutheranism (see chapter 4) raised broader questions about the limited focus of historical–critical study of the Bible and, in particular, the preoccupation with reconstructing the life of Jesus. Johannes

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

C. K. von Hofmann (1810–1877) at the University of Erlangen, appreciated historical investigation, but felt that intellectual analysis of the facts of the biblical narratives had become too divorced from the perspective of faith. Without returning to the conservative views of inerrancy or verbal inspiration, he argued that the Bible was unique in that, in its totality, Old and New Testament together, it provided insights into the history of salvation (Heilsgeschichte), or God’s dealings with humanity from creation to the end of time (doc. #278). In a number of books he sketched out this teleological interpretation of the history of God’s saving acts. Martin Kähler (1835–1912), who studied with both Baur and Tholuck and taught at Halle, contended in 1892 that the Life-of-Jesus movement was a blind alley because the sources were insufficient for constructing a biography. He thought that both the allegedly presupposition-less research of the biblical scholars as well as the dogmatic Christology of the early creeds failed to grasp the “Biblical Christ” who is the object of faith. Kähler made a distinction between the history of critical research (Historie) and the history which bequeaths a permanent influence on posterity (Geschichte). For him, the Christ of faith, the Christ of apostolic preaching, based on the whole New Testament, was more important than the historical Jesus whose scholars sought to find “behind” the gospels. Trusting in this “Biblical Christ” brought salvation and allowed people to grow towards true humanity (doc. #279). The most respected of the more conservative biblical exegetes was Adolf Schlatter (1852–1938) who taught at Greifswald, Berlin, and Tübingen. In his “History of the Christ” he attempted to refute the various proposals that had been made to explain away the actuality of the resurrection (doc. # 280).3 In the early twentieth century, a new picture of Jesus began to emerge from a number of scholars who stressed his eschatological consciousness. Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889) and other liberal theologians (see chapter 6) had envisioned the Kingdom of God as the gradual coming to fruition of a new ethical framework in this world. Johannes Weiss (1853–1914), his son-in-law, a professor of New Testament at Marburg and then Heidelberg, argued, to the contrary, that Jesus saw the Kingdom of God as an immanent supernatural intervention which would create a new world. According to Weiss, when the coming of the kingdom was delayed, Jesus hoped that his death would prompt it and that he would then return to rule over a new–born people as Messiah (doc. #281). A few years later in 1901,

67

Wilhelm Wrede (1859–1906) added further to the repudiation of the liberal reconstructions of the life of Jesus by his explanation of the Messianic Secret theme in Mark’s Gospel. Wrede, who served briefly as a Lutheran pastor and then became a professor at Göttingen and Breslau, argued that the Gospel of Mark was no more historical than the others. As he saw it, the concealment of messiahship was a theological construct created by the gospel writer as a way to harmonize the earthly ministry of Jesus, who had no messianic pretensions, with the beliefs of the disciples after his death (doc. #282). Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), who ended his monumental 1906 survey of the quest of the historical Jesus with Wrede, agreed with him about the limited historical value of the gospel accounts, but joined with Weiss in emphasizing the eschatological consciousness of Jesus (doc. # 283). Schweitzer concurred with both of them that the lives of Jesus written by liberal scholars in the previous century were mostly imaginative projection of what they wanted Jesus to be in order to make him relevant to the modern world. He presented an alternative picture of Jesus as an apocalyptic teacher who failed to instigate the coming of the Kingdom of God by his death. The historical Jesus is “a stranger to our time,” he claimed, but he still vaguely suggested that “the spirit which goes forth from Him” continues to influence people and is, thus, important for the ongoing life of humanity (doc. #284). It was almost fifty years before significant efforts were made once again in Germany to write the life of Jesus. After World War I, more attention was given to developing new methods of literary criticism. Scholars such as Martin Dibelius (1883–1947) in Heidelberg and Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) in Marburg analyzed the characteristics of different narrative forms in order to gain fresh insights about the formation of the gospels. They sought to relate the sayings of Jesus to the life setting (Sitz im Leben) of the church in which they were transmitted. Bultmann is also remembered, however, for an influential essay he wrote in 1941 calling for the demythologization of the Christian message (doc. #285). Concerned about Lutheran theology as well as biblical studies, Bultmann thought that the cosmology of the New Testament, and its mythological language, presented an obstacle to appreciating the truth and value of the Christian message or kerygma. The problem related not only to the spatial understandings of heaven, earth, and hell but also to reports about miracles, the resurrection of Jesus, and concepts such as sacrificial atonement. Bultmann asserted that past

68

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

scholars were mistaken if they thought only a partial demythologization was necessary, but he felt that more radical efforts to eradicate myth often threw out the kerygma as well. He not only diagnosed the problem but also offered a constructive theological solution which drew heavily on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger to set forth a demythologized interpretation of the saving event of Jesus Christ (see more in chapter 8). One of Bultmann’s students, Ernst Käsemann (1906–1998) reopened the quest of the historical Jesus in 1953. While agreeing that it was difficult to extract history from the gospels and that most nineteenth century lives of Jesus were flawed, this professor at Göttingen and Tübingen still thought that the message proclaimed by the early church was grounded upon the historical events of the life of Jesus even if the gospel writers also introduced myth (doc. #286). He proposed a set of criteria for determining the genuine utterances of Jesus. A pastor as well as a professor, he also addressed the theological question of how the Jesus of history relates to the Christ of faith and was active in addressing political issues from the period of the Second World War until the end of his life. Günther Bornkamm (1905–1990), another Bultmann student who succeeded Dibelius as professor of New Testament in Heidelberg in the post-war years, agreed with Käsemann that it was not impossible to find the history that underlay the beliefs of the early church. Consequently, he ventured to put forth a new portrayal of the life of Jesus in 1956 (doc. #287). This historical reconstruction received mixed reviews, but the significance of history for faith continued to be a widely-debated issue. Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928– 2014), professor of systematic theology in Munich, was especially noted for arguing that Christian faith must be grounded upon the historical events of the life of Jesus as well as the outline of his message. The New Testament should be viewed as a “historical source” and not only as a “preaching text.” Pannenberg stressed, in particular, the importance of the resurrection of Jesus and argued for viewing it as a historical fact (doc. #288).

PRINCIPLES OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM 265. JOHANN ALBRECHT BENGEL: GNOMON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT (1742) After publishing a more reliable Greek text of the New Testament in 1734, Bengel worked on his Gnomon (Pointer), an extensive commentary which he finished in 1742. In this book, he was both scholarly in his exegetical analysis and practical in his concern to make the Bible a guide for daily living. From Gnomon of the New Testament estament. ed. and trans. by J. B. A. Fausset. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1866), 9–10.

Fig. 3.1. Johann Albrecht Bengel (18th century)

Human selection of sayings and examples, taken from Scripture, have their use; the study, however, of the Sacred Volume, should not end here; for it should, both as a whole, and in its several parts, be thoroughly studied and mastered, especially by those who are occupied in teaching others. In order fully

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

to accomplish which, we ought to distinguish the clearly genuine words of the Sacred Text, from those which are open to doubt or question, from the existence and authority of various readings, lest we should either pass by, and thus fail to profit by the words of the apostles, or treat the words of copyists as if they were those of the apostles. . . . Most learned men entirely neglect the spirit, and, consequently, do not treat even the letter rightly. Hence it arises, that up to the present time, the most confused and contradictory opinions prevail, as to the mode of deciding between conflicting readings, and on the method of combining such decisions with the Received Text. One relies on the antiquity, another on the number of manuscripts, nay, even to such an extent, as to exaggerate their number: one man adduces the Latin Vulgate, another the Oriental Versions: one quotes the Greek Scholiasts, another the most ancient Fathers: one so far relies upon the context (which is truly the surest evidence), that he adopts universally the easier and fuller reading: another expunges, if so inclined, whatever has been once omitted by a single Ethiopic—I will not say translator, but—copyist: one is always eager to condemn the more received readings, another equally determined to defend it in every instance. Not everyone who owns a harp can play upon it. We are convinced, after long and careful consideration, that every various reading may be distinguished and classified, by due attention to the following suggestions: 1) By far the more numerous portions of the sacred text (thanks be to God) labor under no variety of reading deserving notice. 2) These portions contain the whole scheme of salvation, and establish every particular of it by every test of truth. 3) Every various reading ought and may be referred to these portions, and decided by them as by a normal standard. 4) The text and various readings of the New Testament are found in manuscripts and in books printed from manuscripts. . . . We include all these under the title of codices, which has sometimes as comprehensive a signification. 5) These codices, however, have been diffused through churches of all ages and countries, and approach so near to the original autographs, that, when taken together, in all the multitude of their varieties, they exhibit the genuine text. 6) No conjecture is ever on any consideration to be listened to. It is safer to bracket any portion of the text, which may haply appear to labor under inextricable difficulties.

69

7) All the codices taken together, should form the normal standard, by which to decide in the case of each taken separately. 8) The Greek codices, which possess an antiquity so high, that it surpasses even the very variety of reading, are very few in number: the rest are very numerous. 9) Although versions and fathers are of little authority, where they differ from the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, yet, where the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament differ from each other, those have the greatest authority, with which versions and fathers agree. 10) The text of the Latin Vulgate, where it is supported by the consent of the Latin Fathers, or even of other competent witnesses, deserves the utmost consideration, on account of its singular antiquity. 11) The number of witnesses, who support each reading of every passage, ought to be carefully examined: and to that end, in so doing, we should separate those codices which contain only the gospels, from those which contain the Acts and the epistles, with or without the Apocalypse, or those which contain that book alone; those which are entire, from those which have been mutilated; . . . 12) And so, in fine, more witnesses are to be preferred to fewer; and, which is more important, witnesses who differ in country, age, and language, are to be preferred to those who are closely connected with each other; and which is most important of all, ancient witnesses are to be preferred to modern ones. ... 13) A reading, which does not allure to too great facility, but shines with its own native dignity of truth, is always to be preferred to those which may fairly be supposed to owe their origin to either the carelessness or the injudicious care of copyists. 14) Thus, a corrupted text is often betrayed by alliteration, parallelism, or the convenience of an ecclesiastical lection, especially at the beginning or conclusion of it; from the occurrence of the same words, we are led to suspect an omission; from too great facility, a gloss. Where a passage labors under a manifold variety of readings, the middle reading is the best. 15) There are, therefore, five principal criteria, by which to determine a disputed text. The antiquity of the witnesses, the diversity of their extraction, and their multitude; the apparent origin of the corrupt reading, and the native color of the genuine one. 16) When these criteria all concur, no doubt can exist except in the mind of a sceptic.

70

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

17–27 (minor criteria and comments on the format of his text edition and commentary.) ENLIGHTENMENT REAPPRAISALS OF SUPERNATURALISM, BIBLICAL INSPIRATION, AND THE CANON 266. JOHANN GOTTFRIED HERDER: CONCERNING THE DIVINITY AND USE OF THE BIBLE (1768) This excerpt is from a sermon preached on Romans 15:4-13. From Johann Gottfried Herder. Against Pur uree Reason: Writings on Relig Religion, ion, Lang Languag uage, e, and History History. ed. and trans. by Marcia Bunge. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 201–12. . . . What does it mean to say that the Bible is the Word of God? Does it mean that these are the precise thoughts of God when God is thinking about this or that subject? This is the way God speaks to Himself? This is the way God thinks? Does it mean that when you, a human being, look in the Bible, you know the nature of God’s soul, the way God imagines everything, the way God speaks to himself and to others? Does it mean this? By no means! . . . When God reveals himself to human beings, how else can he do it except in the language and way of thinking belonging to that people, that place, that century, and that period to which he spoke? Now everyone agrees that the way a people thinks or expresses itself is not the same among all peoples of the earth; still less does this remain the same over time. . . . Every one of my reflective listeners will agree that it is good and necessary to explain and elucidate even the Bible in relation to its historical context. There is no reason to criticize the Bible because it can and must be elucidated. Every book from a past time or from a foreign nation must, precisely because it is a book, be explained in relation to its context. It is absurd to require a text to be completely and equally intelligible to all human beings, peoples and centuries. This is the case with all texts in the world. . . . God revealed himself in the soul of each person who became his writer. How did this happen? Did the writer stop thinking at that moment, and did God do all the thinking? Impossible! . . . No! It is clear to me, indeed to anyone who looks at the Bible, that all of its writers thought in a way that they could think and wanted to think in accor-

dance with their intellectual capacities, the tendency and measure of their human powers, the makeup of their temperaments, and even their acquired knowledge and their ability to write. . . . They thought under the most careful supervision of God and under the guidance of his grace. Nevertheless, as they wrote, they held onto their souls, their ways of thinking, their ways of speaking. God did not speak instead of them; rather God spoke through them. . . . It may be that the Bible contains many mistakes concerning geology, history, and astronomy (although it has been shown that these are not mistakes). Let us assume for the moment that this is the case. The Bible has certainly not been given to me in order that I might learn all these things from it but rather that I might learn about religion and virtue. Perhaps Joshua did indeed believe that the sun stood still or sat in the sky. Why should this bother me? He was able to believe this in accordance with his historical context; and God found it beneath his dignity to prove himself to be a professor of astrology and to explain to Joshua whether the sun or the earth moved. For God’s purpose this would have had as little effect as it does in everyday life to say that the sun “rises” or “sets.” It is extremely ridiculous to read and to judge the Bible from such perspectives. It is even more ridiculous to make the Bible into a cheap novel, into a wheel of fortune, or into a hocus–pocus of sudden inspirations about what I should or should not do this moment. The Bible is truly not given to us for such nonsense; rather, it is given to us for the edification and improvement of our souls. . . . Unfortunately, people have become accustomed to confusing devotion with indolence, piety with lazy thinking. This is one reason among others that we gain so little when we hear sermons or read the Bible. . . . The Holy Spirit and God’s grace function in human beings only humanly. In rational beings only rationally, in moral beings only morally. Thus, you must think thoughts, you must rouse the feelings of your heart, you must let your conscience speak, you must read the Bible actively and as thoughtfully as any other instructive, moving and edifying book. Approach the Bible with this prejudice: Behold! It is the most instructive, the most edifying book! . . .

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

267. JOHANN SALOMO SEMLER: TREATISE ON THE FREE INVESTIGATION OF THE CANON (1772) Semler differentiated between the Bible and the Word of God. The Bible contained the Word of God but only in some of its parts. From Abhandlung von fr freier eier Untersuchung des Canon anon. (Halle: C.H. Hemmerde, 1772). trans. by Eric Lund. #5 It is indisputable that all people, and especially all Christians, can and should grow in moral understanding, practice and experience. It is also true that some people have more opportunities and inner capabilities than other of their contemporaries and so actually grow in such skills more than others. . . . This moral advance in the true restoration of people comes from God, from whom all good gifts and all perfect gifts have their origin and continuance. . . . As it is clear from the accounts of the Evangelists that Jesus adjusted his teachings according to the different capabilities of those whom he instructed, so it is assuredly the case that a writer also necessarily makes accommodations to the circumstances of his readers in the construction of his accounts or teachings and does not write what would surpass the ability of a current reader to understand. . . . There remain differences among Christians such that some already have a great deal of understanding and have no need of the indulgence or condescension that is necessary for another reader in another writing. ..... So it must also remain free for some people who have begun to experience the salutary power of truth to judge the moral value of individual books in a collection, as well as specific parts of some books, according to their own understanding and experience. Other readers also remain free, according to their real or presumed insights, to accept the whole content of all of the books of the entire Old and New Testament as divine without such special differentiation. . . . It is evident that in a written composition that is directed to a reader of a definite time and a specific place, there must be many parts of limited and variable usefulness. There are no good grounds for thinking that they have an equally good application to all readers of all other times and locations. It is also entirely certain, then, that in all writings of the canon there are points and parts of the composition that have waned in significance because they relate to a time and circumstance that has passed away along with the original hearers. . . .

71

One can rightly maintain as divine truth the undeniable principles of true religion that are not seldom found in these books, especially in the Psalms and in other teachings, some parts of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job and the prophets. They are certainly from God! But not all 24 books (of the Jewish Bible) are divine instruction throughout all their content. Nor is it necessary for all people, without any exception, to learn such truths from these books of the Jews. ..... Whoever has become familiar with the teachings of Christ need not dwell on what the Jews, who are not Christians, present of old events among their people in their historical books. . . . I assure you that I, in honest conviction, in honorable inner fear of God as I know it according to the spirit of Christ, cannot persist with the until now almost general opinion that all those books that are in the ecclesiastical canon . . . are 1) evenly of divine origin, 2) or equally of immediate good use for all readers of all times. . . . I also assert that I do not consider it good to introduce all books of the so–called Scriptures without differentiation of rank into yearly preaching or house devotions. . . . I would recommend a sound selection from the books of the Old Testament, which leaves out the minor unfruitful accounts that are relevant only to the Jews and so clearly bear the stamp of a particular time or province, rather than a cold description of events that are and remain entirely foreign and unknown to us and our completely different sense of understanding and morals. . . . Holy Scripture and the Word of God are clearly to be distinguished, for we know the difference. If this has not previously been acknowledged, there is still no prohibition against us saying so. To Holy Scripture (using the term as it arose historically among the Jews) belong Ruth, Esther, the Song of Songs, etc., but not all the books that are called holy belong to the Word of God, which at all times makes all men wise unto salvation. . . . For us, for Christians as Christians, if the spirit of Christ is not seen in those books they are not writings that belong to the teaching base of the Christian religion. . . . Moreover, I believe that extending the meaning of inspiration to all words is an almost entirely unnecessary assertion of earlier theology. . . . I do not think that the theological debate about this concerns the inner bearings of a Christian nor will it make one more perfect. A decision on this matter is not important to many of our contemporaries. It can be left to the scholars. . . . I will only observe that I do not doubt that the writers found themselves in a special

72

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

state of mind when they wrote, or rather dictated, their compositions. . . . THE WOLFENBÜTTEL FRAGMENTS CONTROVERSY 268 HERMANN REIMARUS: CONCERNING THE INTENTION OF JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES (1778) From Hermann Reimarus. Fragments, ed. by Charles Talbert. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), 71–78, 95–96, 152–53, 174. trans by Ralph Fraser.

Fig. 3.2. Hermann Samuel Reimarus (ca. 1775)

#7 I cannot avoid revealing a common error of Christians who imagine because of the confusion of the teaching of the apostles with Jesus’ teachings that the latter’s purpose in his role of teacher was to reveal certain articles of faith and mysteries that were in part new and unknown, thus establishing a new system of religion, which on the other hand doing away with the Jewish religion in regard to its special customs, such as sacrifices, circumcision, purification, the Sabbath, and other Levitical ceremonies. I am aware, of course, that the apostles, especially Paul, worked at this and that later teachers in part forged

more and more mysteries and articles of faith and in part also abandoned the Jewish ceremonies more and more, until eventually Moses’ laws were completely done away with and an entirely different religion had been introduced. But I cannot find the least trace of either of these things in all the teachings, sermons and conversations of Jesus. He urged nothing more than purely moral duties, a true love of God and of one’s neighbor; on these points he based the whole content of the law and the prophets and commanded that the hope of gaining his kingdom and salvation be constructed on them. Moreover, he was born a Jews and intended to remain one; he testifies that he has not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. . . . #10 Since nowadays the doctrine of the Trinity of persons in God and the doctrine of the work of salvation through Jesus as the Son of God and Godman constitute the main articles and mysteries of the Christian faith, I shall specifically demonstrate that they are not to be found in Jesus’ discourses. . . . #11 . . . .During Jesus’ baptism and his transfiguration on the mountain there is a voice from heaven that says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” [Matt.3:17] Thus according to the divine voice Jesus is called a son of God because God loved him and had pleasure in him, which consequently is on the same basis as when in the Old Testament, David, Solomon, indeed the whole of Israel are called sons of God. . . . #18 However, if Jesus himself had wished to expound this strange doctrine of three different persons in one divine nature, utterly unknown to the Jews, or if he had regarded explaining it one of a teacher’s duties, would he have kept silent about it until after his resurrection? Moreover, would he have simply concealed it with three words in the baptismal formula at the moment when he is about to take leave of his disciples? Would he always make himself less than the Father, attribute to the Father as the giver of all the power that he ascribes to himself, and acknowledge his duty to serve the same, to obey him, and to worship him? Would he not also as a human being, when he himself prays, call upon the Father and the Holy Spirit as two equal co–persons of one being? Would he not have instructed the disciples to call upon God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in their prayers or end their prayer with praise as “Glory be to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”? We find the opposite of all this; thus, it was not his intention to present a triune God or to make himself God’s equal, no matter how much he makes of himself, nor did he intend to introduce a new doctrine that would deviate from Judaism. . . .

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

Part II #9. . . Now everyone will readily acknowledge, as do the apostles, that Christianity depends entirely upon the truth of the story of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Everybody knows that the apostles established it as a fact, partly through the evidence of Pilate’s watchmen at the grave, partly by their own statements and support, and partly through the prophecies of the Old Testament. . . . #10 . . . Did Jesus after he was put to death, actually arise from the dead? . . . #14 . . . The apostles had reason to invite to the tomb on a certain day and at a certain hour not only Pilate and his guard, but all the chief priests and scribes as spectators. Then they would have spared themselves the later suspicion of fraud and subsequent persecution and would have effected a general conversion without preaching and without any effort. But they are utterly silent about his resurrection before the event and act as if they had never even known or thought about it. But what is even more significant: in all the forty days that Jesus is supposed to be resurrected and walking among them they do not tell a single one of us any word of his being alive again so that we might go see Jesus and talk with him. Rather, after forty days and when he is supposed to have ascended into heaven they go about for the first time and say that he had been here and there. If anyone asks them where he was or who saw him, he was always in a closed room with them without a door’s ever opening or anyone’s seeing him come or go; so it was in the fields, at the Sea of Galilee, on the mountain. My goodness! Why not in the temple, before the people, before the chief priests, or at least before the eyes of any Jew at all? . . . . #20 The first thing that we notice concerning the consistency of the four evangelists is that their stories diverge from each other in almost each and every point of the affair, and each one reads differently. Although this does not straightway show a contradiction, still it certainly does not make a unanimous story, especially since the difference is expressed in the most important elements of the event. And I am definitely assured that if today in court four witnesses were heard in a cast and their testimony was as different in all respects as is that of our four evangelists’, the conclusion would at leave have to be made that no case could be constructed on such conflicting testimony. . . .

73

269. JOHANN SALOMO SEMLER: ANSWER TO THE ANONYMOUS FRAGMENTS (1780) In this rebuttal, Semler mentions two earlier Lutheran theologians from the Age of Orthodoxy: Nikolaus Hunnius (1563–1616) and Martin Chemnitz (1522–1580). The word “homoousios” (“same being” in Greek) was used in the Nicene Creed to describe the divinity of Christ. From Johann Salomo Semler. Beantwortung der Fragmente eines Ung Ungenanten enanten insbesonder insbesonderee vom Zweck Jesu und seiner Jueng Juenger er. (Halle: Verlag des Erziehungsinstituts, 1780), 46, 56, 248, 253. trans. by Eric Lund. Did Jesus teach nothing new? The unknown author sets out to prove that Jesus taught no new mysteries or articles of faith and maintains that Jesus always wanted to uphold the law and all of Judaism. . . . His pretension and self–absorption is so entirely monstrous; his enthusiasm against the doctrine of God, Father, Son and Spirit, of the three persons, a concept which was gradually assembled by newly formed Christian societies, is so evident and gross that he clearly belongs to the Deist party and wants to replace the Christian religion with that. . . . As a matter of fact, Jesus had, indeed, still not assembled all these ideas together as the readers and interpreters of the gospels and letters of the apostles later collected and assembled them from very different sources, because the religion of Jesus was free and spiritual. But then are these different collections and clarifications of these teachings not the content of a new Christian religion? Has a Christian then not experienced a conversion if he expressly thinks about certain things according to the circumstances of his time and place, and affirms this as a certain sense of the teachings of Jesus and the apostles? . . . I think it was clearly known that Jesus taught something other than the Pharisees. . . . On the Teaching of the Trinity . . . The unknown writer’s next intention is to show that Jesus never spoke of the Trinity. I observe that the Greek fathers and Latin writers themselves said that the description of the Trinity, which became more definite for teachers in the church since the fourth century, after much questioning, had not yet become defined in the teachings of Jesus. Why

74

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

does the writer now want to show what we have known for a long time? Hunnius and other respected scholars have long judged the word “person” or “three persons” to be dispensable and unnecessary for instruction in inner Christianity. Chemnitz said the same of the word “Trinity” and Luther of the word “homoousios.” It is the benefits of God, though differently attached by Christians to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, that are the main content of the Christian religion. The Death of Jesus The unknown author repeats many times that ..... the first tenet of Christianity is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This is not correct and clearly does not say enough. Christianity also consists of the teachings of Christ which stand against Judaism and heathendom and all moral disorder and also describe a perfect spiritual worship of God for all people. This is the first essential tenet of Christianity. . . . One can also not exactly say that all parts of the story of Jesus, all circumstances per se, also the resurrection per se, belong to the essential tenets of Christianity, but they stand in a true connection with the teachings of Jesus about our healing and welfare. . . . The unknown author maintains that all of Christianity rests, also for us now, on the account of the resurrection of Jesus (in the gospels) and if he has assembled three proofs, attacked them and made them uncertain, he has made all of it susceptible to attack and thus made it uncertain for us. I say I deny this entirely because he imagines the matter too simply. Christianity consists of the teachings of Jesus, not merely of the account of his resurrection without the teachings. One must differentiate the matter from the proofs themselves. All proofs, their links or associations and effects, are mutable. It is not a case of once and for all. Thus, it does not follow that if a proof or its associations that persuaded a reader or hearer in the first or second century does not persuade me now that I and all Christians have no proof. . . . I maintain, however, that for me there is one certain ground for belief: that these teachings of Jesus are better than all Judaism and heathendom. . . . I know so little about where the grave was, what trees it stood under, how long and deep the hole was, in what kind of stone or field it was hewn. I know none of these circumstances. ..... We have an entirely different context now for our moral transformation. Is our Christianity therefore not Christianity because our knowledge and judg-

ments have an entirely different standing and do not have that locale? [A Dialogue] . . . Me: Oh, I wish from my heart for the secret influence of God on my understanding and will, when I do not know what you are saying about the spirit of God, which he gladly gives to people. Jesus: So little you know in the visible world of the origins and path of the wind which is so necessary and effective in all of nature. Even so little can you further clarify the spiritual effects of God which in the invisible realm of truth are so indispensable to the growth of all spiritual perfection, to our inner perfection. But you can well know the new joyful results if you turn your ideas and inclinations to God and become a new better man. This spirit of God effects a new moral creation among men. 270. JOHANN DAVID MICHAELIS: AN EXPLANATION OF THE HISTORY OF THE BURIAL AND RESURRECTION OF CHRIST (1783) From the translation in J. C. O’Neill. The Bible’s Authority—A Portr ortrait ait Gallery of Thinkers fr from om Lessing to Bultmann Bultmann. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991), 34–35. Let us accept there might remain contradictions between the evangelists, (yet scarcely as many as the ten the author of the Fragments counts, since some of them fall away at first sight – in fact he has simply made them up, attributing something to one of the evangelists of which not one work appears in him; nevertheless there are some contradictions). From that it does not at all follow, as the late G.E. Lessing very well reminds us, that the resurrection of Christ would be historically false, the invention of his disciples, or lies, but merely this: the evangelists are not God–inspired, not infallible writers. When Lessing asserted this he certainly did not prove himself an enemy of the Christian religion, but a friend and defender, or at least a valuable and perceptive observer. Given that four men, men not rendered infallible by a divine miracle, men like ourselves, are painstakingly describing something, partly as eyewitnesses, partly as they have heard it from others; and granted they are decidedly not together correcting their accounts according to one already existing book on the subject, it is scarcely possible that they should not fall into some contradictions, simply because of the fallibility of the human memory, and because of other tendencies to err. . . .

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

But we do not believe even the resurrection of Jesus merely on the testimony of the four evangelists whose works are still to hand, and from which we gather the more particular reports of it; but, as Lessing has very well remarked, before these evangelists had written, the resurrection was just as completely certain and credible as it is now, after 1700 years—indeed, because of the proximity to the event, still more certain. The case for the Christian religion was won before ever the evangelists and apostles had written. We believe the resurrection on the testimony of the apostles who attest that they were eyewitnesses of this fact and had seen the risen Jesus, and who dared to say this in face of the whole Sanhedrin though they knew that persecution, scourging and death could follow it. . . . So then, what would we lose if we so regarded the evangelists in historical matters as we do other writers, not as inspired but as honest human writers writing in the very period in which the events had taken place? . . . . 271. GOTTHOLD LESSING: THE RELIGION OF CHRIST (1780) This short piece appeared in Lessing’s “Counter–Propositions,” written to accompany the “Fragments.” (See more in chapter 1.) From Lessing’s Theolog Theological ical Writings Writings, ed. and trans. by Henry Chadwick. (Stanford University Press, 1957), 106. 1. It is a question whether Christ was more than a mere man. That he was a real man if he was a man at all, and that he never ceased to be a man, is not in dispute. 2. It follows that the religion of Christ and the Christian religion are two quite different things. 3. The former, the religion of Christ, is that religion which as a man he himself recognized and practiced; which every man has in common with him; which every man must so much the more desire to have in common with him, the more exalted and admirable the character which he attributes to Christ as a mere man. 4. The latter, the Christian religion, is that religion which accepts it as true that he was more than a man, and makes Christ himself, as such, the object of its worship. 5. How these two religions, the religion of Christ and the Christian religion, can exist in Christ in

75

one and the same person, is inconceivable. 6. The doctrines and tenets of both could hardly be found in one and the same book. At least it is obvious that the former, that is the religion of Christ, is contained in the evangelists quite differently from the Christian religion. 7. The religion of Christ is therein contained in the clearest and most lucid language. 8. On the other hand, the Christian religion is so uncertain and ambiguous, that there is scarcely a single passage which, in all the history of the world, has been interpreted in the same way by two men. HEGELIAN BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION 272. GEORG W. F. HEGEL: THE POSITIVITY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION (1795) “Positive” Religion in this text has negative connotations. It refers to external, ritualistic religion in contrast to an inward and moral religion. From G W F Heg Hegel: el: Earl Earlyy Theolog Theological ical Writings Writings. trans. by T. M. Know (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1948/1971), 69–86. How Christianity became the Positive Religion of a Church Jesus, who was concerned till manhood with his own personal development, was free from the contagious sickness of his age and his people; free from the inhibited inertia which expends its one activity on the common needs and conveniences of life; free too from the ambition and other desires whose satisfaction, one craved, would have compelled him to make terms with prejudice and vice. He undertook to raise religion and virtue to morality and to restore to morality the freedom which is its essence. This was necessary because, just as each nation has an established religious trait, its own mode of eating and drinking, and its own customs in the rest of its way of living, so morality had sunk from the freedom which is its proper character to a system of like usages. Jesus recalled to the memory of his people the moral principles in their sacred books and estimated by them the Jewish ceremonies, the mass of expedients they had devised for evading the law, and the peace which conscience found in observing the letter of the law, in sacrifices and other sacred customs, instead of in

76

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

obedience to the moral law. To the latter alone, not to descent from Abraham, did Jesus ascribe value in the eyes of God; in it alone did he acknowledge the merit which deserved a share of blessedness in another life. Jesus, on this view, was the teacher of a purely moral religion, not a positive one. Miracles and so forth were not intended to be the basis of doctrines, for these cannot rest on observed facts; those striking phenomena were perhaps simply meant to awaken the attention of a people deaf to morality. On this view, many ideas of his contemporaries, e.g. their expectations of a Messiah, their representation of immortality under the symbol of resurrection, their ascription of serious and incurable diseases to the agency of a powerful evil being, etc., were simply used by Jesus, partly because they stand in no immediate connection with morality, partly with a view to attaching a nobler meaning to them; as contemporary ideas they do not belong to the content of a religion, because any such content must be eternal and unalterable. . . . The teaching of Jesus requires an unconditional and disinterested obedience to the will of God and the moral law and makes this obedience a condition of God’s favor and the hope of salvation; but it also contains the various features described above and it was these which could induce those who kept and disseminated his religion to base the knowledge of God’s will, and the obligation to obey it, solely on the authority of Jesus, and then set up the recognition of this authority as part of the divine will and so as a duty. The result of this was to make reason a purely receptive faculty, instead of a legislative one, to make whatever could be proved to be the teachings of Jesus or, later, of his vicars, an object of reverence purely and simply because it was the teaching of Jesus or God’s will, and something bound up with salvation or damnation. Even moral doctrines, now made obligatory in a positive sense, i.e., not on their own account, but as commanded by Jesus, lost the inner criterion whereby their necessity is established, and were placed on the same level with every other positive, specific, command, with every external ordinance grounded in circumstances or on mere prudence. And though this is otherwise a contradictory conception, the religion of Jesus became a positive doctrine about virtue. . . . This development of Christ’s teaching into the positive faith of a sect gave rise to most important results both for its external form and also for its content. These results have continually and increasingly diverted it from what we are beginning to take as the

essence of any true religion, the Christian religion included, i.e. from having as its purpose the establishment of human duties and their underlying motives in their purity and the use of the idea of God to show the possibility of the summum bonum. 273. FERDINAND CHRISTIAN BAUR: CHRISTIANITY AS A NEW PRINCIPLE OF THE WORLD’S HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT (1845) From Paul, The Apostle of Jesus Christ. Vol. 2 ed. by Eduard Zeller. Second edition. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1875), 212. trans. by Allan Menzies.

Fig. 3.3. Ferdinand Christian Bauer (ca. 1858)

The relation of Christianity to heathenism and Judaism is, as we have seen, defined as that between the absolute religion and the preparatory and subordinate forms of religion. We have here the progress from servitude to freedom, from nonage to majority, from the age of childhood to the age of maturity, from the flesh to the spirit. The state left behind is one in which the divine spirit is so little apprehended, that those dwelling in it are without any

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

higher guiding principle: this is heathenism (1 Cor 12:2, 3) or it is the torturing conflict between the law and sin, beyond which Judaism can never pass. The state now reached is a truly spiritual consciousness charged with its own proper contents and at one with itself. It is only in Christianity that man can feel himself lifted up into the region of the spirit and of the spiritual life: it is only here that his relation to God is that of spirit to spirit. Christianity is essentially the religion of the spirit, and where the spirit is there is liberty and light, the clear and unshadowed identity of the spirit with itself. . . . . . . Christ entered into humanity as a Son at the time appointed for that event, that is, when humanity had arrived at its maturity. In this view, Christianity is not merely a thing that has been imported into humanity from without; whatever conception be formed of Christ’s person, Christianity is a stage of the religious development of the world which has proceeded from a principle that is internal and immanent in humanity. Christianity is reached by the progress of the spirit to the freedom of its own self–consciousness, and humanity cannot arrive at this period till it has traversed that of unfreedom and servitude. Christ as the principle of this period of human development is the second Adam over against the first. This antithesis as much as the others suggests that Christianity is one of the stages of an immanent process of development. . . . 274. FERDINAND CHRISTIAN BAUR: LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOGMA FROM A SPECULATIVE VIEWPOINT (1865) From Ferdinand Christian Baur on the Writing of Church History History. ed. and trans. by Peter Hodgson. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 364. From the speculative standpoint, the history of dogma can be considered only as the movement of Absolute Truth, which in that history discloses itself to subjective consciousness. Or the moving principle is thinking Spirit, which strives for consciousness of itself, which wants to become one with itself in the consciousness of itself and of its true nature, and in this process objectifies itself in dogma, becomes external to itself, but also returns to itself from this objectivity in which it divests itself and attains to the freedom of its self–consciousness. The speculative standpoint is concerned with the consciousness of the Absolute; but the subject can be conscious of the

77

Absolute only because it is essential to the Absolute itself to give this consciousness. Hence, only from the speculative standpoint can we perceive in the history of dogma and in the multiplicity of its content a unity, the unity of a moving principle. . . . THE QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS AND ITS CRITICS 275. DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS: THE LIFE OF JESUS CRITICALLY EXAMINED (1835) When Strauss distinguishes between a form or image and an idea in #14 of this text he is using the Hegelian concepts of Vorstellung and Begriff. The reference to Wegscheider concerns the rationalistic theologian described further in chapter 1. From David Strauss. The Lif Lifee of Jesus Criticall Criticallyy Examined Examined. ed. by Peter Hodgson. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), 52, 53, 80, 86, 87–91. trans. by George Eliot. #8 Rise of the Mythical Mode of Interpreting the Sacred History . . . The earliest records of all nations are, in the opinion of Baur, mythical: Why should the writings of the Hebrews form a solitary exception?—whereas in point of fact a cursory glance at their sacred books proves that they also contain mythical elements. A narrative, he explains, . . . to be recognizable as mythus, first, when it proceeds from an age in which no written records existed, but in which facts were transmitted through the medium of oral tradition alone; secondly, when it presents an historical account of events which are either absolutely or relatively beyond the reach of experience, such as occurrences connected with the spiritual world, and incidents to which, from the nature of circumstances, no one could have been witness; or thirdly, when it deals with the marvelous and is couched in symbolical language. Not a few narratives of this description occur in the Bible; and an unwillingness to regard them as mythi can arise only from a false conception of a mythus, or of the character of the biblical writings. ..... Wegscheider ascribed this greater unwillingness to recognize mythi in the early records of the Hebrew and Christian religion than in the heathen religions, partly to the prevailing ignorance respecting the progress of historical and philosophical science; partly to a certain timidity which dares not call things manifestly identical by the same name. At the same

78

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

time he declared it impossible to rescue the Bible from the reproaches and scoffs of its enemies except by the acknowledgement of mythi in the sacred writings, and the separation of inherent meaning from their unhistorical form. . . . #14 The Possibility of Myth in the New Testament Considered on Internal Grounds . . . If religion be defined as the perception of truth, not in the form of an idea, which is the philosophic perception, but invested with imagery; it is easy to see that the mythical element can be wanting only when religion either falls short of, or goes beyond, its peculiar province, and that in the proper religious sphere it must necessarily exist. . . . #15 Definition of the Evangelical Mythus and its Distinctive Characteristics We distinguish by the name evangelical mythus a narrative relating directly or indirectly to Jesus, which may be considered not as the expression of a fact, but as the product of an idea of his earliest followers: such a narrative being mythical in proportion as it exhibits this character. The mythus in this sense of the term meets us, in the Gospel as elsewhere, sometimes in its pure form, constituting the substance of the narrative, and sometimes as an accident adjunct to the actual history. The pure mythus in the Gospel will be found to have two sources, which in most cases contributed simultaneously, though in different proportions, to form the mythus. The one source is, as already stated, the Messianic ideas and expectations existing according to their several forms in the Jewish mind before Jesus, and independent of him; the other is that particular impression which was left by the personal character, actions, and fate of Jesus, and which served to modify the Messianic idea in the minds of his people The account of the Transfiguration, for example, is derived almost exclusively from the former source; the only amplification taken from the latter source being—that they who appeared with Jesus on the Mount spoke of his decease. On the other hand, the narrative of the rending of the veil of the temple at the death of Jesus seems to have had its origin in the hostile position which Jesus, and his church after him, sustained in relation to the Jewish temple worship. Here already we have something historical, though consisting merely of certain general features of character, position, etc.; we are thus at once brought upon the ground of the historical mythus. The historical mythus has for its groundwork, a definite individual fact which has been seized upon by religious enthusiasm, and twined around with myth-

ical conceptions culled from the idea of the Christ. This fact is perhaps a saying of Jesus such as that concerning “fishers of men” or the barren fig–tree, which now appear in the Gospels transmuted into marvelous histories: or, it is perhaps a real transaction or event taken from his life; for instance, the mythical traits in the account of the baptism were built upon such a reality. Certain of the miraculous histories may likewise have had some foundation in natural occurrences, which the narrative has either exhibited in a supernatural light, or enriched with miraculous incidents. . . . #16 Criteria by which to Distinguish the Unhistorical in the Gospel Narrative Having shown the possible existence of the mythical and the legendary in the Gospels, both on extrinsic and intrinsic grounds, and defined their distinctive characteristics, it remains in conclusion to inquire how their actual presence may be recognized in individual cases. The mythus presents two phases: in the first place it is not history; in the second it is fiction, the product of the particular mental tendency of a certain community. These two phases afford the one a negative, the other a positive criterion, by which the mythus is to be recognized. I. Negative. That an account is not historical—that the matter related could not have taken place in the manner described is evident, First, when the narration is irreconcilable with the known and universal laws which govern the course of events. Now according to these laws, agreeing with all just philosophical conceptions and all credible experience, the absolute cause never disturbs the chain of secondary causes by single arbitrary acts of interposition, but rather manifests itself in the production of the aggregate of finite causalities, and of their reciprocal action. . . . Secondly, an account which shall be regarded as historically valid, must neither be inconsistent with itself, nor in contradiction with other accounts. The most decided case falling under this rule, amounting to a positive contradiction, is when one account affirms what another denies. Thus, one gospel represents the first appearance of Jesus in Galilee as subsequent to the imprisonment of John the Baptist, whilst another Gospel remarks, long after Jesus had preached both in Galilee and in Judea, that “John was not yet cast into prison.” II. Positive. The positive characters of legend and fiction are to be recognized sometimes in the form, sometimes in the substance of a narrative. If the form be poetical, if the actors converse in

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

hymns, and in a more diffuse and elevated strain than might be expected from their training and situations, such discourses, at all events, are not to be regarded as historical. . . . If the contents of a narrative strikingly accords with certain ideas existing and prevailing within the circle from which the narrative proceeded, which ideas themselves seem to be the product of preconceived opinions rather than of practical experience, it is more or less probable, according to the circumstances, that such a narrative is of mythical origin. ..... The boundary line, however, between the historical and the unhistorical, in records, in which as in our Gospels this latter element is incorporated, will ever remain fluctuating and unsusceptible of precise attainment. Least of all can it be expected that the first comprehensive attempt to treat these records from a critical point of view should be successful in drawing a sharply defined line of demarcation. . . .

79

tist, have invariably called in question. Jesus showed himself to his adherents only: why not also to his enemies, that they too might be convinced, and that by their testimony posterity might be precluded from every conjecture of a designed fraud on the part of his disciples? . . . If we compare with this account of the resurrection of Jesus, the precise and internally consistent attestation of his death: we must incline to the other side of the dilemma above stated, and be induced to doubt the reality of the resurrection rather than that of the death. . . .

276. DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS: DEBATES CONCERNING THE REALITY OF THE DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS (1835) From The Lif Lifee of Jesus Criticall Criticallyy Examined. ed. by Peter Hodgson. Part III, Chapter IV #140, 735. The proposition: a dead man has returned to life, is composed of two such contradictory elements, that whenever it is attempted to maintain the one, the other threatens to disappear. If he has really returned to life, it is natural to conclude that he was not wholly dead; if he was really dead it is difficult to believe that he has really become living. . . . Hence the cultivated intellect of the present day has very decidedly the following dilemma: either Jesus was not really dead, or he did not rise again. Rationalism has principally given its adhesion to the former opinion. The short time that Jesus hung on the cross, together with the otherwise ascertained tardiness of death by crucifixion, and the uncertain nature and effects of the wound from the spear, appeared to render the reality of the death doubtful. ..... But of all this our evangelical sources give no intimation and for conjecturing such details we have no ground. . . . Secure evidence of the resurrection of Jesus, would be the attestation of it in a decided and accordant manner by impartial witnesses. But the impartiality of the alleged witnesses for the resurrection of Jesus, is the very point which the opponents of Christianity, from Celsus down to the Wolfenbüttel Fragmen-

Fig. 3.4. Portrait of David F. Strauss by unidentified artist (1908)

277. AUGUST THOLUCK: THE CREDIBILITY OF GOSPEL HISTORY (1837) From Die Glaubwürdigkeit der ev evang angelischen elischen Geschichte: zugleich eine Kritik des Lebens Jesu von Str Strauss: auss: für theolog theologische ische und nicht theolog theologische ische Leser Leser. (Hamburg: F Perthes, 1837), 18, 23, 26, 28, 32. trans. by Eric Lund. Characteristics of Strauss’ Work If this work is publicized as a presentation of the life of Jesus, the booksellers are telling an untruth.

80

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

It is much more a critique of the gospel accounts, through which, apart from a thin historical thread, the life of Jesus is completely destroyed. In order to view this destructive process in the right light, we must take a look at the standpoint from which it is executed. The author tells us in his preface, and boasts, that he undertook the composition of his work without any religious or dogmatic presuppositions, from which philosophy has already freed him. What, now, is the philosophy underlying the standpoint of this critique of the life of Jesus? It is pantheism in the form that the proponents of the Hegelian school gave him and which bears a similar relationship to the positive Christian religion ..... as the mystical pantheism of Muhammed and the Christian Middle Ages. The author confesses to this pantheism with such blatancy that he merits respect for that as well as loathing. . . . Adherents of the Rationalism that has prevailed until now were of the opinion that they could take possession of lecterns and pulpits without altering the shape of Christendom entirely. They still honored the person, Jesus, as the head of the church, the greatest benefactor of humanity, the best man, whose teachings, after unfairly stripping away the parts resulting from accommodations (to his hearers), should remain the palladium or sacred preservative of humanity into the distant future. This new évangile de la raison or gospel of reason (contained in this book), however, begins another period. The Christian church no longer has any history of its head. (According to this new gospel), the weak, narrow–minded standpoint that long ago became something different from the teachings of Jesus in the church proceeding from him should become something entirely different, once again, in the newest philosophy now arising in this church. What the church has taught until now of the supernatural birth, the incarnation, the resurrection, ascension and future judgment must, in the future, be taught in only a symbolic sense. The author admits, to his credit, that as a result of these discoveries, the honorable man, who does not want to be scolded as a liar, can no longer remain a servant of the church. What shape Christendom and the church should take in the future is dark to his eyes. . . . If this system is true, Christianity cannot be true. So, this system, entering into the struggle that rationalistic Deism began against a portion of Christian dogmatics and the miraculous aspect of Christian history, attempts to run the destructive process to its completion. We are dealing here with a struggle against gospel history. . . . Misled by a philosophical

direction that easily evaporates the history under consideration, the author undertakes the daring beginning of denying the historical grounds of the entire gospel story, with the exception of a few historical data. The authenticity of the gospels, which stands in his way, is denied. He indicates that the first three gospels are a concoction of unhistorical tales, arising unintentionally at the end of the first century and that the fourth gospel, originating in the circle of disciples of the apostle John, contains, in all that is particular to it, the fantasy of an individual man. Furthermore, the substance of these tales is produced, for the most part, from mistaken interpretations of the stories of the Old Testament. . . . Against the external proofs of the authenticity of the gospels he offers the indictment that they are less strong than the philosophical preconditions, which he has set up as evidence of their untenability. He considers the historical evidence and his philosophical preconditions to have such an incommensurable greatness that he admits to not wanting to discuss any external proofs. Instead he considers himself invincible for inner reasons. And what is his irresistible evidence? The first and most important one is his philosophical claim that miracles are impossible and that the gospels, for the most part, recount entirely grotesque miracle stories. One can say of this argument that it is not new. His second claim is also nothing new, namely that there are countless divergences among the evangelists in their telling of the gospel story. Again, the author was not the one who discovered these discrepancies. . . . With regard to the novelty of this view on historical matters, it is uncertain whether the author of this life of Jesus can be credited with the measure of originality found in the writer of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments, whose construction of the life of Jesus is innovative through and through. Of course, the impact on his contemporaries would be inexplicable if this life of Jesus were not a significant book, despite the lack of novelty in its elements. It is a significant work but its significance consists in the uniting in one whole of all the elements of the school of thought that is striving against Christianity in our time and directing them at one point with confidence, strength and shrewdness. 278. J.C.K. VON HOFMANN: INTERPRETING THE BIBLE (1860) This book began as lectures in 1860 at the University of Erlangen in Bavaria. That institution became a

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

center for more strongly confessional, Neo–Lutheran theology. (See more in chapter 4.) Trans. by Christian Preus. (Minneapolis: Ausgburg Publishing House, 1959), 70, 76, 135, 166, 169, 210, 236.

81

truth and therefore is not the Word of God. This view implies a mechanical separation which assumes, as far as inspiration is concerned, a psychological impossibility. The Spirit of God did not work in a piecemeal manner, rather the whole man who wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit of God was thereby affected. Therefore, the question should rather be, what is the relationship of those matters which can be learned from natural knowledge and investigation, to Scripture as the authoritative witness of the saving truth? . . . The saving truth which the Scripture proclaims authoritatively to the Church does not consist in a series of doctrinal propositions, but rather in the fact that Jesus has mediated a connection between God and mankind. In the assurance of this comprehensive truth the interpreter of Scripture approaches his task. And since he firmly believes that the Church has the documentary proof of this truth in Scripture, he starts his work with the expectation that everything in Scripture will be an aspect of this truth. This, correctly understood, is what is meant by the rule that Scripture must be interpreted according to the analogy of faith. . . . The Theological Interpretation of the Old Testament History

Fig. 3.5. Johannes Christian Konrad von Hofmann (date unknown)

Scripture as Witness of the Saving Truth The Bible is more than an errorless book. The errors that are found in it do not injure in any way that quality of the Bible which makes it different from all other books. If one intends to make the fact that the Bible is the Word of God dependent upon that belief that there is no error of any kind in the Bible, even in information derived from natural knowledge, scientific research, or memory, then one measures the work of the Holy Spirit, not according to the purpose for which it was performed, but according to the nature of God. On the other hand, it is just as much of a mistake to hold that the Bible is not the Word of God but only contains the Word of God, and thus to differentiate between that which is religious truth and therefore is the Word of God, and that which is not religious

The history recorded in the Old Testament is the history of salvation as proceeding towards its full realization. Hence the things recorded therein are to be interpreted teleologically, i.e. as aiming at their final goal, and thus as being of the same nature as the goal yet modified by their respective place in history. Since the course and the events of that history are determined by their goal, this goal will manifest itself in all important stages of its progress in a way which, though preliminary, prefigures it. These manifestations are like the joints of a plant which develops towards its flower and fruit, namely the salvation which will be fully realized in Jesus and His Church, but which has not yet reached the full fruition of that salvation. . . . The events of Old Testament history must be taken as prefigurations (that is the prerequisite of their interpretation); and the salvation to which the Old Testament bears witness must be understood in a spiritual way. Yet in both cases the historical conditions in which they are found have to be respected. ... We interpret every single event of the Old Testament in the context of the whole history of the Old

82

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Testament, and the details of each event in relation to the event as a whole; and we discover their typological significance on that basis. . . . The Typological Understanding of the New Testament The events of the New Testament are not new as contrasted with the Old, which dissolved and vanishes as they came to pass, but are rather antitypes which bring a preliminary history to its conclusion and fulfill a prophecy. New Testament events belong to the same process as that by which they were foretold, yet they are not mere serial continuation of that process, but rather on the same line they begin a new series which contrasts with the earlier one. . . . At any given moment, the experience of salvation allows one to envisage the past history of salvation from a number of different viewpoints. Thus, we must always ascertain the viewpoint in Holy History from which the narrative has been told, in order to be able correctly to evaluate both the arrangement of the narrative as a whole and also the significance which its details have for the whole. By doing so we shall understand not only why these features of the narrative were selected but also why this manner of presentation was chosen. . . . To sum up. Our first task consisted in describing the specific character of biblical exegesis by defining it in terms of the relationship in which the theologian stands to Scripture as a whole. A further qualification of the task of interpretation was derived from two facts: first, that the historical fact of salvation in Christ had an historical preparation; and secondly, that the biblical proclamation of salvation originated step by step in the course of Holy History. As a result of these facts, the process of salvation itself and the biblical witness concerning it had to be differentiated. These are the only features that are relevant to the interpretation of Holy Scripture. ..... 279. MARTIN KÄHLER: THE SO–CALLED HISTORICAL JESUS AND THE HISTORIC BIBLICAL CHRIST (1892) Ed. & trans. by Carl Braaten (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964), 46, 48, 56, 57, 60, 62, 65. I regard the entire Life-of-Jesus movement as a blind alley. A blind alley usually has something alluring about it, or no one would enter it in the first

place. It usually appears to be a section of the right road, or no one would hit upon it at all. In other words, we cannot reject this movement without understanding what is legitimate in it. The Life-of-Jesus movement is completely in the right insofar as it sets the Bible against an abstract dogmatism. It becomes illegitimate as soon as it begins to rend and dissect the Bible without having acquired a clear understanding of the special nature of the problem and the peculiar significant of Scripture for such understanding. In other cases the problem is simply historical; here that is not so. . . .

Fig. 3.6. Martin Kähler (ca. 1890)

. . . We do not possess any sources for a “Life of Jesus” which a historian can accept as reliable and adequate. I repeat: we have no sources for a biography of Jesus of Nazareth which measure up to the standards of contemporary historical science. A trustworthy picture of the Savior for believers is a very different thing, and of this more will be said later. . . . Today everyone is on his guard when a dogma is frankly presented as such. But when Christology appears in the form of a “Life of Jesus,” there are not many who will perceive the stage manager behind the scenes, manipulating, according to his own dogmatic script, the fascinating spectacle of a colorful biography. Yet no one can detect the hidden dogmatician so well as a person who is himself a dog-

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

matician, whose job it is to pursue consciously and intentionally the implications of basic ideas in all their specific nuances. Therefore, the dogmatician has the right to set up a warning sign before the allegedly presuppositionless historical research that ceases to do real research and turns instead to a fanciful reshaping of the data. . . . This brings us to the crux of the matter: Why do we seek to know the figure of Jesus? I rather think it is because we believe him when he says, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9), because we see in him the revelation of the invisible God. Now if the Word became flesh in Jesus, which is the revelation, the flesh or the Word? Which is the more important for us, that wherein Jesus is like us, or that wherein he was and is totally different from us? Is it not the latter, namely, that which he offers us, not from our own hearts, but from the heart of the living God? I do not want to be misunderstood. That he was like us is, of course, incomparably significant for us and is treasured by us; Scripture always emphasizes it, too, but hardly ever without adding expressions like “without sin,” “by grace,” “in humility and perfect obedience,” etc. (Hebrews 4:15, 7:26, 27; 2 Corinthians 8:9, Philippians 2:6f) How he was like us is self–evident. . . . And yet, there is something unique in the way he did things, for there has never been a man like him. Why, in the final analysis, do we commune with the Jesus of our Gospels? What does he offer us? “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses (Ephesians 1:7).” Do I really need to know more of him than what Paul “delivered to [the Corinthians] as of first importance, what [he] also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared” (1 Corinthians 15:3f)? . . . Therefore, the reason we commune with the Jesus of our Gospels is because it is through them that we learn to know that same Jesus whom, with the eyes of faith and in our prayers, we meet at the right hand of God, because we know, with Luther, that God cannot be found except in his beloved Son, because he is God’s revelation to us, or, more accurately and specifically, because he who once walked on earth and now is exalted is the incarnate Word of God, the image of the invisible God—because he is for us God revealed. . . . Therefore, either we must do without the revealed God, or the reality of Christ as our Savior must be something quite different from the scarcely accessi-

83

ble, or even inaccessible, reality of those clear and transparent details of his personal life and development which are generally deemed essential in the writing of a modern biography. There must be another way to reach the historic Christ than that of scientific reconstructions which employ source criticism and historical analogy. Consider for a moment. What is a truly “historic figure,” that is, a person who has been influential in molding posterity, as measured by his contribution to history? Is it not the person who originates and bequeaths a permanent influence? He is one of those dynamic individuals who intervene in the course of events. What they are in themselves produces effects, and through these effects their influence persists. In the case of thousands of people whose traces in the history of their contemporaries and of posterity are obliterated slowly or not at all, their earlier development remains for scholarship just so many roots hidden underground, and the particulars of their activities are forever forgotten. The person whom history remembers lives on through his work, to which, in unforgettable words and personal characteristics, a direct impression of his dynamic essence often attaches itself. And the effect left by that impression is necessarily conditioned by the material on which it leaves its mark and by the environment upon which it had to and was able to work. Thus, from a purely historical point of view the truly historic element in any great figure is the discernible personal influence which he exercises upon later generations. But what is the decisive influence that Jesus had upon posterity? According to the Bible and church history it consisted in nothing else but the faith of his disciples, their conviction that in Jesus they had found the conqueror of guilt, sin, temptation, and death. From this one influence all others emanate; it is the criterion by which all the others stand or fall. This conviction of the disciples is summed up in the single affirmation, “Christ is Lord.”. . . . The risen Lord is not the historical Jesus behind the Gospels, but the Christ of the apostolic preaching, of the whole New Testament. To designate this Lord as “Christ” (Messiah) is to confess his historical mission, or as we say today, his vocation, or as our forefathers said, meaning essentially the same thing, his “threefold office” [prophet, priest, king]. That is to say, to confess him as Christ is to confess his unique, supra-historical significance for the whole of humanity. Christians became certain that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ, in total opposition to public opinion, not only with regard to the idea of the Messiah (that is, the way one conceived of the Messiah and what

84

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

one expected of him), but also with regard to the person of this Jesus of Nazareth. This was as true then as it is today. When Christians tried to make the Messiahship of Jesus credible in their sermons and then in epistles and gospels, they always made use of two kinds of experience: personal testimony to his resurrection, based on experience, and the witness of the Scriptures. As the living Lord he was for them the Messiah of the Old Covenant. Therefore, we, too, speak of the historic Christ of the Bible. It is clear that the historical Jesus, as we see him in his earthly ministry, did not win from his disciples a faith with power to witness to him, but only a very shaky loyalty susceptible to panic and betrayal. It is clear that they were all reborn, with Peter, unto a living hope only through the resurrection of Jesus from the death (1 Peter 1:3) and that they needed the gift of the Spirit to “bring to their remembrance” what Jesus had said, before they were able to understand what he had already given them and to grasp what they had been unable to bear (John 14:26; 16:12, 13). It is clear that they did not later go forth into the world to make Jesus the head of a “school” by propagating his teachings, but to witness to his person and his imperishable significance for every man. If all this is clear and certain, it is equally certain that Jesus’ followers were capable of understanding his person and mission, his deeds and his word as the offer of God’s grace and faithfulness only after he appeared to them in his state of fulfillment—in which he was himself the fruit and the eternal bearer of his own work of universal and lasting significance, a work (to be exact) whose most difficult and decisive part was the end of the historical Jesus. Even though we once know the Messiah according to the flesh, now we regard him thus no longer (2Corinthians 5:16). This is the first characteristic of Christ’s enduring influence, that he evoked faith from his disciples. And the second is that this faith was confessed. His promise depends upon such confession (Romans 10: 9-10), as does also the history of Christianity and our own decision of faith. The real Christ, that is the Christ who has exercised an influence in history, with whom millions have communed in childlike faith, and with whom the great witnesses of faith have been in communion—while striving, apprehending, triumphing and proclaiming – this real Christ is the Christ who is preached. The Christ who is preached, however, is precisely the Christ of faith. He is the Jesus whom the eyes of faith behold at every step he takes and through every syllable he utters—the Jesus whose image we impress upon our

minds because we both would and do commune with him, our risen, living Lord. The person of our living Savior, the person of the Word incarnate, of God revealed, gazes upon us from the features of that image which has deeply impressed itself on the memory of his followers—here in bold outlines, there in single strokes—and which was finally disclosed and perfected through the illumination of his Spirit. . . . 280. ADOLF SCHLATTER: THE HISTORY OF THE CHRIST—THE RESURRECTION (1920) Trans. by Andreas Köstenberger. Rapids: Baker Books, 1997), 375–82.

(Grand

The Continuation of Jesus’ Life beyond the End of His Earthly Ministry The simplest way of categorizing the Easter account among Jesus’ later effects appears to be the one of interpreting the Easter reports as legends. That the poetry arising with those reports has a lofty quality need not be disputed by the one who represents this thought. This is not a crude, impure legend, but perhaps still nothing more than a legend, a series of ideas that doctrine produced by itself. . . . This theory, however, eliminates together with the Gospels also the statement of Paul. For Paul, the assertion that Jesus had risen came to him not as a legend from an already established theory but from the fact that he saw him. No interpretation that we may provide for Paul’s claim leads us to fiction; he always confronts us with what happened, with what he experienced. But Paul did not attribute the appearance of Jesus solely to himself while denying it for the other apostles; he rather claimed for himself merely what he found with the others, thus putting himself, on account of the appearance granted to him, on the same level as them. Since Paul’s conversion leads us back to the beginning of the community, his testimony makes clear that the Easter account was told from the beginning as the apostles’ experience. It never consisted of the explanation that Jesus “must have risen” but rather appeared as a testimony that they had seen him. . . . When there were no more appearances of the Risen One, they were no longer claimed or invented. There emphatically did not arise a legend that construed appearances for the purpose of proving his messiahship. The Easter account as we know it had this form from the beginning, for it always appeared as the “testimony” of those who had experienced the days of Easter. . . .

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

The necessity of establishing the transition from the cross to the establishment of the community, not by poetry or theory, but by a series of events filling the days of Easter, is met by that interpretation of the Easter account that considers it to be a series of visions. Like the prior theory, it categorizes the report under Jesus’ later effects and does not admit to the continuation of his history beyond death. It does, however differ from the fiction theory by allowing for experiences on the part of the disciples, thereby stepping onto the ground of history, albeit not Jesus’ history, but that of the disciples. In them, it is said, one should find the conditions for these events so that they arose from their wishes and moods. They desired for Jesus not to be dead and wanted him to rise, longing for his appearance. From this, it is claimed, arose the appearances, causes merely subjectively, yet with a vividness that made them real for their consciousness and authorized them to assert that they had seen him. This ideas finds support in the fact that visions also occur later in the apostles’ lives, so that one could assume a certain predisposition for these. It is also true that Jesus’ crucifixion deeply agitated the disciples. They were not in a calm, calculating mood that was capable of sober observation, least of all the women who have such a great part in the Easter account. Yet our sources reveal nothing of such a passionate mood but are characterized by a solemn calmness that is becoming for certitude. This, it is argued, is only the mood of a later time that has become accustomed to the concept of the resurrection and that now treats it as an assured fact. . . . This interpretation of the events has against it that the appearances are not narrated in terms of visions but, if such visions are assumed, can have received their present form only by deliberate transformation that camouflaged their visionary character. Paul did not judge differently here than the other disciples. He distinguished his later visionary experiences from that appearance of Jesus which made him an apostle, precisely as John distinguished the visionary view of Jesus that he experienced on Patmos from the encounters with the risen one, adding to them only that appearance of Jesus he himself had been given (1 Cor. 15:1–11). . . . As far as the empty tomb is involved in the events, they are at any rate not conceived of as a vision. Those accounts that do not occur at the tomb, such as Jesus’ appearance to the twelve or to the two who walked to Emmaus or at the Sea of Tiberias, likewise are unlikely to be descriptions of visions, since they always involved a multitude of disciples at the same

85

time who are simultaneously part of the action. ..... The risen one remains, of course, a mystery for them, as is strongly stressed by the accounts; he lives in a different order of things and comes and goes as someone who is placed into nature is not able to do. But the accounts do not thereby render doubtful the event’s rootedness in a reality other than merely the disciples’ spiritual condition. . . . This gives preference to a third type of explanation rather than the supposition of visions. This theory resorts not to an ecstatic alteration of consciousness but to a preoccupation with illusions. It differs from the previous two by not interrupting the normal course of events and by allowing the consciousness to function in its normal manner, injecting concepts into early Christian consciousness by the effect of an objective factor, such as a strong will. These concepts are completely characterized by a normal way of perception. This theory has the advantage that events of the kind of which it conceives lead, not to mysticism, but to faith, and may happen to many people at the same time, just as the power inherent in illusions may simultaneously control the attention of many. Thereby, however, the theory approximates miracle, and this all the more, the more it distances itself from the pathological processes assumed by vision theories, and the more it recognizes, in those illusions brought to the clarity of seeing, the source of effective and valuable powers that shape the progress of history. . . . This interpretation of the Easter narrative deviates from the disciples’ account by eliminating the elements in it that touch on nature. Accordingly, one should not speak of Jesus’ body and of his empty tomb. It retreats exclusively to the sphere of the internal event, but in such a way that the event is supposed to have been affected by stimuli coming from outside and above it. This theory’s deviation from New Testament principles does not have historical but doctrine reasons. It results from the ideas that the historian develops regarding the end of human life and the relation of the internal life to nature. Its discussion therefore transcends historical observation. ..... All theories using the concept of vision or illusion to interpret the Easter story are open to a dualistic tendency, since they surrender the natural world to destruction and allow the glorification to occur through the elimination of the earthly. But the Easter concept of the disciples, according to which the Christ experiences in his entire human condition, including his body, the life–giving and glorifying work of God, resulted in that complete faith that

86

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

knows itself not to be cut off from God in the natural realm, in interaction with earthly matter, and in circumstances conditioned by the body. Precisely in these connections and spheres, this faith knows simultaneously that it is integrally linked with God. This is significant for the development of a hope that conceives of the ultimate goal of man and of the world in terms of the Christ and therefore longs, not for immortality with the separation of this world from the world beyond, but the fulfillment of the world that will grant to humanity, including the nature bearing it, entrance into an eternal glory. . . . MESSIANIC CONSCIOUSNESS AND ESCHATOLOGY 281. JOHANNES WEISS: JESUS’ PROCLAMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD (1892) Trans. by Richard H. Hiers & David L. Holland. Life of Jesus Series, ed. by Leander Keck. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 129–35. Let us now summarize once more the principal results of our study: 1) Jesus’ activity is governed by the strong and unwavering feeling that the messianic time is imminent. Indeed, he even had moments of prophetic vision when he perceived the opposing kingdom of Satan as already overcome and broken. At such moments as these he declared with daring faith that the Kingdom of God had actually already dawned. 2) In general, however, the actualization of the Kingdom of God has yet to take place. In particular, Jesus recognized no preliminary actualization of the rule of God in the form of the new piety of his circle of disciples, as if there were somehow two stages, a preliminary one and the Kingdom of Completion. In fact, Jesus made no such distinction. The disciples were to pray for the coming of the Kingdom, but men could do nothing to establish it. 3) Not even Jesus can bring, establish, or found the Kingdom of God; only God can do so. God himself must take control. In the meantime, Jesus can only battle against the devil with the power imparted to him by the divine Spirit, and gather a band of followers who, with a new righteousness, with repentance, humility and renunciation, await the Kingdom of God. 4) The messianic consciousness of Jesus consists of the certainty that when God has established the

Kingdom, judgment and rule will be transferred to him. God will raise him to the office of “Son of man” (John 3:14), to which he is entitled (John 5:27), and will make him Lord and Messiah (Acts 2:36). 5) Although Jesus initially hoped to live to see the establishment of the Kingdom, he gradually became certain that before this could happen, he must cross death’s threshold, and make his contribution to the establishment of the Kingdom in Israel by his death. After that, he will return upon the clouds of heaven at the establishment of the Kingdom, and do so within the lifetime of the generation which had rejected him. Jesus did not fix the time when this will take place more exactly, since the coming of the Kingdom cannot be determined in advance by observation of signs or calculations. 6) But when it comes, God will destroy this old world which is ruled and spoiled by the devil, and create a new world. Even mankind is to participate in this transformation and become like the angels. 7) At the same time, the Judgment will take place, not only over those who are still alive at the coming of the Son of man, but also over those who will then be raised from the dead, good and evil, Jews and Gentiles alike. 8) The land of Palestine will arise in a new and glorious splendor, forming the center of the new Kingdom. Alien people will no longer rule over it, but will come to acknowledge God as Lord. There will be neither sadness nor sin; instead those who are in God’s Kingdom shall behold the living God, and serve him in eternal righteousness, innocence, and bliss. 9) Jesus and his faithful ones will rule over this new-born people of the twelve tribes, which will include the Gentiles. 10) The rule of God is not suspended by the rule of the Messiah, but thereby actualized, whether it be that they reign together side by side, or that Jesus reigns under the highest sovereignty of God. . . . The results just summarized present peculiar difficulties for systematic and practical theology. Jesus’ idea of the Kingdom of God appears to be inextricably involved with a number of eschatological–apocalyptical views which systematic theology has been accustomed to take over without critical examination. But now it is necessary to inquire whether it is really possible for theology to employ the idea of the Kingdom of God in the manner in which it has recently been considered appropriate. The question arises whether it is not thereby divested of its essential traits and, finally, so modified that only the name still remains the same. Thus, for example, Jesus’

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

consciousness of the nearness of the Kingdom is a feature that cannot be disposed of. Protestant theology, however, generally regards its task to be that of framing a unified Christian view of the world and life, which is supposed to be authoritative both for the individual and for all people for a long time to come. It would, therefore, at least have to mitigate the ardent eschatological tone of Jesus’ proclamation. ... That which is universally valid in Jesus’ preaching, which should form the kernel of our systematic theology is not his idea of the Kingdom of God, but that of the religious and ethical fellowship of the children of God. This is not to say that one ought no longer to use the concept “Kingdom of God” in the current manner. On the contrary, it seems to me, as a matter of fact, that it should be the proper watchword of modern theology. Only the admission must be demanded that we use it in a different sense from Jesus. The real difference between our modern Protestant world-view and that of primitive Christianity is, therefore, that we do not share the eschatological attitude. . . . Another attitude has silently come among us in place of the strictly eschatological one—where it is not present, preaching and instruction should do all they can to awaken it. The world will further endure, but we, as individuals, will soon leave it. Thereby, we will at least approximate Jesus’ attitude in a different sense, if we make the basis of our life the precept spoken by a wise man of our day: “Live as if you were dying.” We do not await the Kingdom of God which is to come down from heaven to earth and abolish this world, but we do hope to be gathered with the church of Jesus Christ into the heavenly Βασίλεία. In this sense we, too, can feel and say, as did the Christians of old: “Thy Kingdom come.” 282. WILHELM WREDE: THE MESSIANIC SECRET (1901) Trans. by James C. G. Grieg. (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co. Ltd., 1971). Reprinted in Gregory Dawes, ed. The Historical Jesus Quest: Landmarks in the Search for the Jesus of History History. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), 114–16. Present–day investigation of the Gospels is entirely governed by the idea that Mark in his narrative had more or less clearly before his eyes the actual circumstances of the life of Jesus, even if not without gaps. It presupposes that he is thinking from the standpoint

87

of the life of Jesus, and is motivating the individual features of his story in accordance with the actual thoughts and feelings of Jesus, and is linking together the events he describes in the historical psychological sense. . . . This view and this procedure must be recognized as wrong in principle. It must frankly be said that Mark no longer has a real view of the historical life of Jesus. . . .

Fig. 3.7. Wilhelm Wrede (date unknown)

The person of Jesus is dogmatically conceived. He is the bearer of a definite dignity bestowed by God, or, which comes to the same thing, he is a higher supernatural being. Jesus acts with divine power and he knows the future in advance. The motives for his actions do not derive from human peculiarity, human objectives and human necessities. The one pervasive motive rather takes the form of a divine decree lying above and beyond human comprehension. This he seeks to realize in his actions and his suffering. The teaching of Jesus is correspondingly supernatural. His knowledge is such as no man can

88

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

possess on his own account but he conceals it and conceals his one being because from the beginning his gaze is directed to the point of the whole story, i.e. the resurrection, which is the event that will make manifest for man what is secret. For he is known in the world beyond and already on earth he has a link with that world when he proves his power to the spirits or sees the heavens opening. . . . These motifs and not just the historical ones represent what actually motivates and determines the shape of the narrative in Mark. They give it its coloring. The interest naturally depends on them and the actual thought of the author is directed towards them. It therefore remains true to say that as a whole the Gospel no longer offers a historical view of the real life of Jesus. Only pale residues of such a view have passed over into what is a supra–historical view for faith. In this sense the Gospel of Mark belongs to the history of dogma. . . .

eschatological can have suffered no alteration by reason of outward events but must have been the same from beginning to end. . . .

283. ALBERT SCHWEITZER: THE SECRET OF THE MESSIAHSHIP—THOROUGH-GOING ESCHATOLOGY (1901) Trans. by Walter Lowrie. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1914), 92, 261–71. The Eschatological Character of the Charge to the Twelve “The Kingdom of God is at hand” (Matthew 10:7)—this word which Jesus commissions his disciples to proclaim is a summary expression of all his previous preaching. . . . The one errand of the apostles as teachers is to cry out everywhere the warning of the nearness of the Kingdom of God to the intent that all may be warned and given opportunity to repent. . . . In the commission of the Twelve, Jesus imparts instruction about the woes of the approaching Kingdom. . . . The New View The idea of Passion is dominated only by the eschatological conception of the Kingdom. In the charge to the Twelve the question is only about the eschatological – not about the ethical–nearness of the Kingdom. From this it follows, for one thing, that Jesus’ ministry counted only upon the eschatological realization of the Kingdom. Then, however, it is evident that the relation of his ethical thought to the

Fig. 3.8. Albert Schweitzer

Summary of the Life of Jesus . . . The sending of the Twelve was the last effort for bringing about the Kingdom. As they then returned, announced to him their success, and reported that they had power over the evil spirits, it signified to him, all is ready. So now he expects the dawn of the Kingdom in the most immediate future. ... . . . The Kingdom which Jesus expected so very soon failed to make its appearance. . . . By his retreat into the region of the Genesareth Jesus withdrew himself from the Pharisees and the people in order to be alone with his Disciples [Matthew 14]. . . . He urgently needed such a retreat, for he had to come to an understanding about two messianic facts.

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

Why is the Baptist executed by the secular authorities before the messianic time has dawned? Why does the Kingdom fail to appear notwithstanding that the tokens of its dawning are present? The secret is make known to him through the Scripture: God brings the Kingdom about without the general Affliction. He whom God has destined to reign in glory accomplishes it upon himself by being tried as a malefactor and condemned. Wherefore the others go free: he makes the atonement for them. What though they believe that God punishes him, though they come offended in him who preached unto them righteousness,—when after his Passion the glory dawns, then shall they see that he has suffers for them. . . . Thus Jesus read in the Prophet Isaiah what God had determined for him, the Elect. The end of the Baptist showed him in what form he was destined to suffer this condemnation: he must be put to death by the secular authority as a malefactor in the sight of all the people. Therefore he must make his way up to Jerusalem for the season when all Israel is gathered there. . . . The journey to Jerusalem was the funeral march to victory. Within the secret of the Passion lay concealed the secret of the Kingdom. . . . Only through humiliation and the meek sacrifice of service is one prepared to reign in the Kingdom of God. Therefore must he, who shall exercise supreme authority as Son of Man, make now an atonement for many by giving up his life in meek sacrifice. . . . In the neighborhood of death Jesus draws himself up to the same triumphant stature as in the days by the seaside,—for with death comes the Kingdom. . . . 284. ALBERT SCHWEITZER: THE RESULTS OF THE QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS (1906, 1933) The first part comes from Schweitzer’s summary of his Jesus research in his 1933 autobiography, Out of My Lif Lifee and Thought Thought. trans. by C. T. Campion. (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1933), 46–48, 399. The second part comes from the final chapter of The Quest of the Historical Jesus Jesus, trans. by W. Montgomery. (New York: MacMillan Company, 1950), 399–401. Research first reaches a fairway of real history through the channel of a critical scrutiny of the Gospels so as to determine the historical value of their narratives. Its work, which began with the nineteenth century and was continued for several

89

decades, brought it to the following results: that the picture given by the Gospel of John is irreconcilable with that of the other three; that these three are the older, and therefore the more credible sources, that the matter which they contain in common with one another is given in its earliest form by the Gospel of Mark; and finally, that Luke’s Gospel is considerably later than those of Mark and Matthew. . . . From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards there is gradually built up the modern historical view that Jesus attempted to spiritualize the realistic Messianic hopes of contemporary Judaism; that He came forward as a spiritual Messiah and founder of an ethical Kingdom of God; and that finally when the people, failing to understand him, deserted him, he came to the resolution to die for his cause, and in that way to carry it to victory. . . . The most living presentation of this modernized theory about Jesus is to be found, I think, in Harnack’s “What is Christianity?” (1901). But as early as 1860 separate investigations into the problems of the life of Jesus began to make it clear that the view which represents him as trying to spiritualize the eschatological, Messianic expectations of his time, cannot be sustained, because in a series of passages he speaks in a quite realistic way of the coming of the Son of Man and the Messianic Kingdom when this world comes to an end. . . . The question whether Jesus thought eschatologically or not resolves itself, into the one point, whether he held himself to be the Messiah or not. Anyone who admits that he did so must also admit that his ideas and expectations were of the eschatological type of late Judaism. Anyone who refuses to recognize this element in his thought must also refuse to attribute to him any consciousness of being the Messiah. That is the way in which Wilhelm Wrede in his work “The Messianic Secret of the Gospels” (1901) preserves consistency. . . . Toward the end of the century the view which sees an eschatological character in the preaching of Jesus and his Messianic self–consciousness begins to make headway, as developed by the Heidelberg theologian, Johannes Weiss (1892), in a book written with wonderful clarity, “The Preaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God.” Scientific theology cherishes, nevertheless, in secret the hope that it will not, after all, have to admit everything that Weiss propounds. In reality, however, it has to go even further than he, for he comes to a stop halfway. He makes Jesus think and talk eschatologically without proceeding to the

90

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

natural inference that his actions also must have been determined by eschatological ideas. Chapter 20: Results of the Quest The study of the Life of Jesus has had a curious history. It set out in quest of the historical Jesus, believing that when it had found Him, it could bring Him straight into our time as a Teacher and Savior. It loosed the bands by which He had been riveted for centuries to the stony rocks of ecclesiastical doctrine, and rejoiced to see life and movement coming into the figure once more, and the historical Jesus advancing, as it seemed to meet it. But He does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to His own. What surprised and dismayed the theology of the last forty years was that, despite all forced and arbitrary interpretations, it could not keep Him in our time, but had to let Him go. He returned to His own time, not owing to the application of any historical ingenuity, but by the same inevitable necessity by which the liberated pendulum returns to its original position. The historical foundation of Christianity as built up by rationalistic, by liberal, and by modern theology no longer exists; but that does not mean that Christianity has lost its historical foundation. The work which historical theology thought itself bound to carry out, and which fell to pieces just as it was nearing completion, was only the brick facing of the real immovable historical foundation which is independent of any historical confirmation or justification. Jesus means something to our world because a mighty spiritual force streams forth from Him and flows through our time also. This fact can neither be shaken nor confirmed by any historical discovery. It is the solid foundation of Christianity. . . . But it is impossible to over-estimate the value of what German research upon the Life of Jesus has accomplished. It is a uniquely great expression of sincerity, one of the most significant events in the whole mental and spiritual life of humanity. . . . But the truth is, it is not Jesus as historically known, but Jesus as spiritually arisen within men, who is significant for our times and can help it. Not the historical Jesus, but the spirit which goes forth from Him and in the spirits of men strives for new influence and rule, is that which overcomes the world.

THE DEMYTHOLOGIZATION DEBATE 285. RUDOLF BULTMANN: NEW TESTAMENT AND MYTHOLOGY (1941) This text states the problem as Bultmann saw it. His attempt to articulate an appropriate theological response can be found in chapter 10. From Kerygma and Myth Myth, ed. by Hans Werner Bartsch, (London: SPCK, 1954), 1–12. trans. by Reginald Fuller.

Fig. 3.9. Rudolf Bultmann

The Problem: The Mythological View of the World and the Mythical Event of Redemption The cosmology of the New Testament is essentially mythical in character. The world is viewed as a three-storied structure, with the earth in the center, the heaven above, and the underworld beneath. Heaven is the abode of God and of celestial beings—the angels. The underworld is hell, the place of torment. . . . Miracles are by no means rare. Man is not in control of his own life. Evil spirits may take

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

possession of him. Satan may inspire him with evil thoughts. Alternatively, God may inspire his thought and guide his purposes. He may grant him heavenly visions. He may allow him to hear his word of succor or demand. He may give him the supernatural power of his Spirit. History does not follow a smooth unbroken course; it is set in motion and controlled by these supernatural powers. . . . The end will come soon and will take the form of a cosmic catastrophe. It will be inaugurated by the “woes” of the last time. Then the Judge will come from heaven, the dead will rise, the last judgment will take place, and men will enter into eternal salvation or damnation. This then is the mythical view of the world which the New Testament presupposes when it presents the event of redemption which is the subject of its preaching. It proclaims in the language of mythology that the last time has now come. “In the fullness of time” God sent forth his Son, a pre–existent divine Being, who appears on earth as a man. He dies the death of a sinner on the cross and makes atonement for the sins of men. His resurrection marks the beginning of the cosmic catastrophe. Death, the consequence of Adam’s sin, is abolished, and the daemonic forces are deprived of their power. The risen Christ is exalted to the right hand of God in heaven and made “Lord” and “King.” The will come again on the clouds of heaven to complete the work of redemption, and the resurrection and judgement of men will follow. Sin, suffering and death will then be finally abolished. . . . The Mythological View of the World Obsolete All this is the language of mythology, and the origin of the various themes can be easily traced in the contemporary mythology of Jewish Apocalyptic and in the redemption myths of Gnosticism. To this extent the kerygma [proclamation] is incredible to modern man, for he is convinced that the mythical view of the world is obsolete. We are therefore bound to ask whether, when we preach the Gospel today, we expect our converts to accept not only the Gospel message, but also the mythical view of the world in which it is set. If not, does the New Testament embody a truth which is quite independent of its mythical setting? If it does, theology must undertake the task of stripping the kerygma from its mythical framework, of “demythologizing” it. Can Christian preaching expect modern man to accept the mythical view of the world as true? To do so would be both senseless and impossible. It would

91

be senseless, because there is nothing specifically Christian in the mythical view of the world as such. It is simply the cosmology of a pre–scientific age. Again, it would be impossible, because no man can adopt a view of the world by his own volition—it is already determined for him by his place in history. ..... Man’s knowledge and mastery of the world have advanced to such an extent through science and technology that it is no longer possible for anyone seriously to hold the New Testament view of the world—in fact, there is hardly anyone who does. ..... The only honest way of reciting the creeds is to strip the mythological framework from the truth they enshrine—that is, assuming that they contain any truth at all, which is just the question that theology has to ask. . . . The mythical eschatology is untenable for the simple reason that the Parousia of Christ never took place as the New Testament expected. . . . But natural science is not the only challenge which the mythology of the New Testament has to face. There is the still more serious challenge presented by modern man’s understanding of himself. . . . Although biology and psychology recognize that man is a highly dependent being, that does not mean that he has been handed over to powers outside of and distinct from himself. . . . Conscious as he is of his own moral responsibility, he cannot conceive how baptism in water can convey a mysterious something which is henceforth the agent of all his decisions and actions. He cannot see how physical food can convey spiritual strength and how the unworthy receiving of the Eucharist can result in physical sickness and death (1 Cor 11:30) . . . . Again, the biblical doctrine that death is the punishment of sin is equally abhorrent to naturalism and idealism, since they both regard death as a simple and necessary process of nature. . . . The same objections apply to the doctrine of the atonement. How can the guilt of one man be expiated by the sin of another who is sinless—if indeed one may speak of a sinless man at all? . . . The resurrection of Jesus is just as difficult, if it means an event whereby a supernatural power is released which can henceforth be appropriated through the sacraments. . . . And as for the pre–existence of Christ, with is corollary of man’s translation into a celestial realm of light, and the clothing of the human personality in heavenly robes and a spiritual body—all this is not only irrational but utterly meaningless.

92

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

The Task Before Us . . . Whatever else may be true, we cannot save the kerygma by selecting some of its features and subtracting others, and thus reduce the amount of mythology in it. . . . And if we once start subtracting from the kerygma, where are we to draw the line? The mythical view of the world must be accepted or rejected in its entirety. . . . If the truth of the New Testament proclamation is to be preserved, the only way is to demythologize it. ... How then is the mythology of the New Testament to be reinterpreted? This is not the first time that theologians have approached this task. . . . The liberal theologians of the last century were working on the wrong lines. They threw away not only the mythology but also the kerygma itself. . . . The last twenty years have witnessed a movement away from criticism and a return to a naïve acceptance of the kerygma. The danger both for theological scholarship and for the Church is that this uncritical resuscitation of the New Testament mythology may make the Gospel message unintelligible to the modern world. . . . Perhaps we may put it schematically like this: whereas the older liberals used criticism to eliminate the mythology of the New Testament, our task today is to use criticism to interpret it. . . .

sion for the theologian in the problem of the historical Jesus and of his significance for faith. Developing this in more detail, we find that present–day criticism hinges on three points. First, efforts are being made to show that the Synoptists contain much more authentic tradition than the other side is prepared to allow. Secondly, a case is being made out with particular vigor for the reliability, if not of the whole of the Passion and Easter tradition of the Gospels, at least of the most primitive elements in it. In both cases, the concern is to counteract any drastic separation, or even antithesis, of kerygma and tradition. Those who take this line are, fundamentally, trying to maintain that the kerygma includes the recital of facts as mediated by the tradition. And thus they arrive, thirdly, at the systematic conception of a ‘salvation history’ running parallel to universal history, embedded in it but yet separable from it, having its own laws and continuity and finding its vehicle in the history of faith and of the Church as the new divine creation. . . .

THE NEW QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS 286. ERNST KÄSEMANN: THE PROBLEM OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS (1953) Trans. by W. J. Montague in Essays on New Testament Themes Themes. (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1964), 15–47. . . . In his “Primitive Christianity in its Contemporary Settings,” [Bultmann] included his portrayal of Jesus within his account of late Judaism and, correspondingly, sketched New Testament Theology as a development of the primitive Christian message, thus making the preaching of Jesus appear the mere precondition of the latter. . . . Knowledge proceeds by antitheses and Bultmann’s radicalism is provoking a reaction. But over and above this, we are all without exception concerned at present with the question of a proper understanding of history and historicity which is bound to find concrete, necessary and, indeed, archetypal expres-

Fig. 3.10. Ernst Käsemann

The characteristic feature of our situation, then, is that the classical liberal question about the Jesus of history is increasingly regaining its theological important; and that, paradoxically, this is happening at a time when liberalism is discredited over wide areas of Church life, and happening as a counter– blast to an historical and theological criticism which

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

itself sprang from the soil of liberalism. This change of fronts is certainly among the most fascinating and fruitful phenomena in recent theological history. For two hundred years, critical research has been trying to free the Jesus of history from the fetters of the Church’s dogma, only to find at the end that such an attempt was predestined to failure, and that we can learning nothing at all about the historical Jesus except through the medium of primitive Christian preaching and of the Church’s dogma which is bound up with it; we can no longer detach him neatly and satisfactorily from the Christ of preaching and of faith. . . . History is only accessible to us through tradition and only comprehensible to us through interpretation. To be acquainted merely with what actually happened is of little use to us by itself. . . . No one has ever been compelled (in the true sense) to make his decision between faith and unbelief, simply because someone else has succeeded in representing Jesus convincingly as a worker of miracles. And nothing is settled about the significance of the Resurrection tidings for me personally, simply because the evidence of the empty tomb has been shown to be reliable. The handing on of relatively probable facts does not as such provide any basis for genuinely historical communication and continuity. It is obvious that primitive Christianity was well aware of this. We cannot otherwise explain why its Gospels were not written primarily as reportage and why its own kerygma actually overlays and conceals the figure of the historical Jesus, thus facing us as historians with incalculable difficulties and very often making any reconstruction quite impossible. . . . By acting as it did the community bore (and still bears) witness to history as being living and contemporary. It interprets out of its own experience what for it has already become mere history and employs for this purpose the medium of its preaching. It is precisely by this method that the community rescues the facts of the past from being regarded only as prodigies and wonders. And in so doing it demonstrates that in its eyes, Jesus is no mere miracle–worker, but the Kyrios, from whom it knows itself to receive both grace and obligation. To state the paradox as sharply as possible: the community takes so much trouble to maintain historical continuity with him who once trod this earth that it allows the historical events of this earthly life to pass for the most part into oblivion and replaces them by its own message. It is not only at this point in its history that the community does this. The same process is always being repeated in the course of Church history. . . .

93

Mere history, the existence of which can only be prolonged with difficulty by its presence to human consciousness has, as such, no genuine historical significance, even if it is full of curiosities and wonders. At any rate, it has no more historical significance than a lunar landscape which itself is not without curiosities and wonders. Mere history [Historie] only takes on genuine historical [geschichtliche] significance in so far as it can address both a question and an answer to our contemporary situation; in other words, by finding interpreters who hear and utter this question and answer. For this purpose primitive Christianity allows mere history no vehicle of expression other than the kerygma. . . . If these observations are in any way accurate, we conclude from them once again that it was in fact eschatological interests which led irresistibly to the setting out of the earthly history of Jesus in the Gospels. We conclude further that primitive Christianity was in any event not primarily interested in the bruta facta of the past as such, but was engaged in eliciting from the past the essence both of its faith and of its own history. And thirdly, it emerges that, as a result of this exercise, those concerned did not arrive at any monochrome outlook, but only at various partly interlocking, partly contradictory answers. They were agreed only in one judgment: namely, that the life history of Jesus was constitutive for faith, because the earthly and the exalted Lord are identical. The Easter faith was the foundation of the Christian kerygma but was not the first or only source of its content. Rather, it was the Easter faith which took cognizance of the fact that God acted before we became believers, and which testified to this fact by encapsulating the earthly history of Jesus in its proclamation. How far are we obliged, or even able, to appropriate to ourselves the decision which was then taken? The immediate answer to this question is that we also cannot do away with the identity between the exalted and the earthly Lord without falling into Docetism and depriving ourselves of the possibility of drawing a line between the Easter faith of the community and myth. Conversely, neither our source nor the insights we have gained from what has gone before permit us to substitute the historical Jesus for the exalted Lord. . . .

94

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

287. GÜNTHER BORNKAMM: JESUS OF NAZARETH (1956) Trans. by Irene and Fraser McLuskey. (NY: Harper & Row Publishers, 1956/1960), 13–14, 22, 24–25. Faith and History in the Gospels No one is any longer in the position to write a life of Jesus. This is the scarcely questioned and surprising result today of an enquiry which for almost two hundred years has devoted prodigious and by no means fruitless effort to regain and expound the life of the historical Jesus, freed from all embellishment by dogma and doctrine. At the end of this research on the life of Jesus stands the recognition of its own failure. Albert Schweitzer, in his classic work, “The Quest of the Historical Jesus”, has erected its memorial, but at the same time has delivered its funeral oration. Why have these attempts failed? Perhaps only because it became alarmingly and terrifyingly evident how inevitably each author brought the spirit of his own age into his presentation of the figure of Jesus. . . . We possess no single word of Jesus and no single story of Jesus, no matter how incontestably genuine they may be, which do not contain at the same time the confession of the believing congregation or at least are embedded therein. This makes the search after the bare facts of history difficult and to a large extent futile. . . . What has been said so far must in no way discourage us from raising the question of the historical Jesus at all. True, it may appear as if scholarship and faith, from opposite points of view, would wish to dismiss it as an impossible question. Representatives of critical biblical scholarship dismiss it because they consider the entanglement of confession and report, of history and faith in the Gospels so indissolubly close, that they consider every quest of the historical Jesus entirely vain. The supporters of believing tradition dismiss it because from the very start they dispute the suitability of critical historical scholarship for this subject, and consider the unqualified recognition of the tradition in its given form the first requirement of faith. Both offer solutions senseless and forced. . . . If what we have said about the character of the Gospels is true, it is clear that research is faced with a great number of questions and tasks. The torrent cannot be halted, no matter how much of its water has strayed

from its course. We shall have to set about building real dams until these waters subside and the dry land becomes visible again. But it cannot be seriously maintained that the Gospels and their tradition do not allow inquiry after the historical Jesus. Not only do they allow, they demand this effort. For whatever the opinion of historians on matters of detail, none can dispute that the tradition of the Gospels is itself very considerably concerned with the preEaster history of Jesus, different though this interest is from that of modern historical science. The Easter aspect in which the primitive Church views the history of Jesus must certainly not be forgotten for one moment; but not less the fact that it is precisely the history of Jesus before Good Friday and Easter which is seen in this aspect. Were it otherwise, the Church would have been lost in a timeless myth, even if for some irrelevant reason or other she had given the bearer of this myth the name of Jesus. The Gospels are the Rejection of Myth. . . . Quite clearly what the Gospels report concerning the message, the deeds and the history of Jesus is still distinguished by an authenticity, a freshness, and a distinctiveness not in any way effaced by the Church’s Easter faith. These features point us directly to the earthly figure of Jesus. It is precisely historical criticism which, rightly understood, has opened up our way anew to this history, by disposing of attempts along biographical, psychological lines. We can now see more clearly. Although the Gospels do not speak of the history of Jesus in the way of reproducing the course of his career in all its happening and stages, in its inner and outer development, nevertheless they do speak of history as occurrence and event. The Gospels give abundant evidence of this history. This opinion may be boldly stated, despite the fact that on historical grounds so many of the stories and saying could be contested in detail, despite tendencies evidently active in the tradition, despite the impossibility of finally extracting from more or less authentic particulars a more or less assured whole which we could call a life of Jesus. . . . As everyone knows, the Gospels tell the story of Jesus in ‘pericopae’, i.e. in brief anecdotes. These story scenes give his history not only when pieced together, but each one in itself contains the person and history of Jesus in their entirety. . . . What then is shown us in this style of transmission? Surely these are all characteristics of a popular and unhistorical transmission, evidence that the Gospel tradition, in origin and purpose, is directed to the practical use of the believing Church, to whom

LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DEBATES ABOUT THE HISTORICAL JESUS

mere history as such means very little. Surely the historian is forced thereby to criticize this tradition, which often enough is silent where he seeks an answer, naively generalizes where he enquires after the individual element in each case, and frequently blurs the distinction between history and interpretation. There are legitimate questions. And yet we must never lose sight of the fact that, precisely in this way of transmitting and recounting, the person and work of Jesus, in their unmistakable uniqueness and distinctiveness, are shown forth with an originality which again and again far exceeds and disarms even all believing understandings and interpretations. Understood in this way, the primitive tradition of Jesus is brim full of history. 288. WOLFHART PANNENBERG: JESUS’ HISTORY AND OUR HISTORY (1960) Translated by Ted Peters in Perspectives on Religious Studies 1:2 (1974), 139–47.

95

situation, by interpreting the Mosaic law with extraordinary sovereignty and by announcing the breaking–in of the kingdom of God. Through the claim contained in his teaching he provoked a confrontation which led to his execution. Only against the background of this event does the meaning of his teaching in its particular contours become visible. And not only the meaning but also the validity of Jesus’ teaching is established through his fate, especially though his resurrection. The resurrection could be understood, of course, only as the divine confirmation of the very man whom the Jews had condemned as a blasphemer of God. Without the resurrection, Jesus’ interpretation of the law would have remained an exorbitant critique and his proclamation of the imminent end of the world merely a temporally determined error. Thus, the teaching of Jesus is not true in itself, but only as it is a constituent part of the fate of his career. The Christian faith depends wholly upon the historical events of nearly two thousand years ago and on the meaning inherent within their context. It has no truth independent of this. The God of Israel himself demonstrated through these events before all the world that he alone is the true God. Therefore, our belief in God depends directly upon the events which constitute the fate of Jesus of Nazareth. Faith and Insight

Fig. 3.11. Wolfhart Pannenberg (1983)

The Christian faith is connected in a unique way with a past event. In no other religion is the historical person of the founder so basic that everything either stands or falls with him. If one were to omit from the Christian proclamation the information regarding the earthly works of Jesus and the fate of crucifixion and resurrection which befell him, then nothing peculiarly Christian would remain. Even the teaching of Jesus itself cannot be the ground and content of faith. By itself alone it is in no way something of lasting general validity. It has its character and its meaning only through the authority claimed by Jesus for himself in his particular historical

. . . If we appeal solely to the decision of faith when we are asked about the truth of the Christian message, then faith must degenerate into convulsions. Faith presupposes something upon which it is grounded, something which confirms itself as real again and again in the face of all doubting: it is the information about the events which constitute in their context the career of Jesus. . . . We must recover anew the courage of this fact. We must rediscover first that faith has presuppositions, presuppositions which do not simply establish themselves through a “decision of faith” but rather are subject to the judgment of reason. . . . Historical Inquiry How is certain knowledge of the career of Jesus obtained? How does one know that Jesus of Nazareth with the full power of God’s authority proclaimed demands and healed diseases, as well as announced the imminent end of the world and the breaking–in of the kingdom of God itself? Or that he was arrested

96

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

as a blasphemer of God, executed and raised from the dead? Now, one can learn this in no other way than through obtaining knowledge of past events. Though not always, it is often true that this knowledge, as in the case of our knowledge of Jesus, can be dependent upon explicit reporting, human witnesses and written tradition. But no tradition can be accepted as true without examination. That would fly in the face of all reason. . . . One must inquire in addition as to the interest that governs the actual report. Only after one has taken into consideration the interest operative in the tradition can he make a reasonable assessment of the factual subject matter. ..... Thusly have I indicated the procedure of historical inquiry. It can be compared to the procedure of a criminal investigation. A good detective would not simply believe this or that witness, but rather he seeks out circumstances which give him hints towards the truth of the matter. . . . Following this path the detective will reconstruct the details of the deed. Similarly, this method is followed by every person who wants to find certainty about an event in the sphere of his personal life. The historian does likewise. Only the historian requires much more complicated resources in order to clear up an event in the distant past. The conclusions drawn from such historical inquiry are never completely incontestable. They are always only more or less probable and subject to alteration through new discoveries and newer approaches towards inquiry. Nevertheless, such historically secured certainty is the greatest certainty that can be attained about past events. If, then, the Christian faith presupposes information about events

in a distant past, it can obtain the greatest possible certainty about these events only by way of historical inquiry. . . . Supra-History? Because of the apparent danger to the fundamentals of faith from the side of historical inquiry, theology in the last fifteen years has allowed itself to be led astray by a disastrous short-cut: one sought a “storm free refuge” (M. Kähler) in which faith might be independent of historical investigation. The history of Jesus is described as “supra-history” (Übergeschichte) or Heilsgeschichte or “pre-history” (Urgeschichte) in opposition to “usual” history (Historie). New Testament research has quite accustomed itself to speaking only about the Easter faith of the early community instead of the event of Jesus’ resurrection. I limit myself, on the other hand, to what has been established, namely, that there is no knowledge of past events above or beyond historical knowledge. It is only because the resurrection of Jesus is a historical fact that there is a foundation capable of supporting a faith in the God who raised him. Christians must trust that the reality of Jesus’ resurrection will be confirmed again and again in historical inquiry and that the historical doubt will be overcome again and again in the progress of research. It cannot provide, however, a “storm free refuge” for faith. It is because Jesus was truly man that the career of Jesus in which God makes himself known remains exposed to historical doubting. . . .

4. The Revitalization of Lutheranism in Nineteenth Century Europe

Rationalism strongly influenced many Lutheran professors and pastors during the eighteenth century. It changed the focus of their teaching and preaching and often led to a diminished emphasis on the distinctive themes that had characterized Lutheran theology in its first two centuries. In their more radical manifestations, the new currents of Enlightenment thought not only increased confessional indifference but also led to outright alienation from traditional Christianity. Some of this intellectual estrangement seeped down to the less educated classes in German society as a result of the rationalistic sermons they heard and the schooling they received, but political discontent after the French Revolution, intensified by the social disruption associated with the gradual industrialization of society, would have an even bigger effect in diminishing their involvement in church life, especially in urban areas. The Lutheran church would not recover the full extent of its former influence, but in the early nineteenth century there were several movements within the churches that revitalized the confessional identity and religious commitment of those who continued to be affiliated. These signs of reawakening were diverse: some were expressions of Neo-Pietism while others stressed the distinctive concern for doctrine that had been more characteristic of earlier Orthodoxy. In addition there arose new schools of thought, which remained receptive to some features of the critical intellectual orientation that had arisen in the Enlightenment, while also confidently proclaiming the continuing validity of the gospel message as it had been understood in the past by Lutherans.

State-sponsored celebrations of the four hundredth anniversary of the Reformation stimulated some of the first expressions of this Lutheran revitalization. In 1817, King Friedrich Wilhelm III (1770–1840), as part of the multi-faceted Prussian reshaping of German society after the fall of the Napoleonic empire, decided to mark the anniversary of the Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses by consummating the union of the Lutheran and Reformed churches in his realm. The church was now to be called “Evangelical” instead of “Lutheran” or “Reformed,” and subsequently there were proposals to change forms of worship as well as the administrative structures of the church. (See chapter 2.) While these developments had strong support among some Prussian church leaders and inspired similar unions in several other German territories, many Lutherans, already disturbed by the infiltration of rationalistic influences within the churches, viewed these changes as yet another attempt to eradicate the very essence of Lutheranism. One of the first efforts to make the Reformation commemoration a starting point for a return to traditional Lutheranism came from northern Germany but outside of Prussian territory. Claus Harms (1778–1855), a Lutheran pastor in Kiel published a new set of 95 Theses, echoing Luther’s earlier critique of the state of the church. He confronted the spread of a human–centered religion which was replacing the gospel of Christ with the voice of reason and conscience. He also envisaged confusion resulting from the effort to create a union between the Lutheran and Reformed traditions. Harms con-

98

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

fidently presented the Lutheran church as the most complete and glorious expression of Christianity (doc. #289). His call for a redirection of the church was applauded by Lutherans in many other parts of Germany. Within Prussia, the strongest opposition to the church union came from the eastern region of Silesia. Several influential pastors refused to implement the liturgical changes demanded by the Prussian government, and some groups of Lutherans began to worship outside of the state churches although this was against the law. One of the leaders of this resistance movement, Johann Gottfried Scheibel (1783– 1843), a professor of theology in Breslau, blamed the effort to overlook the doctrinal differences between the two Protestant churches on the infiltration of a world view into society that was more influenced by ancient Greek paganism than by Christianity. He portrayed the church union as nothing other than a hostile attempt to suppress the essential teachings of Lutheranism (doc. #290). The price Scheibel paid for his resistance was dismissal from his posts as professor and pastor. He found refuge at first in Saxony, a German territory where traditional orthodoxy remained strong, and then in Bavaria which later became another hub of the resurgence of confessional Lutheranism. Some dissenters in both Prussia and Saxony immigrated to North America rather than compromise their Lutheran identity. The numbers associated with the so-called Old Lutheran movement in Prussia were modest but eventually the Prussian government agreed to resolve the conflict by allowing those who remained behind to form a separate Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia in 1845. Some other Lutheran critics of rationalism in Prussia were more supportive of the monarchy because they say it as a bulwark against the spread of social revolution. Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg (1802–1869), one of the leaders of what came to be called Repristination Theology, (Repristinationstheologie) was both a religious and political conservative. Being the son of a well–known Reformed pastor, he was favorably disposed to the formation of the Prussian church union. During his university years he gradually repudiated his early sympathy for liberal nationalism and became a staunch defender of traditional Lutheran theology, especially after his contact with Lutheran Pietist noblemen in Prussia such as Baron Hans Ernst von Kottwitz (1757–1843). Through their influence, Hengstenberg was appointed professor of theology in Berlin in 1826 where he became noted for his defense of the divine

inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible. His most influential book concerned the Old Testament, which he viewed as one continuously unfolding prophecy of the coming of Christ (doc. #291). In 1827 Hengstenberg also founded a journal, the “Evangelical Church Times”, which became a leading instrument for the defense of various conservative causes. Through it, he and an associate, Ludwig von Gerlach, carried out a sustained attack against rationalistic theologians in the German universities (see chapter 1, doc. #239). Hengstenberg, who edited the journal for forty years, also stressed the Christian duty of obedience to government (doc. #292). This was the chief reason why he felt little sympathy for the Old Lutheran dissenters in Silesia. The aggressive tactics he advocated, in alliance with supporters in the government, ultimately prompted August Neander and some other theological conservatives in Berlin and Halle to distance themselves from him. While Pietist noblemen attempted to exercise their influence on the government in Prussia, a less political Pietist Awakening (Erweckungsbewegung) began to unfold in other regions of Germany. Württemberg had long been a region with a strong presence of Pietism, and in the 1840s it experienced another revival of fervent devotion, especially through the influence of Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805–1880), the Lutheran pastor in the small village of Möttlingen. The circumstances that prompted this Awakening were quite unusual. Blumhardt had to deal with the case of a parishioner who manifested bizarre behavior which he could not explain. He ultimately decided that he must be facing a case of demon possession, and his successful resolution of the problem after an appeal for divine intervention, stimulated others in his parish to repent of their sins and experience a religious rebirth (doc. #293). The revival spread beyond the village and later Blumhardt established an influential retreat center at Bad Boll where he practiced faith healing. At the opposite end of the spectrum, there was also a nineteenth century renewal movement of a more “high church” nature, which is commonly differentiated from Repristination Theology and the pietistic Awakening by use of the label “Neo-Lutheranism.” There were manifestations in various regions, but the leadership came especially from Bavaria, Mecklenburg and Hesse. Lutherans were in the minority in Bavaria but had a strong presence in the northern region of Franconia, which the Catholic king had formally annexed in 1815. Here too, in 1818, the Lutherans and Reformed churches had been united into one church by the state’s constitution. The

THE REVITALIZATION OF LUTHERANISM IN NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE

Neo–Lutheran movement in Bavaria owed much to Wilhelm Löhe (Loehe), (1808–1872) who had grown up in a Pietist family but developed a strong interest in the writings of the Orthodox dogmaticians while studying at the University of Erlangen. He paid special attention to the issue of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper, one of the points of division between the Lutherans and the Reformed. After several temporary positions, Löhe became pastor in the small town of Neuendettelsau in 1837. This would be the base of his energetic ministry for the rest of his life. In 1845, he published “Three Books about the Church,” in which he differentiated between various Christian denominations and argued that the Lutheran tradition was most pure because of its emphasis on both word and sacrament (doc. #294). In opposition to church union movements, he called for fidelity to the Lutheran confessions, which we presented as most free of extreme positions and most faithful to the Scriptures. Löhe also had a strong social consciousness and established homes for the handicapped and orphans in his parish. Concerned for the church at large, he formed a mission society which provided pastors for the German Lutherans who were settling at that time in scattered communities in the American Midwest. (See chapter 9) In Mecklenburg, the Neo-Lutheran movement was led by Theodor Kliefoth (1818–1895) who made important contributions to liturgical studies and fought for the independence of the church from state control. In Hesse, Neo-Lutheranism found a strong defender in August F. C. Vilmar (1800–1868). As a church administrator and later as a professor of theology at the University of Marburg he helped reform religious education in the territory’s gymnasia. Facing a strong presence of Reformed Protestantism in Hesse, he argued for strict fidelity to all that was distinctively Lutheran. In his 1856 book, “The Theology of Fact versus the Theology of Rhetoric,” he contended that theological study should deal with the real spiritual needs of people and not focus on esoteric research or useless speculation (doc. #295). In contrast to theologies that adjusted to each new school of philosophy or centered on personal religious experience, he stressed the longstanding shared faith of the church as expressed in the Lutheran confessional books. The University of Erlangen, located close to Nürnberg, had been founded in Franconia as a Protestant institution in 1743. During the nineteenth century, it became the leading center in southern Germany for the development of a mild, dynamic

99

Lutheran confessionalism. A distinctive mode of theological reflection developed there, characterized by an effort to “teach the old truth in a new garb.” The so-called “Erlangen School” continued to exercise an important influence on European Lutheranism until the latter half of the twentieth century. More than some other universities, the theological professors at Erlangen manifested a direct commitment to the church and missions both at home and abroad. Their method of theological reflection, based on the Bible, the confessions and the personal experience of regeneration, also influenced theological writers at northern universities such as Leipzig, Rostock and Dorpat (Tartu, Estonia). One of the best known of the Erlangen theologians was Johannes Christian Konrad von Hofmann (1810–1877) whose influence was especially notable in the field of biblical studies. He called for a biblical hermeneutic that took into consideration both historical investigation and the perspective of faith. He developed the concept of salvation-history (Heilsgeschichte) to describe how the whole Bible, Old and New Testament, presented a narrative of God’s self–revelation in historical events (see chapter 3, doc. #278). Another innovative but more controversial aspect of his thought was his strong rejection of any interpretation of the event of the cross as a substitutionary atonement. He gathered scriptural passages to make the case that the death of Jesus was not a sacrificial payment for sin but an act of self-offering which demonstrated obedience and love, thereby moving humanity towards a new relationship with God. Hofmann’s colleague at Erlangen, Gottfried Thomasius (1802–1875) disagreed with his interpretation of the atonement, but was closer to him in his understanding of how to reconcile the biblical portrayal of the historical Jesus with the traditional assertion that Christ was both divine and human. Rehabilitating and modifying the notion of kenosis (selfemptying) that had earlier been explored by the theologians of Lutheran Orthodoxy, Thomasius argued that the Son of God had voluntarily divested himself of divine power, fully accepting human limitation, so that he might actualize a new relationship between God and humanity (doc. #296). Another Erlangen theologian, Adolf von Harless (1806–1879) was noted for applying the principles of the Erlangen method to the study of ethics. His “System of Christian Ethics,” first published in 1842, went through eight editions. Harless’ approach revived the Lutheran distinction between law and gospel and presented Christian ethics as a working

100

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

out of an appropriate response, in faith, hope and love, to the experience of forgiveness of sins accomplished in Christ. He moved on to become a professor in Leipzig and court preacher in Dresden before returning to Bavaria to continue the defense of Lutheran interests as president of the kingdom’s Protestant consistory (doc. #297). There were other efforts to revitalize Lutheranism which were somewhat more open to the results of recent historical and philosophical research and more irenically minded with regard to non–Lutheran forms of Christianity. The Mediating Theology, (Vermittlungstheologie) so–called for its endeavor to mediate between Christianity and modern critical study, was especially well represented at the Prussian universities in Halle and Berlin. One representative who was noted for his work as a church historian was August Neander (1789–1850). Jewish by birth, he was baptized and changed his name from David Mendel after developing an interest in Christianity through his exposure to the thought of the liberal theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher, while studying at the University of Halle. He briefly considered entering the Lutheran ministry but turned to an academic career and spent 37 years teaching at the University of Berlin. In 1837, he wrote one of the more influential critiques of David Strauss’ mythological interpretation of the Gospels. Neander applauded efforts to overcome personal bias in the writing of history, but also felt that a true understanding of the development of Christianity required a surrender to its truth. He faulted Strauss both for attempting to write from a standpoint above Christianity and for abstractly reinterpreting it in Hegelian categories (doc. #298). Isaak Dorner (1809–1884) who taught theology in five other universities before taking a position in Berlin in 1862, was more noted for his work in systematic theology. He too published a critique of Strauss’ research on the historical Jesus but was quite open to speculation that drew on both philosophy and theology. Like Hofmann and Thomasius at Erlangen, he elaborated a kenotic Christology. Dorner was optimistic about the revival of Protestant theology in the nineteenth century. He credited Schleiermacher for finding a productive path beyond the reductionism of rationalism and the distorting influence of Hegelian idealism. He made a case for seeing Schleiermacher as a theologian with Lutheran features, and, like Schleiermacher, favored the formation of the Prussian Union Church (doc. #299). The effort to develop a mediating theology merged with Pietism in the perspective of August

Tholuck (1799–1877). Famed for his early mastery of nineteen languages, he had planned to devote himself to philology until he experienced a religious awakening under the influence of Baron Hans von Kottwitz during his student years in Berlin. His subsequent theological formation owed much to Schleiermacher and Neander, and like both of them, he was always more interested in the cultivation of religious experience than in rigid adherence to orthodox doctrine. Tholuck lectured on the Bible, theology and church history for almost fifty years at the University of Halle where he also served successfully as the university preacher. Among his many books were two analyzing the development of rationalism and another, which defended the trustworthiness of the Bible in response to David Strauss’ attack on the historicity of the gospel narratives (see chapter 3, doc. #277). Like Dorner, Tholuck was convinced that a great resurrection of Christianity was underway during the nineteenth century. In his early apology for Christianity, “The Doctrine of Sin and the Reconciler,” (1823) he defended Pietism against the charges of being narrow–minded or censorious. He encouraged the faithful to value advances in the arts and sciences and stressed the importance of building a loving sense of community, which could make Christianity the bonding agent of the nation (doc. #300). Tholuck’s writings also circulated widely in the English-speaking world, and he was sought out by many British and American Protestants who came to study theology in Germany. Outside of the universities, the revitalization of Lutheranism also owed much to pastors who were attentive to the physical needs of their parishioners as well as their spiritual formation. Theodor Fliedner (1800–1864) made Kaiserswerth, a poor industrial town near Düsseldorf, a renowned center for such efforts. Soon after he became the town’s Lutheran pastor in 1821, Fliedner began a ministry among inmates in the local prison and established a hospice to help with the rehabilitation of female prisoners after their release. He also opened a hospital for the poor and developed a plan to staff these institutions by reviving the office of deaconess, as a well–ordered but unordained form of ministry within the churches. In 1836 he established a school in Kaiserswerth to train young unmarried women for this work, and Wilhelm Löhe founded a similar institution in Neuendettelsau in 1849 (doc. #301). Fliedner also advocated reforming the theological faculties at the universities so that pastors in training would receive practical ministerial instruction and not just a theoretical academic education (doc. #302). He

THE REVITALIZATION OF LUTHERANISM IN NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE

undertook extensive trips abroad to raise funds for these institutions, and by the time of his death there were motherhouses for Lutheran deaconesses not only in Germany but also in Scandinavia, the United States and even Jerusalem. In northern Germany, Johann Hinrich Wichern (1808–1881) started another movement that combined evangelization and social action. Like Tholuck, he was influenced spiritually by Baron von Kottwitz during his theological studies in Berlin. He brought the fervor of the Pietist Awakening to his work as a pastor in Hamburg, especially at first in his concentrated efforts to establish a “redemption home” for poor, often delinquent, boys. At the so–called Rough House (Raues Haus), established in 1833, he provided a family structure for neglected children and offered both religious education and practical training for future employment. From this start Wichern laid out more ambitious plans to create an “Inner Mission” in Germany which would address a wide range of social problems and in so doing help revive the influence of Christianity in society (doc. #303). In 1848, a year in which social revolts erupted across Europe, he presented his proposal to the first meeting of the Kirchentag, a conference of delegates from various territorial Protestant churches, which met in Wittenberg to develop a more united front for the struggle against forces that attacked both religion and the existing social order (doc. #304). 1848 was also the year of the publication of the Communist Manifesto, and Wichern explicitly envisioned the Inner Mission as a way to counter the influence of atheistic socialism, which urban industrial workers were beginning to view as the most promising remedy for their plight. Although he disliked Hengstenberg’s abrasive dogmatism, Wichern allied himself with politically conservative Prussian church leaders of this sort and portrayed his charitable initiatives as an important contribution to their efforts to uphold the monarchy and restore social tranquility. He became a trusted advisor for King Friedrich Wilhelm IV (1795–1861) and was given a government appointment in 1857 to prepare a reform of the Prussian prison system. The Inner Mission movement continued to grow well into the twentieth century under the leadership of Friedrich Bodelschwingh (1831–1910) and his son of the same name (1877–1946). However, near the end of the nineteenth century some Lutheran advocates for the poor became convinced that more direct political action was necessary to alleviate social problems. The conservative court preacher, Adolf Stoecker, founded the Christian Socialist Labor Party in 1878. Friedrich

101

Naumann, an influential pastor who had once worked for the Inner Mission in Frankfurt, and Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (1842–1919), son of the Pietist revivalist Johann Christoph Blumhardt, both became more liberal advocates of Christian Socialism and served as parliamentary representatives in the early twentieth century (see chapter 2). OPPOSITION TO THE PRUSSIAN UNION 289. CLAUS HARMS: THE 95 THESES OF 1817 From Claus Harms Lebensbeschr Lebensbeschreibung eibung. (Kiel: Akademische Buchhandlung, 1851), 229–242. trans. by Eric Lund.

Fig. 4.1. An illustration of Claus Harms by Julius Fürst (1895)

(Human–Centered Religion and Ethics: Theses 1–8) 1. When our Master and Lord Jesus Christ says: “Repent!” he wants humanity to conform to his doctrine; He does not conform to human doctrine, as they do now, according to the changed spirit of the times, 2 Timothy 4:3. 2. Doctrine in relation to faith as well as life is now construed in such a way that the whole is accommodated to humans. This is why protest and reform now have to be repeated. 3. The idea of a progressive reformation—as this idea is understood and falsely urged—reforms

102

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Lutheranism into paganism and (takes) Christianity out of the world. (The Idolatry of Autonomous Conscience: Theses 9-24) 9. The pope of our time, our Antichrist, can be called Reason, with regards to faith, and Conscience, with regards to life, (according to the place given to them both over against Christianity: Gog and Magog, Rev. 20:8); consciences have been given the threefold crown of legislation, praise, and punishment. 14. This operation by which God was removed from the judgment seat and one’s own conscience was placed on it has happened while there was no watch in our church. 17. Once conscience stops reading and begins to write, it turns out to be as diverse as peoples’ handwriting. Name me a sin that everybody considers to be such! 18. Once conscience stops being a servant of God’s judgment over sin, it will not allow God to be even a servant in its judgments. The concept of divine punishments entirely disappears. 21. The forgiveness of sins cost money in the 16th century; in the 19th it is entirely free, since all help themselves to it. 23. Ask for forgiveness—from whom? From oneself?—Cry tears of contrition—cry to oneself? — Comfort oneself with God’s grace—yes, if he turns away the natural consequences of my evil deeds! The prevailing theory teaches this way of speaking. (THE IDOLATRY OF AUTONOMOUS REASON: THESES 25-49) 26. One must tremble and shake if one considers how godless, that is, devoid of God and his fear, people are now. 27. According to the old faith, God created man; according to the new faith man creates God, and when he is done, he says: Oh yes! Isaiah 44:12-20. 30. This operation, by which every revealed religion—and thus also Christianity—was entirely rejected insofar as it does not agree with reason, happened while there was no watch in our church. 32. The so–called religion of reason is divested either of reason or of religion or of both. 39. Just as reason has its understanding, so the heart also has its understanding, only that it is turned to an entirely different world. 43. The relation of so–called natural religion to revealed religion is like the relation of nothing to

something, or like the relation of revealed religion to revealed religion. 43. When reason touches on religion, it throws out the pearls and plays with the husks, the empty words. 45. It drags what is holy in the faith into the realm of common experiences and says like Muhammad: “How should God have a Son, since he is not a woman?!” 47. If in matters of religion reason wants to be more than a layman, it becomes a heretic. Shun it! Titus 3:10. By the way, one gets the impression that all heresies are let loose again at the same time. . . . (The Use of Rationalistic Editions of the Bible: Theses 50-62) not included (The Right of Lutheran Christians to Have Lutheran, not Rationalistic, Preachers: Theses 68-74) 64. One should teach Christians that they have the right not to tolerate what is un-Christian and unLutheran from the pulpits and in books in church and school. 66. The people cannot trust in the supreme commissioners of the church, several of whom, it is decried, do not have the faith of the church. 69. The watchword of the false teachers is John 4:24: “God is a spirit, and all who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” They act as if they had caught the entire church, even Christ himself in his own words. 70. Their battle cry is Acts 10:35: “In every nation, whoever fears God and does what is right is pleasing to him.” They . . . . interpret this as if it did not matter whether one is a Jew, a Christian, a half–Christian, or just nothing. 71. Reason rages in the Lutheran church: it tears Christ from the altar, flings God’s word from the pulpit, throws excrements into the baptismal water, accepts all sorts of people as God–parents, sweeps away the address of the confessional chair, hisses away the priests, and all people after them, and has been doing this for a long time. Will one still not restrain it? Perhaps this is supposed to be purely Lutheran and not Carlstadtian? 72. The Catholic Church, as has been suggested to it, could very well celebrate the Reformation festival with us, since as far as the dominating faith in our church is concerned, it is just as Lutheran as our church.

THE REVITALIZATION OF LUTHERANISM IN NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE

(Against a Church Union on Reductionist, Rationalistic Foundations: Theses 75–89) 77. To say that time has abolished the dividing wall between Lutherans and Reformed is not clear talk. Is it a matter of who has fallen away from the faith of their church, the Lutherans or the Reformed? Or both? 78. If Christ’s body and blood were in the bread and wine at the 1529 Marburg Colloquy, then they are still there in 1817. 83. (The Church Union creates) Confusion with the confessions—they are nothing other than certain, generally accepted interpretations of Holy Scripture. 84. (It creates) Confusion with the authorized and adopted church’s service books, hymnals, and catechisms, as already public proclamation, in many places, stands is glaring dreadful contradiction in the holy place. 85. (It creates) Confusion among the teachers when one preaches the old, the other the new faith. The highly–praised slogan 1 Thessalonians 5:14: “Examine everything and keep the best!” is wrongly understood to speak of a free examination of the biblical faith. 87. (It creates) Confusion with other churches. Each rests on the Bible according to different interpretation upon which they have agreed: You accept that interpretation, we accept this one, and in this we want to love and respect each other. The religion of reason wants to know of no other interpretation than the one that each makes in his own head for today and perhaps for tomorrow. 88. (It creates) Confusion with the states. They have pledged their protection to the church based on the confessions that were presented at one time. The religion of reason does not want to know of such confessions. But the religious element in humanity, if it is not bound to a divine revelation, is a fearful element. (Abuses in the Current Lutheran Polity: Theses 90–91) 90. The Lutheran church has reached completeness and perfection in its building; except that the supreme leadership and final decision, even in properly spiritual matters, rests with a person who is not a pastor. This mistake was made in haste and disorder and can be rectified in an orderly manner. 91. In the same way it cannot be reconciled with the Protestant principles of our church that only a

103

few persons in a congregation or sometimes only one person, who perhaps does not even belong to the congregation, put a preacher in place. Sheep are given a shepherd, but souls should everywhere elect their pastor for themselves. (On the Glories of the Evangelical Lutheran Church: Theses 92–95) 92. The evangelical–catholic church is a glorious church. It rests on and constitutes itself particularly by the sacrament. 93. The evangelical-reformed church is a glorious church. It rests on and constitutes itself particularly by God’s word. 94. More glorious than both is the evangelical–Lutheran church. It rests on and constitutes itself by the sacrament as well as God’s word. 95. Into this church, both of the others are developing, even without the intentional effort of men. But, as David says, “the way of the wicked will perish.” Psalm 1:6 290. JOHANN GOTTFRIED SCHEIBEL: DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE UNION OF CHURCHES (1834) Like Harms, the leader of the Silesian Old Lutherans attacks both the influence of rationalism, which he links to a revival of the pagan spirit of the ancient Greeks, and efforts within the Prussian Union Church to downplay theological differences between the Lutheran and Reformed, especially regarding the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper. From Actenmässig Actenmässigee Geschichte der neuesten Unternehmung einer Union zwischen der ref eformirten ormirten und lutherischen Kirche Kirche. (Leipzig: Friedrich Fliescher, 1834), 5–8. trans. by Eric Lund. Preface What the Lord said to Ephesus already in Revelation [2:4] has happened most decidedly here. “You have abandoned the love you had at first.” The peaceful time after the Thirty Years War, the merely learned and manifestly dead theology, the lack of pious supervision and direction of those studying at the universities, the influence of foreign desires and sins in the courts and among the nobles of Germany due to insufficient scrutiny by pious preachers, the growing wealth of the German trade cities; these all

104

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

fostered a decline from the earlier life of faith. Religious rest and freedom were not a blessing to the deeper Christian spirit. . . . Then came the punishment the Lord threatened in his Word. Revelation 2:5: “The light will be removed from your cities unless you repent.” Theologians, philosophers, and poets were in competition to work against faith and the fear of God both theoretically and practically. The woeful theology it so exquisitely produced promoted false science and art . . . against the sufficiently established truth. The universities filled up with unbelieving teachers, who in all extravagance, hence unfortunate youthful impudence, approached altars and pulpits with profane hearts. The high and low classes both sank deeper and deeper into frivolity, sensuality and the pursuit of pleasure. The community of God, the holy Israel became the people of Greece, to whom the Germans are [now] strikingly similar not only in [their interest in] the intellectual formation of the ancient Hellenes but also in their decadence and pagan character. Theological literature lost its significance more and more. And thus, now, a church party, which appeared similar to the church, could more confidently penetrate the Lutheran Church of Germany, because the seed of the Hellenic orientation had already been planted. Luther had already revealed that Zwingli and then Calvin’s interpretation of the Lord’s Supper was different from the biblical view. Yes, he had shown how both Swiss, regarding the Lord’s Supper, had set up the principle: to accept nothing that is against reason and nature. This is the general principle, in this dogma and also in others, which raises up human intelligence as an infallible God, as if it were the Holy Spirit. . . . [The Reformed, however, argued that they were not that different from the Lutherans.] Thus, it was very easy, in this situation, for them to do in the last decade what they had not been to do for three hundred years: to succeed in their attempt to bring a host of Lutheran teachers and congregations, indeed whole lands and provinces, into a union with them. This unstoppable attempt at union, as the name indicates, was supposed to remove the differences between the churches in an entirely friendly manner. [However, Reformed doctrine entirely denied the essential Lutheran teaching of the true partaking of the body and blood of Christ.] . . . So, it is clear that all this attempt has, as its only goal, the suppression of the Lutheran church and the enhancement of the Reformed church. . . .

REPRISTINATION THEOLOGY: RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL CONSERVATISM 291. ERNST W. T. H. HENGSTENBERG: CHRISTOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT (1829/1854) This text reveals Hengstenberg’s very traditional view of biblical inspiration. Like Luther, he sees all sorts of prophetic and typological references to Christ in the Old Testament. A divine redemptive plan is already in place at the time of the Fall of Adam and Eve. This type of interpretation had been totally repudiated by the historical–critical biblical scholars of the nineteenth century (see chapter 3). From Hengstenberg. Christology of the Old Testament and a Commentary on the Messianic Pr Predictions edictions, v. 1, Second Edition. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1868), 12–13. trans. by Theodore Meyer.

Fig. 4.2. Photo of Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg (pre-1876)

In the Messianic prophecies contained in Genesis we cannot fail to perceive a remarkable progress in clearness and definiteness. The first Messianic prediction, which was uttered immediately after the fall of Adam, is also the most indefinite. Opposed to the awful threatening there stands the consolatory promise, that the dominion of sin, and of the evil

THE REVITALIZATION OF LUTHERANISM IN NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE

arising from sin, shall not last forever, but that the seed of the woman shall, at some future time, overthrow their dreaded conqueror. With the exception of the victory itself, everything is here left undetermined. We are told neither the mode in which it is to be achieved, nor whether it shall be accomplished by some peculiarly gifted race, or family of the progeny of the woman, or by some single individual from among her descendants. There is nothing more than a very slight hint that the latter will be the case. . . . The prophecy becomes still more definite when the Lord begins to prepare the way for the appearance of this deliverance, by separating from the corrupt mass a single individual—Abraham—in order to make him the depositary of His revelations. . . . From among the posterity of Shem, the Lord sets apart first the family of Abraham, then that of Isaac, and lastly that of Jacob, as the family from which salvation is to come. Yet even these predictions, distinct though they be when compared with those previously uttered, are still very indefinite when compared with those subsequently given, and when seen in the light of the actual fulfilment. Even in these, the blessing only is foretold, but not its author. It still remained a matter of uncertainty whether salvation should be extended to all the other nations of the earth through a single individual, or through an entire people descended from the Patriarchs. The former is obscurely indicated; but the mode in which the blessing was to be imparted was left in darkness. This obscurity is partially removed by the last Messianic prophecy contained in Genesis 49:10. . . . By being transferred to Judah, the promise of the Messiah acquires not only the expected limitation, but an unexpected increase of clearness and precision. Here, for the first time, the person of the Messiah is brought before us; here also the nature of His kingdom is more distinctly pointed out by His being represented as the peaceful one, and the peacemaker who will unite, under His mild scepter, all the nations of the whole earth. Judah is, in this passage, placed in the center of the world’s history; he shall obtain dominion, and not lose it until it has been realized to its fullest extent by means of the Shiloh descending from him, to whom all the nations of the earth shall render a willing obedience. The subject-matter of the last four books of the Pentateuch would naturally prevent us from expecting that the Messianic prophecies should occupy so prominent a place in them as they do in Genesis. The object contemplated in these books is rather to prepare effectually the way for the Messiah, by laying the theocratic institutions on a firm foundation, and

105

by establishing the law which is intended to produce the knowledge of sin, and to settle discipline, and by means of which the image of God is to be impressed on the whole national life. If the hope of the Messiah was to be realized in a proper manner, and to produce its legitimate effect, it was necessary that the people should first be accustomed to this new order of life; that, for the present, their regards should not be too much drawn away from this their proximate and immediate vocation. Yet, even in the last four books there are not wanting allusions to Him who, as the end of the law, was, from the very beginning, to be set before the eyes of the people. . . . [In Deut 18:15-19] it is natural that Moses’ attestation should have reference to Christ in so far as He is his antitype. He bears witness to Christ as the true Prophet, as the Mediator of the divine revelation—thus enlarging the slender indications of Christ’s prophetical office given in Genesis 49:10. A new and important feature of Messianic prophecy is here, for the first time, brought forward; and because of this, the character of the prophecy is that of a germ. Behind the person of the future Prophet, which is as yet ideal, the real person of Him who is the Prophet in an absolute sense, is, in the meantime, concealed. It is reserved for the future development of the prophetic prediction to separate that which is here beheld as still blended in a single picture. . . . 292. ERNST HENGSTENBERG: THE ESSENTIALS OF THE SCRIPTURAL DOCTRINE CONCERNING GOVERNMENTAL AUTHORITY (1831) This essay was published without reference to its author, but most lead-off articles in this conservative journal were written by Hengstenberg, who edited it for more than forty years. Written a year after popular uprisings spread across Europe it shows how the theological conservatives tended to support the suppression of power–sharing by the Prussian king. Hengstenberg cannot comprehend how Lutherans in America could support democracy. From the Ev Evang angelische elische Kirchen-Zeitung (April 13, 1831), #30: 234. trans. by Eric Lund. Revolt and rebellion raise their heads more boldly than ever and threaten to destroy the foundations of the human order. Once released the unleashed spark ignites from land to land and shows that where it catches light, the tinder was ready. In the hearts of natural, carnal people this abomination finds natural

106

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

allies, for they are enemies of obedience because they do not know and love what serves true freedom. . . . Alienated from the true living God through the errors of the times, not knowing the rich benefits of his house, they are unable to resist powerful human errors. They have no word of God by which they might recognize Satan when he shows them worldly riches and splendor. He dupes their blinded hearts with the promises he makes to them. But what is more hurtful is also that many Christians who strive for the heavenly homeland lack the right strength and the right light for the necessary struggle against the spirit of revolt and rebellion because they are not embraced the full instruction of the word of God. It so happens that many among the American Christians, which have often been presented in these pages as enlightened examples of living faith and who are active in love (although not without a hint of blemish), and, furthermore, the greater part of the Christian dissenters in England and the French Protestants who confess the name of Jesus in their benighted country do not accept what Peter and Paul, driven by the Holy Spirit, taught about (governmental) authority. Rather, they accept the system of lies which the apostate pseudo–wisdom of the free spirits of the eighteenth century concocted and do not hesitate to pull the yoke of their political confession along with unbelievers whose other errors they detest. . . . God is the Lord of all, but he has established authority and allegiance among people in accordance with the human diversity that he has ordained. He has fixed and sanctified this by his word which urges the servant to offer service, obedience and allegiance to his master. He is the judge of the world, the king of all heathens, the king of Zion but he has lent out and committed some of his power and majesty to judges and kings on earth so that they might judge and rule in his name and under his authority. He has conveyed to them through his word the right to respect and obedience. . . . Earthly fathers, lords, judges and kings are only likenesses of God through which he reveals himself to us, but because they are images that God himself has made it is essentially correct that the likeness truly contains the essence of the archetype. Likenesses are not merely a representation of the archetype or essence, but present in their measure, the archetype and the essence itself before our eyes. Therefore, in their measure, the honor and majesty of the archetype also belongs to them.

THE PIETIST AWAKENING IN WÜRTTEMBERG 293. JOHANN CHRISTOPH BLUMHARDT: THE SICKNESS OF GOTTLIEBEN DITTUS (1842) / THE AWAKENING MOVEMENT IN MÖTTLINGEN (1845) In his own account, Blumhardt admits to being perplexed by the woman’s bizarre behavior at first, but comes to see it as a case of demonic possession. The Lutheran conservatives continued to believe in supernaturalism in contrast to the rationalists and the later liberals. From “Die Krankheitsgeschichte der G.D. in Möttlingen mitgeteilt von Pfarrer Blumhardt” in Gesammelte Werke Reihe I: Schriften Bd. 1: Der Kampf in Möttlingen. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979), 32–74. trans. by Eric Lund.

Fig. 4.3. Johann Christoph Blumhardt (19th century)

. . . G[ottlieben] D[ittus] was single, without financial resources, 28 years old and had lived for four years together with her three also single sisters and

THE REVITALIZATION OF LUTHERANISM IN NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE

an older half–brother in a small ground–floor lodging in Möttlingen. . . . Already with her first entrance into this lodging in February 1840, G. felt a peculiar effect, which was all the more striking to her because it seemed to her that she saw and heard many uncanny things in the house. This also did not escape the attention of her siblings. . . . In the fall of 1841 when her nightly troubles rose to a higher degree, she came to me in the parsonage but spoke to me in only general terms about her complaints so that I could not help her and could say little to put her at ease. . . . From December of that year until February 1842, she suffered from a skin ailment and lay quite dangerously ill. During the whole illness I was not able to visit her much because I was repelled by her behavior, in that if she saw me, she looked away, did not reply to my greeting, and if I prayed, she separated her previously folded hands and generally paid no attention to my words, appearing almost senseless. . . . One Sunday evening [in June] I came again to her, while several friends were present, and I saw her shocking convulsions. I sat myself down at some distance. She contorted her arms, bent her head sideways, twisted her body up high, while foam flowed again from her mouth. Judging from the recent events, it became clear to me that something demonic was at play here, and I found it painful that for such a horrible thing no remedy and advice could be found. With these thoughts, a kind of fury took hold of me. I sprang up, grabbed her stiff hands, forcibly pulled her fingers together as if to pray, shouted her name loudly into her ear, in her unconscious state, and said, “Put your hands together and pray: ‘Lord Jesus, help me! We have seen for long enough what the devil has done; now we also want to see what Jesus can do!’” After a few moments she awoke, repeated the praying words and stopped all her convulsions, to the great astonishment of the onlookers. This was the decisive turning point, which pitched me with irresistible force into action. Before then, I had not had the least thoughts about such matters and now an immediate urge guided me, about which I still have so strong an impression that it has often been my only reassurance later on. I had not done one thing out of my own choice or presumptuousness, for at that time I could not have envisioned such shocking developments. . . . A few days later the apparent possession reoccurred. . . . Three, then seven and finally fourteen demons exited through her mouth, but each time the look of the person changed and took on a new threatening air towards me. They ejected many

107

threatening words against me, which I ignored; and those present, even the sheriff, received many blows and punches from her fists. . . . From fourteen the number of demons rose quickly to 175 and then to 425. A more precise description of their particular appearances I can no longer give because it happened so quickly and there were so many of them following each other. After the last of these struggles there were some days of rest. . . . The longed-for conclusion of the story came in the last days of Christmas 1843. . . . She threatened to rip me into a thousand pieces so I did not dare to get nearer to her. She made horrible attempts with her own hands to tear open her body. . . . This time the demon that let itself be questioned indicated that it was not a departed human spirit but one of Satan’s angels. . . . It appeared to be in great anguish and despair, though its defiance was no less gigantic. It challenged God to provide a sign and professed that it would not be driven out until there was a sign from heaven that shook the whole place because it was not so common as other sinners but had to maintain a certain measure of honor in hell. . . . Around two in the morning the alleged satanic angel roared out the words: “Jesus is Victor, Jesus is Victor!” . . . After that the power of the demon got weaker and weaker and by eight in the morning disappeared completely. . . . THE AWAKENING MOVEMENT IN MÖTTLINGEN (1845) From “Mitteilung von Pfarrer Blumhardt” in Gesammelte Werke Reihe I: Schriften Bd. 1. 97. trans. by Eric Lund Immediately after the conclusion of this story, a spiritual alteration followed, which has advanced since then in my congregation. It began with the awakening of a local man who was notoriously evil in many respects and had a coarse nature. . . . He came trembling and pale, entirely unlike himself, and around the start of the New Year in 1844 said to me: “Pastor, is it also possible that I can be forgiven and become holy?”. . . . He persisted in his desire for a formal declaration of forgiveness of his sins, and I, uplifted by joy over the rescuing of a sinner, did not hesitate. . . . The first thing this man did then was to go to his fellow sinners and explained his experience. They were astonished and could not rightly comprehend it. Still, they saw the change in him and they could no longer oppose his request that they agree to the same way and become partakers of the same peaceful conscience. . . .

108

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

HIGH CHURCH CONFESSIONAL THEOLOGY: NEO–LUTHERANISM 294. WILHELM LÖHE: THREE BOOKS ABOUT THE CHURCH (1845) Trans. by James Schaaf. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 92–115, 156–161.

belongs. Let us not draw that conclusion so hastily. It has been admitted and will again be admitted that a person can be saved somewhere else, since the heavenly call and portions of the truth are to be found in most denominations. But even though salvation may be based on portions of the truth which shine forth from the midst of darkness and error or even hidden by them, the other possibility also exists—the very sad possibility that a person may be lost. . . . The things which divide them are doctrines, expressions of divine truth. They teach different things, and this is a serious matter. If it is completely impossible for two contradictory judgments on the same matter to be correct, it is just as impossible that God’s Word can have two equally correct interpretations. Only one can be right. He who has the one that is wrong is in greater danger than he who plays with fire or firearms for false doctrine begets false principles which lead to a false life and that is sin. . . . The Mark of the Purest Denomination

Fig. 4.4. Wilhelm Löhe (date unknown)

II. About the Churches

The question is, what is the mark of that denomination which possesses the most truth or the complete truth? To this we answer without fear of contradiction that faithfulness of its confession to the Scriptures is the mark of the denomination which has the most truth or the complete truth. . . . The Scriptures are clear. In matters of faith they do not depend on the interpretations of scholars but reveal their light to everyone’s eye. Yes, even if they are not clear in and of themselves, they would certainly be clear if the antithesis were proposed or a question were asked. Just as steel and flint when struck together give a bright spark, so the Scriptures give a bright, clear spark in comparison with human teaching. Look only in the Bible and there is much you will not find, but compare what it says with what men say about the same thing and you will see what sort of difference there is between the Word of God and the word of man. . . .

The Church is Divided into Many Denominations, One of Which Must Have Precedence

The Lutheran Church as the Distinctive Mark of a Confession which is Faithful to the Scriptures

The visible church which is spread throughout the world is divided into a number of denominations each one having its own distinctive name. Since these denominations usually agree in certain principle doctrines, and baptism is properly administers in most of them, a man might come to the conclusion . . . that it makes no difference to which one he

We admit that the so–called Lutheran Church is just one denomination, one part of the visible church, but we also claim, despite some faults it may have, that it is nevertheless the one among all which has the mark of the pure denomination, the church par excellence. . . . If the Lutheran Church has the pure Word and

THE REVITALIZATION OF LUTHERANISM IN NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE

sacrament in a pure confession, it obviously has the highest treasures of the church unperverted. It thus has God’s fullness and the living source from which all deficiencies may be supplied, and it can claim for itself all the advantages of which other denominations justly boast. . . . It is true that our fathers argued. In the bright light of our church they saw tiny rough spots in the road, flecks of dust in the air; this is what they argued about. But our fathers did the fighting for us, and now there is concord. We are one and the unity grows from day to day. We have conquered one another and now we can move on in unity together. It is true that there was much unfaithfulness in our camp and we almost disappeared from sight. But we did not die out, or where did we who faith against you come from? We are the proof of our teaching that the church may become small but it can never die. It can wane like the moon, but it can also wax like the moon. . . . Let us now elevate this discussion without allowing ourselves to exaggerate. Because it has Word and sacrament in a pure confession, the Lutheran Church is the fountain of truth, and from its waters all thirsty souls in other churches have their thirst quenched. With cheerful faces and sharp swords the members of this church stand in serene peace around the fountain which saves all those who are saved. III. About the Lutheran Church It is the Center which Unites the Confessions An unprejudiced and unpartisan comparison of Lutheran doctrines with the doctrines of the other churches, especially with the doctrines of the Roman and the Reformed Churches, shows that in all significant doctrines the Lutheran Church holds the correct position midway between them—that is the center of the confessions. In none of its doctrines does it defend an extreme position, but in everything its doctrine offers the only possible means of uniting the extreme positions of the different denominations. It is in the final statement of faith, the Formula of Concord, that this has reached its culmination. . . . In an age when “union” is everyone’s slogan, the children of the true church are obligated to make it very clear that, by virtue of the doctrine it confesses, their church is the union of opposite extremes and that it is the great task of the pure church always to testify anew to this true union before the opposing churches, to prove that what they all seek (correctly

109

understood) is comprehended in the doctrine of our church and is brought to life by the living of this doctrine. Far from first creating an external union by the unfortunate method of ignoring and disregarding undeniable differences and then childishly hoping that somehow an inner unity will be found, far from wanting to use human means to compel a union which should be effected only when the Spirit of truth creates a spiritual unity, the right church prays unceasingly for a union of all people in the one true faith and hopes that all the sheep of the Good Shepherd will hear his voice in the preaching of pure doctrine and will let themselves be gathered into one flock. . . . Let the pure church hold what it has. Let it be very particular about every error. Let it say “No”—a simple, calm, serious, determined, dispassionate “No”—to everything which is not true. Let it remain firm in this witness from beginning to end. But let it say “Yes”—a simple, calm, joyful “Yes”—to everything which is true, regardless of where it is found or on which side it is. . . . In the last decades there has been clear evidence that the Lord has used the confession of his faithful followers to unity many hearts and call those who are separated into only holy host. Many of those who protested vehemently when our brethren in Silesia began to testify now give the same testimony. ..... The clear testimony of the Silesians [The Old Lutherans] started many others thinking and today from the North to the deep South of Germany there is a great multitude united only by its confession and for the sake of its confession. . . . Therefore long live the witness of the holy church through which the Lord unites his flock! The zeal of the Lord will do it. 295. AUGUST VILMAR: THE THEOLOGY OF FACTS VERSUS THE THEOLOGY OF RHETORIC (1856) Trans. by Roy Harrisville II. (Fort Wayne IN: Lutheran Legacy, 2008), 31–35, 41–47, 59–70, 71–87. Chapter 1 Theologians who retain their theology for themselves, who have it only for themselves are a self–contradiction. They are not theologians, they have no theology. Theology, even if only a knowl-

110

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

edge of God, is the absolute opposite of egoism, of self-contained existence for oneself, of the esoteric. The knowledge of God which calls itself theology is at the same time a speaking from God. And speaking from God goes forth into the world, into human life. ... Theology serves real life in this world and in eternity. . . . Theology shares what it has, totally and unabridged. . . . And all this because its content is for those who receive it, the breath of life, an indispensable nourishment, no different from air, and sunlight, and bread, since none on earth can live who does not receive what proceeds from theology. . . .

a thousand years, have become rotten and threaten a certain collapse, when the inheritance from our fathers of a natural discipline, order, and custom is clearly heading toward ultimate decline, and in a few generations will be totally spent, a time which unhesitatingly points to the end of our people, to an end with horror, who shows them that they and they alone with the living Word of God in heart and mouth can halt this ruin? . . . In order for this to happen, instructors must not be mere instructors, and listeners not mere listeners or pupils. The former must be masters, so that the latter can be disciples. These masters must themselves have lived through and experienced everything spoken of, must themselves have endured the struggles, performed the labors and fulfilled the tasks. . . . Chapter 2 Science

Fig. 4.5. Illustration of August Friedrich Christian Vilmar (1868)

The need to receive, however, consists in hunger and thirst for the Word of God, for the certainty of eternal life, of salvation. In theology should be given and received the Word of God, the certainty, the undoubted, unimpeachable certainty of eternal life, of salvation. Theology must exercise the office of shepherd in such manner that it instructs the coming generation towards becoming a generation of true shepherds, able and ready to gather the sheep, to go after, to seek and find them. . . . Still there are very many among the disciples of theology who do not know, and during the entire course of their theological study are not aware, that they are to become shepherds and tend flocks for which they have to answer with their lives. . . . Who shows them that in this time of ours, when the worldly supports on which we have leaned for

For an unfortunately long time it has become the ruinous fashion in theology to measure the fitness of a theological instructor, especially a future instructor, solely according to the number and heft of the “researches” he had taken on and published (now and then resulting in a number and sheer weight of books). What must still be required of a theological instructor is first of all faithfulness and experience, or the capacity for experience in Christian life, not a mass of researches, but of knowledge connected with spiritual akribie [precision]. . . . It was certainly not progress in the “science” of dogmatics that Schleiermacher appeared with an entirely new principle of Christian faith and a series of new “scientific” dogmatic tenets, and by it set the entire evangelical dogmatics on its head, as it were. . . . It was progress from antiquated rationalism beyond or by way of the person of Christ as a portal to pantheism. It did not improve dogmatics. It brought it into a new more perilous phase of ruin than had been the case with rationalism, and the aim was and still is to hand on the alien material which Schleiermacher with consummate artistry inserted into Christian doctrine. . . . It is not the task of theology to debate with every real or alleged beginner in philosophy, with every new system of philosophy or cosmosophy, especially when it has already been decided (and in most instances can be immediately decided, since, if it is of the right sort, theology has or at least should have the sharpest eye for everything going on in the world) that the new philosophy or cosmosophy is nothing but cosmomania. . . . Before all, theology is life, designed for real life, and should determine it. It must

THE REVITALIZATION OF LUTHERANISM IN NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE

be harmonious and constant, must not allow itself to be shoved and pushed, shaped and reshaped by the life it is designed to govern. . . . (Rhetorical theology) does not want to make an impact, it wants to talk, talk for its own pleasure, and waken in others a similar pleasure. Meanwhile, it eagerly plants in others its aversion to fact and action. . . . Rhetorical theology opposes the facts of revelation with “impartiality,” meaning that from the outset it has no bias or even aversion toward it. ..... The rhetor does not penetrate to the depths, his nature does not allow it. His bailiwick is the surface of things; seriousness is not his affair. He is concerned with playing a game, where possible an ingenious game. He never involves his person, but always his words. His heart never arrives, his tongue is always in motion. . . . Whoever pays attention to eternal salvation, does not begin with impartiality and absence of presuppositions, but is biased in favor of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and assumes an eternal salvation won by this Savior on the cross. . . . Chapter 4 Systematic Theology . . . Doctrine as expressive of the deed of redemption is sound only to the degree that it is true expression of these acts, and belongs to the life of the Church. . . . In and by themselves, therefore, dogmatics and ethics are nothing but confessions of the Church, not the results of experiences, to say nothing of an individual’s speculation in the Church. This point of view, however, was neglected for a century and more. Influenced by the general confusion of the human spirit which turned from real life toward a spurious life of erudition, the theological disciplines cited above as witnesses of what the Church has lived through and experienced have become “sciences.” ..... Though in the two last decades much has occurred which allows us to hope for an improvement of this unsalutary devastation, much of real improvement is still lacking. . . . Chapter 5 Church . . . To the two necessary means of salvation, pure doctrine and Sacrament, a third has come to be added which embraces both (and, if the Apostle’ Creed contains objective truth toward salvation, no less necessary), that is, the preservation of pure doctrine and the right sacrament, thus, the recognition of ordi-

111

nances, an agency by which that preservation is most reliably secured. . . . (The rhetorical theologians) understand that the union [of Lutheran and Reformed Churches] is a perfect way to remove from Christian faith and life all of its specificity, thus to change the Church into an oratorical and debating society, in any event into a theological auditorium toward which all its effort it directed. A Church that stands firm, with an unshakeable confession, with a mighty, soul–constraining content of faith, with emphatic claims to genuine life, is the object of their repugnance, for many among them actually an object of hate. . . . It is proved by the circumstance that the unions exclude and repel Lutherans and the genuinely Reformed in equal measure, thus merely add to the division of the Church by one member. . . . THE ERLANGEN THEOLOGY: DYNAMIC CONFESSIONALISM 296. GOTTFRIED THOMASIUS: CHRIST’S PERSON AND WORK (1853) Trans. by Claude Welch in God and Incarnation in Mid–N Mid–Nineteenth ineteenth Century German Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 47–49. #40 The Incarnation as the Self-Limitation of the Son of God . . . The divine . . . surpasses the human as a broader circle does a smaller one; in its knowledge, life and action the divine extends infinitely far over and above the human, as the extra–historical over the temporal, as that which is perfect in itself over that which becomes, as the all–permeating and all–determining over the conditioned, over that which is bound to the limits and laws of earthly existence. The consciousness that the Son has of himself and of his universal governance does not come together as one with the consciousness of the historical Christ—it hovers, as it were, above him; the universal activity which the Son continuously exercises does not coincide with his divine-human action in the state of humiliation—it lies beyond or behind the latter; “while the Logos in all-permeating presence rules throughout the creation, Christ is restricted to the sphere of redemption, at least to a definite space.” Thus there is a twofold mode of being, a double life, a doubled consciousness; the Logos still is or has

112

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

something which is not merged into his historical appearance, which is not also the man Jesus—and all this seems to destroy the unity of the person, the identity of the ego; thus there occurs no living and complete penetration of both sides, no proper beingman of God. . . . . . . And thus we shall have to posit the incarnation itself precisely in the fact that he, the eternal Son of God, the second person of the deity, gave himself over into the form of human limitation, and thereby to the limits of the spatio-temporal existence, under the conditions of a human development, in the bounds of an historical concrete being, in order to live in and through our nature the life of our race in the fullest sense of the word, without on that account ceasing to be God. Only so does there occur an actual entrance into humanity, an actual becomingone with it, a becoming-man of God; and only so does there result that historical person of the mediator which we know to be the God-man. The transition into this condition is manifestly a self-limitation for the eternal Son of God. It is certainly a divesting of that which is essential to deity in order to be God, but it is a divesting of the divine mode of being in favor of the humanly creaturely form of existence, and eo ipso a renunciation of the divine glory which he had from the beginning with the Father and exercises vis-à-vis the world, governing and ruling over it throughout. . . . As the assumption of human nature, the incarnation is at the same time the self-limitation of God the Son; and conversely, the self-limitation of the Son of God mediates the assumption of flesh. Divesting himself, he appropriates human kind; imparting himself to it, he truly participates in it, and in such manner unites himself with it and it with him in one person. . . . The two moments, coincident in time and in deed, are rather only the two sides of one and the same act by which the Christ of God came into being. In the unity of the two the incarnation is itself the deepest mystery of self-denying love, a deed of love in which the eternal Son of the Father becomes like unto us, in order in suffering and dying to reconcile us with God and to make us hereafter participant in his glory. . . .

297. ADOLF VON HARLESS: SYSTEM OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS (1842/1864) This excerpt is take from the 6th edition, which appeared in 1864. The first German edition was in 1842. Trans. by A. W. Morrison & William Findlay. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1887), 95–174.

Fig. 4.6. Adolph Gottlieb Christoph von Harless (post-1852)

#13 The Existence, the Nature, and the Import of the Positive Law The inkling or the postulate of a divine law, standing above man, and ethically determining and regulating his will, may be described as a working of conscience. But the actual existence of such, in its full manifestation before the eyes of man, is not given in conscience. Such a self-explication of the divine will touching the whole relations of human life, is found neither in man nor in the natural organization over against him. . . .

THE REVITALIZATION OF LUTHERANISM IN NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE

The question is therefore this, how the Christian consciousness comes to the knowledge of such a positive divine law. For the Christian consciousness, it is its vital connection with Christ which is the guarantee to the Christian of the existence of an historical divine law in the law given to the people of Israel, and which unfolds to him as well the unity as the diversity of what he has in the law, and what he has in Christ. . . . #15 Legal Obedience By virtue of the law I become conscious that the will of the personal and holy God over me can only arrive at its just accomplishment out of a sanctified will in man. The more definitively, however, the law and conscience reveal to me my own unholiness, so much the more decidedly does the law drive me from the requisition of holiness to that revelation of the divine will, by virtue of which God will begin with this, that he sanctifies me. If this desire takes possession of us, then is the purpose of the law attained. . . . #17 The Existence, the Essence, and the Import of the Gospel The reconciliation of that discord between God and man, of whose existence both our conscience and the law of God convince us, is not nor can be regarded as a fact of the natural human consciousness. . . . The sum of all the yearning excited in us by conscience and the law is comprised in the knowledge that no man can effect his own redemption. . . . As to how the possibility of man’s being saved lay with God, all preparatory revelation was intended to excite man to ask. The full revelation and disclosure, however, is expressly testified to be the announcement of a mystery hitherto hidden and withheld from the world. . . . The fact of the death of Christ is that which is named as the consummation of the reconciliation “when we were still enemies” (Rom 5:10). No reconciliation and redemption of the world accomplish by Christ could at all be spoken of if it were not effected by an act of Christ, and by that alone. By virtue of this is Christ (. . .) truly the redeemer of the world (. . .), the propitiation for the whole world (. . .), the deliverer from the wrath of God (. . .). And that which is offered to us by God as our justification, is nothing else but justification in the blood of Christ (Rom 5:9), and, absolutely identical with forgiveness of sins. . . .

113

The Working of the Gospel on the Human Consciousness #18a Evangelical Faith Since in the gospel, on account of that fulfilling of the law which was accomplished in Christ, grace and forgiveness of sins are held out to us in the word in the way of promise, an ethical procedure is hereby called forth on man’s part (that is to say, one which has its root in his will), in which he takes his stand for his justification before God entirely, and alone on this grace, which has been given him by God in Christ, and made over to him in the word of promise. This procedure of his is, however, conformably to its origin, justly appreciated in a moral point of view, and kept pure, only in the same proportion as man recognizes and holds firmly to its possibility and reality as an effect proceeding from the word of God’s grace, and which makes him free from such self–action, and seeks the appropriation of the grace offered to him in the word of promise in no act which is prejudicial to or altogether sets aside the gift of grace proceeding from God, as a gift freely offered to us and that purely for Christ’s sake. This renunciation on our part of everything in us which might be conceived as a ground of God’s grace is the ethical continued characteristic of that appropriation of the word of promise which is called by Scripture justifying faith. Since man perceives from the working of conscience and the law, that he has nothing in himself which could justify him before God, he is enabled by the working of the gospel–word to grasp in faith that gracious relation of God in Christ, which his eye cannot see, and which far transcends his inner knowledge and experience, but which is guaranteed to him in the word of promise, and to receive it in confident assurance of the all-powerful efficacy of God in Christ as also availing for him. . . . #19b Evangelical Love Out of faith, which takes what no man is able to give, is born the love, which gives what no man can give of himself. For it only gives back that which faith has received from God, viz. a joyous and cheerful heart for the service of God and man. Therefore it is faith which makes us free for love, not love which makes us free for faith. For the heart–constraining love of God comes not upon me, if I do not believe that God in Christ first loved me before I loved Him. And just as love and faith are inseparable, so certain is

114

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

it that we must first come to faith before we come to true love. For only the love which is born of faith can prove its truthfulness in this, that in such love it does not seek its own, least of all does it seek a righteousness of such love before God. Rather it knows well, that it is nothing in comparison with that love with which God has loved us in Christ, and has given up His only-begotten Son for us, and cannot do otherwise than love God in return who has so loved the world. . . . #20c Evangelical Hope What man needs here below for his mastery over the accusations of conscience and of the law—what he needs for the assurance of his justification by grace before God,—that is given him in the word of promise, and that he has in faith. What he requires for the service of God and of his neighbor that he receives in the divine spirit of love, which springs from the love of the grace–promising God. But that which extends beyond this work, and lifts man above this world, is presented to him in the promise of benefits which, destined for future possession in another world, are here below benefits of hope, and remain the object of hope. . . .

Fig. 4.7. August Neander. Lithograph by Gentili after a drawing by Fr. Krüger (19th century)

MEDIATING THEOLOGY 298. AUGUST NEANDER: LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOGMAS, VOL. 1 (1826) Trans. by J. E. Ryland. (London: Bell & Daldy, 1872), 17–19. It is justly demanded of the historian that he should write with impartiality, sine ira et studio [without anger or zealousness]. For if fixed to the standpoint of a party, he will present in glowing colors the representations that favor it, the bright side alone without any shadows; and on the other hand depreciate whatever does not agree with this standpoint. The injurious operation of theological polemics has been strikingly shown in the history of dogmas. Thus a one–sided Catholicism has been able to see in Protestantism, not the Christian element, but only what it regards as impure additions, and as it looked at everything through the same prejudiced medium, what was historical has been branded as heresy, so that a great part of the development of the Church has appeared in a distorted shape. Protestantism stands on a higher stage of development, and thus is better able to judge of the preceding stages in a loving and equitable spirit; nevertheless there is a one–sided and narrow-minded Protestantism which is incapable of discerning what is Christian in Catholicism, though mixed with what is falsely Catholic; this is shown in the judgments passed by Protestant writers on the history of dogmas in the Middle Ages. But frequently the demand for impartiality has been extended too far. The historian has been called upon to repress his subjective tendencies so entirely as to render his views and representations purely objective. But this is an impracticable requirement; a man cannot deny what he is; he cannot turn himself into a tabula rasa [blank slate]; the representation of any object must be conditioned by the standpoint of the observer. Such negativity and indifference would not suffice for the production of a chronological aggregate, for even this requires judgment in its arrangement. An organic, genetic arrangement would certainly be impossible, since there could be no cordial interest in the events, nor anything more than a superficial collocation and junction of them. Whoever would be correctly acquainted with the development of Christianity, must have a correct idea of Christianity and of its relation to other phenomena. . . . We are not required to lay aside our sub-

THE REVITALIZATION OF LUTHERANISM IN NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE

jectivity, but to purify it more and more, and to surrender ourselves to the Truth. In modern times methods of treating the history of dogmas have been proposed which have tried to assume a standpoint above Christianity. A distinction has been made in it between the substance of the thought and the empirical appearance which forms its envelope. Thus (David) Strauss complains that Christianity has not been yet discussed with the same freedom as other religions. But since, as we have remarked, Christianity is the absolute religion, which alone meets all the religious wants of man, no higher standpoint can be given for religious inquiries than itself. Moreover, religious phenomena are only intelligible by means of their principle, Religion, which has its seat in the soul of man, and not by mere intellectual notions. In fact, what is presented as the essence of Christianity from the standpoint of the Intellect often consists of ideas which have no root in Christianity. Strauss, for example, endeavors to trace back the whole fullness of the divine life in Christianity to universal ideas; to an immanent reason which occupies the place of the living God and by which God and the World are interchanged and confounded; to the eternity of the Spirit in mankind which is substituted for a personal life, and which makes man as transitory as all other earthly phenomena; in fine, the idea of Humanity comes in place of the historical Christ. This mode of thinking is in direct contradiction to Christianity, and therefore cannot comprehend it. It also contradicts History; for what has exercised the greatest influence on the inner and outer life of man? Not abstract ideas certainly, but Christianity in its own flesh and blood, the personal religious truths which form the vital principle of the Christian Church. So that Christianity cannot be separated from Christ and his apostles, with whom it originated, nor from the facts which accompanied its first promulgation; our task will ever be to develop more widely that which is granted to mankind in the first appearance of Christianity. . . . 299. ISAAK DORNER: LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOGMAS, VOL. 1 (1867) From Geschichte der pr protestantischen otestantischen Theolog Theologie, ie, besonders in Deutschland (Munich: J. G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1867), 766, 771, 774, 784, 793, 807, 815, 825. trans. by Eric Lund.

115

Fig. 4.8. Photograph of Isaak August Dorner (19th century)

Book 2 /Division 2 /Section 3 /Chapter 3 Review of the Eighteenth Century . . . Just as an organism struggles for mastery when faced with a dangerous sickness, so also did Protestantism, during the period, from 1750 to 1800, when subjectivity was most in the ascendant, when philosophy with its successive systems was the order of the day. It shook off all that it felt to be the cause of the bondage into which it had fallen, all that oppressive narrowness of external form which its inner nature could not assimilate, and which yet sought to lord it over that nature. That which thus cramped its energies and stifled its breath was not the divine itself, but the human additions and forms which had been mingled with it, which made the historical appear unspiritual, or the divine uncongenial, and were destructive to thought, freedom and will. . . . Antiquated theology went down to its grave, but the Christian faith remained, nay, was even now reviving with fresh vigor, to bring forth in due time a new theology. To this result philosophy, even in its especially critical period, furnished its contribution. During the above mentioned period, its attitude indeed was, for the most part alien or antagonistic

116

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

to Christianity. Its labors nevertheless served a higher cause than its own and formed a regularly advancing process, which was not all loss, but also profit, because it showed beforehand how the factors of the human and the divine, of nature and grace, were intrinsically related. . . . Book 3 / Division 1 The Nineteenth Century or the Regeneration of Protestant Theology One of the most important results of the commotion which during the eighteenth century had agitated the Evangelical Church, was the altered attitude of the different Christian, and especially the different Protestant, confessions towards each other. In the seventeenth century their controversies had too often been characterized by self-exaltation, want of charity, and a spirit of binding opponents to conclusions which they repudiated. Both confessions had ignored those treasures of evangelical faith which were common property, and had shown a disposition to disparage their common Christianity or to restrict its natural effects. . . . This was chiefly shown on the part of Lutheran theologians by their claim that their confession, as being in possession of correct doctrine, was the only true church of Christ on earth, and in the most flourishing condition. Opposition to this distortion, which turned attention from the fundamental evangelical truths, and placed in their stead those doctrinal distinctions which were morbidly overvalued, was never indeed wholly absent, though it continued without result until the commencement of the present century. . . . On the other hand, the great intellectual revolution of the eighteenth century certainly helped to moderate expectations and to break through the narrowness to which the mind had hitherto been subjected. If the storm had engulfed all Christian doctrines, and involved them in a common destruction, this necessarily called for deliberation as to what really constituted those vital articles of evangelical faith, for whose recovery or preservation is was needful, with all earnestness, to contend. The result of this newly acquired knowledge and reawakened love was the inward alliance of those kindred spirits in both confessions, whom their common faith enabled to overcome confessional restrictions. The judgments and deliverances of the subsequent Napoleonic era were instrumental in reviving a truly Christian fear of God and love to the Church, and these were the conditions from which a desire for union arose—a desire which Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia decided

to address by his proclamation on September 27, 1817 [of the Church Union], but one which was joyfully re–echoed on all sides. The celebration of the third centenary of the Reformation was to be a sign of the retraction of the injustice and narrowness which had been attached to the great spiritual act of the German people. What the king at the same time effected against the liturgical anarchy which had set in, was equally to bear the impress of the spirit of the Reformation. . . . Section 1 With respect to the application of Schelling and Hegel’s philosophy to theology, it may be said that both have exercised a reviving influence upon many recent theological works. . . . But the supposed peace between theology and philosophy proved to be illusive; for neither orthodoxy nor Christianity can be restricted within one system which reduces everything to a movement of thought. . . . This semblance of union was chiefly destroyed by [David] Strauss. ..... He set his mythical view against the biblical supernaturalism which sought to base the truth of Christianity upon inspiration, miracles, and prophecy, . . . Strauss demands a presupposition–less historical criticism yet makes two presuppositions of his own for his mythical theory, one dogmatic and the other historical. The chief obstacle, however, to more lasting effects being produced by Strauss’ work, was the influence of [Friedrich] Schleiermacher and his theology, an influence which was further augmented by the schism in the Hegelian school. The chief service he rendered to theology, which above all else makes him an important figure in its history, is that he overcame that antagonism of rationalism and supernaturalism which prevailed until about 1820. . . . That which was valid about rationalism was its desire for personal conviction and mental appropriation of truth, instead of blind subjection to merely external authority, and its consequent tendency to a strict combination of man’s natural and moral being. Supernaturalism on the other hand, was right in its assumption that man, in his highest relations, does not stand upon his own resources, but needs the divine agency; and in more specific terms, that Christianity is not a natural growth. . . . Now Schleiermacher, by his return to the fundamental Reformation view, united freedom and authority, personal appropriation and tradition, the ideal and the historical, upon the foundation of religion or faith, in the evangelical sense of the word. . . .

THE REVITALIZATION OF LUTHERANISM IN NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE

Schleiermacher, originally a member of the Reformed Church, but educated and brought up among the Moravian Brotherhood, which is especially indigenous in the Lutheran Church, belongs exclusively to neither of the two confessions. By combining Lutheran mysticism with Reformed reflection and dialectics, he attained that original mode of viewing his subject, which gave such animation to his scholarly operations. . . . His strict insistence upon the universalism of grace, in opposition to Calvinistic particularism, and the greater stress that he lays on love than on justice, both in his estimation of the Old Testament with relation to the New, in the doctrine of God, and in the ethic relation of the regenerate Christian to the world, are also Lutheran features. . . . From the Fifth Decade of this Century to the Present Time The period during which the influence of Schleiermacher, and of the tendency to which he had given the first impulse, was at its height about the year 1820, and lasted until the middle of 1840. From about 1827, indeed, until the appearance of Strauss’ Life of Jesus in 1835, Hegel and his school was able to dispute its pre-eminence. This work, however, revealed the contradictions of the Hegelian philosophy to Christianity, and, at the same time, introduced into the former a process of dissolution, also, in part, a transition to a Hegelian popular philosophy. The consequence was that Schleiermacher’s far more enduring influence upon theology was again triumphant. . . . It is much to be desired and hoped that a good understanding upon the basis of the recovered perception of the power of the Reformation principles, and the danger of any alteration of them, may continue to increase in the whole German evangelical church. . . . It is unmistakable that the process, so happily begun, of regaining to their church the hearts of the German nation, stagnated due to various faithful spiritual leaders; especially because of their warlike attitude against the union and the Reformed and their archaic and hierarchical tendencies. . . . Now that the tendency to materialism is so widely spread and has been fashioned into a theory, it is especially needful that the hearts of the people be opened to the gospel so that a new creation, resulting from the energy and unity of the German nation, might be brought forth out of the mental chaos. . . .

117

300. AUGUST THOLUCK: THE DOCTRINE OF SIN AND THE RECONCILER (1823) This book presents a dialogue about faith and doubt between two friends, Guido and Julius. In this excerpt, Otto, a friend of Guido, describes his meetings with a pious old man named Abraham, whose words of wisdom brought about his rebirth—not like a sudden earthquake, but “gradually during these weeks through a growing feeling of the majesty and peaceful grandeur of a truly Christian life.” The old man is probably modeled after Baron Hans von Kottwitz, a Pietist nobleman, who helped bring about Tholuck’s own rebirth. The book was written in response to the liberal biblical scholar Wilhelm DeWette’s novel entitled “Theodor or the Consecration of the Sceptic” (1821). From Der Lehr Lehree von der Sünde und vom Versöhner ersöhner. Seventh edition. (Hamburg: Friedrich Perthes, 1851), 149–156. trans. by Eric Lund.

Fig. 4.9. Photograph of August Tholuck (pre-1877)

Book 2, Chapter 2 Yes, a great resurrection morning has dawned. Hundreds of young people, in all places, have been awakened by the Spirit of God. Everywhere the converted are entering into a closer union. Science itself is the handmaid and friend of the crucified one. The governmental authorities, though in part still hostile

118

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

to this great transformation out of a fear that it might generate political commotions, are favorable in many places, and where this is not so, the forces of the light are so much stronger. Many enlightened preachers already proclaim the gospel in its power. Many who are still in obscurity will come forward. . . . Pietism will seem very disreputable. It is so already. But do not inconsiderately attack what the world reproaches under that name, for it rejoices in the trick it has played upon you, since you yourself are included by it in the reproach, and, in its view, you will have unwittingly attacked your own principles. Rather, may you be ready in all cases to admit, with the simplicity of a child, that in the sense in which the world uses the term, you must accept it for yourself. For, my dear one, when you hear talk about narrow–mindedness and censoriousness, you will by far more frequently find, that it means nothing other than the feeling of godly simplicity which loves only One Thing, and everything else only as it is connected with that One. Since the world has not found all in that One, it must think it narrow-minded, if the Christian only loves that One among all things, and loves nothing that it cannot love in and for him. . . . Therefore, my dearly beloved, let your heart be purified by the grace of the Lord Jesus from all selfish aims, from all private ends, and let the eyes of your soul be enlightened. Then you will not have that narrow–mindedness which will be condemned before the judgment-seat of Christ. You will not reject what the world offers you in the arts and sciences, or in the pleasures of life, and whatever else there may be; but you will let it be purified by the Spirit which is a refiner’s fire and will use it in a sanctified way. Neither will you condemn what the Lord has not condemned. . . . Despise not human greatness or talent, or ability of all kinds, but beware lest you overvalue it. I see a time coming—indeed it is already come—in which gifted men will lift up their voice for the truth; but woe to the time which seeks self-promotion with its voices instead of taking words to heart. There will come a time when the world will come to a truce with Christ. Perhaps after a few decades, there will be no one in many parts of Germany who will not wish to be called a Christian! Learn to discern the spirits. Whoever exhibits Christian ideas well, whether in the fine arts or in discourse; whoever can show that Christianity is the bonding agent of states and the pillar of thrones; whoever points out the triune God and the redemption everywhere in the life of nations and in nature; whoever seeks out edifying

society and keeps up with ascetic publications —do not depreciate to anyone what he says or does; . . . Communion in divine brotherly love is at the same time the touchstone and the alkali of Christianity, [which absorbs and neutralizes whatever is acidic in the church]. In its true form, it cannot exist without true love for its Lord; and besides this, it removes whatever peculiarity or falsely originality might attach itself [to Christianity]. At the same time, it is an enemy of all lukewarmness. Everyone has a different gift of grace; therefore, each learns from the others, as all likewise learn from Christ. Where Christians are isolated from each other, you will always find a certain eccentricity as well as lukewarmness and lethargy. Such a brotherly communion, however, allows all spirits to have their different developments, if they only all come together in Christ: . . . LUTHERAN SOCIAL ACTION: THE DEACONESS AND INNER MISSION MOVEMENTS 301. THEODOR FLIEDNER: APPEAL OF THE DEACONESS INSTITUTE AT KAISERSWERTH TO ALL FRIENDS OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD (1853) Trans. by David Crowner and Gerald Christianson in The Spirituality of the German Awakening (New York: Paulist Press, 2003), 194–99. Already in the apostolic church, as the apostle Paul reports about sister Phoebe in Cenchreae (Romans 16:1), and still many centuries later deaconesses have proved that to a certain extent they carry out Christian diaconal service in the most appropriate and beneficial way, practicing love in the service of the church to needy children, the sick, the poor, and the imprisoned. Thousands of young women and widows of every rank, even the highest, who are not bound by pressing family responsibilities have been compelled by thankfulness to their Savior to find in this practice of love the most wonderful vocation for their lives and have been an adornment of the church. After the office of deaconess died out in the Greek and Roman Church during the Middle Ages only the Waldensian Church and the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren preserved it. After the beginning of the blessed Reformation in the sixteenth century, when Luther too, repeatedly expressed himself beautifully about the special vocation of women in practicing

THE REVITALIZATION OF LUTHERANISM IN NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE

Christian love, the Evangelical Church in various countries tried to reintroduce the office of deaconess. . . . But due to unfavorable conditions at the time these attempts did not last very long. . . . The deaconess office was reintroduced to our Evangelical Church in 1836 in such a way that it was clearly authorized by the Provincial Synods of the Rhine Province and Westphalia and by our other highest church authorities. Since then the deaconesses’ Christian care and training of children, the sick, the poor, the imprisoned, and the helpless and lost of all kinds have been recognized as so beneficial that from year to year our deaconess motherhouse here has received more and more requests from congregations, from administrators of institutions, and from organizations and private parties to send deaconesses. The number of requests has grown steadily, even though in addition to our institution, and partially through its assistance, several similar institutions have been founded over the past eleven years in France, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Sweden, and North America. Our Deaconess Institute, the oldest of them, has been in existence since October 1836, and currently has 163 sisters. Of them 119 have been consecrated for the office of deaconess, and 109 work outside of the motherhouse, some in private care of the sick, some in twenty–six hospitals, others in nine congregations, six orphanages, five homes for the elderly, three kindergartens, one teacher–training school, one secondary school, one halfway house for released female prisoners, and one Magdalene House. . . . O, my dear sisters in Christ! What a great field of work lies before you, the grain ready for harvest! [Matt 9:37]. And what a delightful field, rich in blessing, to serve the Lord in congregations, institutions, and families as mothers of the poor and sick by strengthening the weak, tending the sick, binding up the wounded, searching for what is lost, and bringing back what has strayed! [Ezek 34:16] And what a delightful field, to do the same in orphanages, rescue missions, and schools, to shepherd the lambs on green meadows, to lead them to the fresh water of life, yes, into the arms of the Prince of Life, their Good Shepherd, so that he might bless them! We cannot provide workers for even a tenth of this holy vineyard. Hundreds, thousands of bodies and souls are withering away without help. . . . Why do you not come? Why do you stand idly about? Most of you hold back for at least one of three reasons. Many of you have no idea at all of the great phys-

119

ical and spiritual need around you. You would really like to serve the Savior out of thanks for his love, but you do not know how or where. In addition you feel weak and unprepared and are uninformed about the facilities for preparation and training that our Deaconess Institute and similar ones offer. Others of you do indeed know all this and would like to come and help. However, you are worried that your passionate zeal for work might be a self–chosen path, not God’s path. You think you have to wait for an outward call to place God’s seal on your inward call. Still others do not receive permission from their all-too-anxious parents—we, of course, find parental consent necessary according to the Word of God—or they let themselves be held back by relatives who are full of biases. Therefore, dear brothers in the ministry, you can, with the aid of the Lord, help greatly to remove these hindrances. Whether from the pulpit, in Bible classes, missionary lessons, or confirmation instruction you can turn their attention to the rich blessing they can become for the church and to the blessed reward of grace from the Lord. . . . You can help by making the women aware of how the office of evangelical deaconess is free of nun’s vows and other human statutes that go against the Scriptures, that the office stands in evangelical freedom, which, of course, does not allow one to make room for the flesh. . . . However, even though deaconess work is a delightful task, it is nevertheless difficult for flesh and blood. Therefore, these Christian women must be energetic and strong, not physically ailing, nor morose, and not with troubled souls. Nor can they be half-invalids looking for care and support, like the ones who, unfortunately, are often sent to us out of a lack of judgment and with medical certifications that one could often call falsifications. The Lord wants the best in sacrifice to his service. His service deserves nothing less. . . . 302. THEODOR FLIEDNER: THE LACK OF PASTORAL CARE AND PRACTICAL THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION AT PRUSSIAN UNIVERSITIES (1831) From Collektenr ollektenreise eise nach Holland und England., Bd. II (Essen: G. D. Bädeker, 1831), 192–225. trans. by Eric Lund.

120

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Fig. 4.10. Steele engraving of Theodor Fliedner (19th century)

If we now cast a comparative glance at our German, namely Prussian, universities in respect to overall pastoral care for Protestant students and especially the practical education of Protestant theologians, we find here still significant lacks and gaps. Incomprehensibly, a special care of souls is not provided for Protestant students, as far as I know, at any German university, as if it were superfluous or entirely impossible. . . . Unspeakable damage has been done to churchly life and faith in the Protestant Church, in that until now not only the theologians but all other Protestant students who will afterwards exercise an important influence on the life of the church and the state, find themselves outside of all churchly associations and regular pastoral care during the three or four years of their university life, precisely during the time of life when the heart is turned here and there most strongly by passions and when the intellect in its research into all domains of knowledge so easily loses humility with respect to religious matters, making space for unbelief. . . . Is it any wonder that a large part of them are torn from Christ and the means of grace of his church and hear nothing about him except perhaps for hints about Christianity in philosophical or historical lectures, which then do not shake up but more likely strengthening their unbelief? The appointed university preachers cannot fill the harm-

ful gap because they merely preach at certain times, practice no pastoral care, and are customarily burdened with learned professorial duties. . . . The state could, without much difficulty, assign one of the pastors of a Protestant congregation in a university city to provide special pastoral care for all Protestant students. . . . So that trust might grow and a real enduring pastoral care might take place, the pastor should visit each student in his residence at least every half year, just as he holds half-yearly home visits with the remaining members of his congregation in accordance with our church order. Halfyearly visits are necessary because many only remain at a university for a semester. . . . He will awaken the sting of conscience in them, thereby leading to moral earnestness and in that way preparing for a decisive turning towards the Lord. He will impress upon them the duty of a greater hallowing of the Sabbath and the benefits of using the day not merely for the gratification of sensual desires or for learned studies but much more for religious instruction, awakening and edification, for self-examination and the practice of godliness through the hearing of the divine word. ... Another great impairment for the Kingdom of God is the highly deficient and paltry practical guidance given to Protestant theologians for their future professional lives, especially at our Prussian universities. . . . The number of students exclusively dedicated to scholarly theology is so extraordinarily small that the indisputable chief purpose of theological education at the university must be the training of young theologians to be capable teachers and spiritual directors of Christian congregations. But, this requires not merely rigorous academic training in theology but also thorough practical instruction for their profession. Now, for almost all theologians in Prussia, the universities are the only institution where they get their scholarly education and practical instruction. The only theological seminary in our fatherland, the one in Wittenberg [opened 1817], limits itself to only a small number of regular members—to 25—and demands so much time—the course being two-years long. Students need to have completed their academic studies already, and, as a rule, they must also have passed their first candidate exam. It costs so much for exceptional members who are not among the 25 scholarship holders to attend that, as a result, the number of beneficiaries of that seminary education remains very small. . . . So, what now constitutes the practical instruction of theologians are the university? After they have spent the first two years exclusively on theoretical

THE REVITALIZATION OF LUTHERANISM IN NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE

academic studies, including scholarly exegesis, church history, doctrine and ethics as well as methodology, which merely shows them the method of learned study and gives them book-knowledge, they turn in part of their last university year in a more practical direction, hearing about homiletics and catechesis. . . . After they have dedicated a part of the last third of their three-year program to practical matters ..... they head back home, well prepared so they think, to be shepherds and spiritual directors for hundreds, even thousands of immortal souls, preachers and interpreters of the divine word for adults, teachers and nurturers of truth and godliness for youth, helpers of the poor, consolers of the sick and dying, guardians and caregivers of the church, overseers and promoters of schools, spreaders of the kingdom of God to all classes and relations, although they do not have the least or maybe very sparse experience in most of these holy activities. . . . Scholarly exegesis in no way provides sufficient instruction that is useful and necessary, but unfortunately, as a rule, it is the exclusive exegesis that is taught at the universities. What is much more needed is an interpretation of Scripture aimed at practical life, at edification and the sanctification of the heart, without displays of philosophical, philological or theological learning, without the citation of learned opinions and hypotheses but which, according to the model of a Spener or Francke makes the history and teachings of the text fruitful for the heart of the hearer. For these hearers, as future preachers and teachers of their congregations, to be able to make practical teachings about sin and reconciliation, about flesh and spirit, about law and grace, rebirth and sanctification truly understandable, and fruitful for their souls, they must first themselves penetrate these teachings in the spirit and experience the truth of the same in their own hearts. . . . In a similar way, young theologians under the leading of university pastors should catechize frequently in churches and also be given opportunities to acquire experience in instructing one or more weaker students alone. These opportunities can easily be found, partly because in any group of catechumens some remain behind the others and would benefit from private catch-up sessions, and partly because the poor houses and prisons of a university city, which as a rule contain many who are entirely devoid of religious knowledge, can also serve as beneficial training schools for the heads and hearts of seminarians. . . . Another very important part of pastoral care is care for the sick. It is universally agreed that spiritual vis-

121

its to the sick constitute the most difficult but also important activities of pastoral care. The statement of some theoretical rules and accounts of bedside experiences provide little help for the young theologian. Practical instruction in visits to the sick is therefore in no way dispensable. . . . Francke implemented this and in the establishment of a seminary for church ministers in 1714 he thought to provide seminarians with opportunities to acquire pastoral knowledge, to visit the sick, etc., in order to have at least preliminary practice in all kinds of spiritual ministry. . . .

Fig. 4.11. Portrait of Johann Hinrich Wichern by unknown artist (19th century)

303. JOHANN HINRICH WICHERN: THE INNER MISSION OF GERMANY (1851) This English language document records Wichern’s explanation of the Inner Mission to the Evangelical Alliance in London at its annual conference in 1851. It shows the ecumenical outlook and the international influence of the movement.

122

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

From Sämtliche Werke Bd. V. (Berlin/Hamburg: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1962), 98–102. [In 1848] the Revolution swept over Europe, and spread universal terror. Believers in all parts of Germany were awakened by it, and in a spirit of true repentance, confessed to one another, that they had sinned against their countrymen, and that the Christian Church had not answered the end for which it was planted among them. . . . They became increasingly convinced that the Christian Church is called upon to be the savior of the people. The great questions of the present times, especially the social questions, are not to be solved by cannons and bayonets, but by the Word of God. When the living Christ comes among his people and calls around them his army of workmen (thus, we speak in our fatherland), we hear his voice, and obey the call of the Lord. And these are they who work in the Inner Mission. This is an institution which at that time had not been begun, but which has been since so widely and heartily taken up, that it has become a national work. . . . It is not a mission to neologians, nor to Roman Catholics, nor to any who are not included in the Protestant Church, but a mission designed to awaken those who are professedly within her pale. Not that others are absolutely excluded from its field of action, but that they are not primarily contemplated as lying within it. And it seeks to engage all living Christians in its works of usefulness, for it proceeds upon the principle upon which also the Protestant Church is itself founded, of the universal priesthood of Christians. If this principle be true, the Inner Mission aims to embody and to exemplify it, and calls, therefore, upon every Christian individually to show himself to be a priest. . . . Those who commenced it did not wish to go far away, but to begin as near home as possible. They asked themselves: Who stands nearest to me? And the answer was—I, myself, and my own family. What has filled our eyes with tears, and still excites in us the deepest alarm, is the ruin in our families. There are countries in Germany in which half the children are illegitimate. If the reason of this be sought after, and of pauperism, so greatly increasing, it is found in the fact that the Bible has disappeared from the household. Accordingly, one of the first works of the Inner Mission has been, to recall families to family worship, for there are large districts in which, where it once obtained, it has altogether passed away. . . . A second work of the Inner Mission is, to look after miserable and lost children. Vast numbers of such are given over to sin and crime. I live in a house (Raues Haus) into which, for several years past,

I have gathered continually about a hundred of these wretched outcasts, incendiaries, thieves and sinners. These are they who fill our prisons. We have prisons in Germany, which, twenty years ago, contained only some 300 criminals, that now are crowded with thousands. To stop this fearful tide of crime, we must endeavor to reclaim the young transgressor. The houses into which we receive them are called Houses of Refuge. They are built in the country; and the children are occupied principally in agricultural labor. We place over them Christian heads of families, and we experience more and more the blessing with which God attends them. During the last twenty-five years, about one hundred and fifty such institutions have been formed. They are founded and maintained, not by the government, but by individual and voluntary benevolence. . . . Akin to the work carried on among these juvenile sinners is the visitation of the prisons. It seemed important to us that Christian love should concern itself with the condition of prisoners. . . . Another object of the Inner Mission is, to mitigate, and, as far as may be, to annihilate pauperism. German countries have been reduced almost to despair by increasing poverty. An immense gulf has arisen between the rich and the poor. The poor are filled with envy, and the rich with fear. The question to be asked: How is this gulf to be filled up? No stream of gold can fill it. It can be filled only by the love which is born of God. This alone can unite those divided grades of society. The great mistake has been committed in Germany, of supposing that the care of the poor should devolve on government, and that pauperism can be cured by poorhouses. . . . The Inner Mission, addressing itself to this work, has endeavored to enforce the principle, that each congregation should take care of its own poor, and that those who are not in poverty themselves, should provide for their fellow–worshippers who are. What we should give to the poor is not so much money, or food, or clothing, but ourselves. . . . The Inner Mission is reviving the Bible Societies. Germany is indebted to English Christians for their original institution; but they have been suffered to fall into decay. . . . In a large city of northern Germany, the Bible was carried by the Inner Mission from house to house. In this manner it was offered to six thousand people. Almost half of them refused it, declaring that they no longer believed in it, and by some it was torn to pieces in the very presence of the colporteurs. But there were more than a thousand who thanked God that his Word was again offered to them. But it is not enough that a person possesses the

THE REVITALIZATION OF LUTHERANISM IN NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPE

Word of God or even that he reads it—it is necessary that he should understand it. Hence Bible lectures have been commenced in which the Holy Scriptures are both read and explained. . . . In conclusion, in the further development of the Inner Mission, the conviction was growing in the minds of its friends, that it must be an international work, in which England, France, Germany and Switzerland, must become one people, one great congregation of the Lord. . . . 304. JOHANN HINRICH WICHERN: SPEECH TO THE WITTENBERG KIRCHENTAG (SEPTEMBER 21, 1848) From “Erklärung auf dem Wittenberger Kirchentag.” Sämtliche Werke Bd. I, (Berlin/Hamburg: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1962), 155–162. trans. by Eric Lund. The turning point in world history at which we currently find ourselves must also be a turning point in the history of the Christian, and especially German Protestant, Church, in so far as it must enter into a new position in relation to the people. These thoughts, wishes and hopes have been circulating for a long time in our church and in recent decades in ever more lively streams in the circles which lay the salvation of the nation unescapably to heart. The difficulties and obstacles which have opposed the realization of these hopes appear to be manifold as well as insurmountable. Then came in February of this year [the social uprisings of 1848] the horrors assailing our western neighbors, followed in March by the fateful events in our own country. Though the heart bled so deeply and still bleeds in pain over the disgrace, misery and power of sin which came to light, there also lay behind all this, for the eyes of faith, the dawning of a new day of promise for the rejuvenation of the faithful, saving work of the church, a day whose nearness we can only greet in living hope with rejoicing. A day of the Lord, a day of salvation for our church in our dear fatherland has arisen over our heads, with these events. It must and will come to consciousness that our Protestant Church is a church of the people, penetrated with a new breath of life from God, by which the people are renewed in a new way and with new power. The actual beginning, though it may be unknown to many, lies before us. I greet today’s Kirchentag as a great and long hoped for a step of progress on the way to the building of our Protestant Church into a true church of the people, despite all appearances that the church is beyond

123

recovery in its territories. If the proceedings are to lead to these results, if the actualization is not to be delayed and the hope of very many church members is to be fulfilled, the practical questions should be worked through, fundamentally, clearly and deeply in their significant connection with the questions of this morning, as hundreds and thousands have expected from the Kirchentag in Wittenberg. . . . Two years ago those who spoke with earnest about the dangers of Communism among the Germans, in Paris and London, were concerned that they would be laughed at or cut short. The circumstances of our times have taught us otherwise. Those who knew how the matter stood saw the threatening monster rise up, and now the storm of a Communist revolution has blown up. . . . Indeed, the often obscured principle means for the reaching of their goals has been atheism. . . . As a sign of the spirit that frequently dominates among the workers note a stanza of a song that was sung a short while ago in a gathering of lesser craftsmen in Hamburg: Curse the God, blind and deaf, to whom we vainly prayed in faith for whom we hoped and waited He has tricked and made fools of us. . . .

What is to be done? While this condition spread across all of Europe like a great net, messengers were sent out in great numbers to the heathen. The thought arose to practice mission activity in our hometowns and in our own houses. So the name Inner Mission arose in circles which also in like measure operated external missions. But those actions remain imperfect if the same view is not expanded into governmental and political life. The state demands this work as much as the church. The deepest ethical foundations on which civic life rests are being shaken and appear in part to have already sunk into the bottomless pit. As a consequence, there is revolution and the threat of anarchy. ... Love for the down-trodden and the lost was a principle of the Protestant Church from the very beginning, but the awakening of this love in its full richness belonged to a later time—and perhaps also to the present state of development of the spirit of our church. It seems that there were two God–gifted men who especially worked on that which should come about: [the Pietists] Spener and A. H. Francke—the one through his proclamation of the priesthood of all believers and the other through his

124

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

well-known works of mercy in Halle. But it was unfortunate that even back then and until recent times the activity of saving love, was directed, preferentially, towards the young and the poor. The full zeal of the church’s thought should not only be directed toward these but also toward adults, the

family, and all classes of the whole public realm, on rich and poor, the low and the high. There is a need for a Reformation, or rather a regeneration of all our local conditions. Through new and renewed acts and revelations of faith and love, the church is called to work towards this new birth. . . .

5. Lutherans in North America, 1619–1865

The first recorded presence of Lutherans in North America was a Danish expedition to Canada in 1619, seeking the Northwest Passage to Asia. Along with the expedition was a Danish Lutheran pastor, Rasmus Jensen (doc. #305), who celebrated the first Lutheran worship service on the continent. The expedition was trapped in Hudson’s Bay that winter, and most of the crew, including Jensen, died there. The Danes later developed a colony in the Virgin Islands after 1672, with an established Danish Lutheran Church on the islands. The Swedes founded a colony along the Delaware River which lasted from 1638 to 1655, and the Swedish Lutheran Church was established there as well (doc. #306). Lutheran pastors were sent from Sweden to these congregations for almost 175 years, until the congregations adopted English in the late eighteenth century, when they went over to the Episcopal Church. There were a number of Dutch, German, and Scandinavian Lutherans in the Dutch colony of New Netherlands in the seventeenth century, but they were prevented from having their own Lutheran pastors because of the animosity of the Dutch Reformed clergy in the colony. The oldest continuing Lutheran congregation in North America dates back to 1649, but these Lutherans had a great deal of trouble securing pastors. The bulk of Lutherans in North America during the colonial period were from Germany, but most of them did not come in organized groups of colonists. Rather, many of them came individually, or as scattered groups or families. Many poor Germans came to North America as indentured servants, who worked in legal bondage for years to repay their passage. Most of these immigrant Lutheran came to the Middle American colonies, most notably to Pennsylvania.

Organized groups of Lutheran refugees were sent by the English authorities to New York (the Palatinates) and to Georgia (the Salzburgers) (doc. #307). Other Lutherans settled in Virginia and the Carolinas, but virtually none went to New England. There were also small Lutheran settlements in Maine and Nova Scotia. Forming Lutheran congregations in colonial North America was difficult. The immigrants were generally poor, and scattered across the territory, often in mixed groups of German Lutherans, Reformed, Moravians, and Radical Pietists. One enduring feature here were the “Union” congregations, usually consisting of a mixed group of German Lutherans and Reformed, sharing a church building and school. Obtaining pastors for these congregations was very difficult, as most State Church Lutheran pastors in Europe had very little motivation to come to the wilds of North America. Only the very dedicated or the very desperate European pastors would come to the New World; sometimes in the latter category were the clerical imposters who frequently plagued colonial Lutheran congregations. There were some Lutheran pastors ordained in colonial North America, beginning in 1703 with Justus Falckner (1672–1723). Making the transition from European State Church Lutheranism was very difficult for clergy and laity alike; instead of having the state provide for churches and pastors, these immigrant Lutherans had to take the initiative themselves. That lay people had to form and finance their own congregations also meant that the “power differential” between laity and clergy also had to be adjusted, which was a challenge for both groups. Lutheran congregations were scattered and generally weak.

126

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Beginning in the eighteenth century, a number of talented Lutheran pastors were sent to North America, and they began the task of drawing the scattered American Lutherans together. William Berkenmeyer (1687–1751) was sent to the New York Lutherans in 1725 by Lutheran officials in Hamburg, but Berkenmeyer had limited success in uniting the scattered and fractious congregations in his area. More successful was the Pietist Lutheran pastor, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711–1781), who was sent to Pennsylvania in 1742 by the leaders of the Halle Institution. Muhlenberg had to fend off challenges to his leadership by self–appointed pastors, and by Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf, the Moravian leader (doc. #308). Unlike Berkenmeyer, Muhlenberg quickly grasped the changed religious situation in colonial America, and through his own personal efforts and contacts began to draw together the scattered Lutheran pastors and congregations. In 1748 they formed the first Lutheran synod in North America, the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, which helped to regulate congregations and pastors, examine and ordain candidates for the ministry, and settle disputes (doc. #309). As Muhlenberg’s influence grew, he was sought out by Lutherans outside of Pennsylvania, and he became the de facto leader and patriarch of most of the Lutherans in colonial America (doc. #311). The Lutheran congregations in colonial America were almost completely German–speaking, and became the linguistic and religious centers for the German–American communities (doc. #310). The congregations provided for the religious and educational needs of the community, and also served as social and cultural centers. Generations of lay Lutherans took control in their local congregations, and eventually won limited representation in the Pennsylvania Ministerium. Many Lutheran pastors (including Muhlenberg) married into local families, and eventually Lutheran clerical dynasties were formed, with younger pastoral candidates “apprenticing” with establish pastors. Pastor had to farm land provided to them by the congregations, and these familial connections (especially through their wives) were essential to their survival. American Lutherans were centered around Pennsylvania, where Lutheranism was the strongest. There were long-standing and important Lutheran settlements in New Jersey, and along the Hudson River in New York. In search of farmland, Lutheran also moved south and west, into Maryland, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and into western parts of North Carolina. Lutherans also came directly into South Carolina and Georgia, where they settled

into upland areas; originally poor and opposed to slavery, they eventually obtained enslaved AfricanAmericans as a perceived economic necessity. Most of these Lutherans remained German-speaking, which limited their interaction with their “English” neighbors, as well as Native Americans. As the eighteenth century progressed there were rising tensions between the colonists in North America and the British colonial officials in England, which lead to the American Revolution, beginning in 1775. Being German-speaking, most American Lutherans were not as immediately involved in the growing conflicts, but the nature of this war, which was fought out mainly in the middle colonies, drew Lutherans into the conflict, whether they wanted to be or not (doc. #312). Lutheran leaders like Muhlenberg sought to remain neutral, but this was very difficult given the nature of the conflict, and Muhlenberg himself eventually declared his support of the new American government. Younger, more anglicized Lutherans were more directly involved in the hostilities, and some even served in the Revolutionary army. Other Lutherans did remain loyal to the British crown, however, and suffered for this decision during and after the war. Some of these loyalist Lutherans, along with Hessian troops that remained in America, moved to the Canadian province of Ontario after the war, providing an initial core for Canadian Lutheranism. By the end of the eighteenth century (1790) there were an estimated 25,000 Lutherans who were members of Lutheran congregations in the new American republic, though there were probably many times this number of nominal or cultural Lutherans. Independence meant that the westward expansion of the country, stalled by British officials, could resume, and a flood of Americans pushed west into the lands of the Ohio River Valley, and into the trans-Mississippi region added by the Louisiana purchase in 1803. There was a tremendous demand for the new lands on the frontier, and settlers pushed ever further westward. Established Lutheran congregations, recovering from the wars, were deeply affected by the numbers of members who left for the frontier, where there were no Lutheran congregations, and very few pastors available to serve the scattered population. Lutheran pastors made missionary trips across the frontier, and barely–trained catechists and pastoral candidates were pressed into service in the new states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois (docs. #313 and 318). Though these pastors served faithfully and at considerable personal cost, there

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

were many Lutherans who were lost to Methodist or Baptist preachers on the frontier. The growing numbers and geographic range of Lutherans in America signaled the need for greater institutional growth, especially the need for more regional synods. The Pennsylvania Ministerium (1748) and the New York Ministerium (1786) could not meet the needs of the Lutheran populations in the south and west. New synods were formed in North Carolina (1803), Ohio (1818), and Maryland (1820), followed by dozens of new synods in the decades to follow. Though the majority of synods were organized along regional lines, there was the beginning of synods formed out of theological differences, such as the Tennessee Synod (1820), or eventually due to ethnic or language differences. Another difficult issue in the early nineteenth century was the transition to the use of the English language. Colonial Lutheranism was based in part around the German language, but the inevitable generational tide of young Lutheran moving toward the use of English caused tremendous conflicts, especially as these younger Lutherans gained power in their congregations and synods. Complicating the transition was the fact that American Lutherans had no experience and no models for doing Lutheranism in English, and were not sure if such a thing were actually possible. Also, with transition to English, many Lutherans began to move closer to their American Protestant neighbors, and the Lutherans picked up a number of the elements of American Protestantism, especially the new frontier revivalism that came to dominate the American religious scene in the first part of the nineteenth century (docs. #316 and 317). With the growth and expansion of regional American Lutheran synods, and the expansion of the country, some American Lutheran leaders began to suggest the need for a national Lutheran organization to coordinate the activities of the regional synods, as well as developing further theological education for pastors. The path to such an organization was complicated, and when the new General Synod was formed in 1820 (docs. #314 and 315), it did not include all of the American Lutheran synods. The young leader who brought together the new General Synod (and helped keep it together) was Samuel Simon Schmucker (1799–1873), who also served as the President of the new Lutheran seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, founded in 1826. Over the next forty years Schmucker became a leading theological figure within American Lutheranism. Interacting with the American religious context, as well as the move to the use of English raised impor-

127

tant theological and confessional questions for American Lutherans, questions that had been a part of Lutheranism from its very beginnings, but were now reaching a critical point. For colonial Lutherans, their separate ethnic identity, their “German–ness,” had been the key point in forming their distinct identity. But now in an English-language and American-cultural context, what did it mean to be Lutheran? (doc. #316). Lutheran had long been defined theologically and confessionally by a certain adherence to the sixteenth-century Lutheran confessional documents, especially the Augsburg Confession (1530), which defined Lutheranism apart from the Roman Catholics as well as from other Protestants. But as American Lutherans adopted the English language, there was a discernable movement away from the Augsburg Confession in favor of a pan–Protestant Biblicism. Schmucker believed that the Augsburg Confession was necessary and important, but also understood that many American Lutherans would not accept some of the elements in that sixteenth–century document, elements that they found too close to Roman Catholicism. However, his 1855 attempt to produce an “American Edition” of the Augsburg Confession (removing some of its “outmoded” elements) badly misjudged the situation (docs. #321–324). There had been for some years a growing confessional reaction within sectors of American Lutheranism, led by theologians such as Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823–1883), which sought a closer, more formal authority of the Lutheran Confessions for Lutherans in America. The resulting theological battle raged through the 1850s and 1860s, and splintered the General Synod, and the older, colonial American Lutheran organizations (the eastern or “Muhlenberg” tradition). More strictly confessional Lutherans began to form their own synods. On top of this, there were the beginnings of the massive nineteenth–century immigration of Europeans to North America, from the 1840s to the beginnings of the First World War. Over thirty million immigrants crossed the Atlantic during this period, and millions of them were Lutherans from Germany, Scandinavia, and areas of Eastern Europe, who swelled the Lutheran population of the United States and Canada (doc. #318 and 326). Since they used their European languages in their congregations, and were deeply suspicious that the settled American Lutherans were actually Lutheran at all, they formed their own independent Lutheran congregations and ethnic synods, mainly in the American Midwest. Initially, the immigration brought large numbers of German Lutherans, who formed

128

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

their own synods, increasingly confessional in nature, including the Buffalo, Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin synods (“synod” here meaning a national rather than regional organization). The largest and most successful of these was the Missouri Synod, which was formed as a strictly confessional organization by its leader C.F.W. Walther (1811–1887), Founded by Saxon Lutherans fleeing Europe because of confessional differences with German state churches (doc. #257), the Missouri Synod grew rapidly, becoming one of the largest Lutheran denominations in North America (docs. #319, 320 and 325). There were also any number of different Lutheran denominations formed by Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish immigrants, and later by Finnish, Icelandic, Slovak, and Baltic Lutherans. As if confessional and ethnic/linguistic differences were not problem enough, Lutherans in America also were increasingly caught up by the American conflict over the question of slavery and its abolition, an issue that convulsed the nation in the 1840s and 1850s, and led to secession and civil war. Many Southern Lutherans had become convinced of the necessity of slavery, and joined their neighbors in a spirited defense of it. In order to keep the Lutheran peace, and because they saw slavery as a political rather than religious issue, most Northern Lutherans avoided the issue, so as not to provoke Lutherans from the South. However, abolitionist sentiment among Northern Lutherans grew during the period before 1860, and several Northern Lutheran synods became known for their abolitionist positions, especially the Franckean Synod in New York, which complicated relations between Northern and Southern Lutherans (docs. #327 and 328). Many immigrant Lutheran denominations, Scandinavian and German, were anti–slavery from the beginning, although the Missouri Synod (located in a border state) attempted a mediating position. With the secession of the Southern states and the coming of the Civil War in 1861, Southern Lutherans separated from their Northern counterparts and formed their own General Synod South (doc. #329). The Civil War (1861–1865) was terribly damaging to Southern Lutheran congregations and institutions, and after the war Southern Lutherans continued their own separate institutional identity. There were a number of African-Americans in Lutheran congregations in the South (free and enslaved) before the Civil War, but after the war they were neglected and pushed into poorly supported, segregated congregations, many of which withered for lack of pastors and resources. The American Civil War was destructive

on both sides (doc. #330), and initiated a long–running regional and racial divide within American Lutheranism. DOCUMENTS FROM THE PERIOD 305. ACCOUNT OF THE DANISH EXPEDITION TO NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1620 The first recorded Lutheran presence in North America was an ill–fated Danish expedition to find the “Northwest Passage,” led by Jens Munck, and including Lutheran pastor Rasmus Jensen. From: Jens Munck, Navig avigatio atio Septentrionalis Septentrionalis, Copenhagen, 1624, Translation in Carl Cronmiller, A History of the Luther Lutheran an Church in Canada anada. Volume 1, (n.p., Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Canada, 1981), 15–17. The Holy Christmas Day was celebrated in customary Christian fashion. We had a sermon and Communion; and our offerings to the minister after the sermon, were in accordance with our means. The crew had very little money, nevertheless, they gave what they had; some gave white fox furs, so that the minister had enough wherewith to line a coat. However, sufficiently long life to wear it was not granted him. January 10th. Our Minister, the Reverend Rasmus Jensen and Dr. M. Casper Caspersen went to bed after having for some time felt ill and henceforth violent sickness spread among the crew increasing day by day. It was a peculiar ailment in which nearly everyone so inflicted suffered dysentery three weeks before they died. My best cook died this day. January 21st, we had now thirteen persons laid up sick. This day I inquired from the Doctor, who was mortally ill, if he had among his medicine a remedy that might prove a means of recovery for the crew as well as for himself. He answered, as often before, that he had already used all such remedies as he had brought along and which he thought would be of value. If the Lord would not help he knew of no other means by which we might bring our sick back to health. January 23, Hans Brock, one of my mates died after a sickness that had lasted almost five months. The weather was beautiful with wonderful sunshine and the minister sat up in his berth and preached to the crew, which was his last sermon in this world.

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

February 20th, towards evening the Rev. Rasmus Jensen died after having been sick for some time. March 1st, Jens Borringholm and Hans Skudenes died and since the sickness had so spread as to practically include everyone, it became increasingly difficult to bury the dead. March 21st, these days the weather was very unsteady and most of the crew were, alas, sick. It was pitiful to witness all this misery. Dr. M. Casper Caspersen and Povel Pedersen died after having been confined to bed since Christmas. The sickness continued to spread and it became indeed difficult for those of us who were as yet well to look after the burials. April 14th, heavy frost. Only five of us were well enough to sit up and listen to a Good Friday sermon. June 4th. Whitsunday. Only four alive including myself and too sick to help each other. Our stomachs were hungry enough, and there was nothing wrong with our appetites, but our teeth could not chew any solid food and not one was strong enough to bring us a drink of wine. The cook’s boy was dead by my side and three others dead not far from me. Two men were ashore and anxious to return to the ship but without strength enough to do so. For four days all of us went without food. I expected nothing else but that the Lord would soon end our sufferings and take us unto Him. And since I was fully convinced that the end would soon come and that I was about to write my last note in this world, I wrote the following: Because I do not expect to live very much longer in this world, I pray in the name of the Lord: that if any Christian persons should come to this place after my death, they will bury the dead, including my own poor body, and receive their reward from the Lord. And also that this account may be forwarded to my graceful Master and King. (For every word written herein is true.) Thus my poor wife and children may obtain some benefit from my tribulations and final death. I bid the whole world Good Night and recommend my soul to the mercy of the Lord. 306. NEW SWEDEN COLONY ON THE DELAWARE: LETTER, JANUARY 30, 1647, FROM PASTOR JOHAN CAMPANIUS TO SWEDISH ARCHBISHOP Johan Campanius (1601–1683) was sent to the New Sweden colony in 1647 to minister to the colonists there. By 1647 he was looking forward to a return to Sweden and finding a regular parish there.

129

Fig. 5.1. Frontespiece of the translation by Johan Campanius of Luther’s Small Catechism into the Algonquin language, printed in Stokholm in 1696

From: Peter Stebbins Craig, ed., Colonial Rec Record ord of the Swedish Churches in Pennsylv ennsylvania. ania. Volume 1. (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 2006), 6–8. According to ordinances and decrees by the Gracious High Authorities, I have now hazarded both life and prosperity by a tedious and very perilous journey, namely to New Sweden in the West Indies (which is sufficiently known to You Most Reverend) and where I am now obliged to remain as long as it pleases God. I can be released from here by You Most Reverend graciously and benignly. What I trust is that You Most Reverend shall not deny me a benefice upon which I would support myself with my wife and numerous little children, when, by divine providence and by the gracious and benevolent permission of Her Royal Majesty, our Most Gracious Queen, and You Most Reverend, I am to return to the

130

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Fatherland again, which I do now here devoutly request. And the reasons why I so write this to You Most Reverend, are: First, I am too weary to endure it longer in these parts, as I am now somewhat well on in years and am but a frail man myself, in poor health. Where and when I am to get it back rests with God. On the ground of which I have again reason hic militer to ask You the Most Reverend to dispatch hither two or three pastors. Two are right well needed here continuously because of the places that are here. Those are five or six built upon by those who are Swedish and some of them situated at least two [Swedish] miles apart, some three miles, others four, five or six miles between, according to how they are lying. One cannot always come to a parish on account of a great many inconveniences and hindrances. And now I am the only clergyman in the land, and besides a valetudinarius, am obliged, however, without any regard to the weather, be it bad or fine, to go between the places from one to another to visit them with the Word and the Sacraments, something I am quite willing to do, but my strength is becoming more feeble for every day as to such as is required. . . Someone who is young, strong and agile, who could bear to be ever going to and fro, those are to the best purpose. The second reason is the lengthy period I have now been in this country, viz. in this present year—1647—well nigh upon five years with great danger of death, night and day, in a heathenish country, amongst these ferocious pagans who for every year have threatened to slay us Swedes and exterminate us completely. . . 307. SALTZBURG LUTHERANS IN GEORGIA: LETTER OF PASTOR JOHANN MARTIN BOLTZIUS TO GOTTHILF AUGUST FRANKE AT HALLE, MAY 6, 1734 The Salzburg Lutherans were forced out of their home in Austria by the local Roman Catholic Archbishop. Sympathetic European Protestants helped to resettle these exiles, include a group that was sent to Georgia in North America. From: Russell C. Kleckley, ed., The Letters of Johann Martin Boltzius, Luther Lutheran an Pastor in Ebenezer, Georg Georgia. ia. Volume 1, (Lewiston NY: Edward Mellen Press, 2009), 93–95.

Fig. 5.2. Portait of Johann Martin Boltzius (1754)

I am not mentioning now all of the particular demonstrations of the divine providence that is ruling over me because it is hoped that the worthy Herr Professor Francke, according to my prayerful desire, will have sent the most noteworthy points to you through your son. But I am reporting only this much, that this call has been exceedingly advantageous for soul and body. In Halle I had to get around almost constantly with a sick body and be a burden to others with the arduous mental labor and many vexations that occur daily with such numerous youth, although I had no scarcity in needed care through the fatherly attention of the Herren Directors. To the contrary, from the very beginning of the journey God has strengthened me in my health to such a degree that I could attend to my office unhindered on the sea voyage and afterwards, even though many times there has been greatly lacking peace of mind and body, as well as healthy food and drink. He has heartily and paternally taken account of my soul and in the arduous circumstances of the ship assured me most steadfastly of His grace and fatherly love for me, a poor sinner, given me much insight into His Word and marvelous governance, affixed already many a seal to my office through evident blessing, and has given to me such a heavenly delight in my very wor-

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

thy colleague and the entire congregation who, with very few excepted, could be called in truth a community of saints, of which I regard myself to be completely unworthy. They all love me to such a degree that I must often be ashamed because of my unworthiness and let it serve me to love them all the more fervently and not to spare my strength for their best. My heavenly Father, through various occurrences, has now brought me here to America. What He now will further do with me and my dear colleague is now hidden alone in His wisdom and all well–making care. We have both pledged ourselves in the Lord to spend the brief remainder of our lives completely to the honor of our Immanuel and for the salvation of people, whoever they may be. The great opportunity for this He Himself, the great Housefather and Lord of the Harvest, will show. We do not believe that He has called us both in so far a land only for the sake of the Salzburgers, of whom there are not yet 40 in all, but, as His manner has always been, to begin with little and meager appearing things and gloriously to conduct His work often through completely wretched instruments. Therefore we have the good confidence in Him that He will make it so with us already in our days that we and others will be able to thank Him. The harvest, also in this new world, is certainly very great and the faithful laborers are very few. . . . Many hundreds of Lutherans are said to live, in part, together, and, in part, scattered here and there, who have no one who provides for them with God’s Word and the Holy Sacraments. And even when some receive one and the other preacher, they do not find in them the mind of Christ and His apostles but many times vexatious things. Therefore one has enough to do to talk the people out of the notions that we are seeking nothing for the flesh but the souls redeemed through the blood of Christ without intent for temporal interest, because most all of them stand in the notion that the preachers who would come through such an arduous and dangerous way to America were not able to earn their keep in Europe and therefore are seeking their fortune as are other colonists in the new world and that it is to them more a matter of their stomachs and comfort than the salvation of others. And when they are strengthened in this notion through the wicked example of carnal preachers, it is almost no wonder if they draw such conclusions to the disadvantage to the gospel of Christ.

131

308. DEBATE BETWEEN HENRY MELCHIOR MUHLENBERG AND COUNT NICHOLAS VON ZINZENDORF IN PHILADELPHIA, DECEMBER 30, 1742 When Muhlenberg arrived in Philadelphia in 1742, he came into a situation where Zinzendorf was attempting to gather all the German-speaking congregations in North America under his control. Muhlenberg had to challenge him for control of the Lutheran congregations. From: Theodore G. Tappert and John W. Doberstein, eds, The Journals of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg Muhlenberg.. Volume 1. (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1942), 76–79. After the Count sent word to me, politely requested that I should visit him. I went, expecting to speak to the Count alone. When I arrived however, there was in the room a large gathering of his generals and corporals, the Count presiding at a small table. This was the first time I ever saw the Count face to face and I expected to hear something great from the Reformator Ecclesiae. . . Then the following ensued: Count. On what conditions are you here? Reply. I have been called and sent through the Rev. Court Preacher Zigenhagen [Ziegenhagen], who has a commission from the congregation. Count. What sort of commission did Mr Zigenhagen have? Reply. The three Lutheran congregations in New Hannover, Providence, and Philadelphia; had been urgently requesting a pastor for several years past. The copies are deposited in Halle and the letters in London, which published at any time, if necessary. . . Count. I have been called as pastor in writing by the Lutheran congregation here in Philadelphia, and likewise my adjunct, Pirlaeus. Reply. Is your call signed by anybody? Count. It doesn’t need it. Reply. My call has been signed and I shall trouble myself no further, but just follow the instructions of my superiors in Europe. If this does not please you, you can settle it with them. Count. But is it not contrary to all fairness and courtesy that after I have been so long in this country you should not have come to visit me? If you have been sent to investigate matters here, why did you not inquire into our affairs? When a person learns that there is a consistory and an inspector in a place, even granting that it is illegal, does not one first make inquiries there?

132

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

to become, more and more, such a Lutheran as Mr. Zigenhagen is. Count. Before the year is out, I shall bring forward more than a hundred witnesses to prove that Mr. Zigenhagen is not a genuine Lutheran. Reply. Mr. Zigenhagen is certainly not afraid and is not likely to be. I am surprised, my dear Count, at the way you cavil at me with your questions and try to hook something on me. . . .

Fig. 5.3. Engraving of Henry Muhlenberg from 1884 publication History of Montgomery County Pennsylvania

Reply. Even if I had desired to call on you as a stranger, you would not have been there in any event, for it was said that you were among the Indians. There are all kinds of sects here, and how is it possible for me to run around to all of them? I have enough to do with the Lutherans who have been assigned to me. Count. I am the Lutheran pastor! Why did you not come to me? Reply. I had no orders to do so and still have none. Count. Did Mr. Zigenhagen say that you should pass me by? Reply. When I was called; I inquired as to how I should conduct myself with regard to the Count and the reply; was made that I should have no fear of the Count. . . Count. Were you not reared at Halle? Reply. No, I was reared in the province of Hannover, completed my studies at Gottingen, was also at Halle. Count. The Hallensians are Pietists; aren’t you a Hallensian? Reply. I am a Lutheran and shall remain so. Count. Are you such a Lutheran as Mr. Zigenhagen is? Reply. I was with Mr. Zigenhagen for some time and learned to know his character. I am rand hope

Fig. 5.4. Engraving of Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf for 1854 publication of Two Hundred Men in Portraits and Biographies (Liepzig, 1854)

Now I leave it to any Christian and intelligent mind to judge and consider whether the Count exhibited anything of the mind of Christ or the apostles or our dear father Luther. The congregations in New Hannover and Providence the Count could not capture because they were too smart for him and knew his weaknesses. In part they were also too much trouble for him, because there the foundation had to be laboriously laid among both the young and old, for the young people have been neglected and have, for the most part, grown up without any knowledge or reading of the Word of God. The Count did try it in both congregations and won over a few, but the people felt that he acted like a fox which is as skillful in luring the hens as a cock, and when they are near enough to him, he gobbles them up.

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

309. FORMATION OF THE LUTHERAN MINISTERIUM OF PENNSYLVANIA, 1748 Muhlenberg presided over the organizational meeting of the first Lutheran synod in North America in 1748. This included the German-speaking congregations in Pennsylvania, but not the Swedish–speaking congregations, which were under the direct control of the Church of Sweden. From: Documentary History of the Ev Evang angelical elical Luther Lutheran an Ministerium of Pennsylv ennsylvania. ania. (Philadelphia: Board of Publication, General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1898), 8–12. “Extract and Copy of the General Church Protocol, St. Michael’s Church, Philadelphia, August 15, 1748.” The United Congregations held a meeting at which were present: The hymn, “Du süsse Lieb, schenk uns deine Gunst,” etc., was sung: then prayer was offered. Muhlenberg delivered the opening address, as follows: This union has long been desired, but until now it has not been effected, etc. It is known that five years ago an attempt towards this was made in the Swedish Church. But one of the preachers, namely Nyberg, defeated it, because he said the Lancaster people had already prepared an Order, and their preacher only talked, instead of preached to them. During the investigation concerning the Moravians, the assembly was broken up, the matter was dragged into the papers, etc. A twisted cord of many threads will not easily break. There must be unity among us. Every member in the congregations has children. The deacons would have great responsibility, if they were negligent in helping to create good order, especially in behalf of the children, who, if they were neglected, would help to condemn their parents. We are here assembled for this purpose, and, if God will, we shall assemble yearly; this is only a trial and test. We preachers who are here present, not having wandered hither of our own will, but called and necessitated, are bound to give an account to God and our conscience. We stand in connection with our Fathers in Europe, We must provide not only for ourselves, but also for our posterity, etc., etc. I. Each congregation was asked on what terms it was with its pastor. The Church Council of Philadelphia testified that they were well satisfied with their Pastor Brunnholtz,

133

that he exerted himself only too much; they wish that God may grant him good health. The Germantown congregation has nothing to say against its Pastor Brunnholtz. Providence and New Hanover are very well satisfied with their pastor, Mr. Muhlenberg. Tulpehocken is thankful for its new preacher Kurtz, whom the whole congregation desires. They ask the united preachers that a letter of introduction be given them in reference to him. We promised it to them. Lancaster and Earlingstown are all well satisfied with Mr. Handschuh, and wish that he may be appointed as their regular teacher for all time. . . III. Concerning the church ceremonies that have been introduced. All the elders of the congregations testify in the name of their congregations, that they are well satisfied to use the same ceremonies, since the preachers are united, and they have no objections to our agende, except that the public service lasts too long, especially in the cold winter. They ask that it be made briefer; they leave it to the Ministerium, what to shorten and how. The preachers promise to strive after brevity, and before they separate, to deliberate and decide the matter. IV. Why other so-called preachers, as Stiver, Streiter, and Wagner were not invited. Mr. Muhlenberg shows that we can have no fellowship and close brotherhood with them, for 1, they decry us as Pietists, without reason; 2, they have not been sent hither, have neither an inner nor an external call; 3, they are not willing to observe the same Church Order that we do; each wants to conform to the ceremonies of his home; 4, six years’ experience has taught Mr. Muhlenberg that they care for nothing but their bread; 5, they are under no Consistorium, and give no account of their official doings. V. Mr. Wagner accuses Mr. Muhlenberg of having driven him from Tulpehocken. The Tulpehocken elders were asked, according to their best knowledge and conscience, to inform the meeting as to this matter. The Church Council of Tulpehocken answered: 1, Mr. Muhlenberg did not force himself upon them. 2, The congregation and its elders have since 1742 urgently requested Mr. Muhlenberg to take charge of them; 3, Mr. Wagner himself resigned in Tulpehocken, as he never succeeded in Tulpehocken, and the divisions in the congregation continually increased. They proposed to wait to see how matters go this year. The elders are exhorted to prayer. Whether those who have left Evangelical congregations, and again join them, but refuse to acknowledge themselves members of the congrega-

134

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

tion by signing their names, must be compelled to do this, and if they will not sign, be regarded as no members? 310. THE CHURCH AGENDA (LITURGY) OF 1748 The first Lutheran liturgy that was composed in North America. Since the Lutheran congregations and pastors in Pennsylvania used a variety of different liturgies from Germany, this was an attempt to standardize their worship patterns. From: Documentary History of the Ev Evang angelical elical Luther Lutheran an Ministerium of Pennsylv ennsylvania. ania. (Philadelphia: Board of Publication, General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1898), 13–17. The manner in which public worship shall be conducted in our congregations. When the pastor enters the church the service shall begin with the singing of the hymn “Nun bitten nur den Heiligen Geist,” either entire, or several verses of it; or a verse of the hymn “Komm Heiliger Geist, Herre Gott.” After the singing of the hymn, or the verse, the pastor goes to the altar, turns his face to the congregation, and says: Beloved in the Lord Thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose Name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones: I will not always chide, neither will I keep anger forever: only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the lord thy God. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Accompany me therefore in making confession of sins, saying: I, a poor sinner, confess unto God, my heavenly Father, that I have grievously and in various ways sinned against Him; not only by outward and gross sins, but much more by inward blindness of heart, unbelief, doubt, despondency, impatience, pride, selfishness, carnal lusts, avarice, envy, hatred and malice, and by other sinful passions which are naked and open in the sight of my Lord and God, but which I, alas 1 cannot so fully understand. But I do sincerely repent, in deep sorrow, for these my sins; and with my whole heart I cry for mercy from the Lord, through His dear Son Jesus Christ, being resolved, with the help of the Holy Ghost, to amend my sinful life. Amen. Lord God the Father in heaven, have mercy upon

us. Lord God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy upon us. Lord God the Holy Ghost, have mercy upon us and grant us Thy peace. Amen. After the confession the hymn “Allein Gott In Der Höh Sei Ehr” shall be sung. During the singing of the last verse the pastor goes to the altar, turns his face to the congregation, and says: The Lord be with you. The congregation responds: And with thy spirit. The pastor says: Let us pray. Then he prays in the words of the Collect which is appointed for the Sunday or the festival, in the Marburg Hymn-book. After the Collect the lesson from the Epistle shall be read, being introduced with the following words: Let us devoutly listen to the reading of the lesson for this day, from the, etc. Then shall be sung the principal hymn, selected by the pastor, from the hymns in the Marburg Hymn-book—one familiar to the whole congregation. The whole hymn, or only a part of it, shall be sung, as circumstances may decide. After the singing of the principal hymn, the Gospel lesson shall be read, being introduced with the same words as before the epistle. After the Gospel the pastor repeats devoutly the Creed, in verse, “Wir glauben all.” If children are present to be baptized, the Gospel and the Creed are omitted. Before the sermon the hymn “Liebster Jesue, wir sind hier,” or “Herr Jesus Christ, Dich zu uns wend,” is sung, either entire or in part. Ordinarily the sermon shall he limited to three–quarters of an hour, or, at the utmost, to one hour. If the pastor is moved to have an exordium or a series of supplications before he begins the Lord’s Prayer, he is at liberty to do so. After the Lord’s Prayer, as usual, [the Gospel is read?] during which reading the congregation shall stand. The sermon being concluded, nothing else shall be read than the appointed Church-prayer here following, or the Litany instead of it, by way of change; and nothing but necessity shall occasion its omission. . . . After the General Prayer petitions for the sick shall follow, in case, request has been made to that effect; then shall follow the Lord’s Prayer, and then whatever proclamation and notices may be required. When all is done, the pastor closes with the Votum: The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds, through Christ Jesus, unto eternal life. Amen. Then a hymn shall be sung. After the sermon and the closing hymn the pastor goes to the altar and says: “The Lord be with you.”

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

Cong. “And with thy spirit.” Pastor. “Let us pray.” Hold us up, O Lord, Lord our God, that we may live; and let our hope never make us ashamed. Help us by Thy might, that we may wax strong; and so shall we ever delight ourselves in Thy statutes, through Jesus Christ Thy dear Son, our Lord. Amen. After the sermon in the afternoon shall be sung the hymn “Ach, bleib bei uns Herr Jesu Christ.” Then shall follow The Benediction, The Lord bless thee and keep thee, give thee peace, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Then a verse shall be sung at the close. OF CONFESSION AND THE HOLY COMMUNION. Ordinarily, whenever circumstances admit of it, the Supper of the Lord shall be administered on Christmas, on Easter, and on Pentecost, It may also be administered at other times, as the necessities of the congregation may demand. The pastor shall give notice from the pulpit of the administration of the Lord’s Supper, one week or two weeks before the time of its celebration. To this notice he shall add a short exhortation, and at the same time he shall inform the people as to the day when they shall report themselves to him and have their names recorded. The pastor shall keep a register of the communicants, which is to continue in the care of the congregation. In case the pastor should know that, among those who call upon him to report their names for the Holy Communion, there is one or more who are living in strife, or occasioning public scandal, and his own influence should not be sufficient to remedy the evil, he may call the vestry of the congregation together, and direct such offenders to appear before them, with their plea and answer. 311. EXTRACT FROM MUHLENBERG’S JOURNAL, NOVEMBER 1763 An account of the pastoral activities of a Lutheran pastor in colonial North America. Many pastors were pressed to their limits to meet the needs of their parishioners, and without much in the way of support for themselves. From: Theodore G. Tappert and John W. Doberstein, eds, The Journals of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg Muhlenberg. Volume 1. (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1942), 700–16. November 1: In the forenoon I had all sorts of run-

135

ning in and out and troublesome interruptions. Visit from the late Pastor Steiner’s widow, who had many laments to make. November 5: Saturday. Visit from Josua Pawling, of Providence, who said I must again take over the Providence church and congregation, otherwise everything would go to ruin. November 6: I went to church with Mr. Brycelius, baptized three children, and preached to a crowded auditorium. As soon as church was over I was taken to Germantown to bury Mr. Jacob Gänsle. About five–thirty in the evening I drove away and arrived home in the dark near eight o’clock. November 9: I felt unwell, but I had to carry out my promise to go to Mr. [George] Whitefield. He received us very cordially. I received a courteous letter inviting me to visit Chief Judge Coleman and furnish a testimonial to the deceased wife of a certain Lutheran man. I also visited the silversmith, Mr. Carben; had a refreshing visit with the family. November 13: Sunday. Early in the morning Mr. Jacob Graef took me to Germantown. At eleven o’clock we went to church [and] I preached on the Gospel. My companion drove me back to Philadelphia, but we had to drive very fast to be able to hold the [funeral] service at the right time. After the service I baptize Gr–––’s sick child. In the evening I married a couple, then went to the home of Mr. Graef where I found a fine group of awakened members of the congregation [and] had an edifying and inspirational conversation with them from seven to nine o’clock. November 16: Learned that the church council had rejected the petitions I had submitted to them. This bewildering and miserable affair is hastening my death and is almost rendering me unfit for my office. November 17: Today we had the first deep snow and unhealthy, wet weather. Had a visit . . . The rest of the time I meditated and wrote. Otherwise I was distressed and depressed over the intricate dispute in this poor congregation . . . my health is suffering from it. November 21: Visit from the poor widow of a Reformed preacher. She was in great straits and besought me to be surety for her, but I was unable to do so. Today I borrowed £50 currency at interest in order to meet my needs. At home I had many visitors, among them a young blacksmith who some year ago had married an old widow [who now] refused to live with him. The said blacksmith asked me whether he might now marry someone else. Reply: No. November 22: More and more murders and burn-

136

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ings are occurring on the frontiers, and almost daily there are robberies in and around the city. The city itself is swarming with unruly mobs. I visited a godly family which had retained much of last Sunday’s sermon and gained consolation from it. November 25: Last night I was unable to sleep because of worry and concern of soul about the coming church council meeting and the fact that old quarrels are to be brought up again. I took refuge in quiet prayer to Almighty God. [after a long meeting it was noted] The entire church council and the complainants have settled all points of controversy and made peace. Henceforth there shall be no further discussion or mention of the old controversy. November 29: Tuesday. Early in the morning I journeyed to Germantown. At home I heard that immediately after my departure on Saturday several dissatisfied persons had come into my house and blustered against me and the church council. At 1 pm I married Daniel Sorg and Margretha Heidel. In the evening we had a heavy rainstorm. Refreshing visit from Mr. Kressler. November 30: A visit from [Swedish pastor] Wangel, with whom I conferred on various matters and strengthened myself. In the evening I read the History of the Martyrs to my family for edification. 312. A LUTHERAN PASTOR’S REPORT ON THE EFFECTS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR (1777–1778) Nicholas Collin was a Swedish pastor in New Jersey during the Revolutionary War. As a neutral, Collin observed the upheaval and destruction of the war, especially in the Middle Colonies, where troops from both sides were very active. From: Nicholas Collin, Journal and Autobiogr utobiograaphy. Trans. Amadeus Johnson. (Philadelphia: n.p., 1936), 244–47. Many people here were plundered on this occasion. The English soldiers are undisciplined and cannot always be controlled. This was one of the main reasons for their slight success, because often both friend and foe were robbed in the most despicable manner, and sometimes with the permission of the officers. . . . From this time on until the end of June when the English army left Philadelphia conditions here were in a rather wretched state. It looked as though America would soon be conquered. The people around here began, as early as last autumn, to trade with the English in order to obtain specie coin, as well as

sugar, tea, syrup and strong liquors, which are much used here. The location of the place on the river and around some navigable tributaries was very favorable for that purpose. The severest laws were passed against such trading and caused many people to suffer. These, in order to take revenge and others to avoid punishment, went over to the English side. A fort on the [New] Jersey shore, which commands the river, had already been seized by the Englishmen last summer, and later had been put in good condition for defense. This fort proved a convenient refuge for all those and others, who had changed their opinion, either from conviction or through fear and hope, so that as early as the middle of November a great number of so-called refugees had taken up arms for the King. Everywhere distrust, fear, hatred and abominable selfishness were met with. Parents and children, brothers and sisters, wife and husband, were enemies to one another. The militia and some regular troops on one side and refugees with the Englishmen on the other were constantly roving about in smaller or greater numbers, plundering and destroying everything in a barbarous manner, cattle, furniture, clothing and food: they smashed mirrors, tables and china, etc., and plundered women and children of their most necessary clothing, cut up the bolsters and scattered the feathers to the winds, burned houses, whipped and imprisoned each other, and surprised people when they were deep asleep. At the end of March, 15 persons were arrested, who had traded with the English; half of them belonged to the congregation. They were kept imprisoned for one night in the schoolhouse at the Raccoon Church and the next morning they were marched off under guard to the country. . . At daybreak on April 4, 300 refugees and English troops arrived in three divisions to surround the militia, which escaped with great difficulty. They burnt down the schoolhouse for the simple reason that their friends had been kept prisoners there. I remonstrated with them how un-christian and wicked this behaviour was, and that it was the worst disservice they could do to their King. The officers agreed to this, but said that they were unable to keep proper military discipline. The militia returned after a while, took up their position in a wooded hill [close by] and began to fire [on the English]. A terrible alarm ensued. I and some others went out to look on, but both parties aimed so badly, that the bullets flew in all directions, so that it was best to stay inside. In the morning on Easter Day a terrific cry was heard near the church. When I came out I saw a terrible sight. A man, married to a woman of Swedish

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

parents and in a way belonging to the congregation, was tied to a pine tree and was being whipped. He fainted at times, but when he recovered, the flogging continued both on [his] sides and back, so that the flesh was said to have been entirely crushed [and cut up]. Some days later he died. His crime was that he had profited by the forbidden trade. In the month of May a division of American troops was stationed in Swedesborough for some weeks. Although the weather was fine, they, nevertheless, took up their quarters in the church and filled it with filth and vermin, so that no Divine service could be held. I therefore had to preach in private houses, wherever the best opportunity was found. Many members of the congregation (especially Raccoon) of both parties suffered injury in various ways by this frenzy. James Stillman, a strong old Swedish Republican, very rich, lost most of his cattle. Peter Loch, the widow Henricson, also Swedes, Thomas Batton, an Englishman, and many others also suffered much. Doctor Otto’s house was also burnt down by refugees and a good deal of his property taken. Southerland, a Scotchman, son-in-law of the above–mentioned Stillman, together with a young Swede, Henricson, and some others [were] taken to New York as prisoners and retained [there] for several months. . . . On the opposite side the militia pillaged [the following] : Jan Dericson, an old kind and quiet man, Jacob and Anders Jones who had traded with the English, a sea captain Jan Cox, who had lived in Raccoon for two years, whose beds were cut up, and his mirrors, china, tea tables, bureaus, etc., smashed to pieces by bayonets and musket stocks; Isac Jostason, a Swede, who had gone over to the Royal Army, after he had begun to trade, but had for a long time previously been a strong Republican and officer in the militia. . . . 313. THE DIARIES OF FRONTIER EVANGELIST JOHN STOUGH (1806–1807) John Stough was a wagon-maker on the Pennsylvania frontier who heard the call to preach. Because of the desperate need for pastors on the western frontier, he was sent into Ohio despite the fact that he had very little education. This is an account of one of his travels. From: W. D, Allbeck, “John Stough: Founder of Ohio Lutheranism,” Luther Lutheran an Quarterl Quarterlyy 12, 1960, 45–50.

137

Extract from my diaries as traveling preacher. As far as I can observe, many receive with warm thanks the efforts that are made to prepare them for the Gospel, but others are indifferent. As traveling preacher I have preached in ten counties, in some places once and in others three or four times. June 18 [1806]. After prayer with my family I set out on my journey. On the way read the first eight chapters of Matthew. How great is the goodness of God, in faithfulness and teaching, toward wretched man! Rode twenty miles. Put up for the night with praying people. [Received] 100 cents June 19. When I awoke, I sighed in my heart, gave thanks to God, and prayed for divine help to accomplish what I have to do. Rode nineteen miles. Preached on Luke 15:10. Stayed overnight with people who pray for the kingdom of Jesus. June 20. Reached Stuben [Steubenville, Ohio], a distance of twenty-five miles. Visited two sick men, one of whom was in an awakened condition. 160 cents. June 21. Preached on Matt. 10:6, 7. Baptized a child. Some ten families live there. Some expressed hearty thanks for the Gospel. Rode sixteen miles. Put up for the night where I discovered through conversation and prayer that the family prefers to be pious rather than ungodly. June 22. Preached twice on Luke 15:1-10. Appeal to all sinners: “Jesus accepts you. Come soon. Come all. Come repentant. Allow yourselves to be cleansed of your sins.” Baptized eighteen children. There are about thirty families here, and in the other place about twenty-five. Almost all the people are quite unknown to me. I saw attentive faces and moist eyes. God grant that I may be able to know some of them as blessed. 250 cents. June 24. Visited four families, members of which I confirmed years ago. We wept for joy. O Jesus, thy powerful Word! Go into all the world, etc. June 25, Preached on Mark 10:17. Baptized six children. Ten families. God, there is more chaff than wheat! 78 cents. June 28. Rode twelve miles to a place where some ninety Germans are living. Preached on John 7:37. Everybody there was unknown to me. Observed thoughtful faces. Baptized three children. Rode on for another twelve miles. 228 cents. June 29. Preached twice on March 6:36-42. Two church buildings have been started here, seven miles apart. I baptized seventeen children. My soul rejoices over the fact that in one place where there was wilderness six years ago, two hundred people now assemble. Some manifest a heart warm toward reli-

138

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

gion. Some invited me to go with them. What a promise it is: Whoever gives you a cup of water to drink, etc. Here I received a call. 38 cents. July 1. Stayed overnight with an acquaintance. Baptized one child. Rode two miles to the home of a sick woman. Baptized a child. Rode thirty-two miles through a region in which I know no German to be living. July 3. Rode twenty miles. Happened to fall into the company of a man who said that he had been lost to sight for sixty years. He spoke about God, his family, and himself in a nice way. Returned home. [On this whole journey] I preached 9 times, traveled 266 miles, received $8.64. September 1. When I awoke I lifted up my heart in prayer: God make me useful to many souls. Several of my neighbors came to my home to pray, and committed us all to the good God. Entered upon my second journey. Five people accompanied me for four days. Rode twelve miles. Preached on the seventh petition in Matt. 6. Baptized three children. Grin [Greene] County. Put up for the; night with a praying family. Mannangahali [Monongalia] County, Virginia; Rode thirteen miles. 15 cents. September 3. Preached on John 19:34. Gave the Lord’s Supper to eleven awakened people inasmuch as there was evidence that the Word was not without power. Baptized a child. Rode twelve miles. 168 cents. September 5. Preached on John 17:3. Baptized twelve children. There are six families in the mountains. Six persons accompanied me for ten miles. 97 cent September 8. Preached on Luke 17:11-19. God be merciful to a people living in security. Twenty-five families. Baptized six children. Rode twelve miles. September 9. Preached on James 1:22. There are some who believe that one must be converted in order to be saved. Baptized six children. Rode fifteen miles in Geffurson [Jefferson] County. An innkeeper in Cates [Cadiz?], who is an adherent of no religion, accepted nothing for fodder. May God, who gave him a heart to give, also give him a heart to receive the grace which makes godly. Rode eight miles. September 14. Rode thirty miles to Columbiana County. September 15. Preached on Matt. 6:33. Baptized two brothers. Rode ten miles. September 16. Visited several families. Rode sixteen miles. September 17. Several praying families. Had an exhortation. Rode six miles. September 18. Preached on John 3:36. Many auditors, but few with understanding. 120 cents. October 2. Rode twenty-eight miles. [Totals for

the whole journey:] Baptized preached 21 times, traveled 416 miles, received $11.50. November 26. Across the great line and up the Shinango [Shenango River] in Merser County [Mercer County, Pennsylvania] for twenty–six miles. Good Shepherd, lead me into the right way, among people into whose heart thy Word may find entrance. May the great waters not deter me, even as thou hast now kept me going without hindrance for twelve years. November 29. Preached on John 7:46 to fifteen people who told me with tears that many of them have already lived there for six years without hearing a single German sermon. Baptized two children. The people assembled again in the evening, and although I was caught in a very heavy rain, I preached to them again. 125 cents. If I have in my haste counted aright, I traveled in all 122 days, preached 67 times, baptized 212 children, covered 1301 miles, and received $28.27. I have forgotten how much I gathered last fall in my old congregations for the travel [?] fund. I sent the amount to the officers of the Ministerium. I believe that it was between $20 and $25. 314. PROPOSED PLAN (PLAN ENTWURFT) FOR THE ORGANIZATION OF A GENERAL SYNOD, 1819 The organization of regional synods for American Lutherans proceeded slowly, but by 1819 there was a perceived need for a national Lutheran organization to coordinate their activities. Some were skeptical of handing power to this group, while others criticized its lack of confessional Lutheran subscription. From: Richard C. Wolf, ed., Documents of Luther Lutheran an Unity in America. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964), 54–58. Proposed Plan 1. This central union of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in these United States shall be carried into effect and maintained by an organization to be called The General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States of North America. 2. This General Synod shall be composed of delegates from all the Synods now existing in the United States, and of such as may be organized in future, which join this union, in the following ratio of representation:

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

Every Synod composed of six ministers may send one; of fourteen, two; of twenty-five, three; of forty, four; of sixty, five, and of eighty-six, six clerical delegates to the General Synod, and for every two clerical one lay delegate. In case, however, a Synod is entitled to only one clerical delegate, such Synod shall also have the right to send with him one lay delegate. 3. The General Synod elects its own officers, whose (term of) office continues until the next General Synod; and fixes the time and place of the next meeting, in such manner, however, that at least one General Synod is held in three years. 4. The General Synod has the exclusive right, with the concurrence of a majority of the particular Synods, to introduce new books for general use in the public church services as well as to make improvements in the Liturgy, but until this be done the hymn-books or collections of hymns now in use, the Small Catechism of Luther, and Agenda already adopted, and such other books as have been adopted by the existing Synods shall continue in public use at pleasure. But the General Synod has no power to make or demand any change whatever in the doctrines (Glaubens lehren) hitherto received among us. 5. If twenty-five ministers living in close proximity in a fixed district, of whom, however, at least fifteen must be ordained ministers, make application to the General Synod to be permitted to form a Synod by themselves, and the Synod to which they have hitherto belonged having received formal notice of their intention to make the application, which notice must first be given in every instance, presents no weighty reasons to the contrary, the General Synod has authority to grant their application. And if there should be no separate Synod in an entire State, and six ordained ministers living in it should make application for that purpose, the General Synod shall permit the formation of a new Synod in that State. But until the consent or permission of the General Synod has been formally given to it, no newly organized body shall be recognized as a Ministerium among us, and no ordination performed by it shall be recognized as valid by us. 6. Those Synods now existing, as well as those formally recognized or organized by the General Synod, shall never be hindered in the appointing and ordaining of ministers at their own discretion within their own bounds. They also retain forever the privilege of establishing rules and regulations with regard to the internal arrangements and control of the affairs of their own districts; provided, however, that such rules and regulations are not in conflict with these fundamental articles of the general organization; and

139

only in cases of appeal can the General Synod have anything to do with such internal rules and regulations of the particular Synods. 7. The General Synod is authorized by and with the approval of a majority of the particular Synods or Ministeriums proper to fix grades in the ministry which are to be generally recognized. But until this is done, the grades at present established by the particular Ministeriums shall continue as now in force. 8. If by reason of human frailty dissension or division in regard to doctrine or discipline should arise in any Ministerium, such dissentions or divisions shall be brought before the General Synod for decision only when a full third of the members of such Ministerium present appeal to it for that purpose. 9. Every minister who is not satisfied with the decision of his Synod with reference to himself personally, his conduct, or his administration of his office, has the right to appeal to the General Synod. 10. Each Synod retains the right of granting to visiting ministers from other Synods voice and vote. But no minister shall have the right to go from one Synod to another as a full member unless he present a certificate in which the officers of the Synod to which he belonged set forth his grade in office, attest his good character to the best of their knowledge, and declare their consent to his transfer. . . This proposed plan is to be sent to all Evangelical Lutheran Synods or Ministeriums in these United States as a proposal for a general organization. 315. OBJECTIONS TO THE PROPOSED CONSTITUTION OF THE GENERAL SYNOD: THE TENNESSEE SYNOD (1820) During the colonial period, many American Lutherans did not acknowledge much of a formal relationship with the Lutheran confessional documents, such as the Augsburg Confession (1530). The Tennessee Synod was founded as an attempt to regain a more formal Lutheran position. From: Richard C. Wolf, ed., Documents of Luther Lutheran an Unity in America merica. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964), 74–77. Article 1 “The body founded on this constitution, is denominated: The Evangelical Lutheran General Synod of the United States of America,” This body indeed, may call itself Evang[ical]

140

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Lutheran, and yet not be such. The constitution does nowhere say, that the Augsburg Confession of faith or Luther’s catechism or the Bible, shall be the foundation of doctrine and discipline of the General Synod. It is well known, that they always have been the standard of the Lutheran church. Why does the constitution not once name them? It is truly said by some: that every person knows this, without any further mention, that they have always been the standard of the church. True indeed! But who assures us, that they are to be the standard of this General Synod? There is not a single clause to bind the General Synod to act in conformity to them. The General Synod, has unlimited power by this constitution, to promote any doctrine, to establish any new creed, or institute any discipline they please; for there is no Augsburg Confession. 316. CONDITIONS ON THE FRONTIER AS SEEN BY A LUTHERAN LEADER (1821) Interactions between American Lutherans and their Protestant neighbors tended to erode a strict Lutheran identity over time, especially with the transition to English. One of the early leaders of Lutheran confessionalism in America was Paul Henkel, whose letter describes the influence of American Protestantism on the Lutherans. From: Richard H. Bauer, ed., “Paul Henkel to an Unnamed Lutheran Minister, November 1821,” in The Letters of Paul Henkel Henkel. (St. Louis: Lutheran Historical Conference, 2003), 44–46. Much beloved and dear colleague That the apostasy from the teachings of Jesus is remarkable, everyone who looks into it can see. I am still of the opinion that in the present unrest in the matter of the doctrine of the Holy Sacraments, if the basis and cause of them were examined more and investigated, as perhaps in the previous century, then they would especially be the signs which are very vehemently spoken against, Luke 2:34. This is especially true in regard to Holy Baptism. That is what the Methodists and so-called New Reformed do. They reject the doctrine of Holy Baptism [when they say] the rebirth does not come about through it, but through prayer and experiences and the like, which up to now have not been given much consideration by right-thinking people. Since then, however, the most learned of our present Lutheran preachers have begun to blow on the same horn. So there is one note that is heard from many, and it leads them to support the fanatics and help set up the

kingdom of the Antichrist. Through this many hearts will, however, also plainly become thoughtful. Many a person who previously did not know, according to his mind, of the order of salvation wherein one may be saved, has seen the light. One finds that many a man believed he was indeed grounded in the true doctrine so that he could say that from his earliest years he was instructed in it, who now shows himself a true fanatic and dreamer, and is inconsistent, wrong and deceived. Another from whom one did not expect anything since he had not understood the matter, in his ignorance joined with him. Since, however, this person has a true spirit and is sincere minded; and since he, however, is troubled in this storm: he looks about to find a place since he wants to be sure since it seems that almost all of socalled Christianity appeals to the dear Bible for its doctrine and instruction for salvation. Thus a sincere hearted person investigates the true foundation himself and is satisfied with nothing less. Then the matter often turns out wholly different than he supposed. This very fittingly manifests itself at this time and will continue to do so even more. Since the uproar among the people is on account of what was published with the actions of the first Tennessee Synod, many will search farther, especially in regard to Baptism as well as in regard to the General Synod. In the actions of the second or last Tennessee Synod there is still much more as everyone will find. There they will find remarks about most of the articles of the constitution of the General Synod which is to improve the first Proposed Plan. Since your Letter came after this, the matter will be taken into consideration much more by many. First in regard to the doctrine of Holy Baptism since a short but, in truth, very basic discussion is being issued together with scriptural proof, and second because the remarks about the General Synod are so pertinent. So the matter will much more be considered. It will certainly be impossible for the Generalists to prove in any way from Holy Scripture what they allege of the General Synod in which they will stand. The only recourse which they will take is to appeal to a majority of votes, even though it may be so very contrary to the doctrine of the Bible. This has been proved sufficiently already through the fact one knows that some deny the deity of Jesus Christ although they nevertheless call themselves Evangelical [Lutheran] preachers. It seems very probable to me that it must be immaterial to these men whether their articles agree with the doctrines of Holy Scripture or not, just so they can attain their goal. One does not find anywhere that they try to prove any of their doc-

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

trines and plans with Holy Scripture. Therefore we do not expect that we or anyone else through writing or debating will bring any of them to other ideas or plans. It is no error or misunderstanding by such men, but much more a wanton and premeditated act against the divine doctrine through selfish purposes. You will, to be sure, find in the last minutes that some preachers in North Carolina confessed that in the beginning they did not so understand the matter as they do now and thus now give the understanding that they retract the matter. Then one must expect that they have misunderstood the matter. Then our writings may yet have a good effect. It may also be of value yet to instruct some people in the congregations so they can be on their guard, or they will never be able to resist the current. Then what the prophecies teach about the matter will truly be fulfilled. Still if a person only knows so much that he gets out of the way so that he is not swept away with the current, then it is worth the trouble that we write, and that others read. In regard to these proceedings we are also very hopeful that we can write about the matter now so that those who come after us may be taught, instructed and comforted through our writings when we are no longer here. They may also see from our writings that we have foreseen, according to the testimony of Holy Scripture, what would ensue. These also are the things honest souls seek so they can triumph in the time of temptation. Everything that can serve them in this we poor and humble pastors will pay attention to. The great ones of the world do not consider it worthwhile to read any of our writings, so may they be upheld by the poor and humble rather than other writings written by the learned, and may they serve others too. Thus if you have the opportunity to write anything else of the kind, it will be received with much thankfulness and be used as much as possible. 317. AMERICAN LUTHERANS AND REVIVALISM (1830–1844) The first half of the nineteenth century saw remarkable revivals of religion in North America, with emotional appeals to conversion and renewal of life. Many American Lutherans practiced elements of these revivals, while other remained strongly opposed to these activities. From: “Report of President Linner,” Minutes of the H Hartwick artwick S Synod ynod, 1832, 21. . . . so powerful and extensive has been the work of the Holy Spirit that upwards of 1,000 souls have been

141

hopefully converted and admitted into the Church. . . . In this work of grace so extensive through the church, we have seen the influence of the Holy Spirit exhibited under a great variety of circumstances. In places where vice and iniquity had predominated for years, the attentions of the people was suddenly arrested, and crowds of convicted sinners appeared in the house of God, bathed in tears—bowed to the dust, and crying for mercy; the most stubborn unbelievers and hardened transgressors were melted and subdued by the power influence of the Spirit of God. In other instances, this influence gradually descended, calm and refreshing like the gentle dew coming down from heaven, to fertilize the earth. From: “Report of the President,” Minutes of the South C Car arolina olina S Synod ynod, 1830, 17. . . . a meeting was held in St. John’s Church in the upper part of Lexington District, and another at St. Matthew’s Church, Orangeburg, on the fifth Sunday of May and October. On these occasions most of our ministers (who were not too remotely situated) attended. Their meeting lasted three days. They preached in the churches during the day, and attended meetings for prayer among the different families in the neighbor hoods, in the evenings. The congregations that attended were unusually large, and we have every reason to believe that by these means many durable impressions have been made—our congregations have been strengthened, and the cause of vital religion has been promoted. Other Lutherans were alarmed by these activities, which they considered antithetical to Lutheranism. Many critical letters were sent to Lutheran publications objecting to these practices within the Lutheran congregations. From: “Measures,” Luther Lutheran an Standard Standard. 2 (19), March 1, 1844, 3. New measures are nursed, advocated, and zealously propagated by that paper. The editor is carried away farther and farther by these extravagant measures. Some years ago he evinced much modesty, reserve and forbearance. He is assuming a bolder and more decided position. In proportion as he progresses on new measure ground, he recedes from the ancient landmarks of genuine Lutheranism. From: “Letter to the Editor,” Luther Lutheran an Observer Observer. 5 (23), March 30, 1838. Instead of less of that disgusting stuff about got-up Revivals, Screaming, Clapping of Hands at the Hypocrite’s Bench, you have more of it every week. You and the other Revival-Boys are advocating this RailRoad Christianity according to which they become

142

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

sinlessly perfect in an hour, for the same reason for which the Presbyterians have adopted it, that our people might not desert to the Methodists. . . . Alter, for the Lutheran Church’s sake, the name of your paper; call it New Measure, Fanatical, Methodistical, Anti-Lutheran Engine, or Advocate of Screaming, Falling, Clapping of Hands, of Hypocrisy and Lies. 318. LUTHERANISM IN CANADA: THE TRAVELS OF ADAM KEFFER Lutheranism spread into the frontiers of Ontario, Canada, in the early nineteenth century, but there was a critical lack of pastors to lead these congregations. A lay leader, “Father” Adam Keffer, made two trips on foot to the meeting of the Pittsburgh Synod to beg for pastors to be sent to them. From: The Missionary Missionary, October 1849, June 1850. At the meeting of the Mission Committee, during the Synod, an aged Christian, Father Adam Keffer, appeared before them in behalf of several destitute congregations in the Townships of Markham and Vaughan, near Toronto, Canada. His communication set forth the mournful state of things among these, our brethren, destitute of a pastor, and imposed upon by the most shameless impostors, who assume the name of Lutheran in order to carry on their work of deception among the unsuspecting people. . . . The earnest hope was expressed that Synod would do something effectual for their supply, ere they would finally be scattered, never more to be gathered again. The committee was deeply affected by this appeal, and after prayer, it was unanimously resolved that the request of the petitioners be taken into serious consideration. After mutual consultation, it was deemed most judicious to send someone to visit these people to ascertain their actual situation and wants, in order that the most effective measures might be adopted for their supply. Rev. G. Bassler was thereupon appointed to visit these churches at as early a day as possible and minister to them for a month or six weeks. Bassler’s report: I traveled by way of Cleveland, Buffalo, Lewiston and Toronto, to the vicinity of Thornhill, C.W., where, by the preserving care of my Heavenly Parent, I arrived on Saturday evening, the 28th of the same month; having been somewhat indisposed by the way, caused mainly, no doubt, by fatigue. It was already after night when I arrived at our friend, Father Adam Keffer’s, and they had retired for the night. When the neighbor who kindly took

me to the house knocked, and Mrs. K. saw only the dim outlines of my figure she at once exclaimed “Der Pfarrer ist Komme,” and in a few moments the whole family were astir, and I was made heartily welcome, and immediately felt at home; for their dialect as well as their whole manner, reminded me of our German Pennsylvania farmers. On Friday one of the brethren conveyed me to Markham, the adjoining township, where on the subsequent Lord’s Day I endeavored to preach (A.M.) in German, and (P.M.) in English. The congregations, especially in the afternoon, were large, and very attentive to the Word. . . The condition of these churches, while it is not hopeless by any means, is yet sad in the extreme. Some of the principal members have been drawn off by other churches. Many, especially of the young, are attached to no church, and can say, “no man careth for our souls.” The youth are growing up, many of them at least, without any religious instruction, exposed to all the evil influences of a mixed society, such as that of Canada, and many of those who are still connected with the church are indifferent or discouraged. . . There is little doubt but that these churches in a few years at most, with the labors of an efficient and acceptable Gospel Minister, who could preach in both languages, would support their own pastor and aid in extending the Gospel to other portions of that land. They are really anxious to have a pastor of their own, and most of them would cling around him like children cling around a father. But something must be done soon, since “hope deferred maketh the heart sick.” They have been so often deceived and so frequently disappointed that many are ready to give up all hope, and if something cannot be done soon the number will be so reduced that there will be no prospect of building up self-supporting churches (October 1849). Unexpectedly, and to the surprise of everyone, when the Synod met, our venerable Father Adam Keffer, from beyond Toronto, in Canada West, again appeared among us. His mission was the same as last year—to procure a shepherd for the scattered flocks of our brethren in Canada. The interviews of this aged patriarch with the Synod, and his agonizing entreaties for someone to come over and help them, went to the heart of everyone, and awakened an interest for the mission cause never before felt. When the mission committee met, and the inquiry was proposed “What shall be done for our brethren in Canada?” there was no answer, for no one knew of a suitable laborer for this difficult field, and we knelt

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

down and wept and prayed to God who alone could send help out of Zion. After mature deliberation, the committee unanimously resolved in humble reliance upon Almighty God, to send a laborer at the earliest possible time to our destitute brethren (June 1850). 319. EARLY SAXON SETTLEMENT IN MISSOURI Conservative confessional Lutherans from the German state of Saxony left Europe because of differences with the State Church in that territory. Their early days in Missouri were troubled by poverty and by conflicts with their leader Martin Stephan, who was eventually driven out of their community. This is from the memoirs of one of the first Missouri pastors. From: Memoirs of Ernst Moritz Buerg Buerger. er. trans. E.J. Buerger. (Lincoln MO: Martin Julian Buerger, 1953), 46–53. Through selected men a large piece of land in Perry County in the State of Missouri was bought, upon which a sufficient number of houses was erected, so that, for the time being, a few hundred people could find shelter. A large part of the emigrants, who desired to do farm work, moved onto this land; the remainder, mostly artisans, remained in St. Louis, because they had, in the course of time, found profitable employment there. We pastors still remained in St. Louis, also Stephan. Of necessity it appeared strange to me that Stephan pushed me into the background as over against the other pastors, so that I was not drawn along into the discussions and consultations that were necessary. His antipathy to me manifested itself in particular in his criticism of a sermon which I had delivered in St. Louis, in which he accused me, and expressed it to others, that I had maligned the holy apostles in my sermon . . . Scarcely had I returned to St. Louis, when Walther came to me and said: “Prepare yourself for something terrible.” He did not, however, tell me what it might be, and left me. Without doubt he feared that I might carelessly blabber about that which no one should as yet know or hear. Maidens whom Pastor Stephan had misused had, during my absence, been impelled by their awakened conscience to make an open confession to Pastor [G. H.] Loeber. With troubled heart Loeber had remained silent for several days, and kept his own counsel, but finally communicated the secret to Pastors Walther and [E. G. W.] Keyl. Before the time that the maidens had confessed their guilt to Pastor Loeber, Stephan had gone to the property

143

which had been purchased, and was no longer in St. Louis. Having been strengthened, there in the primeval forest, by the Word of God, and assured of the grace of God, I had returned, prepared patiently to endure shame and slightings. Loeber finally made everything known to me. Remarkable! Instead of being terrified at the revelations, as the others had been, I felt a strange sense of joy in my soul. As the ungodly conduct of Stephan eventually became known to the congregation, the agitation was tremendous. No stone was to be left unturned to render Stephan harmless, and to prevent his gaining any following. It was resolved to send Pastor Walther to Perry County. He was successful in persuading all who had already gone there to forsake Stephan without Stephan’s observing anything of it. Soon thereafter also we pastors, and a large number of those who did not desire to remain in St. Louis, leased a steamship to go to Perry County. Following an investigation undertaken with Stephan, he was deposed, and banished from the settlement to Illinois. There he is said to have served a congregation for a period of time, and to have died without any evidence of repentance. That was the end of a man who had once been a faithful witness of Jesus Christ, who had directed many souls upon the way of salvation. What a warning example! “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed, lest he fall!” The lands were distributed among the creditors who had paid their money into the credit–treasury. Five localities were established with the names: Dresden, Altenburg, Niederfrohna, Seelitz and Wittenberg. Although many of the poor, whose transportation had been paid out of the credit–treasury, paid up honestly in the course of time, yet the creditors were obliged to lose much, and to accept the land at a much higher price than it was worth. Each of the pastors went to that locality where those people lived who had been under his pastoral care in Germany. Thus I went to Seelitz, where those people lived whom I had served while I was assistant pastor to my father in Seelitz. Now, however, a time of great misery and suffering set in. Sicknesses, cold fever (ague), named inflammatory fever, snatched away a great number, particularly in Seelitz, which lay low in a valley. The land was largely virgin, and had to be brought under cultivation. The means were lacking to acquire the direct necessities. The brethren in faith remaining in St. Louis, who had found a good income there, did, indeed, send help, but they could not adequately relieve the shortage. Worse was the spiritual distress that came over us.

144

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Doubt began to be expressed concerning the legitimacy of our emigration. The question arose: What are we? Did our pastors rightfully resign their office in Germany? Do they here have a proper call? Are they not seducers, who have enticed us to this man, and helped toward tearing asunder family ties, so that children forsook their parents and spouses their mates? Are we to be designated a Lutheran congregation, and is the Lutheran Church in our midst, the Lutheran ministry, the rightful administration of the Sacraments, etc.? The effort was made to ease this situation thereby that, in orderly meetings, all pastors were called for the conducting of ministerial office in each of the congregations. But the confidence had been shaken. In this I suffered most. In my congregation, in which several had suffered great loss, the unrest because of that seemed to be great. Even though I had nothing to do with the credit-treasury and the book-keeping, as this was in the hands of a faithful and conscientious treasurer, yet they looked upon me as a seducer and the cause of their distress and their losses. Even during the voyage I had given them occasion to be dissatisfied with me. It had been their previous experience for a long time that I treated them in a fraternally loving and friendly manner; for eight years a very cordial relationship had existed between us. But on the voyage, when I was not sufficiently watchful of myself, I had often been gruff, hard and unfriendly toward them, especially when the burden of the work was pressing upon me. My conscience became ever more disturbed over the sins of our emigration; I recognized that it had been premature, that, since the pure confession still had legal standing in Saxony, we should have remained and fought; that we, disdaining the cross, had lightly forsaken our divinely committed offices, that we had torn family ties asunder, and misled many souls into error and brought them into much misery. These questions and doubts pressed more and more upon my conscience. I doubted the legality of my call to the ministry in Perry County, and whether I was worthy to administer the ministerial office. Added to that was the fact that my congregation had grown indifferent and distrustful toward me. . . . Doubts continued; I read much, especially in Luther’s exposition of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, in the first chapter, concerning the words in the second verse . . . This word brought rays of light to my soul. I must call our seduced congregations valid congregations in God’s sight; I could not deny that all rights and treasures belonged to these congregations, which Christ has won for His Church, that they had the

power to establish the ministry and cause the Sacraments to be administered by called servants. Therefore I did not dare to say that the Sacraments administered among us were not the true Sacraments, ordained by Christ. I showed this passage to a Mr. N. N. Whether Pastor Walther’s attention was directed to this passage through this Mr. N. N. or whether Walther found it in his seeking and searching for clarity, for that none has the praise but God alone. For it was this passage particularly out of which God permitted light, and abundant light, to stream forth. Walther was equipped by God with rich gifts, and understood how to make the most of this goldmine, as none of us would have understood it, least of all I. Undoubtedly just this passage gave Walther occasion to seek out the testimony of other faithful church fathers. He was able masterfully to erect the building on this foundation, which now stands before our eyes. When the well-known colloquium was held in Perry County, Walther communicated this newfound treasure to a vast assembly. He proved that, despite our aberrations, Christ’s Church was here, with all the rights and treasures earned by Christ. . . . 320. C.F.W. WALTHER’S 1848 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS TO THE MISSOURI SYNOD (1848) Because of its stormy beginnings under Stephan, the Missouri Synod continued to worry about the derivation of its right to be the church, and about its authority. Walther, its theological leader, addressed these concerns, locating its authority on adherence to the Word of God. From: “Walther’s 1848 Presidential Address,” trans. Paul F. Koehneke, Conc oncordia ordia Historical Institute Quarterl Quarterlyy 33, April 1960, 12–20. In these last days of sore distress there have again come days of great joy, days of refreshment and strengthening for us, members and servants of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of this country. God has granted us grace that we, who knew and know that we are united in one faith, but in part were not acquainted and in most cases lived a great distance from one another and had to work and battle alone, have been able to meet here to manifest our unity in the spirit publicly by deeds and jointly to strengthen this unity, to confess our most holy faith jointly and to be edified thereby, jointly to take upon ourselves the burden of the individual and to present it to God in joint prayer. Whereas at present our fellow believers in most other countries, especially in our former fatherland, because of the disturbance and confusion

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

of a violent dissolution of all existing relationships in church and state, are restricted almost entirely to solitary sighing in the closet, we have been able to assemble peacefully to refresh our spirits in the shadow of an undisturbed peace. Thanks, humble thanks be to Him who is good and whose mercy endureth forever. . .

Fig. 5.5. Portrait of C. F. W. Walther, patriarch and leader of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

However, we are here not only as individuals; most of us have come here as servants and members of the church in the name and on behalf of our congregations in order to deliberate in the fear of God on matters necessary for them and the church as a whole. We are bearing a grave responsibility in being present here, in the confessions which we make and in the resolutions we pass. The eyes of many are on us; they are looking upon our deliberations partly with concern, partly with expectation. Generally, however, the demand is made upon our meeting—and, we must admit, with perfect justification—that it is not only to be beneficial for us personally, but that it also brings a blessing upon our congregations and the whole church. . . The question to which I now intend to give a brief answer is the following: “Why Should and Can We Carry on Our Work

145

Joyfully Although We Have No Power but the Power of the Word?” The principal and most important motive is the following: Because Christ has given His servants only this and no other power, and because even the holy apostles have appropriated to themselves no other power and therefore have seriously warned the servants of the church against claiming every other power. . . . Can we, therefore, my brethren, be depressed because we in our American pastorates are endowed with no other power than the power of the Word and especially because no other power has been granted to this assembly? Most assuredly not. This very fact must arouse us to perform the duties of our office and to carry on our present labors with great joy; for in this manner the church also among us preserves its true character, its character of a kingdom of heaven; in this manner Christ remains among us as what He is, the only Lord, the only Head, the only Master; and our office and labor preserves the true apostolic form. How could we lust for a power which Christ has denied us, which no apostle has claimed, and which would deprive our congregations of the character of a true church and of the true apostolic form. . . . Even though we possess no power but that of the Word, we nevertheless can and should carry on our work joyfully. Let us, therefore, esteemed sirs and brethren, use this power properly. Let us above all and in all matters be concerned about his, that the pure doctrine of our dear Evangelical Lutheran Church may become known more and more completely known among us, that it may be in vogue in all our congregations and that it may be preserved from all adulteration and held fast as the most precious treasure. Let us not surrender one iota of the demands of the Word. Let us bring about its complete rule in our congregations and set aside nothing of it, even though for this reason things may happen to us, as God wills. Here let us be inflexible, here let us be adamant. If we do this, we need not worry about the success of our labor. Even though it should seem to be in vain, it cannot then be in vain, for the Word does not return void but prospers in the things whereto the Lord sent it. By the Word alone, without any other power, the church was founded; by the Word alone all the great deeds recorded in church history were accomplished; by the Word alone the church will most assuredly stand also in these days of sore distress, to the end of days. Even the gates of hell will not prevail against it. “For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass

146

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away; but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.” Amen. 321. SAMUEL SIMON SCHMUCKER AND “AMERICAN LUTHERANISM” (1851) The leading theologian and leader of the General Synod was Samuel Simon Schmucker, who proposed a moderate form of Lutheranism that saw the Augsburg Confession as mainly authoritative, but a document that could be modified to meet contemporary needs and understandings. From: S.S. Schmucker, The American Luther Lutheran an Church Church. (Springfield: D. Harbaugh, 1851), 160–62.

Fig. 5.6. Portrait of Samuel Simon Schmucker, prominent Lutheran leader in the early nineteenth century

Again, if the founders of the American Lutheran church even had formally adopted the symbolical books of Germany, it was equally competent for their successors to rescind such adoption; and certainly could not affect our duty and position. It is enough for us, and for the present generation of our ministers and members, that when we entered the holy office, no such obligation was customary or even thought of; no pledge to the symbolical books, or any one of them, was asked of us, or given by us. We selected

the Lutheran church as the church of our choice, as she then was, not as she had been two or three centuries ago. And, as honest and honorable men, we are answerable for our fidelity only to the promises which we ourselves made, so long as we do not publicly renounce them, and avow a change of opinion as to our duty; as Luther did when he repudiated the obligation of his monastic vows. It is certain our American fathers did not formally adopt these books, but in several instances practically required assent to them at licensure or ordination, and probable for some years longer, as we have recently been informed by one of the oldest fathers of the church, required candidate’s assent to the Augsburg Confession alone, practically rejecting the other books; and they did recommend the smaller catechism of Luther as a book for catechetical instruction; but their successors gradually disapproving of this pledge, practically rejected it, as well as any pledge to the other symbolic books, about half a century ago, which they had a perfect moral right to do. All the while, those venerable brethren, among whom were Drs. Kunze, Helmuth, Schmidt, Streit, Schaeffer of Philadelphia, Muhlenberg of Lancaster, Daniel Kurtz of Baltimore, Krug, Endress, Goering, Schmucker of York, and Lochman, Sen’r., though they no longer required the licentiate to pledge himself to the Augsburg Confession, yet still adhering to the grand doctrines held by Luther, considered it honorable to retain the name of Lutheran, as their successors still do. Dr. Helmuth is known to have been prominent in rejecting the requisition of a pledge to the Augsburg Confession. Whether all the others, above named agreed with him, we know not; yet the majority must have done so, or the practice could not have been changed. During the first thirty years of this century, the great body of the American Lutheran church had, therefore, no human creed at all binding upon them, though they always did refer (as we still do,) to the Augsburg Confession, as a substantial expose of their doctrines. As freemen, and servants only of Christ, they felt that they had the right, and rested under the obligation to worship God, and to conduct the affairs of his church according to the dictates of their own conscience, guided by the Scriptures; and we have yet to see any evidence that they were under any obligation of honor or honesty, to pursue a different course. Their real doctrinal position, at the formation of the General Synod, was that of fundamental agreement with the Augsburg Confession, and acknowledged dissent from it on some minor or non-fun-

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

damental points. This state of doctrine alone could the clause of the General Synod’s constitution be designed to perpetuate, which denies to that body “the right to introduce such alterations in matters appertaining to the faith, as might, in any way, tend to burden the consciences of the brethren in Christ.” The alterations prohibited, must have been alterations from the state of things and doctrines actually existing. How the “consciences of the brethren could be oppressed” by the General Synod’s altering or rejecting any doctrine which they did not believe, we cannot divine; and to maintain that the our fathers not rigid symbolists, framers of that article designed by it to perpetuate or shield from alteration any doctrine which they themselves rejected, would evince more zeal than sound judgment. This doctrinal position of substantial agreement with the Augsburg Confession, with acknowledged privilege of difference on non-fundamental or minor points, was subsequently made symbolic or binding by the General Synod, in her Constitution for Synods, and this is the official creed of the General Synod. This doctrinal position had been introduced in the same way and with exactly equivalent restrictions, into the Constitution of the Theological Seminary of the General Synod. This obligation, written by ourselves, we have also taken, and to it we expect to adhere so long as strength is granted us to labor in the vineyard of our blessed Lord. It has sometimes been said, as Lutherans we ought to adhere to the standards of the Lutheran church. This is perfectly true and just, if the standards of the Lutheran church in America be intended; for these are none other than the “Word of God and the fundamentals of that Word as taught substantially in the Augsburg Confession.” But as to the former symbolical books of the Lutheran church in Germany, we are under no such obligation. Our churches, for near a century, have not acknowledged any one of them except the Augsburg Confession, and for fifty years past have received as binding, none at all, until the General Synod formally adopted the Augsburg Confession, and that only as to fundamentals; and probably not a dozen of all our American ministers have ever read all these books. 322. CONFESSIONAL REACTION TO “AMERICAN LUTHERANISM” (1849) In opposition to Schmucker, a new group of leaders arose to urge for a more formal adherence to the Lutheran confessions, including Charles Porterfield

147

Krauth, who became the leader of a rival Lutheran seminary in Philadelphia. This conflict eventually led to a schism within the General Synod in 1867, and the formation of the rival General Council. From: Charles Porterfield Krauth “The Relation of our Confessions to the Reformation,” Ev Evang angelical elical Review 1, 1849.

Fig. 5.7. Photograph of Charles Porterfield Krauth (1880)

The Augsburg Confession was exquisitely adapted to all its objects as a confession of faith and a defense of it. In it the very heart of the gospel beat again. It gave organic being to what had hitherto been but a tendency and knit together great nationalities in the holiest bond by which men can be held in association. It enabled the Evangelical princes as a body to throw their moral weight for truth into the empire. These were the starting points of its great work and glory among men. To it, under God, more than to any other cause the whole Protestant world owes civil and religious freedom. Under it, as a banner, the pride of Rome was broken and her armies destroyed. It is the symbol of pure Protestantism as the three general Creeds are symbols of that developing catholicity to which genuine Protestantism is related as the maturing fruit is related to the blossom.

148

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

To it the eyes of all deep thinkers have been turned as to a star of hope amid the internal strifes of nominal Protestantism. Gieseler, the great Reformed church historian, says, “If the question be which among all Protestant confessions is best adapted for forming the foundation of a union among Protestant churches, we declare ourselves unreservedly for the Augsburg Confession.” But no genuine union can ever be formed upon the basis of the Augsburg Confession except by a hearty consent in its whole faith, an honest reception of all its statements of doctrine in the sense which the statements bear in the confession itself. If there be those who would forgive Rome her unrepented sins, they must do it in the face of the Augsburg Confession. If there be those who would consent to a truce at least with rationalism or fanaticism, they must begin their work by making men forget the great confession which refused its covert to them from the beginning. With the Augsburg Confession begins the clearly recognized life of the Evangelical Protestant Church, the purified church of the West on which its enemies fixed the name Lutheran. With this confession its most self-sacrificing struggles and greatest achievements are connected. It is hallowed by the prayers of Luther, among the most ardent that ever burst from the human heart; it is made sacred by the tears of Melanchthon, among the tenderest which ever fell from the eye of man. It is embalmed in the living, dying, and undying devotion of the long line of the heroes of our faith who, through the world which was not worthy of them, passed to their eternal rest. The greatest masters in the realm of intellect have defended it with their labors, the greatest princes have protected it from the sword by the sword, and the blood of its martyrs, speaking better things than vengeance, pleads forever with the blood of Him whose all-availing love, whose sole and all-atoning sacrifice, is the beginning, middle, and end of its witness. But not alone on the grand field of historical events has its power been shown. It led to God’s Word millions who have lived and died unknown to the great world. In the humblest homes and humblest hearts it has opened, through the ages, the spring of heavenly influence. It proclaimed the all-sufficiency of Christ’s merits, the justifying power of faith in him, and this shed heavenly light, peace, and joy on the darkest problems of the burdened heart. “It remains forever,” says Gieseler, “a light to guide in the right path those who are struggling in error.” It opened the way to the true unity of the church of Christ, and if it has seemed to divide for a little time, it has divided only

to consolidate, at length, the whole church under Christ’s sole rule and in the one pure faith. Can we honorably bear the name of Evangelical Lutheran, honestly profess to receive the Augsburg Confession as our creed, and honestly claim to be part of the church of our fathers while we reject, or leave the conservative posture open to rejection, parts of the doctrine whose reception gave our church its separate being and distinctive name, which led to the formation of its confession, which are embodied in its articles and guarded in their condemnatory clauses, and which for centuries our whole church in every official act maintained as principal and fundamental? This is the real question. All others are side issues. This question, once agitated, can never be laid till it is fairly settled, and to it every conscientious man, even—lover of our church, should bend his prayerful thoughts. . . . 323. THE DEFINITE SYNODICAL PLATFORM (1855) Schmucker and his allies proposed an “American Edition” of the Augsburg Confession, edited of what they thought were obsolescent and un-scriptural elements. First distributed anonymously, the Definite Platform was a tactical and theological failure, adopted only by a few small synods. From: Richard C. Wolf, ed., Documents of Luther Lutheran an Unity in America merica. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964), 100–104. This Definite Synodical Platform was prepared and published by consultation and co-operation of ministers of different Eastern and Western Synods, connected with the General Synod, at the special request of some Western brethren, whose churches desire a more specific expression of the General Synod’s doctrinal basis, being surrounded by German churches, which profess the entire mass of former symbols. As the American Recension, contained in this Platform, adds not a single sentence to the Augsburg Confession, nor omits anything that has the least pretension to be considered “a fundamental doctrine of Scripture,” it is perfectly consistent with the doctrinal test of the General Synod. . . . The Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds are also universally received by our churches. Hence any District Synod, connected with the General Synod, may, with perfect consistency, adopt this Platform, if the majority of her members approve the Synodical Disclaimer, contained in Part II. It is, moreover, exceedingly important, for the sake of uniformity, that any Synod adopting this

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

Platform, should receive it entire, without alteration. ...

Fig. 5.8. Frontespiece of the Definite Platform (1855), the ill-fated proposal by Schmucker and others to amend the Augsburg Confession

Part I Preliminary Principles; and the Doctrinal Basis or Creed to be Subscribed WHEREAS it is the duty of the followers of Christ to profess his religion before the world. . . . Christians have, from the earlier ages, avowed some brief summary of their doctrines or a Confession of their faith. Such confessions, also called symbols, were the socalled Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, &c., of the first four centuries after Christ. Thus also did the Lutheran Reformers of the sixteenth century, when cited by the Emperor to appear before the Diet at Augsburg, present the Confession, bearing the name of that city, as an expose of their principal doctrines; in which they also professedly reject only the greater part of the errors that had crept

149

into the Romish Church. . . . Subsequently, Luther and his coadjutors still further changed their views on some subjects in that Confession, such as the Mass; and seven years later taught purer views in the Smalcald Articles. Again, a quarter of a century after Luther’s death, these and other writings of Luther and Melanchthon, together with another work which neither of them ever saw, the Form [Formula] of Concord, were made binding on ministers and churches, not by the church herself, acting of her own free choice, but by the civil authorities of certain kingdoms and principalities. The majority of Lutheran kingdoms, however, rejected one or more of them, and the Augsburg Confession alone has been acknowledged by the entire Lutheran Church. . . . WHEREAS the entire Lutheran Church of Germany has rejected the symbolical books as a whole, and also abandoned some of the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession, among others the far greater part of them the doctrine of the bodily presence of the Savior in the Eucharist, and our fathers in this country also more than half a century ago, ceased to require a pledge to any of these books, whilst they still believed and in various ways avowed the great fundamental doctrines contained in them: And WHEREAS the General Synod of the American Lutheran Church, about a quarter of a century ago, again introduced a qualified acknowledgement of the Augsburg Confession, in the Constitution of her Theological Seminary, and in her Constitution for District Synods, at the ordination and licensure of ministers, without specifying the doctrines to be omitted, except by the designation that they are not fundamental doctrines of Scripture; and whereas a general desire has prevailed amongst our ministers and churches, to have this basis expressed in a more definite manner; and the General Synod has left this matter optional with each district Synod: Therefore we regard it as due to the cause of truth, . . . to specify more minutely what tenets of the Augsburg Confession, and of the former symbolic system are rejected, some by all, others by the great mass of the ministers and churches of the General Synod, in this country. Accordingly, the following American Recension of the Augsburg Confession, has been prepared, by consultation and cooperation of a number of Evangelical Lutheran Ministers of Eastern and Western Synods belonging to the General Synod, at the special request of Western brethren, whose churches particularly need it, being intermingled with German churches, which avow the whole mass of the

150

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

former symbols. In this revision, not a single sentence has been added to the Augsburg Confession, whilst those several aspects of doctrine have been omitted, which have long since been regarded by the great mass of our churches as unscriptural, and as remnants of Romish error. The only errors contained in the Confession (which are all omitted in this Recension) are—

reception of one Doctrinal and Disciplinarian Platform. III. Resolved, That we will not receive into our Synod any minister who will not adopt the Pledge defined in these Resolutions, and faithfully labor to maintain its discipline in his charge.

1. The Approval of the Ceremonies of the Mass.

SYNOD TO THE DEFINITE PLATFORM (1856)

2. Private Confession and Absolution.

The publication of the Definite Platform led to a theological storm among Lutherans in America, and pushed other groups to make more definite statements as to how they understood the validity of the Lutheran confessional documents, especially the Augsburg Confession. From: Richard C. Wolf, ed.,., Documents of Luther Lutheran an Unity in America. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964), 104–6.

3. Denial of the Divine Obligation of the Christian Sabbath. 4. Baptismal Regeneration. 5. The Real Presence of the Body and Blood of the Savior in the Eucharist. With these few exceptions, we retain the entire Augsburg Confession, with all the great doctrines of the Reformation. The other errors rejected in the second part of this Synodical Platform, such as Exorcism, &c., are contained not in the Augsburg Confession, but in the other former symbolical books, and are here introduced as among the reasons for our rejection of all the other books except the Augsburg Confession. At the same time, whilst we will not admit into our Synod anyone who believes in Exorcism, Private Confession and Absolution, or the Ceremonies of the Mass, we grant liberty in regard to the other omitted topics, and are willing, as heretofore, to admit ministers who receive them, provided they regard them as nonessential, and are willing to co-operate in peace with those who reject them, and to subscribe the pledge defined in the following Resolutions:— I. Therefore, Resolved, That this Synod hereby avows its belief in the following doctrinal Basis, namely, the so-called Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the American Recension of the Augsburg Confession, as a more definite expression of the doctrinal pledge prescribed by the General Synod’s Constitution for District Synods, and as a correct exhibition of the Scripture doctrines discussed in it: and that we regard agreement among brethren on these subjects as a sufficient basis for harmonious co–operation in the same church. II. Resolved, That we receive the General Synod’s Formula of Government and Discipline, contained in her Hymn Book, as our directory; and that any additions or alterations we may desire, we will embody in bye-laws; so that our beloved Church may possess and exhibit to the world entire harmony in the

324. OBJECTIONS OF THE PITTSBURGH

Testimony of the Synod of Pittsburgh WHEREAS, Our Church has been agitated by proposed changes in the Augsburg Confession—changes whose necessity has been predicated upon alleged errors in that Confession; And WHEREAS, These changes and the charges connected with them, though set forth by individual authority, have been endorsed by some Synods of the Lutheran Church, are urged upon others for approval, and have been noticed by most of the Synods which have met since they have been brought before the Church; And WHEREAS, Amid conflicting statements, many who are sincerely desirous of knowing the truth are distracted, knowing not what to believe, and the danger of internal conflict and of schism is incurred; And WHEREAS, Our Synods are the source whence an official declaration in regard to things disputed in the Church, may naturally and justly be looked for; we therefore, in Synod assembled, in the presence of the Searcher of hearts, desire to declare to our churches and before the world, our judgment in regard to these changes and these charges, and the alienation among brethren which may arise from them: 1. Resolved, That by the Augsburg Confession we mean that document which was framed by Melanchthon, with the advice, aid and concurrence of Luther and the other great evangelical theologians,

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

and presented by the Protestant Princes and Free Cities of Germany, at the Diet of Augsburg, in 1530. 2. Resolved, That while the basis of our General Synod has allowed of diversity in regard to some parts of the Augsburg Confession, that basis never was designed to imply the right to alter, amend or curtail the Confession itself. 3. Resolved, That while this Synod, resting on the word of God as the sole authority in matters of faith, on its infallible warrant rejects the Romish doctrine of the real presence, or Transubstantiation, and with the doctrine of Consubstantiation, rejects the Mass and all ceremonies distinctive of the Mass, denies any power in Sacraments as an opus operatum, or that the blessings of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper can be received without faith, rejects Auricular Confession and priestly Absolution, holds that there is no priesthood on earth except that of all believers, and that God only can forgive sins, and maintains the sacred obligation of the Lord’s day; and while we would, with our whole heart, reject any part of any Confession which taught doctrines in conflict with this our testimony; nevertheless, before God and his Church, we declare that, in our judgment, the Augsburg Confession, properly interpreted, is in perfect consistence with this our testimony, and with the Holy Scriptures, as regards the errors specified. 325. WALTHERS’ PROPOSAL FOR “FREE CONFERENCES” (1856) With the theological upheavals of the 1850s, Missouri Synod leader C.F.W. Walther proposed a series of “Free” theological conferences to discuss the issue; “Free” in the sense that attendees would represent only themselves, and not their respective synods (out of a fear of “unionism”). From: Richard C. Wolf, ed.,., Documents of Luther Lutheran an Unity in America merica. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964), 107–8. Our brothers in Germany, working apart in various state churches, have utilized free conferences, religious assemblies, etc., as a means toward the promotion of their unity in faith and confession. We are convinced that after a time in which the various local churches lapsed into a deep and general decay in matters of doctrine and practice . . . there is no way more fitting . . . for awakened individuals within the various church bodies to strengthen and advance the church unity which has become apparent . . . Since we are living under different circumstances, may we

151

not hope that similar general conferences would be more productive here. . . . So we venture openly to inquire: Would not meetings, held at intervals, by such members of churches as call themselves Lutheran and acknowledge and confess without reservation that the Unaltered Augsburg Confession of 1530 is the pure and true statement of the doctrine of sacred Scripture and is also their own belief, promote and advance the efforts toward the final establishment of one single Evangelical Lutheran Church of America? We for our part would be ready with all our heart to take part in such a conference of truly believing Lutherans whenever and wherever such a conference would be held . . . ; at the same time we can promise in advance the support of numerous theologians and laymen to whom the welfare of our precious Ev. [Evangelical] Lutheran Church in this new fatherland is equally a matter of deepest heartfelt yearning and with whom we have discussed the thoughts here expressed. Since it is true that many differences of opinion still exist among those Lutherans who hold with all their heart to the fundamental Confession of our Church, the treatment of which in our periodicals can more easily hinder than advance unity among us, the personal and verbal statements and expressions of opinions would above all else surely bring about this unparalleled blessing, namely, that the contest within our Church (which will always be necessary) will receive and keep the nature of a mutual competition among brethren for the faithful preservation of the precious gem of doctrinal purity and unity. . . . 326. LIFE IN A FRONTIER PARSONAGE (1852) For the Scandinavian Lutherans who immigrated to the American Midwest, the frontier was often a difficult and dangerous place. Religious gatherings often brought both spiritual sustenance and social interactions, important for the often scattered settlers. Linka Preus was the wife of pioneer Norwegian Lutheran church leader Herman Preus. From: Gracia Grindal and Marvin Slind, eds, Linka’s Diary: A Norweg orwegian ian Immigr Immigrant ant Story Story. (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2008), 272–74. May 30, Pentecost—What a wonderful time of the year! What a wonderful day for celebration! Nature is so wonderfully decorated! If only our hearts could be only half as beautifully adorned before You, dear Father, as You now present nature to our eyes! Yesterday, the day after Pentecost, there was a service

152

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

here. Since no church has been built yet, a schoolhouse built of oak had to do; it is far from pretty. At home you seldom see a cowshed as ugly as this house is on the outside. It is a little bit better on the inside. The floor is decent, and along the walls there are two rows of benches. At one end there’s a bench and a table; at the other end there are windows on each of the walls where there is no door. During the service, the table is used as altar, and the farmers have been kind enough to leave four seats on the bench for the minister and his wife. Saying the liturgy, the minister—Hermann—is standing in front of the table, on which the minister’s wife, on special days or at communion, has placed a nice, white tablecloth. After having sung the liturgy, he takes his seat again—one step to the side and then one backward and he is there, by my side. Hymns for the morning service are sung as well as in any farmer’s church, and during the last verse, Hermann stands up, and now the table is used as a pulpit. The congregation is eager to come to services. During the winter, when it was cold and terrible, fewer people came, I guess. Crossing the prairie in that awful wind probably made people stay home in their warm houses, even though upon arriving at the church, they would find the oven we have placed in the middle of the room well heated, almost red. I won’t claim that the entire room was heated accordingly; it’s impossible because of broken windows, and openings in roof, floor, and walls. But still, there are usually more people than there is room for on the benches. Also, once a week H. holds “Edifying Meetings,” when he reads and explains a story from the Bible, plus he reads an edifying story about the missionaries or something like that; a lot of people attend. When it is too dark, or bad weather, it’s mostly neighbors, but on moonlit nights, people from more distant farms show up. These edifying meetings are usually held in the evenings, looking back on a day of hard work. If the weather is nice and we expect more people, then Marthe Moen goes down to the schoolhouse with her candles, and Margit carries my papers. The candles in the windows take care of the light of the eyes, while Hermann, with God’s help, awakens the light of the Spirit in our souls. As the year is proceeding and springtime has entered the air, more and more people gather at services. They also come from the sister congregations. There isn’t enough room for everybody in a building as small as the schoolhouse; there are even a lot of people standing along the walls on the outside. I haven’t dared to go into the overcrowded, stuffy room, since I caused a great disturbance on Easter Sunday, when, in the middle of

H.’s speech, I fainted—“lost my senses” as the farmers say—causing him to stop preaching and see me well out the door.

Fig. 5.9. Linka Hjort Preus

Instead, I bring a chair from home, which I place by the window, in the shadow of the house, where I actually like it better than inside. On Ascension Day, H. held his first confirmation—good Father be with him—be with us all with His Spirit! There were even more people than usual here that day; I was joined by many in my pew outside. We had the clear blue sky as ceiling and the blooming trees as walls. NB: In by the wall, there are only half–rotten splinters. Yesterday I sat in my usual place, but on the other side of the house, since the service was held in the afternoon. H. had been preaching in Norway Grove in the morning. I don’t understand why people prefer to sit in the sun—well—I was sitting by myself, and just as if the beautiful animals felt sorry for me, they did their best to lead my thoughts onto something else: The one poor gander we have had followed me down there, and it was standing by my chair. The

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

only bird I have heard singing some nice tunes since I came here sat in a tree, whistling the entire time. Still, I do believe I paid attention; I tried to see if I remembered the course of H.’s speech, but I’m afraid I did not know the sermon hymn, unless I wanted to guess from the gospel. This can be a proof either way, but one thing is certain, I didn’t look around a lot—I don’t approve of that kind of fussing around. 327. AMERICAN LUTHERANS AND THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY (1839–1857) The most divisive issue in America during the 1840s and 1850s was that of what to do about slavery. Though American Lutherans were generally averse to having their synods make “political” statements, several synods declared themselves as morally opposed to slavery. From: “Statement of the Middle Conference, Pittsburgh Synod. The Missionary. 2 (ns) 36, October 1, 1857.

Fig. 5.10. Sketch of Norwegian Synod leaders arguing about slavery in 1867, drawn by Linka Preus, wife of one of the synodical leaders

Middle Conference of the Pittsburgh Synod, Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, September 2, 1857: Statement adopted by the Conference There are in this country, which we boast to be the freest on which the sun shines, between three and four millions of slaves. These slaves are the descendants of Africans, some of pure African blood, but many of them mixed, and some as fair as any descendants of Europeans. They are deprived of their natural right said in our Declaration of Independence to be inalienable; of liberty and the pursuit of happiness; they are deprived of the opportunity of mental improvement; they are shut out from the reading of

153

God’s Holy Word, and many of them from the most necessary religious advantages and privileges; they are worked, whipped, fed, bought and sold, and in every respect that it is possible to treat human beings as brutes, they are so treated. Slavery makes tyrants and oppressors of masters, and menials and chattels of servants; it demoralizes the community, undermines our free institutions, makes us a by-word among the nations, and brings down the curse of heaven upon us as a people. This state of things is sustained by the laws and by the public sentiments slave States; by the support and countenance which the Federal Government affords it; by the want of a decided public sentiment against it in the free States; also, by the open support of the Church in the South, and the connivance of the Church in the North. Under these circumstances, we believe that it becomes our solemn duty, before God, as a Conference, to declare our sentiments on this subject before the Church and the world. This we do as follows: 1st. We hold that slavery, as it exists in this country, wars not only against the principles of the word of God, but against some of its express and plain declarations, and is therefore sinful. 2nd. We hold that Christians, in their individual and associated capacities, are bound to testify against it, kindly but empathically, in a language that cannot be misunderstood. 3rd. We hold that Christians are solemnly bound to make their influences tell against this evil, as well at the ballot box as in their intercourse with their fellow-man. 4th. We hold, that whilst all political questions, as such, should be carefully excluded from the pulpit, as unbecoming its sacred character, as a moral question, the nature of slavery and the duty of Christians in relation to it, is a proper subject for pulpit discussion. FRANCKEAN SYNOD, STATEMENT ON SLAVERY (1839) From: Luther Lutheran an Her Herald ald, July 16, 1839, 106. We, the ministers and delegates of the Franckean Evangelic Lutheran Synod, do repudiate the whole system of American slavery, as equally opposed to civil and religious liberty; as endangering the rights and liberties of the free wherever it is tolerated; as a disgrace to the government where it exists; as supporting and encouraging the most corrupt and

154

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

depraved state of morals; as an offence to God; and as provoking his just indignation. It is the duty of Christians throughout the land to come out from the Babel of ruins, according to the divine command, lest its rotten and crumbling mass should fall on them and grind them to powder, die cries of “the Union” and “the peace of the Church,” to the contrary notwithstanding. We recommend to the ministers and churches in connection with this Synod not to admit into their pulpits, or to the communion of the Lord’s Supper any person who is a slaveholder or traffics in human beings. 328. SOUTHERN LUTHERANS AND THE DEFENSE OF SLAVERY (1857) In response to the initial stirrings of abolitionist sentiment among some Northern Lutherans, Southern Lutherans responded with their own defense of slavery. This was written by John Bachmann, one of the leaders of Southern Lutheranism before the Civil War. From: John Bachman, “Response to the Middle Conference,” The Missionary Missionary. 2 (ns) 46, December 10, 1857. In our Northern States and Canada, they are everywhere regarded as an Inferior race, and however the Declaration of Independence may be by some men be interpreted, they are not admitted as equals by many of the laws of many of the free States, nor by the laws of custom in any State. They are not invited to their tables, and a union with their daughters would be regarded as a degradation. . . When we assert that they, as a body, are kind and humane, we speak with confidence. The bond of attachment between the master and the servant is very strong. When sick, the latter are attended by the family physician; when aged and infirm, they are not sent to an alms house, or to beg on the highway, but are provided for at home; when in affliction, they are visited and comforted by the master and mistress and other members of the family and when they die, they are buried and mourned over as parts of the household. . . . The word of God was never denied them. . . The churches of every denomination are all open to then, and in some the colored attendants are more numerous than the whites. When the heads of families retire from the holy communion table, the servants come forward and surround the same altar. Many are taught to read by the younger portion of

the white members of the family, and the Bible is found in thousands of families among the colored population. . . . [Slavery was] not only tolerated, but, in some instances, enjoined in the Old Testament. That the Savior and his Apostles found and recognized it under the new dispensation; that they taught the reciprocal duties of masters and servants, and that the holy Apostle, St. Paul enjoined it on a runaway slave, who had become a convert to Christianity, to return to the services of his master, and interceded with the master to take him back into his services, promising to restore to him the property out of which he had been wronged by this formerly faithless servant, saying to him, “perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldst receive him forever. [Should the Abolitionists of the North unite] We will not dwell of the consequences. The violation of the plighted faith, anarchy, strife, and bloody wars among the brethren, are not subjects which should afford the minister of peace and reconciliation any cause for congratulation. And here, the questions arise . . . would the condition of the slave be improved? Would the prosperity of the North be advanced? 329. GRIEVANCES OF CONFEDERATE STATES LUTHERANS (1863) The unity of the General Synod was threatened by the issue of slavery, and was severed by the succession from the Union of the Southern states in 1861. Southern Lutheran leader met in 1863 to formulate a new organization, the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Confederate States of America. From: Richard C. Wolf, ed., Documents of Luther Lutheran an Unity in America merica. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964), 121–22. The Ground of Separation from the Northern Section of the Church.—As in political, as also in ecclesiastical affairs, when it becomes necessary for those once in Christian fellowship to dissolve the bonds of their union, the causes that have produced this result should be clearly made known. We owe it, therefore, to ourselves, to posterity, and to the Master whom we serve, to declare that it has been for no light or trivial cause our ecclesiastical connection with that portion of the Church embraced in the “General Synod of the United States of America” has been annulled. So far as sympathy and harmony of action is concerned, the Northern and Southern portions of

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865

our Church have for years been divided. The prevailing spirit of the Northern portion is a spirit of fanaticism, which has been nurtured and intensified until ..... it permeates all their religious, social, and political relations. . . . On the other hand, the spirit of the Southern portion is that of conservatism. We claim for ourselves nothing beyond that which reason and God’s word allow. While we have always cheerfully conceded to the Northern Church the right to judge for themselves in matters of conscience, we at the same time have demanded that this privilege be extended to us. But how often it has been denied! . . . And now, that a cruel and sanguinary war is waged against us by the Government of the United States . . . so far from uttering a word of remonstrance or protesting against its continuance, the Northern Church has actually gloried in these scenes of blood and carnage, and, by a formal resolution, declared it to be the duty of the government to prosecute this war even to our subjugation. It is under such circumstances, and for these reasons, we renounce them as brethren; and it becomes us this day to make our separation from them final and complete. In taking so grave and decisive a step, we call God to witness that we are influenced neither by malice nor revenge, but by the teachings of His own Word, which require that we withdraw ourselves “from every brother that walketh disorderly,” and from “men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth,” while at the same time we believe that the peace and prosperity of our Southern Church will be thereby promoted. 330. OBSERVATIONS OF A LUTHERAN CHAPLAIN IN THE CIVIL WAR (1863) Lutherans served on both sides in the Civil War, which was an especially brutal and traumatic conflict. This is a contemporary periodical article on the nature of that war by a Northern Lutheran pastor and chaplain, John H.W. Stuckenberg. From J. H. W. Stuckenberg, “The Effects of a Battle on a Man’s Religious Views and Feelings,” Luther Lutheran an Observer Observer, March 6, 1863. Just before entering the field of battle, the conscience of a man, not altogether dead to religion, is unusually active. He will ask himself how his account stands with his Maker, in whose presence he may soon be called to appear. The past will roll its burden of sin upon him, and hang heavily on his soul. His besetting sin will stand between him and his God to disturb his peace. Then, if ever, there will be keen

155

anguish of soul, deep regrets and an earnest desire for purity of heart. Cards are torn from the pocket, and scattered to the winds; new resolutions are formed; a silent, fervent prayer is offered to God; passages of Scripture, thoughts of home and friends, the counsel and prayers of pious parents rush upon the mind, whilst hope and fear content for the victory and the probabilities of life and death in the other world are weighed. Never does the Christian feel the real, living presence of God and his saviour, more deeply, than in such an hour, and in the thought that God reigns and watches over him, is his only hope and consolation. Then it is, too, that the wicked manifest their utter recklessness and godlessness. The awful scene around them, stir the deep of their souls, but only to cast up mire and dirt. There are sounds in battle more fearful than the shrieking of shells, the whistling of bullets, the rattling of musketry, the thunder of cannon, the unavailing cries for help, and the groups of the wounded and dying; they are the horrid oaths uttered there by the wounded and dying, sometimes polluting the lips with the last breath with which the soul passes from the body to the judgment seat of Him whose name he profaned. I have just passed the grave of such a one. He was a youth of eighteen, kind, and brave, and patriotic, but very profane and irreligious. He entered the battle of Fredericksburg, ridiculing those that attempted to dodge the shells, and cursing and swearing. He was wounded in the engagement and borne from the field, but only to die. Danger tests the Christian’s faith and the skeptic’s doubts. The former may find his faith give way when most needed, whilst the latter may have his spiritual eyes, which were blind before, opened in a battle. In a great crisis, in times of deep feelings, in danger, and in death, the skeptic may, as if by inspiration, have such a revelation of his own condition and his relation to his Maker, as to dispel his doubts, and create a new faith.—The voice of God, speaking so loudly there, must be heard by the soul far more susceptible of deep impressions, than at other times. Shortly before the battle of Fredericksburg, an officer in our regiment said to me, “Chaplain, I don’t believe the Bible is inspired, nor that Jesus Christ was more than human, and do not think that God has anything to do with the government of this world.” He was in fact a Deist, denying the overruling providence of God. During the battle of Fredricksburg, our regiment was in the very hottest part of the field, and in a few hours lost two hundred and fifteen men, out of four hundred and seventy-five. Soon after the bat-

156

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

tle I met this officer, and asked him how he escaped unhurt? He replied in a very earnest manner, “nothing but the kind Providence of God would have led mc safely through such a fire.” A few days ago I spoke to another officer on the subject of religion. He said, “Formerly, I was very profane, but since I am in the army I have tried to quit swearing. I also thought that God had little or nothing to do with the government of the world; but I have changed my opinion since the battle of Fredericksburg. I now believe in an overruling Providence, for otherwise I do not see how any could have escaped from such a field.” To show how wonderfully some were protected, he said: “I saw there what I would not have believed, had another told me. A shell falling in a regiment just entered the field, exploded and knocked down six men. I thought, of course, that all were killed or wounded, but five of them jumped up unhurt, and hurried on the field; whilst the sixth was wounded in the leg, and his clothes were on fire, but he was still able to get to some water nearby, and put out the fire.” In looking at the soldiers just coming from the

field of battle, I have always been struck with the deep solemnity written on their countenances. There is no jesting, no laughing, no trifling as they look through the thinned ranks to see who are safe, and who among the killed, the wounded and the missing. You at once see, that the terrible scenes they have witnessed, did not leave them unmoved. They have shed blood and have seen it flow in streams from the wounds of many a comrade; they have been on the field of carnage, and have been at the very jaws of death, and still have escaped unhurt—and a feeling of gratitude arises in their bosoms. What they have seen and heard is indescribable, but it haunts them till the day of their death—and they are changed beings, and can never again be what they were. Thought has been busy, hurried, distracted and anxious; feeling has been excited, deep, and intense, and painful; and an impression has been made that can never be effaced, and which must either lead a man nearer to God, or petrify his heart. J.H.W.S. Chaplain 145th Penn’a. Vol. Camp near Falmouth, Va., Feb. 9, 1863.

6. Nineteenth Century Liberal Lutheranism

The various nineteenth century efforts to revitalize Lutheranism in Europe were initiated both by conservatives who took a strong stand against the changes taking place around them in intellectual and political life and by moderates who attempted to mediate between traditional Lutheranism and recent advancements in philosophy, history and science. Representatives of “Mediating Theology” (Vermittlungstheologie), such as Isaak Dorner and August Neander in Berlin, Richard Rothe (1799–1867) in Heidelberg and August Tholuck in Halle, continued to be strongly committed to the church but also sought to participate in the critical discussions about religion that were taking place in the universities (see chapter 4). They remained interested to the categories of traditional doctrine but were willing to reconsider theological formulations in light of the results of philosophical and historical inquiry. Around the middle of the nineteenth century, this openness to rethink and refocus Christianity was pushed in a more liberal direction by the so-called Ritschlian School, stemming from Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889), a professor of theology in Bonn and later Göttingen. This third group of thinkers was widely influential between 1870 and 1918, after which time there was a strong reaction against them, led by the twentieth century dialectical theologians. There were distinctive characteristics of each of the figures associated with the Ritschlian School, but the following characteristics were commonly present. The Ritschlians wrestled with historical questions resulting from contemporary study of the Bible and the early church, and viewed Christianity as a continuously developing religion. Seeing religious life and thought as always conditioned by its his-

torical context, they were convinced that all aspects of the Christian past do not have permanent value and that Christianity needed to continue to evolve. In Adolf Harnack’s notable phrase: “The history of the Church shows us in its very commencement that ‘primitive Christianity’ had to disappear in order that ‘Christianity’ might remain; and in the same way in later ages one metamorphosis followed upon another. From the beginning it was a question of getting rid of formulas, correcting expectations, altering ways of feeling, and this is a process to which there is no end” (doc. #336). The task, then, of the historically-minded theologian was to distinguish between the kernel and the husk in the message of Jesus and determine what was essential in Christianity. Although the so-called Liberal Lutherans made important contributions to systematic theology and the history of dogma, they did not define Christianity in terms of doctrinal beliefs. For many of them, the establishment of common dogmas was inevitable in the historical development of the Christian movement, but these were later abstraction based on an initial religious experience or the impression made by the personality of Jesus. The Ritschlians valued the individual and were quite tolerant of variability in religious consciousness. They resisted the external imposition of commonality or forced adherence to a rigid orthodoxy. In their theological writings they continued to employ standard doctrinal terms and categories but they often gave them new meanings. The Liberal Lutherans saw Christianity more as a way of living in the world or as a distinctive outlook on all of reality uniquely awakened by its founder, Jesus of Nazareth. Through the force of his person-

158

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ality, Jesus kindled individual religious life and freed his followers from both guilt and self–seeking. At the same time the Liberal Lutherans also valued the building of a moral community. They saw Christianity as the high point in the development of ethical theism and presented the primary goal of Jesus as the full realization of the rule of God on earth or the building of the Kingdom of God. In general, the late nineteenth century liberal theologians were very optimistic about the possibilities of social and cultural progress if people could be inspired by Jesus to take responsibility for reshaping the world. The foundation for the development of these emphases was already being laid at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) who has often been called the father of Liberal Protestantism. Schleiermacher was not a Lutheran, but he was a leading proponent of the Prussian Union Church, which brought the Reformed and the Lutheran Churches together (doc. #254). His writings were important in various ways for the efforts by both the mediating theologians and the Ritschlians to find an alternative to both skeptical rationalism and traditional supernaturalism. Schleiermacher’s father was a Reformed military chaplain in Prussia but he was educated at a boarding school run by Moravians. He experienced a datable conversion at a young age while living among these Pietists, but when he went on to attend a Moravian seminary his reading of Enlightenment authors caused him to develop doubts about Christianity. He transferred to the University of Halle, a stronghold of rationalism, where he became further familiar with the writings of Spinoza, Leibniz and Kant. Having worked through his crisis of faith, he was ordained as a Reformed pastor and became a hospital chaplain in Berlin, where he also had extensive contact with important figures in the emerging Romantic Movement through a literary salon he attended. In 1799, Schleiermacher completed his first major book, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (doc. #331). This work revealed the influence of both Pietism and Romanticism on his thought and offered a remarkably fresh but challenging perspective on religion. Schleiermacher argued that many despisers of religion were mistaken about its essence. Religion was neither a primitive expression of philosophy nor a set of postulates useful for the maintenance of morality. Religion was not a “craving for a mess of metaphysical and ethical crumbs” but rather a matter of feeling or intuition. In the “Speeches” he described the core of religion as an immediate consciousness of the universal existence of all finite things in and

through the Infinite. In his later writings he would clarify this description and speak of “a feeling of absolute dependence.” Like the Pietists who were interested in religious experience and the Romantics who celebrated the individual, Schleiermacher criticized the Enlightenment drive to establish a complete consensus about true and certain knowledge. He celebrated the uniqueness of each individual’s experience of the universe and consequently viewed efforts to codify religion in doctrine as a potentially problematic impulse. Dogmas may have a use as abstract reflections on original intuitions, but they are secondary and cannot be passed off as the essence of religion. When Schleiermacher used traditional religious concepts he often defined them in terms of subjective experience and again separated the religious way of looking at the world from the perspective of philosophy or science. For example, he defined “miracle” as whatever awakens a sense of wonder in a person, even if there may also be a natural explanation for an unusual event. Similarly, he presented a flexible definition of “revelation” as any new and original intuition of the universe. So defined, revelation could be on-going and more wide-ranging than the contents of some ancient sacred books. When Schleiermacher published his systematic theology, The Christian Faith, in 1834, he stressed the importance of Christ but reformulated traditional Christological doctrines with reference to his basic focus on religious self-consciousness (doc. #332). To speak of Jesus as both divine and human thus meant for him that Christ had “an absolutely powerful Godconsciousness.” Christ is the redeemer of humanity in the sense that the force of his personality stirs up and intensifies God-consciousness in his followers until it becomes a constant and controlling element of their lives. When living fellowship with God is awakened, the consciousness of guilt before God also dissipates. Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889) agreed with Schleiermacher that religion should be differentiated from metaphysical speculation and that much of inherited dogma was tainted by concern for the latter. He too related religious faith to personal experience but thought that Schleiermacher’s attention to religious self–consciousness was too individualistic. Ritschl was deeply suspicious of claims to immediate mystical experience and focused more on how Christian consciousness was based on the self-revelation of God in the historical events of the life of Jesus and mediated through the community of his followers. Whereas Schleiermacher initially stressed the difference between religion and ethics, Ritschl accented

NINETEENTH CENTURY LIBERAL LUTHERANISM

Jesus’ concern for the building of the Kingdom of God and linked the essence of Christianity to the moral reorganization of society. Ritschl was the son of a Lutheran pastor who had served for many years as the General Superintendent of the Prussian Union Church in Pomerania. During his university training, Ritschl was attracted to the perspectives of the mediating theologians and then briefly counted himself a disciple of Ferdinand Christian Baur, the historian in Tübingen who made use of a Hegelian dialectic in his analysis of the New Testament and early Christianity (see chapter 3). After becoming a professor in Bonn in 1846, Ritschl strongly rejected Hegelian speculation and oriented his thought more extensively towards the moral philosophy of Kant. Valuing Kant’s understanding of practical reason, he contended that religion has to do not so much with abstract ideas and judgments of fact as with moral values. Many important religious claims are “value judgments,” which have significance primarily in relation to their moral effect. For example, while it may not be possible to prove objectively that Christ had a divine as well as a human nature, faith will affirm that Christ has “the value of God” for us because of his saving effect on us (doc. #333). Ritschl made his most important contributions to historical and theological studies while teaching in Göttingen after 1864. His three volume historical study of Pietism (1880) portrayed the movement as a mystical and otherworldly distortion of Lutheranism. His major work of systematic theology was a threevolume book on The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, published between 1870 and 1874 (doc. #333). As the title indicates, Ritschl organized the book around the doctrine that was most central to Luther’s theology, but he shifted the emphasis somewhat to consider not only the forgiveness of sin and the reconciliation of individuals to God through Christ but also communal dedication to love-inspired action in fidelity to Christ’s call to build the Kingdom of God. He criticized the Lutheran confessions for their one-sided concentration on the first aspect and suggested that Kant and Schleiermacher had helped to restore an emphasis on the moral end of religious fellowship. In Instruction in the Christian Religion (1875), Ritschl put even more emphasis on the moral aspect of redemption (doc. #334). He associated justification primarily with release from a sense of guilt for sin, brought about through a realization that the love and obedience onto death manifested by Christ reveals the grace and faithfulness of God. He described rec-

159

onciliation as the restoration of communion with God made possible by the influence of Christ. Coming to trust in God as a forgiving and loving father, the believer experiences Christian freedom, which includes a sense of dominion over the world as well as the removal of the burden of guilt. Recognizing Christ as the unique bearer of God’s ethical lordship, the believer is thereby also inspired to participate actively in the building the Kingdom of God as part of the community Christ established. Johann Wilhelm Herrmann (1846–1922) was initially influenced by the pietistic mediating theologian, August Tholuck, while studying at the University of Halle, and through him met Albrecht Ritschl. Herrmann became one of Ritschl’s closest allies, and, during his career as a professor in Marburg from 1879 to 1916, he articulated many of the same themes that characterized Ritschl’s theology. He stressed the difference between religion and metaphysical speculation and also criticized the orthodox confessionalists for intellectualizating the faith. In his most widely known book, The Communion of the Christian with God (1886), Herrmann argued that knowledge about the world must be distinguished from faith, which comes about from the inner world of consciousness. Like Schleiermacher, he also held that because the experience of faith is different for each person, Christians are truly united not be “fixity of doctrine” or an identical way of thinking but by a shared sense of communion with God. Although this assertion sounds mystical, Herrmann, like Ritschl, also wanted to disassociate Christianity from mysticism. Mystics, he stated, seek God within and tend to end up as pantheists. Christians, on the other hand, are lifted into communion with God through the mediation of Christ. Their experience of God, the awakening of their faith, is bound to the impression made by “the inner life of Jesus.” This may be known only through the historical reports of others, but the reception of the picture of Christ in the Christian community has the power to give assurance of the forgiveness of sins and to transform lives (doc. #335). Many of the themes found in Ritschl also reappear in the writings of Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), one of the foremost German church historians at the turn of the century. Son of a Lutheran professor, he grew up in East Prussia in a conservative confessional setting but distanced himself from his background after being exposed to historical-critical methods of study and the theology of Ritschl. While teaching in Marburg, he began to publish his highly influential multi–volume History of Dogma (1886–1890), in which the anti-metaphysical critique found in Ritschl

160

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

and Herrmann appeared once again. Harnack alleged that Jesus had no intention of breaking with Judaism by the preaching of new doctrines. He was more concerned with living a holy life in service to others and with winning them for the Kingdom of God. Harnack went on to trace the Hellenization of Christianity as it spread among the Gentiles and the introduction of Greco-Roman elements that transformed it into a movement with a dogmatic theology and authoritarian institutions. Harnack claimed that Luther managed to restore a focus on the original Gospel during the Reformation but had not succeeded entirely in separating the original message of Jesus from “alien growth.” Thus, the Reformation was not a “finished product” (doc. #337). Harnack concluded that Christians must continue to learn “to discern ever more distinctly the simplicity and seriousness of the gospel, in order to become ever purer and stronger in spirit, and ever more loving and brotherly in action.”1 While teaching in Berlin after 1888, Harnack presented a fuller picture of the theological perspective that had emerged from his historical research in “What is Christianity?” (doc. #336). These lectures (1900) were a landmark development for liberal theology because Harnack was skilled at communicating its themes in a way that was easily accessible to the general public. Again, he stressed that the essence of Christianity did not consist of “doctrines handed down by uniform repetition.” It was basically a matter of individual religious life continuously kindled afresh by the joyful message of Jesus and his disciples. Harnack noted that since the world was constantly changing, not all aspects of Christian tradition had permanent value. He proposed in the lectures to use his skills as a historian to “separate the kernel from the husk” and pinpoint the key elements that were still relevant. He admitted that modern biblical scholarship had raised questions about the possibility of recovering a reliable history of Jesus from the gospels, but he argued that it was possible to recover a general view of the teachings of Jesus. The essence of Christianity consisted of these main themes: the coming of the Kingdom of God, the Fatherhood of God, the infinite value of the human soul, and the commandment of love. Harnack daringly affirmed that the gospel had to do primarily with God the Father, and not the Son who proclaimed it. He thought Jesus was more concerned that his followers keep his commandments than adhere to a particular belief about his person or work. For Harnack, Jesus was Son of God in the sense that he knew God in a way that no one else ever had. In place of theories about the

atonement, Harnack simply suggested that the death of Jesus on the cross was significant in the sense that self–sacrificing deeds have always formed the turning–points of history. Looking to the future, Harnack felt that Christianity as it had been purified in Protestantism, would never become obsolete as long as its essence was recognized to consist not in speculative ideas, creeds, ordinances or ceremonies but in love of God and neighbor. The theology of Ritschl and his followers prompted unsympathetic responses from both conservative and liberal critics. The University of Greifswald led the way in contesting the conclusions of the Ritschlian School. In 1897, its theological faculty founded a journal, “Essays for the Furtherance of Christian Theology,” for that purpose, and Hermann Cremer (1834–1902), professor of systematic theology, wrote a detailed response to Harnack’s lectures within a year of their delivery (doc. #338). Cremer painted Harnack as a proponent of a new religion, which saw Jesus as simply a natural phenomenon of history instead of as the Son of God. He also faulted Harnack for ignoring the reality of human sinfulness and thus the role of the death and resurrection of Jesus in the forgiveness of sins. From Cremer’s perspective, Harnack’s “religion of Jesus” was something other than the “religion about Jesus” proclaimed by the New Testament. Cremer also took Harnack to task for his 1892 publication on the Apostles’ Creed. Harnack supported a movement to eliminate recitation of the creed from worship services or to create a modern substitute that made no reference to the virgin birth of Jesus. All across Germany, some liberal pastors who refused to read the Apostles’ Creed in worship lost their positions as a result of this debate. Some of the foremost biblical scholars of the day also criticized the picture of Jesus that Ritschl and his followers presented. Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), who served as a Lutheran pastor, church musician, theological professor, and later as a missionary doctor in Africa, observed in his comprehensive study of Jesus research, The Quest of the Historical Jesus” (1906), how many nineteenth century writers of “Lives of Jesus” created a picture of Jesus that was determined more by their theological desires than by historical research (see chapter 3). In keeping with his emphasis on the thorough–going eschatological consciousness of Jesus, Schweitzer concluded that the theologians who imagined the gradual dawning of an ethical Kingdom of God on earth were spiritualizing his teachings (doc. #339). In contrast to the image presented by the Ritschlians, Schweitzer saw the historical Jesus as a “stranger to our time.”

NINETEENTH CENTURY LIBERAL LUTHERANISM

However, after criticizing their historical assumptions, he too attempted to “disengage that which is abiding and eternal in the being of Jesus from the historical forms in which it worked itself out.” The kernel that Schweitzer salvaged from the husk was the “Spirit of Jesus” and his “religion of love.” The essence of Christianity was the Sermon on the Mount and its message that the ethical is the essence of religion (doc. #340). For this reason, Schweitzer too might be included among the liberal theologians. The History of Religions School (Religionsgeschichtliche Schule), which started in Göttingen among biblical scholars, also pointed out weaknesses in the view of Christian history presented by Ritschl and his followers. This group saw Christianity not so much as a supernatural phenomenon but as a syncretistic religion developing out of a complex mix of Jewish, Hellenistic and Oriental cultural influences. The chief systematic thinker in this group, Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) had been one of Ritschl’s students but developed a view of history, which called into question the “absoluteness” of Christianity and attempts (such as Harnack’s) to locate an enduring “essence” of Christianity. Troeltsch was ordained in 1889 and, in 1901 while teaching theology at Heidelberg, began to give expression to his developing sense that Christianity, like all other historical movements, was constantly changing. It was a product of a particular set of cultures and thus could not make absolute claims that were universally relevant throughout time and in all places. In his 1912 exposition of “The Christian Faith,” Troeltsch associated modern thought with a historical-relativist attitude and endorsed the view that Christianity was only one great religion among several. Noting the difficulty of reconstructing the picture of the historical Jesus, he concentrated instead on the impact that the person of Jesus made on his followers. Historically and psychologically, Jesus became the unifying point of a community that felt itself to be transformed and made whole through him (doc. #341). Despite his criticisms of the Ritschlian School, Troeltsch also shared some of their concerns. He presented Christianity not as dogma but as a “religion of the spirit.” He stressed the power of the “personality” of Jesus and resonated with Schleiermacher’s idea that Jesus transmitted God-consciousness to his followers. Troeltsch emphasized the importance of the religious community through which the influence of Jesus continuously streams and the moral message at the core of Jesus’ teachings. In his widely influential work of historical sociology, “The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches” (1912), Troeltsch

161

presented Christianity, first and foremost, as a matter of practice. He explored how it had been an agent for social change and was able to adapt creatively to shifting situations. In his analysis of Lutheranism, however, he suggested that it had been less transformative than other forms of Protestantism because of its dualistic ethic (the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms). Lutheranism, he thought, had encouraged loyal passivity to the state and, in more modern times, had done little to build up a new social structure (doc. #342). These perceptions would become significant matters of discussion in the twentieth century when Germany became a central force in the development of two World Wars (see chapter 7). LIBERAL THEOLOGY IN THE PRUSSIAN UNION CHURCH: THE BEGINNING OF A NEW APPROACH 331. FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER: ON RELIGION: SPEECHES TO ITS CULTURED DESPISERS (1799) Trans. by Richard Crouter. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 19–27, 48–50. Second Speech: The Essence of Religion If you put yourself on the highest standpoint of metaphysics and morals, you will find that both have the same object as religion, namely, the universe and the relationship of humanity to it. This similarity has long since been a basis of manifold aberrations; metaphysics and morals have therefore invaded religion on many occasions, and much that belongs to religion has concealed itself in metaphysics or morals under an unseemly form. . . . If religion is thus to be differentiated, then it must be set off from those in some manner, regardless of the common subject matter. Religion must treat this subject matter completely differently, express or work out another relationship of humanity to it, have another mode of procedure or another goal; for only in this way can that which is similar in its subject matter to something else achieve a determinate nature and a unique existence. I ask you, therefore, what does your metaphysics do . . . ? It classifies the universe and divides it into this being and that, seeks out the reasons for what exists, and deduces the necessity of what is real while spinning the reality of the world and its laws out of itself. Into this realm, therefore, religion must

162

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

not venture too far. It must not have the tendency to posit essences and to determine natures, to lose itself in an infinity of reasons and deductions, to seek out final causes and to proclaim eternal truths.

Fig. 6.1. Title page of On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers by Friedrich Schleiermacher (1799)

And what does your morality do? It develops a system of duties out of human nature and our relationship to the universe; it commands and forbids actions with unlimited authority. Yet religion must not even presume to do that; it must not use the universe in order to derive duties and is not permitted to contain a code of laws. . . . This mixture of opinions about the highest being or the world and of precepts for a human life (or even for two) you call religion! And the instinct, which seeks those opinions, together with the dim presentiments that are the actual final sanction of these precepts you call religiousness! But how then do you come to regard a mere compilation,

an anthology for beginners, as an integral work, as an individual with its own origin and power? . . . In order to take possession of its own domain, religion renounces herewith all claims to whatever belongs to those others and gives back everything that has been forced upon it. It does not wish to determine and explain the university according to its nature as does metaphysics; it does not desire to continue the universe’s development and perfect it by the power of freedom and the divine free choice of a human being as does morals. Religion’s essence is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling. It wishes to intuit the universe, wishes devoutly to overhear the universe’s own manifestations and actions, longs to be grasped and filled by the universe’s immediate influences in childlike passivity. Thus, religion is opposed to these two in everything that makes up its essence and in everything that characterizes its effects. . . . Thus religion maintains its own sphere and its own character only by completely removing itself from the sphere and character of speculation as well as from that of praxis. Only when it places itself next to both of them is the common ground perfectly filled out and human nature completed from this dimension. Religion shows itself to you as the necessary and indispensable third next to these two, as their natural counterpart, not slighter in worth and splendor than what you wish of them. . . . Praxis is an art, speculation is a science, religion is the sensibility and taste for the infinite. Without religion, how can praxis rise above the common circle of adventurous and customary forms? How can speculation become anything better than a stiff and barren skeleton? . . . Intuition is and always remains something individual, set apart, the immediate perception, nothing more. To bind it and to incorporate it into a whole is once more the business not of sense but of abstract thought. The same is true of religion; it stops with the immediate experiences of the existence and action of the universe, with the individual intuitions and feelings; each of these is a self-contained work without connections with others or dependence upon them; it knows nothing about derivation and connection, for among all things religion can encounter, that is what its nature most opposes. Not only an individual fact or deed that one could call original or first, but everything in religion is immediate and true for itself. . . . Each person must be conscious that his religion is only a part of the whole, that regarding the same objects that affect him religiously there are views just as pious and, nevertheless, completely different from

NINETEENTH CENTURY LIBERAL LUTHERANISM

his own, and that from other elements of religion intuitions and feelings flow, the sense for which he may be completely lacking. You see how immediately this lovely modesty, this friendly inviting tolerance springs from the concept of religion and how intimately tolerance nestles up to it. How wrongly, therefore, do you turn on religion with your reproaches that it is bent on persecution and spitefulness, that it wrecks society and makes blood flow like water. Indict those who corrupt religion, who want to inundate it with philosophy and fetter it to a system. What is it in religion over which men have argued, taken sides and ignited wars? Sometimes over morals and always over metaphysics, and neither of these belong to it. Philosophy indeed strives to accommodate those who wish to know under one common knowledge, as you can daily see; but religion does not strive to bring those who believe and feel under a single belief and a single feeling. It strives, to be sure, to open the eyes of those who are not yet capable of intuiting the universe, for everyone who sees is a new priest, a new mediator, a new mouthpiece; but for just this reason it avoids with aversion the barren uniformity that would again destroy this divine abundance. . . . If this, which I hope I have indicated clearly enough for all of you, actually makes up the essence of religion, then the question of the proper place of those dogmas and propositions that are commonly passed off as the content of religion is not too difficult to answer. Some are merely abstract expressions of religious intuitions, and others are free reflections upon original achievements of the religious sense, the results of a comparison of the religious with the common view. To take the content of a reflection to be the essence of the action being reflected upon is such a common mistake that you must not wonder if it is also found here. Miracles, inspirations, revelations, feelings of the supernatural—one can have much religion without coming into contact with any of these concepts. . . . The conflict about which event is actually a miracle and wherein the character of a miracle properly consists, over how much revelation there might be and the extent to which and the reasons why one might believe in it, and the obvious effort to deny or push aside as much as may be done with propriety and discretion in the foolish opinion of thereby doing a service to philosophy and reason, all of these are the childish operations of the metaphysicians and moralists in religion. They confuse all points of view and bring religion into the disrepute of encroaching upon the totality of scientific and empirical judgments. . . .

163

What, then, is a miracle? . . . “Miracle” is merely the religious name for event, every one of which, even the most natural and usual, is a miracle as soon as it adapts itself to the fact that the religious view of it can be the dominant one. To me everything is a miracle, and for me what alone is a miracle in your mind, namely, something inexplicable and strange, is no miracle in mine. The more religious you would be, the more you would see miracles everywhere. . . . What is revelation? Every original and new intuition of the universe is one, and yet all individuals must know best what is original and new for them. And if something of what was original in them is still new for you, then their revelation is also one for you, and I advise you to ponder it well. . . . Except for a few chosen ones, every person surely needs a mediator, a leader who awakens his sense for religion from its slumber and gives him an initial direction. But this is supposed to be merely a passing condition. A person should then see with his own eyes and should make himself a contribution to the treasures of religion; otherwise he deserves no place in its kingdom and also receives none. . . . Every holy writing is merely a mausoleum of religion, a monument that a great spirit was there that no longer exists; for if it still lived and were active, why would it attach such great important to the dead letter than can only be a weak reproduction of it? It is not the person who believes in a holy writing who has religion, but only the one who needs none and probably could make one for himself. . . . 332. FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER: THE CHRISTIAN FAITH (1830) The book was first published in 1821. This excerpt comes from the second revised edition. Trans. by H.R. MacKintosh & J. S. Stewart. (New York: Harper & Row, 1928/1963), 387, 425, 476, 478, 498. #94 The Person of Christ To ascribe to Christ an absolutely powerful Godconsciousness, and to attribute to him as existence of God in him, are exactly the same thing. . . . He is the only ‘other’ in which there is an existence of God in the proper sense, so far, that is, as we posit the God-consciousness in his self-consciousness as continually and exclusively determining every moment, and consequently also this perfect indwelling of the Supreme Being as his peculiar being and his inmost self.

164

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

#100 The Work of Christ The Redeemer assumes believers into the power of his God-consciousness, and this is his redemptive activity. . . . The original activity of the redeemer is best conceived as a pervasive influence which is received by its object in virtue of the free movement with which he turns himself to its attraction, just as we ascribe an attractive power to everyone to which educative intellectual influence we gladly submit ourselves. Now, if every activity of the Redeemer proceeds from the being of God in him, and if in the formation of the Redeemer’s person the only active power was the creative divine activity which established itself as the being of God in him, then also his every activity may be regarded as a continuation of that person-forming divine influence upon human nature. For the pervasive activity of Christ cannot establish itself in an individual without becoming person-forming in him too, for now all his activities are differently determined through the working of Christ in him, and even all impressions are differently received—which means that the personal self–consciousness too becomes altogether different. . . . Second Division #106 If it be the essence of redemption that the Godconsciousness already present in human nature, though feeble and repressed, becomes stimulated and made dominant by the entrance of the living influence of Christ, the individual on whom this influence is exercised attains a religious personality not his before. Before this the God-consciousness was evinced only casually in isolated flashes, never kindling to a steady flame. The God-consciousness was not in a position to take constant control of the various elements of life. . . . A devout personality must be taken to mean one in which every mainly passive element is part of the relation to the God-consciousness produced by the influence of the Redeemer; and every active element is due to an impulse of the same God–consciousness. Life thus comes under a different formula, making it a life that is new; hence the phrases, ‘a new man,’ ‘a new creature,’ which bear the same sense of our phrase, ‘a new personality.’ This new life of course presents itself as something in process of becoming, for the individual identity persists and the new life can only, as it were, be grafted on to the old. And yet the situation in which the new life is present as something in process of being, when related in memory to the situation in which it was

not present at all, can be attached and bound together with the old into one continuous personal life only by assuming a turning-point at which the continuity of the old ceased, and that of the new began to be in process of becoming. This is the essence of the conception ‘regeneration.’ . . . #107 Regeneration: . . . In the condition left behind, the stirrings of a self–consciousness suffused with a consciousness of God were never determinative of the will, being but casual and fleeting; the sensuous consciousness alone was determinative. When life is linked to Christ it is the other way about, and this change is expressed by the term ‘conversion.’ #109 Justification: . . . In the common life of sinfulness the individual as a human being has no other relation to God except (in view of his holiness and justice) a consciousness of being guilty before him and meriting punishment. It is obvious that this consciousness must cease as soon as, through and along with faith, living fellowship with Christ begins. If we ask how this happens, the easiest answer certainly is that the longer and more uninterruptedly we are under the sway of Christ, the sooner do we forget sin, because it no longer emerges; and if sin does not come to consciousness, neither does the sense of guilt and of deserving punishment. . . . THE RITSCHLIAN SCHOOL 333. ALBRECHT RITSCHL: THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION AND RECONCILIATION (1870/1888) This book was first published in three volumes between 1870 and1874. This excerpt is taken from volume 1 of the third revised edition of 1888. Trans. by H.R. Macintosh & A. B. Macaulay. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1902), 10, 12, 13, 391, 393, 398. Introduction: The Spiritual and Moral Foci of Christianity . . . In Christianity, the Kingdom of God is represented as the common end of God and the elect community, in such a way that it rises above the natural limits of nationality and becomes the moral society of nations. In this respect Christianity shows itself to be the perfect moral religion. Redemption

NINETEENTH CENTURY LIBERAL LUTHERANISM

through Christ—an idea which embraces justification and renewal—is also divested of all conditions of the natural or sensuous kind, so as to culminate in the purely spiritual idea of eternal life. . . .

Fig. 6.2. Albrecht Ritschl (date unknown)

. . . We have in Christianity a culmination of the monotheistic, spiritual and teleological religion of the Bible in the idea of the perfected spiritual and moral religion. There can be no doubt that these two characteristics condition each other mutually. Christ made the universal moral Kingdom of God his end, and thus he came to know and decide for that kind of redemption which he achieved through the maintenance of fidelity in his calling and of his blessed fellowship with God through suffering unto death. On the other hand, a correct spiritual interpretation of redemption and justification through Christ tends to keep more decisively to the front the truth that the Kingdom of God is the final end. Now theology, especially within the Evangelical Confessions, has laid very unequal emphasis on these two principle characteristics of Christianity. It makes everything which concerns the redemptive character of Christianity an object of the most solicitous reflection. Accordingly, it finds the central point of all Christian knowledge and practice in redemption through Christ, while injustice is done to the ethical interpretation of Christianity through the idea of the Kingdom of God. But Christianity, so to speak, resembles not a circle described from a single center, but an ellipse which is determined by two foci. . . . Now it has been the misfortune for Protestantism that the Reformers did not purify the idea of the moral Kingdom of God or Christ from sacerdotal corruptions,

165

but embodied it in a conception which is not practical but merely dogmatic. . . . Kant was the first to perceive the supreme importance for ethics of the “Kingdom of God” as an association of men bound together by laws of virtue. But it remained for Schleiermacher first to employ the true conception of the teleological nature of the Kingdom of God to determine the idea of Christianity. This service of his ought not to be forgotten, even if he failed to grasp the discovery with a firm hand. . . . Since Jesus himself, however, saw in the Kingdom of God the moral end of the religious fellowship he had to found; since he understood by it not the common exercise of worship, but the organization of humanity through action inspired by love, any conception of Christianity would be imperfect and therefore incorrect which did not include this specifically teleological aspect. . . . Now it is true that in Christianity everything is “related” to the moral organization of humanity through love-prompted action; but at the same time everything is also “related” to redemption through Jesus, to spiritual redemption, i.e. to that freedom from guilt and over the world which is to be won through the realized Fatherhood of God. Freedom in God, the freedom of the children of God, is the private end of each individual Christian, as the Kingdom of God is the final end of all. And this double character of the Christian life—perfectly religious and perfectly ethical—continues, because its realization in the life of the individual advances through the perpetual interaction of the two elements. From the life and activity of the founder of Christianity issued at once in the redemption and the setting up of the Kingdom of God. . . . Christianity, then, is the monotheistic, completely spiritual, and ethical religion, which, based on the life of its author as redeemer and as founder of the Kingdom of God, consists in the freedom of the children of God, involves the impulse to conduct from the motive of love, aims at the moral organization of mankind, and grounds blessedness on the relation of sonship to God, as well as on the Kingdom of God. The Doctrine of Christ’s Person and Life-Work . . . Luther’s religious estimate of Christ does not depend upon a rigorous realization of the theological formula of the one person in two natures, although on the whole he continues to give to this formula its ancient place. His religious estimate of Christ, as distinguished from his theoretical exposition of Christological dogma, is expressed in his catechetical and

166

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

to some extent also in his homiletical writings. . . . If faith no longer consists in assent to revealed dogmas, but in confidence towards God, then it follows that faith, i.e. trust in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit, is a recognition of the Godhead of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, since trust of this kind can be given to God alone. Through this explanation of Luther’s the Godhead of Christ is introduced as a judgment of value. . . . Thus, while assuming the formula of the two natures, Luther really connects the religious estimate of Christ as God with the significance which Christ’s work has for the Christian community, and with the position thereby given to Christ as the head of the Kingdom of God. According to Luther, the Godhead of Christ is not exhausted by maintaining the existence in Christ of the divine nature; the chief point is that in his exertions as man his Godhead is manifest and savingly effective. But if Christ by what he has done and suffered for my salvation is my Lord, and if, but trusting for my salvation to the power of what he has done for me, I honor him as my God, then that is a value-judgment of a direct kind. It is not a judgment which belongs to the sphere of disinterested scientific knowledge, like the formula of Chalcedon. . . . Every cognition of a religious sort is a direct judgment of value. The nature of God and the divine we can only know in its essence by determining its value for our salvation. ... 334. ALBRECHT RITSCHL: INSTRUCTION IN THE CHRISTIAN FAITH (1875) Trans. by Albert Swing in The Theology of Albr Albrecht echt Ritschl Ritschl. (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1901), 211, 212, 214, 217, 219, 220. The Doctrine of Reconciliation through Christ #34 As a member of the Christian community one is called to the kingdom of God as man’s highest good and highest common duty, because this is the final purpose of God himself. At the same time, however, by the very recognition of this calling, there comes an increase of the feeling of guilt, and of the separation from God which arises from our own sin and our connection with the common sin. Thus, Christianity seems to require of us a self–contradictory judgment of ourselves, but at the same time it does away with this contradiction by bringing the certainty of a God–given redemption.

#36 The forgiveness of sins or justification, which guarantees the existence of the Christian community is, as a divine purpose of grace, a matter of free judgment. That is to say, sinners are given by God the right to enter into communion with him, and into co-operation with his own final purpose, the kingdom of God, without their guilt and their feeling of guilt forming a hindrance thereto. The freedom and independence of this divine judgment consists in this, that on the part of man so situated no moral work (merit), which might call forth this judgment of God or actually establish it, is conceivable. On the contrary, this judgment needs only religious faith, or confidence in the free grace or righteousness of God, in order to become actual and effective. #37 . . . In adoption (acceptance as children of God) the gracious purpose of the judgment of forgiveness or justification is carried into effect, so that God places himself in the relation of father to the believer and gives him the right to the full confidence of a child. These effects of divine redemption, however, find practical application only on the condition that the believer takes at once an active part in the recognized purpose of the kingdom of God, and has given up the following of selfish ends and inclinations, whether intentional or habitual. #40 Redemption or forgiveness of sins is not assured to the Christian community by Christ’s making as prophet and thus as the revealer of God a universal promise to that effect, which is just what he did not do. But rather he himself beforehand, and the earliest witnesses after him, connected this result with the fact of his death. And this takes place in so far as his death is capable of comparison with the Old Testament sacrifices, which in according with the grace of God were offered for the whole Israelite community, partly to indicate their own entrance into the covenant with God, and partly to serve in yearly repetition for the forgiveness of sins, i.e., to maintain the integrity of the covenant. #41 The death of Christ has the value of the covenant-offering and the universal sin-offering, not because of the fact that his enemies put him to death, but because of the fact that he obediently yielded himself to this fate as in the providence of God a certain result of his special mission. . . . #42 The obedience of Christ to his calling can be interpreted as a gift to God or as a sacrifice and priestly service, because his righteous life, his patience, and his truth were the result not only of his divine mission but also of his free consecration of himself to God. For by this obedience to his calling he maintained the special fellowship of love between

NINETEENTH CENTURY LIBERAL LUTHERANISM

God and himself. Now this obedience to his calling he rendered not only for his own sake, but at the same time necessarily for the purpose of bringing mankind into the same relation toward God as their father which he occupied. . . . In these respects, therefore, he, as the royal priest, represents the community before God for the purpose of its complete establishment. 335. WILHELM HERRMANN: THE COMMUNION OF THE CHRISTIAN WITH GOD (1886/1895) Trans. by J. Sandys Stanyon, 2nd edition 1906. ed. by Robert Voelkel. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 11, 13, 15, 16, 33, 36, 40, 42, 43, 59, 65, 97, 102.

167

Chapter 1: The Relation of the Christian Religion to Mysticism #4 The impossibility of uniformity of doctrine in Christianity The doctrine which really springs from faith has necessarily an infinite variety of forms. The Christian seeks to express in it the reality amid which his faith lives. But since that reality is infinite, therefore the doctrine in which one Christian seeks to express what his faith sees, cannot be laid down as the limit for other believers. Different men see differently, and therefore, since they ought to be truthful, they must express themselves differently. All attempts at union through uniformity of a compendium of doctrine, large or small, are futile, even when men succeed in building up such a structure as outlasts a millennium. Personal, living Christianity will always follow its own free course in unfolding its thoughts; it is inaccessible to that spirit of legalism which controls the world. . . . What really unites Christians one with another and with the witness of the New Testament is not the complete identity of our thoughts but the likeness of our ways of thinking, and the unity of the revelation by which that likeness is caused. . . . #5 Communion with God is mediated through Jesus Christ

Fig. 6.3. Title page of Herrmann’s The Communion of the Christian with God (1895)

The authority of the New Testament, which gives the needed and safe guidance to every Christian, has for its sphere something quite different from fixity of doctrine, namely, the communion of the Christian with God which is mediated through Jesus Christ. . . . Hence we must cease attempting to bind together into one system thoughts of faith coming from various sources, and to make the unity of the Church depend on any product of the kind. No confession ever arose thus which believers could unanimously and heartily accept. The Church’s confession of faith ought to be the confession of real faith. On these grounds, for a Church which desires to be really a fellowship of believers, there can be no theological task more important than that of setting forth that inner life of faith, or that communion with God in which we really find ourselves at one. . . .

168

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

#6 Why the way of mysticism must be abandoned The mystic seeks God in his own inner life. Nor is this altogether wrong. For we have not found God until he rules in our inner life. But the mystic infers from this that everything which affects us from without, not only cultus, doctrine, but also our conception of the person of Jesus himself, are all of them serviceable only as means to produce in us that frame of mind in which God comes inwardly near us. . . . According to mysticism, Christ leads the man who becomes his disciple up to the threshold of blessedness. But then the mystic steps across that threshold, and, at the highest point of his inner life, he has no longer to do with Christ but with God, for when a man really finds God, he finds himself alone with him. . . . #7 Mysticism passes so commonly into pantheism for this very reason, and, indeed, especially in men of the highest religious energy; they refuse to be satisfied with the mere longing after God, or to remain on the way to him, but determine to reach the goal, and rest with God himself. The thought that sums up religious experience in such a manner is necessarily pantheism. But the whole thing is unchristian. We are Christians because, in the human Jesus, we have met with a fact whose content is incomparably richer than that of any feelings which arise within ourselves—a fact, moreover, which makes us so certain of God that our conviction of being in communion with him can justify itself as the bar of reason and of conscience. . . . #9 We part company with the older Protestantism The older theologians believed their great task was to present in their logical connection those thoughts in which the classic witnesses to Christianity had expressed their faith. We go further back. For we desire to show how those thoughts arise in the course of communion with God in the Christian soul that has been set free to enter into this experience. . . . We will have nothing to do with the idea that the doctrines of faith systematically formulated either do or can offer salvation to men. It is, in fact, a mockery of the unredeemed man to offer him as his salvation a sum of doctrines or thoughts of which he is obliged to say that they are not his thoughts and cannot be so. The thoughts of others who are redeemed cannot redeem me. If I am to be saved, everything depends on my being transplanted into that inner condition of mind in which such thoughts begin to be gener-

ated in myself, and this happens only when God lifts me into communion with himself. . . . If the Christian has been really lifted into communion with God, then his duty is to enjoy the new life thus given him. To this he is assisted by the witness of all the redeemed and free life within the church of God, and that witness he finds in Scripture as nowhere else. A man learns how to see this glory of the sacred Scriptures when there has begun in him the same life whose rise and whose perfection are there incomparably described. Before that, the Bible is to him a book with seven seals; after that, he sees in it a means of the revelation of the grace and of the judgment of God. . . . Chapter 2 #2 Revelation as a fact inside our own experience Our certainty of God may be kindled by many other experiences, but has ultimately its firmest basis in the fact that within the realm of history to which we ourselves belong, we encounter the man Jesus as an undoubted reality. . . . The true Christian confession is that Jesus is the Christ. Rightly understood, however, it means nothing else than this: that through the man Jesus we are first lifted into a true fellowship with God. . . . #4 The person of Jesus is the most important element in the sphere of reality God is hidden from us in nature because we do not find our whole selves there, we do not find there the full riches of that reality, which crowds in upon our consciousness. It is only out of life in history that God can come to meet us. In proportion as what is essential to our historical environment becomes an element of our consciousness we are led into the presence of those facts that can reveal God to us. . . . In that historical environment which ought to give our personal life its fullness, there is no fact more important for even individual than Jesus Christ. To overlook him is to deceive ourselves as to the best treasure which our own life possesses. For he is precisely that fact which can make us certain, as no other fact can, that God communes with us. . . .

NINETEENTH CENTURY LIBERAL LUTHERANISM

169

#11 The person of Jesus as the revelation of God The most important thing for the man who is to submit himself to God is surely that he should be absolutely certain of the reality of God, and Jesus does establish in us, through the fact of his personal life, a certain of God which is superior to every doubt. . . . We learn to share his invincible confidence that he can uplift and bless perfectly those who do not turn away from him. In this confidence in the person and cause of Jesus is implied the idea of a power greater than all things, which will see to it that Jesus, who lost his life in this world, shall be none the less victorious over the world. The thought of such a power lays hold of us as firmly as did the impression of the person of Jesus by which we were overwhelmed. It is the beginning of the consciousness within us that there is a living God. This is the only real beginning of an inward submission to him. . . . We are obliged, then, to confess that the existence of Jesus in this world of ours is the fact in which God so touches us as to come into a communion with us that can endure. #12 The objective grounds of the certainty that God communes with us The Christian’s consciousness that God communes with him rests on two objective facts, the first of which is the historical fact of the person of Jesus. . . . (103) The second objective ground of the Christian’s consciousness that God communes with him is that we hear within ourselves the demand of the moral law. . . . Now we find that in the God whose influence upon us is seen in no other experience so clearly as in the power the person of Jesus has over us, the moral convictions that rule our inmost soul acquire the form of a personal life. In the same thoughts that ceaselessly urged us forward we trace now a friendly will that has ordained it for our redemption. God brings it about that to do right ceases to be a painful problem for us, and begins instead to be the very atmosphere in which we live. . . . 336. ADOLF HARNACK: WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY? (1900) Trans. by Thomas Bailey Saunders. (New York: G P Putnam’s Sons, 1901), 11–15, 20–21, 50, 55, 60, 71, 76, 168–74.

Fig. 6.4. Adolf von Harnack

Lecture 1 If Christianity is an example of a great power valid not for one particular epoch alone; if in and through it, not once only, but again and again, great forces have been disengaged, we much include all the latter products of its spirit. It is not a question of a “doctrine” being handed down by uniform repetition or arbitrarily distorted; it is a question of a life, again and again kindled afresh, and now burning with a flame of its own. . . . It is true that Christianity has had its classical epoch; nay more, it had a founder who himself was what he taught—to steep ourselves in him is still the chief matter; but to restrict ourselves to him means to take a point of view too low for his significance. Individual religious life was what he wanted to kindle and what he did kindle; it is, as we shall see, so that they may thenceforth live their own life with him. . . . Jesus Christ and his disciples were situated in their

170

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

day just as we are situated in ours; that is to say, their feelings, their thoughts, their judgments and their efforts were bounded by the horizon and the framework in which their own nation was set and by its condition at the time. . . . From these circumstances it follows that the historian, whose business and highest duty it is to determine what is of permanent value, is of necessity required not to cleave to words but to find out what is essential. The “whole” Christ, the “whole” Gospel, if we mean by this motto the external image taken in all its details and set up for imitation, is just as bad and deceptive a shibboleth as the “whole” Luther and the like. . . . The history of the Church shows us in its very commencement that “primitive Christianity” had to disappear in order that “Christianity” might remain; and in the same way in later ages one metamorphosis followed upon another. From the beginning it was a question of getting rid of formulas, correcting expectations, altering ways of feeling, and this is a process to which there is no end. . . . Lecture 2 Our authorities for the message which Jesus Christ delivered are—apart from certain important statements made by Paul—the first three Gospels. Everything that we know, independently of these Gospels, about Jesus’ history and his teaching, may be easily put on a small sheet of paper, so little does it come to. In particular, the fourth Gospel, which does not emanate or profess to emanate from the apostle John, cannot be taken as an historical authority in the ordinary meaning of the word. . . . Sixty years ago David Friedrich Strauss thought that he had almost entirely destroyed the historical credibility not only of the fourth but also of the first three Gospels as well. The historical criticism of two generations has succeeded in restoring the credibility in its main outlines. These Gospels are not, it is true, historical works any more than the fourth; they were not written with the simple object of giving the facts as they were; they are books composed for the work of evangelization. Their purpose is to awaken a belief in Jesus Christ’s person and mission; . . . Nevertheless they are not altogether useless as sources of history. ..... If, however, we take a general view of Jesus’ teaching, we shall see that it may be grouped under three heads. They are each of such a nature as to contain the whole, and hence it can be exhibited in its entirety under any one of them. . . .

1. The Kingdom of God and its coming Truly the historian’s task of distinguishing between what is traditional and what is peculiar, between kernel and husk in Jesus’ message of the kingdom of God is a difficult and responsible one. ..... If anyone wants to know what the kingdom of God and the coming of it meant in Jesus’ message, he must read and study his parables. He will then see what it is that is meant. The kingdom of God comes by coming to the individual, by entering into his soul and laying hold of it. True, the kingdom of God is the rule of God; but it is the rule of the holy God in the hearts of individuals; it is God himself in his power. . . . It is not a question of angels and devils, thrones and principalities, but of God and the soul, the soul and its God. . . . 2. God the Father and the infinite value of the human soul There is nothing in the Gospels that tells us more certainly what the Gospel is, and what sort of disposition and temper it produces, than the Lord’s Prayer. . . . It shows the Gospel to be the Fatherhood of God applied to the whole of life; to be an inner union with God’s will and God’s kingdom, and a joyous certainty of the possession of eternal blessings and protection from evil. . . . Jesus Christ was the first to bring the value of every human soul to light, and what he did no one can anymore undo. . . . 3. The higher righteousness and the commandment of love . . . Firstly: Jesus severed the connection existing in his day between ethics and the external forms of religious worship and technical observance. . . . Secondly: in all questions of morality he goes straight to the root, that is, to the disposition and the intention. It is only thus that what he calls the “higher righteousness” can be understood. . . . Thirdly: what he freed from its connection with self-seeking and ritual elements, and recognized as the moral principle, he reduces to one root and to one motive—love. . . . Fourthly: we saw that Jesus freed the moral element from all alien connections, even from its alliance with the public religion. . . . It was in this sense that Jesus combined religion and morality, and in this sense religion may be called the soul of morality, and morality the body of religion. . . .

NINETEENTH CENTURY LIBERAL LUTHERANISM

Lecture 9: The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Let us first consider the idea that Jesus’ death on the cross was one of expiation. . . . We should be absolutely at the end of our tether if we were to indulge in speculations as to the necessity which can have compelled God to require such a sacrificial death. . . . If there is one thing that is certain in the history of religion, it is that the death of Jesus put an end to all blood–sacrifices. But that they are based on a deep religious idea is proved by the extent to which they existed among so many nations, and they are not to be judged from the point of view of cold and blind rationalism, but from that of vivid emotion. If it is obvious that they respond to a religious need; if, further, it is certain that the instinct which led to them found its satisfaction and therefore its goal in Christ’s death, if, lastly, there was the express declaration, as we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews, that “by one offering he has perfected forever them that are sanctified,” we can no longer feel this idea of Christ’s sacrifice to be so very strange. . . . His death had the value of an expiatory sacrifice, for otherwise it would not have had strength to penetrate into that inner world in which the blood-sacrifices originated; but it was not a sacrifice in the same sense as the others, or else it could not have put an end to them; it suppressed them by settling accounts with them. . . . Jesus, however, was proclaimed as “the Lord” not only because he had died for sinners but because he was the risen and the living one. If the resurrection meant nothing but a deceased body of flesh and blood came to life again, we should make short work of this tradition. But it is not so. The New Testament itself distinguished between the Easter message of the empty grave and the appearances of Jesus on the one side, and the Easter faith on the other. . . . The Easter faith is the conviction that the crucified one gained a victory over death; that God is just and powerful; that he who is the first born among many brethren still lives. . . . This grave was the birthplace of the indestructible belief that death is vanquished, that there is a life eternal. . . . 337. ADOLF HARNACK: THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION IN PROTESTANTISM (1900) Trans. by Thomas Bailey Saunders. (New York: G P Putnam’s Sons, 1901), 287–89, 277–79, 285–88, 297–300, 305–15.

171

What is Christianity? Lecture 15 Protestantism must be understood, first and foremost, by the contrast which it offers to Catholicism and here there is a double direction which any estimate of it must take, first as Reformation and second as Revolution. It was a reformation in regard to the doctrine of salvation; a revolution in regard to the Church, its authority, and its apparatus. . . . Protestantism was a Reformation, that is to say a renewal, as regards the core of the matter, as regards religion, and consequently as regards the doctrine of salvation. That may be shown in the main in three points. In the first place, religion was here brought back again to itself, in so far as the Gospel and the corresponding religious experience were put into the foreground and freed of all alien accretions. . . . In the second place, there was the definite way in which the “Word of God” and the “experience” of it were grasped. For Luther the “Word” did not mean Church doctrine; it did not even mean the Bible; it meant the message of the free grace of God in Christ which makes guilty and despairing men happy and blessed; and the “experience” was just the certainty of this grace. . . . Lastly, the third feature of this renewal was the great transformation which God’s worship now inevitably underwent. . . . Protestantism was not only a Reformation but also a Revolution . . . Firstly, it protested against the entire hierarchical and priestly system of the Church, demanded that it should be abolished, and abolished it in favor of a common priesthood and an established order formed on the basis of the congregation. . . . Secondly: It protested against all formal, external authority in religion; against the authority, therefore, of councils, priests and the whole tradition of the Church. . . . Thirdly: It protested against all the traditional arrangements for public worship, all ritualism, and every sort of “holy work.” . . . Fourthly: It protested against Sacramentalism. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper it left standing, as institutions of the primitive Church, or, as it might be, of the Lord himself; but it desired that they should be regarded either as symbols and marks by which the Christian is known, or as acts deriving their value

172

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

exclusively from that message of the forgiveness of sins which is bound up with them. . . . Fifthly: It protested against the double form of morality. . . . [Luther] advanced the definite thesis that all positions in life—constituted authority, the married state, and so on, down to domestic service—existed by the will of God, and were therefore genuinely spiritual positions in which we are to serve God. . . . But what was here achieved had its dark side as well. If we ask what the Reformation cost us, and to what extent it made its principles prevail, we shall see this dark side very clearly. . . . The necessity of establishing the new Churches as State-Churches was attended by serious disadvantages. . . . They have weakened the feeling of responsibility and diminished the activity of the evangelical communities’ and, in addition, they have aroused the not unfounded suspicion that the Church is an institution set up by the State. . . . Further, Protestantism was forced by is opposition to Catholicism to lay exclusive emphasis on the inward character of religion, and upon “faith alone”; but to formulate one doctrine in sharp opposition to another is always a dangerous process. The man in the street is not sorry to hear that “good works” are unnecessary, nay, that they constitute a danger to the soul. Although Luther is not responsible for the convenient misunderstanding that ensued, the inevitable result was that in the reformed Churches in Germany from the very start there were accusations of moral laxity and a want of serious purpose in the sanctification of life. . . . Not only had the Reformation to pay a high price; it was also incapable of perceiving all the conclusions to which its new ideas led, and of giving them pure effect. . . . There were countless problems of which [Luther] did not even know, to say nothing of being able to solve them; and so it was that he had no means of distinguishing between kernel and husk, between what was original and what was an alien growth. How can we be surprised, then, if in its doctrine and in the view which it took of history, the Reformation was far from being a finished product; . . . Firstly . . . [Luther] was absolutely incapable of making any sound distinction between “doctrine” and Gospel; . . . The necessary result was that intellectualism was still in the ascendant; and a scholastic doctrine was again set up as necessary to salvation; and that two classes of Christians once more arose: those who understand the doctrine, and the minors who are dependent on the other’s understanding of it.

Secondly, . . . What a capacity [Luther] had for distinguishing between law and Gospel, between Old and New Testament, nay, for distinguishing in the New Testament itself! All that he would recognize was the kernel of the matter, clearly revealed as it is in these books, and proving its power by its effect on the soul. But he did not make a clean sweep. In cases where he had found the letter important, he demanded submission to the “it is written”; and he demanded it peremptorily, without recollecting that, where other sayings of the Scriptures were concerned, he himself had declared the “it is written” to be of no binding force. Thirdly, grace is the forgiveness of sins, and therefore the assurance of possessing a God of grace, and life, and salvation. How often Luther repeated this ..... but the same man allowed himself to be inveigled into the most painful controversies about the means of grace, about communion and infant baptism. . . . Fourthly, . . . whilst the counter-Church identified the sum and substance of its doctrine with the Gospel, the thought also stole in surreptitiously: We, that is to say, the particular Churches, which had sprung up, are the true Church. . . . We are the true Church because we have the right “doctrine.” This misunderstanding, besides giving rise to evil results of self–infatuation and intolerance, still further strengthened the mischievous distinction between theologians and clergy on the one side, and the laity on the other, on which we have already dwelt. . . . Here we have the logical outcome of the contention that in the evangelical Churches, too, doctrine is something laid down for all time, and that in spite of being generally binding it is a matter of so much difficulty that the laity need not be expected to defend it. But if we persist in this path, and other confusions become worse confounded and take firmer root, there is a risk of Protestantism becoming a sorry double of Catholicism. . . . Protestantism is not yet, thank God, in such a bad way that the imperfections and confusions in which it began have got the upper hand and entirely stunted or stifled its true character. . . . Our knowledge of the world has undergone enormous changes—every century since the Reformation marks an advance, the most important being those in the last two; but, looked at from a religious and ethical point of view, the forces and principles of the Reformation have not been outrun or rendered obsolete. We need only grasp them in their purity and courageously apply them, and modern ideas will not put any new difficulties in their way. . . .

NINETEENTH CENTURY LIBERAL LUTHERANISM

CONSERVATIVE AND LIBERAL CRITICS OF THE RITSCHLIAN SCHOOL 338. HERMANN CREMER: A REPLY TO HARNACK ON THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY (1901) Trans. by Bernhard Pick from 3rd edition (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co, 1903), xiii, 3, 4, 168, 264.

Fig. 6.5. Hermann Cremer

Preface In the controversy with Harnack the question is, whether the Christianity of the apostolic message is right, or whether it must be replaced by a Christianity of modern reflection and still more modern enthusiasm. The Christianity of the apostolic message applies to the lost sinner, to whom it offers salvation through the wondrous grace of God, who became our brother in Christ Jesus. Harnack’s Christianity applies to the modern man who feels himself vexed, not by the moral but by the intellectual problem, because the moral problem, “How is the sinner saved?” does not exist for him. . . . With the exception, perhaps, of the conflicts of the early Christian centuries and of the Reformation,

173

the present controversy is the severest that has ever been waged. We battle for the person and importance of Jesus Christ himself. Indeed, we fight a battle in which no truce is possible. Victory for either side necessarily means the destruction of the other. It is the battle of one religion with another religion. The one regards Christ as a natural phenomenon of history, appearing in the normal course of history, who worked and still works like every other important man, only that he surpasses all others in power;. . . . We are to see in Christ the man in whom the good has become a reality in the world, and this realization of the good is to keep us from despair as we attempt such realization also. . . . The other religion regards Christ as an entirely irregular appearance in history. . . . The meaning of his life and nature is unique, not merely because it belongs to no other individual man, but because it does not appertain to the race of man as such. It does not belong to him because he is man come from our race, but because he became man, entered into our race; he existed before he became man, he was and is God in eternal manner, and forever he united himself with us and our race, as only he can do it, who is God and Lord over all, and thus became our brother, who shares everything with us, our misery, our judgment, that everything that he is may redound to our benefit. . . . In order to obtain that which Harnack calls the Gospel, one must, in fact, reduce the entire Gospel to the two commandments of love of God and love of neighbor, which, however, are already Old Testament commandments, and appear in the Old Testament, moreover, as comprehension of the whole law. . . . Reduction! Reduction of the grace of God, reduction of our sin, reduction of our lost estate, reduction of the redeeming love of God, reduction of God’s freedom—nothing but reduction is the real Gospel to suffer. To this end we are to eliminate everything which does not fit in order to get a Christ who neither is more than we are, nor can do more than every other man, who is only gifted in his calling! It was God who in Christ reconciled the world to himself. God—not the thought of God but God himself—entered, in Christ, into the ordered course of history after he had allowed the world till then to go for centuries and millennia its own way, and only endured it that it might not perish before the time. It was God who, in pardoning grace, established himself in the world, who in his eternal Son became present to the world, and since then has remained present. God in Christ has endured that the world should reject him, and enduring it in order to

174

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

forgive; and thus he showed that his love covers also a multitude of sins. But what God did by uniting himself with us in his Son, he did to the end that this union and communion might last forever. 339. ALBERT SCHWEITZER: THE HISTORICAL JESUS AND THE CHRISTIANITY OF TODAY (1931) This analysis is taken from the Schweitzer autobiography titled Out of My Lif Lifee and Thought Thought. Trans. by C. T. Campion. (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1933), 57. Chapter 6: The Historical Jesus and the Christianity of Today The demonstration of the fact that the teaching of Jesus was conditioned by eschatology was at one a heavy blow for liberal Protestantism. For generations the latter had busied itself investigating the life of Jesus in the conviction that all progress in the knowledge of history could not but make more evident the undogmatic character of the religion of Jesus. At the close of the nineteenth century it seemed to see it finally proved that our religious thought could without further ado adopt as its own Jesus’ religion of a Kingdom of God to be founded on earth. It was not long, however, before it had to admit that this description was true, only for the teaching of Jesus as it had been unconsciously modernized by itself, and not of the really historical teaching of Jesus. I myself have suffered in this matter, by having had to join in the work of destroying the portrait of Christ on which liberal Christianity based its appeal. At the same time I was convinced that this liberal Christianity was not reduced to living on an historical illusion, but could equally appeal to the Jesus of history, and further that it carried its justification in itself. For even if that liberal Christianity has to give up identifying its belief with the teachings of Jesus in the way it used to think possible, it still has the spirit of Jesus not against it but on its side. Jesus no doubt fits his teaching into the late Jewish Messianic dogma. But he does not think dogmatically. He formulates no doctrine. He is far from judging any man’s belief by reference to any standard of dogmatic correctness. Nowhere does he demand of his hearers that they shall sacrifice thinking to believing. Quite the contrary! He bids them meditate upon religion. In the Sermon on the Mount, he lets ethics, as the essence

of religion, flood their hearts, leading them to judge the value of piety by what it makes of a man from the ethical point of view. Within the Messianic hopes which his hearers carry in their hearts, he kindles the fire of an ethical faith. Thus the Sermon on the Mount becomes the incontestable charter of liberal Christianity. The truth that the ethical is the essence of religion is firmly established on the authority of Jesus. Further than this, the religion of love taught by Jesus has been freed from any dogmatism which clung to it by the disappearance of the late Jewish expectation of the immediate end of the world. The mold in which the casing was made has been broken. We are now at liberty to let the religion of Jesus become a living force in our thought, as its purely spiritual and ethical nature demands. 340. ALBERT SCHWEITZER: THE QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS (1906) Trans. by W. Montgomery, 1910 (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1950), 401–3. It is not given to history to disengage that which is abiding and eternal in the being of Jesus from the historical forms in which it worked itself out, and to introduce it into our world as a living influence. It has toiled in vain at this undertaking. . . . The abiding and eternal in Jesus is absolutely independent of historical knowledge and can only be understood by contact with his spirit which is still at work in the world. In proportion as we have the Spirit of Jesus we have the true knowledge of Jesus. Jesus as a concrete historical personality remains a stranger to our time, but His spirit, which lies hidden in his words, is known in simplicity and its influence is direct. Every saying contains in its own way the whole Jesus. The very strangeness and unconditionedness in which he stands before us makes it easier for individuals to find their own personal standpoint in regard to him. . . . He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, a of old, by the lake–side, he came to those men who know him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the suffering which they shall pass through in his fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who he is.

NINETEENTH CENTURY LIBERAL LUTHERANISM

HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL APPROACHES TO RELIGION: THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS SCHOOL 341. ERNST TROELTSCH: THE CHRISTIAN FAITH (1912) These lectures were delivered in Heidelberg in 1912–1913 but first published in 1925. Trans. by Garrett Paul. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 74–76, 87–89.

Fig. 6.6. Ernst Troeltsch

#6 Faith and History A particularly difficult problem of contemporary religious thought concerns the relationship of faith to historical phenomena. In contemporary piety, Jesus primarily appears as a historical personality and the historical center of faith. But this has caused new difficulties, centering on the question of the religious meaning and significance of Jesus. This was not a problem for the old Christology, or it was dealt with as, at most, an inessential side issue. . . . Modern thought includes (a) the modern principle of autonomy, which, when it comes to religion, rejects all merely historical authority and insists that belief in anything must proceed from an inner neces-

175

sity. It includes (b) the modern historical understanding of how faith is conditioned by its environment. ..... Modern thought also includes (c) the application of historical criticism to biblical history, making faith’s relationship to history uncertain. . . . Modernity also includes (d) the recognition of the historical relativity of Christianity, which is the result of its historically conditioned division into various confessions, none of which can be acknowledge as the only true one. Also included here are (e) the history of religions and the philosophy of religion, both of which view Christianity as one great religion among others, with nothing unique about its establishment or growth; hence nothing in the history of Christian origins is exempt from analogy to other histories. Finally, modern thought includes (f) the general historical-relativist attitude of the present day, which in light of the extent and duration of human history, dares not locate the absolute center of this immeasurable history in one historical appearance. . . . The religious meaning of history is bound up for us primarily in the total figure of Jesus; everything converges in this figure as a totality. But Jesus is not the sole object of faith. It is important to make this point against thinkers like Herrmann, whose exclusive interest in Jesus renders everything that comes to us from his isolated form utterly unhistorical. Thinkers like Herrmann make the figure of Jesus look much more like a meteor that fell from the heavens, a contrived picture that is less a matter of history than faith. Even Schleiermacher does not deal with Jesus as a truly historical figure, bestowing predicates on him that do not belong to history. For us, however, the figure of Jesus cannot be wrenched from its historical context. He is not to be separated from the prophets who prepared his way, nor from the magnitude, grandeur and simplicity of their demands. Indeed, the prophetic spirit culminated in Jesus. . . . The real picture of Jesus consists in his self-testimony, grasped by the faith of the disciples and by the whole of the history that follows, wherein his life always appears anew as the light that shone from within. We can no longer determine his actual words, but we still have access to the life that flows from them. And everything beyond our control that we experience in ourselves (or in books or in people, which is where the most powerful expressions of Christian life flow) belongs to history—and that is where we catch sight of the divine life we seek.

176

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

#8 The Significance of Jesus for Faith Today the central question is whether the apostolic community’s belief in Christ and redemption can be traced back to the impact of Jesus and is consistent with his inner person; or whether their belief in a savior-god and his redemptive death was appropriated from some non-Christian mystery cult and grafted onto the more or less vague remembrances of a Jewish rabbi. . . . With respect to this idea, it should be said that the myth which is supposed to have been grafted onto the memory of Jesus has never been identified, and that all the proposed candidates have born only an external resemblance to it; . . . But if this is the case, then the development of the Christian belief in salvation and in the saving death of Christ must be traced back to the impact of the person of Jesus himself, i.e., to the resurrection faith and the messianic Christ-cult that arose from his impact. . . . His profoundest impact—his religious and ethical proclamation of the value of the soul and the Kingdom of God in brother-love, as well as his extraordinary consciousness of mission and his struggle for a divinely induced world-renewal all there are clearly historical. The only thing that remains questionable is the extent to which the image of Jesus in the gospels, and particularly the image of Jesus’ messianic self–consciousness, was influenced by the community and its image of Jesus in the Christ-cult. ... . . . We are concerned with Jesus’ historical and psychological effects and with their significance for our religious life. Such an assessment will never be able to speak in terms of cosmic or metaphysical transformations, but will refer rather to the transformation of souls through Jesus’ impact on them. In particular, the only meaning that can be attached to his suffering and death will be historical and psychological—the effect is has on believing souls. [Under the impact of the historical-psychological viewpoint,] we now interpret the three offices of Christ in this way. As prophet, Jesus is the one who reveals God; not, to be sure, as a lawgiver who legislates doctrine, but as one who reveals an ongoing personal life. As high priest, Jesus is the one who leads us to God and mediates salvation and wholeness; he communicates the clarity and courage necessary for the soul to believe in his revelation of God, as well as providing the soul with the conceptual world in which it can find and experience God. . . . Finally, as king, Jesus is both the head and the original image of the community that gathers about him, calls itself

by his name, confesses him as its unifying point, and celebrates his presence in its devotional cult. It is precisely this gathering around a personality and not a dogma or an idea or a moral law or a miraculous community founded by Jesus, that constitutes the central focus of Christianity and provides it with the means to propagate itself. And this is precisely what makes it a religion of the spirit, freeing it from both dogma and priesthood, and providing it with a purely inner spiritual bonding, expressing itself (or it ought to be expressing itself) in a spiritual culture. The most important of the three concepts is that of the king or lord through whom everything —all revelation and all priestly guidance to God, as well as the gathering of the community about Christ as its head—streams ever anew into the lives of the faithful. This is how Schleiermacher and Ritschl construed the religious meaning of Jesus. . . . 342. ERNST TROELTSCH: THE SOCIAL TEACHINGS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES (1911) Troeltsch viewed his comprehensive study of Christian social teachings as a counterpart to Harnack’s “History of Dogma.” He distinguished three different views of community within the history of Christianity: the Church, the sect, and mysticism. Throughout his historical writings, Troeltsch argued that Lutheranism was, at heart, the reshaping of a medieval idea and that the real dawn of the modern world took place not in the Reformation but only later in the Enlightenment. His contemporary, Karl Holl, a professor in Berlin who began a “renaissance” in Luther studies, was a major critic of this interpretation. Trans. by Olive Wyon. (New York: Harper Torchbooks – The Cloister Library, 1931/1960), 478–89, 553, 1004–12. Sociological Effect of Luther’s Thought Luther had no desire to found a new Church; he simply wished to introduce an instauratio catholica, that is, to lead the One Catholic Apostolic Church, founded by Christ and endowed by him with ministry, Word and Sacrament, back to its purely spiritual activity of proclaiming the Word which creates faith. . . . It is the Catholic theory of the Church, only puri-

NINETEENTH CENTURY LIBERAL LUTHERANISM

fied and renewed (in the New Testament there is very little support for these ideas at all); it is a transformation of the idea of a merely universal, al-inclusive Church, with an unbroken priesthood, and an absolute possession of truth, into the earlier and more primitive conception of a pure Christocentric religion which exalted the ideas of grace and faith, and whose objective support is the word of Christ in the Scriptures. Thus we see that the whole of the thought of the Reformation was dominated by the Church-type, which was due in the last resort to the religious originality of the Reformation itself. Luther was only able to exert his enormous influence on world history as a Reformer of the Church. It was only because he held so firmly to the idea of the supernatural universal character of the Church that he was able to have an influence on institutions of a universal character. ..... This prominence of the Church-type, however, meant that all the essential sociological effects also appeared. It led first of all to the demand for the uniformity, unity and universal dominion of the Church, which in the impossibility of carrying through a thorough Reformation, either European or German, finally led to the establishment of united Territorial Churches. . . . The Territorial Church System The Territorial Church system, therefore, finally secures the following elements: the universal character of the Church, its claim to dominate the life of the world, the maintenance of “pure doctrine,” and an ordered ministry on orthodox lines. Luther did not want the ruling princes to control the Church: this development was due rather to a logical development from the situation in the later Middle Ages, and, in any case, it was inevitable once the whole organization had been entrusted to the rulers of the different States. All that Luther desired was to secure the kind offices of the various Governments for the Church, but he also expected that the Word of God within these churches would be left entirely free. This ideal of Luther implied a division of authority within the social order which involved many difficulties from the very outset. . . . In the Lutheranism of more recent times the tension between public and private morality disappeared more and more, and there arose that type which is usually described as Lutheran: that is, unconditional obedience towards the central government, and the subordinate officials, both of whom represent God,

177

and only hold their office by virtue of God’s permission; the belief that these authorities are based on Natural and Divine Law, which appear more and more as the fundamental laws of a true Christian Society, and which cooperate without difficulty; the duty of the Government to look after all secular and natural affairs, and, so far as it is possible, with its secular means, and in agreement with the ecclesiastical government, also to promote the Christian virtues; ..... Nature of the Christian Ethos All these results are of an historical nature. The question, however, naturally arises: Does an extended inquiry of this kind about the Christian world of life and thought really yield nothing more than historical light on the past and on its influence upon the present? Does it not also teach something lasting and eternal about the content of the Christian social Ethos, which might serve as a guiding star for the present and for the future, something which might aid us not merely to understand but also to transform the situation? . . . The Christian Ethos gives to all social life and aspiration a goal which lies far beyond all the relativities of this earthly life, compared with which, indeed, everything else represents merely approximate values. The idea of the future Kingdom of God, which is nothing less than faith in the final realization of the Absolute (in whatever way we may conceive this realization), does not, as short–sighted opponents imagine, render this world and life in this world meaningless and empty; on the contrary, it stimulates human energies, making the soul strong through its various stages of experience in the certainty of an ultimate, absolute meaning and aim for human labor. Thus it raises the world above the world without denying the world. Christianity and Modern Social Problems The churches are losing their hold on the spiritual life of the nations, and many of their functions are now being exercised be educationists, writers, administrators, and by voluntary religious associations. Under these circumstances the Catholic Church-type has been forced to exercise an increasingly powerful and external dominion over the consciences of men. The Protestant churches, on the other hand, have not exercised the same influence. This is due to two causes: (1) because they are not

178

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

sufficiently vigorous to be able to do this; and (2) because the subjective interpretation of the idea of the Church contains strong tendencies which are directly opposed to a development of this kind. . . . If the present social situation is to be controlled by Christian principles, thoughts will be necessary which have not yet been thought, and which will correspond to this new situation as the older forms met the need of the social situation of earlier ages. These ideas will have to be evolved out of the inner

impulse of Christian thought, and out of its vital expression at the present time, and not exclusively out of the New Testament. . . . And when they have been created and expressed, they will meet the fate which always awaits every fresh creation of religious and ethical thought: they will render indispensable services and they will develop profound energies, but they will never fully realize their actual ideal intention within the sphere of our earthly struggle and conflict. . . .

7. Church Struggles in Europe during the Wars of the Twentieth Century

Prussia completed the unification of Germany after victories in wars against Denmark (1864), Austria (1866) and France (1870). These successes awakened strong nationalistic feelings among the Germans, but the Second Reich still faced many challenges before it could become a truly unified nation. There were on-going class conflicts resulting from rapid industrialization, competing factions in the parliament and serious religious divisions between Protestants and Catholics. Chancellor Bismarck attempted to create an efficient and orderly state by suppressing socialism, passing legislation to diminish social discontent, and limiting Catholic influence in the new empire. Kaiser Wilhelm II set out to make Germany a world power by establishing a colonial empire and expanding the military to insure national security within Europe. Germany formed a Triple Alliance with Austria-Hungary and Italy in 1882 which prompted Russia, Great Britain and France to unite in the Triple Entente in 1907. Austria and Russia struggled for control of southeastern Europe, and when the heir apparent to the Austrian throne was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in Bosnia in July 1914, Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia came to the aid of Serbia, Germany to the aid of Austria, and the conflict between the alliances expanded into a world war that lasted four years and resulted in the death of around eleven million solders and seven million civilians. There had long been a close association between “throne and altar,” between the German monarchs and the Protestant churches (Lutheran, Reformed,

and United). Thus, the outbreak of World War I prompted most Lutheran church leaders, both liberal and conservative, to offer an explicit endorsement of the government’s objectives. Kaiser Wilhelm’s first address to the German people at the start of the war was actually drafted by Adolf Harnack (1851–1930), the leading liberal theologian of that day (see chapter 6). This August 1914 call to arms blamed the start of war on Germany’s envious enemies. It portrayed the Empire as peace-loving and assured the people that God would support them in their struggle for survival (doc. #343). Harnack and many other prominent professors, including German theologians such as Wilhelm Herrmann (ch. 6), Adolf Schlatter (ch. 3), Friedrich Naumann (ch. 2) and Reinhold Seeberg (1859–1935), also signed a “Manifesto” in October, 1914, which defended national honor by refuting charges that Germany was the aggressor and a violator of international law. It pictured the empire as a civilized nation, preserving the legacy of Goethe, Beethoven, and Kant, which had been forced to militarize in order to forestall its total destruction (doc. #344). Church leaders were pleased that the war appeared to have sparked a religious revival (doc. #345). In a period when only 14% of the people regularly attended church in Berlin and 7% in Hamburg, there were signs of more active involvement in many parishes. Most pastors held weekly days of prayer and penitence, and their sermons frequently related to the war effort. Dietrich Vorwerk (1870–1942), a Lutheran pastor in the Saxon town of Wernigerode,

180

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

published a famous paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer, which prayed for deliverance from the temptation to carry out divine judgment “too mildly,” and asked forgiveness for every bullet that failed to strike its target (doc. #346). The war sermons of Hermann Franke, a Lutheran pastor in Silesia, were quite typical. He compared the persecution of Germany to the sufferings of Jesus. Portraying Germany as peaceloving, he saw the war as a battle for civilization and suggested that German Christianity was “the most perfect, the most pure.” Franke rallied his congregants with the old Prussian battle cry: “God with us” (doc. #347). Many churches took up special collections and sacrificed organ pipes or church bells to aid the war effort. Chaplains regularly held services for soldiers before battles, but letters home and war diaries suggest that there was not much of a religious revival along the front lines. Superstitious practices were common for those seeking protection amid brutal trench warfare, but many combatants fell into despair at the apparent senselessness of life. By the fall of 1915, there were signs that the religious revival was fading in the congregations. By the end of the war, church involvement had declined in even the most devout regions of Germany. Regular attendance fell from 49% to 38% in Württemberg, and in Saxony the decline was from 35% to 28%.1 During the war, theologians were often asked to clarify whether war and faith in God were compatible. Paul Althaus (1888–1966), a war chaplain who would go on to become a famous Luther scholar at the University of Erlangen, again stressed the perfidy of Germany’s enemies in order to justify war as an unfortunate political necessity. Writing in 1915, he expressed hope for a victorious conclusion to the bloody war but ended his defense with a hint of resignation. Although he believed that God had something great in mind for the “highly blessed German folk,” he called for humble submission to whatever the will of God might bring about (doc. #348). Other theologians urged the government to take advantage of the war to annex more territory for Germany. Reinhold Seeberg (1859–1935), a conservative Lutheran theologian in Berlin, submitted a petition signed by 352 professors which called for the economic and political destruction of France, the seizure of land from Russia, and the assertion of German maritime power in areas of the world where England had colonies (doc. #349). Otto Baumgarten (1858–1934), a liberal churchman who chaired the Evangelical Social Congress, disagreed with Seeberg but also rejected absolute pacifism. He raised no

objection to the annexation of territories where the population was German–speaking, to safeguard the future of a growing population, but also suggested that Germany’s problems already with a “non–native” population within its borders showed the foolishness of unlimited conquest (doc. #350). The war was still raging in 1917 when the four hundredth anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation was to be commemorated. The Protestant Church Committee lamented the fact that a festive celebration could not be planned but reminded the people that Martin Luther was the “embodiment of the German essence” and “the hero of our folk.” In the same year, church leaders also praised the Kaiser for his commendable strength and urged the people to show faithfulness to their heavenly lord by being faithful to their earthly lord (doc. #351). There were also scattered voices of dissent from this pattern of support for the war effort and the Kaiser. A few days before the four hundredth anniversary of Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses, five Berlin pastors influenced by Martin Rade (1857–1940), the publisher of the liberal journal, The Christian World, condemned the glorification of power and greed, urged German Protestants to recognize common Christian values—even among co–religionists in enemy states —and called for the banishment of war as a way to settle international disagreements (doc. #352). Germany’s defeat and the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918 shocked the German people and confronted them with a wide range of difficulties. The Second Reich came to an end, and Germany became a republic with a democratic constitution. The political parties, however, ranging from extreme nationalists to radical Communists, had little success in rebuilding national institutions or overcoming the economic crisis that worsened in 1929. The victorious allies blamed Germany for causing the war and also made recovery more difficult by demanding extensive war reparations. The superintendents of the Old Prussian Church rejected the claim that Germany alone was the guilty party and joined many other German nationalists in condemning the Treaty of Versailles. They appealed to congregations to join together to alleviate suffering, strengthen hope, and also to pray for the Kaiser (doc. #353). Fearing that the new political order would come under the control of anti–clerical socialists who would dismantle the traditional privileges the Protestant churches, the higher clergy tended not to be supportive of democratic reform. Out of necessity, however, they entered

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

into extensive negotiations with the political parties and were able to prevent the complete disestablishment of the churches. The Weimar constitution of 1919 declared that there would no longer be a state religion, but treated the churches as “corporations with a special legal status.” In the older order, the state had contributed around two–thirds of the budget of the churches through direct contributions (27%) and a church tax (39%).2 The church tax structure continued, perpetuating the status of the clergy as civil servants. The constitution also retained the theological faculties of the state–sponsored universities and allowed for the continuation of religious instructions in schools, although parents could now choose to exclude their children (doc. #354). The Weimar Republic retained a ministry of education and culture, which also managed church affairs (Kultusministerium), but the Protestant churches were given greater autonomy now that there was no longer a Kaiser acting as the summus episcopus or head of a state church. Despite retaining much of their regional independence, the 29 territorial churches (Landeskirchen) came to recognize the advantages of cooperating more extensively with each other. After a series of conferences, they established a new German Evangelical Church Federation (Deutscher Evanglischer Kirchenbund or DEK) in 1922, which protected their common interests through three representative institutions: the Church Convention (Kirchentag), the Church Council (Kirchenbundesrat) and the Church Committee (Kirchenausschuss) (doc. #355). Church members continued to identify with several church blocs, differentiate by conservative or liberal beliefs, and were divided by their support for competing political parties. Religious and political conservatives tended to favor the Nationalist Party, and those who were more open to republican ideas affiliated with the Democratic Party. A strong current of “folkish nationalism” continued after the war, as seen in the Declaration concerning the Fatherland issued by the Church Convention in 1927 (doc. #356). The document stated that the Kingdom of God extends among many Volk (folk or people), but that each had a right to develop its special gifts and its national character. It called upon the churches to come together “above parties” and to support the state, since service to the Fatherland is service to God. At the same Church Convention meeting, the confessional theologian Paul Althaus warned the churches about the danger posed by “demoralized

181

and demoralizing” Jews in business, the press, and the arts.3 A new militant right wing party, the National Socialist Worker’s Party (NDSAP), would push these folkish and racial themes much further. In its 1920 platform it presented itself as supportive of “a positive Christianity,” transcending confessional divisions and opposed to the “Jewish materialist spirit” (doc. #357). Adolf Hitler, the head of the Nazi party, pledged in his speeches to undertake a moral purification of Germany and called for honest cooperation between church and state in that endeavor. He also spoke of the need for a revival of religious life and claimed in conversations with various Christians that the New Testament, as translated by Martin Luther, gave him the courage to struggle for national reconstruction.4 As the Nazi party increased its influence in the parliament over the course of several elections, multiple groups developed within the churches that sought to establish a more unified and distinctly German form of Christianity. The Confederation for a German Church (Bund für Deutsche Kirche) was founded in Berlin as early as 1921 and, in Thuringia several pastors formed a similar group, which blended religious and nationalist goals. In 1929, they began to call themselves “German Christians” (Deutsche Christen). In Prussia, the German Christian Faith Movement (Glaubensbewegung Deutsche Christen) was organized in May 1932 under the leadership of a Berlin pastor, Joachim Hossenfelder (1899–1976) (doc. #358). In its guidelines, the group called for the integration of the autonomous territorial churches into one National Protestant Church, which would take a firmer stand against “godless Marxism” and the Catholic Center Party. The Faith Movement described ethnicity or race as one of the orders of God’s creation and took a stand against both inter–marriage and the inclusion of Jewish Christians in the national church. After Hitler became chancellor in 1933, he supported these German Christian movements as part of his wider efforts at Gleichschaltung or “coordination.” All institutional structures in society were to be brought into line with the political goals of the Nazi party. In 1933, the German Christian Faith Movement pushed the process of church centralization forward, envisioning a Lutheran bishop (Reichsbischof), based in Wittenberg, and presiding over a unified church with no more than ten regional subdivisions (doc. #359). In their view, the new Protestant Reich Church was to be a church for only “Aryan” Christians. In literature circulated by the German Christians, Luther was lauded for freeing his German peo-

182

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ple from “the Roman straightjacket” and planting seeds that were now coming to bloom with “a new instrument of God,” Adolf Hitler (doc. #360). National Socialism and German Christianity were depicted as two sides of the same coin—both devoted to a renewal of the German people and their Fatherland. In April 1933, a committee of three church leaders drafted the constitution for a significantly redesigned version of the DEK, and church elections for the Reich bishop took place a month later. The candidate put forward by the German Christians was Ludwig Müller (1883–1945), an army chaplain whom Hitler had appointed as his plenipotentiary for relations with the churches (doc. #361). Those who opposed the German Christians favored Friedrich von Bodelschwingh (1877–1946), a pastor who operated Bethel, a social welfare institution associated with the Inner Mission movement. Bodelschwingh won the election but resigned a month later after finding it impossible to work within the existing political structures. Ludwig Müller took over and vigorously advanced the establishment of a “positive Christianity,” which minimized the theological differences between the Protestant confessions. In his writings, he argued that Germans faced a clear choice between good and evil, between National Socialism and Bolshevism. Quoting Jesus, he insisted that “Who is not with me, is against me.” (Matt 12:30). The most prominent Lutheran theologian showing support for the German Christians was Emanuel Hirsch (1888–1972) of the University of Göttingen. Convinced that God had intended there to be distinctive folk groups and that a state based on a unified ethnicity (Volkstum) allowed for true creativity, he strongly supported a fuller unification of the Protestant churches in order to create an intimate union between Germanness and Christianity (doc. #362). He rebutted charges that the German Christian Faith Movement was heretical, became an advisor to Ludwig Müller, and joined the Nazi Party in 1937. Paul Althaus, the noted Luther scholar at Erlangen, shared Hirsch’s “folkish nationalism,” but was more critical of the German Christian movement. He protested their tendency to conflate German history and salvation history and sharply differentiated between national rebirth and spiritual rebirth. Despite his critical view of the Jewish people, he denied that the German folk were the beneficiaries of a new covenant or “world–saviors” (doc. #363). Althaus continued to support National Socialism until the end of the war but never joined the German Christian movement.

The various German Christian groups were united in support of an anti-doctrinal, anti-Jewish and heroic or manly Christianity. It is estimated that 3,000 out of 17,000 pastors favored the movement at its peak.5 By 1933, however, differences began to grow among its members, exacerbated by an inflammatory speech delivered in November by a district leader of the German Christians in Berlin, Reinhold Krause (1893–1980). Fanatically anti-Semitic, Krause proclaimed that the church should free itself from “all things not German,” including the Old Testament with its Jewish system of morality. He also criticized “an exaggerated presentation of the crucified Jesus” and the “scapegoat” theology of Paul. Krause and other radical German Christians were warming up to the outlook of Alfred Rosenberg (1893–1946) who published The Myth of the Twentieth Century in 1930, a book that set out to create a neo–pagan substitute for Christianity. To calm the uproar, Ludwig Müller removed Krause from his church positions, but the Reich bishop was increasingly marginalized by the Nazi government for failing to maintain church unity. He retained his title as bishop but, in 1934, Hitler transferred his power to a governmental minister of church affairs, Hans Kerrl (1887–1941). To placate the radicals, Hitler also made Rosenberg the cultural and educational leader of the Reich. By the 1940s, it became clear that Hitler’s closest associates, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, and Martin Bormann, were all strongly anti-Christian. Bormann (1900–1945), Hitler’s private secretary, argued that National Socialism and Christianity were incompatible and that it was naïve to think that there was a god or world–force that was concerned about the fate of individuals (doc. #364). Bormann’s record of what Hitler said in private conversations, published after the war, revealed that Hitler too felt that Christianity was a “prototype of Bolshevism,” and “an invention of sick brains,” which should be left alone to die a natural death.6 There were various organized attempts to block the influence of the German Christians within the churches. In May 1933, the Young Reformation Movement came out in support of the reorganization of the Protestant churches but called for both adherence to the Reformation confessions and unconditional freedom to preach the gospel (doc. #365). In September 1933, some of the members of that movement formed the Pastor’s Emergency League (Pfarrernotbund) to protest against growing anti–Jewish sentiment in the German Christian movement (doc. #366). Led by Martin Niemöller (1892–1984), a Lutheran pastor in Dahlem, a district of Berlin, the

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

League attracted a membership of 6,000 by the end of the year. The Nazis pressured the DEK to join other organizations in including Aryan Paragraphs in its organizational documents. The exclusion of Jews from any association with Germans meant that even Jewish Christians or Germans married to Jews would no longer be able to serve as pastors or church officials. When the theological faculty of the University of Erlangen was asked to issue a judgment about this matter, Paul Althaus and Werner Elert supported retention of membership for the Jewish Christians in the German Protestant Church but agreed that it was proper that they be excluded from holding any office in “the church of the German people.” By contrast, the theological faculty of the University of Marburg, including Rudolf Bultmann, opposed racial categorization. There were only 37 Jewish Christian pastors in the DEK in 1933, but critics of the German Christians saw in their banishment a significant violation of a basic Christian principle.7 Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), another Berlin pastor, led the protest with a declaration that God calls all people, Jews and Gentiles, into one church. Recalling the writings of the Apostle Paul, he observed that baptism removes any distinctions based on gender, status in society, or race (doc. #367). The “Jewish Question” prompted Bonhoeffer to think deeply about the subservience to the state that had traditionally been a feature of German Lutheranism. In keeping with past theology he agreed that the church should not tell the state what specific policies it should enact, but he also asked what exactly makes the state one of God’s orders for the preservation of society. Bonhoeffer concluded that where there is too much or too little law and order (anarchy or tyranny), the state forfeits its Godordained role. In such situations, Christians should not only care for the victims of state violence but also “seize the wheel”—resisting its momentum by direct political action (doc. #368). During the war, Bonhoeffer would put his convictions into action. He helped Jews escape to Switzerland and participated in an operation that sought to overthrow the Nazi state. When this plot was discovered, he was imprisoned and executed in 1945. In 1934, Lutheran, Reformed and United Church critics of the German Christian movement planned a more extensive counter-action in a series of “national free synods.” In May, at a session in Barmen, part of the city of Wuppertal, representatives of 26 territorial churches established the Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche), a loosely structured confederation to combat the promulgation of false doctrine by

183

the German Christians. The theological declaration of the movement was largely drafted by Karl Barth, the Swiss Reformed theologian who had been teaching at the University of Bonn, but the final version incorporated revisions suggested by the Altona Confession, which had been formulated in January 1933 by Hans Asmussen (1898–1960) and other Lutheran pastors from the Hamburg area (doc. #369). In his defense of the Barmen Declaration, Asmussen stressed that the churches must hold to the Holy Scriptures as the only source of revelation and proclaim Jesus Christ as their only lord (doc. #370). Three months later, at a meeting in Martin Niemöller’s Dahlem church, more militant members of the Confessing Church produced a resolution, which asked the government to recognize them as the only legitimate representatives of German Protestantism. This created tension within the movement because some conservative churchmen still held out hopes for reconciliation with the German Christians and felt unable to condone a schism. Thereafter, the Council of Brethren (Bruderrat—dominated by Dahlemites) co-existed alongside a more conservative Provisional Church Leadership (Vorläufige Kirchenleitung) of the intact state churches, led by August Marahrens (1875–1950), bishop of Hanover. In the next few years, the Nazi state increased its harassment of the more radical dissenters, arresting over 700 pastors, including Martin Niemöller, and confiscating Confessing Church funds. Professors affiliated with the movement, such as Karl Barth, were dismissed from university positions, and five new underground seminaries had to be created to educate its pastors. The Confessing Church did not address the antiJewish legislation in its official documents, but some of its supporters continued to speak out about this matter. Hellmut Gollwitzer (1908–1993) who replaced Niemöller in the Dahlem-Berlin parish, called for a national day of repentance after the attacks on the Jews on Kristallnacht in 1938 (doc. #371). More extensive resistance was hampered by the conscription of both clergy and laity. For the first time in Germany, women were ordained to serve as vicars in the Confessing Church because of the shortage of male pastors (doc. #372). The theologian Paul Tillich (1886–1965), who had been dismissed from the University of Frankfurt in 1933 and had taken up residence in the United States, was critical of the political cautiousness of the Confessing Church and the influence on it of Barthian theology, but contributed in his own way to the opposition by making radio broadcasts back to Ger-

184

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

many during the war. He denounced National Socialism as a form of paganism and stated that Christianity was “the complete contradiction”’ of the tribalistic–nationalistic attitude that Nazism and the German Christians encouraged (doc. #373). At the end of the Second World War, the leaders of the Confessing Church led the way in the reconstruction of the German church federation. Martin Niemöller, Hans Asmussen, and others proclaimed in the Stuttgart Declaration of 1945 that despite some acts of resistance the churches were guilty of not having done enough to oppose National Socialism (doc. #374). At the same time, however, the church federation also urged those who were involved in denazification efforts to appreciate the difficult situations many German citizens had faced and to be merciful in order to clear the way for a new beginning (doc. #375). The German Evangelical Church (DEK) reconstituted itself in 1948 with a new name, the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), in order to signal a change in its orientation. The Barmen Declaration was cited as part of its confessional foundation. In the same year, seven regional Lutheran churches also formed the United Evangelical Lutheran Church (VELKD) to preserve their Lutheran identity. In addition to affirming the Augsburg Confession, the VELKD committed itself to promoting the inter–church alliance that had started at Barmen and participated in the EKD (doc. #376). The Lutheran churches in the Soviet zone of Occupied Germany and Lutherans in the other eastern European countries that were dominated by the USSR after 1945, now faced a new problem. The Communist governments all attempted, in varying degrees, to spread atheism as part of the MarxistLeninist ideology which guided their restructuring of society. Some Lutherans attempted to make the best of this situation by encouraging a MarxistChristian dialogue. One of the early leaders of this effort was Josef Hromádka (1889–1969), a Lutheran theologian in Czechoslovakia which argued that atheism was an auxiliary, not an essential, element of Marxist socialism. He tried to correct misunderstandings about Christianity in the Eastern Bloc and show how the churches and the Communist governments could cooperate to improve social life (doc. #377). A similar open-minded approach was advocated in East Germany by Bishop Albrecht Schoenherr (1911–2009), who spoke of the “Church within Socialism, ” (neither ‘against’ nor ‘alongside’) and by Heino Falcke (1929– ), a pastor in Erfurt, who called for an attitude of “critical solidarity” in the church’s dealings with the socialist state.

Such hope for the gradual transformation of Communism was often hard to sustain due to the continuation of many forms of discrimination against Christians. Although the German Democratic Republic (GDR) did not seize church lands, it used the schools to promulgate atheism, denied Christian students access to higher education, pressured civil servants to renounce their faith, and created all sorts of barriers to career advancement for Christian workers (doc. #378). Otto Dibelius (1880–1967), the bishop of Berlin-Brandenburg was denied access to East Berlin and the rest of the GDR after the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. It became so difficult to continue organizational ties between the East and West Germany churches that the eight regional churches in East Germany finally separated from the EKD in 1969, forming the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR (Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen or BEK). In the 1980s a peace movement developed in the East Germany churches, using the theme “From Swords to Ploughshares” (Isaiah 2:4). It called for nuclear disarmament by all governments and an alternative to military service for conscientious objectors in the GDR. Severe industrial pollution also stimulated a church-related environmental movement. In 1981, prayers for peace began to be held each week in the Nikolai church in Leipzig, and this effort also spread to other East German cities (doc. #380). Since the churches were one of the few places where open discussion of social issues could take place, these services also began to attract secular members of the opposition. Changes initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union encouraged social activists in East German to push harder for reform. For example, at a church convention in 1988, a group from Wittenberg declared, quoting Luther’s words from 1521, that “the time for silence was past.” In addition to addressing issues related to peace and the environment they also called for greater honesty on the part of the government, an end to media constraints, less arbitrary use of bureaucratic power, and freer elections (doc. #379). By 1989, large public demonstrations regularly took place after the prayer meetings in the Nikolai church. The police attempted to suppress the opposition, but, finally, in November 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, and East German Communism came to an end. Because the churches had played an important role in “Die Wende” (the Turnaround), many of their leaders were looked to as mediators in the negotiating of next steps. There were nineteen pastors in the legislature (Volkskammer) of the transitional

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

government prior to reunification with West Germany in 1990, and four served in the cabinet of prime minister Lothar de Mazière (1940– ), who was himself a member of the governing Synod of the BEK from 1985 to 1990.8 Angela Merkel, the first East German-born chancellor after reunification, was the daughter of a Lutheran pastor, and Joachim Gauck, who served as President of Germany from 2012 to 2017, was also a former East German Lutheran pastor (1965–1990) turned civil rights activist. However, even with the temporary resurgence of importance of the churches as a force within civil society, forty-five years of religious persecution had a lasting effect on the Eastern Bloc. Various polls reported that only around 20% claim to be Protestant in the regions where the Lutheran Reformation began and 52% no longer believed in God.9 Shortly after the reunification of the two states, the East German federation (BEK) re-established its connection to the EKD. According to the Lutheran World Federation, in the early 21st century there were 23,600,000 members of the EKD (40% Lutheran and 57% United). The Eastern European countries with the largest presence of Lutherans were Latvia (250,000), Slovakia (226,000), Hungary (192,000) and Estonia (180,000).

185

support our ally with unshaken loyalty, who fights for its prestige as a great power, and with whose abasement our power and honor are likewise lost. Therefore the sword must decide. In the midst of peace the world attacks us. Therefore up! To arms! All hesitation, all delay were treachery to the Fatherland. It is a question of the existence or non–existence of the Empire which our fathers founded anew. It is the question of the existence or the non–existence of German might and German culture. We shall defend ourselves to the last breath of man and beast. And we shall survive this fight, even though it were against a world of enemies. Never yet was Germany conquered when she was united. Then forward march with God! He will be with us as He was with our fathers.

CHURCH SUPPORT FOR THE WAR EFFORT IN WORLD WAR I 343. KAISER WILHELM II: ADDRESS TO THE GERMAN PEOPLE (AUGUST 6, 1914) This address was actually drafted by the Lutheran theologian, Adolf Harnack. Lewis Copeland, Lawrence Lamm, Stephen McKenna. The World’s Gr Great eat Speeches Speeches. 4th edition 1999. (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc. 1999), 127–28. Since the founding of the Empire, during a period of forty–three years, it has been my zealous endeavor and the endeavor of my ancestors to preserve peace to the world and in peace to promote our vigorous development. But our enemies envy us the success of our toil. All professed and secret hostility from East and West and from beyond the sea, we have till now borne in the consciousness of our responsibility and power. Now, however, our opponents desire to humble us. They demand that we look on with folded arms while our enemies gird themselves for treacherous attack. They will not tolerate that we

Fig. 7.1. Kaiser Wilhelm II (ca. 1910–41)

344. MANIFESTO OF THE NINETY–THREE GERMAN INTELLECTUALS (1914) From “An die Kulturwelt,” October 4, 1914. Trans. in World War I Document Archive. Accessed May 24, 2016

186

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Manifesto_of_the_Ninety–Three_German_Intellectuals. As representatives of German Science and Art, we hereby protest to the civilized world against the lies and calumnies with which our enemies are endeavoring to stain the honor of Germany in her hard struggle for existence––in a struggle that has been forced on her. The iron mouth of events has proved the untruth of the fictitious German defeats; consequently misrepresentation and calumny are all the more eagerly at work. As heralds of truth we raise our voices against these. It is not true that Germany is guilty of having caused this war. Neither the people, the Government, nor the “Kaiser” wanted war. . . . It is not true that we trespassed in neutral Belgium. It has been proved that France and England had resolved on such a trespass, and it has likewise been proved that Belgium had agreed to their doing so. It would have been suicide on our part not to have been beforehand. It is not true that the life and property of a single Belgian citizen was injured by our soldiers without the bitterest defense having made it necessary. . . . It is not true that our troops treated Louvain brutally. Furious inhabitants having treacherously fallen upon them in their quarters, our troops with aching hearts were obliged to fire a part of the town, as punishment. The greatest part of Louvain has been preserved. . . . It is not true that our warfare pays no respects to international laws. It knows no undisciplined cruelty. But in the east, the earth is saturated with the blood of women and children unmercifully butchered by the wild Russian troops, and in the west, dumdum bullets mutilate the breasts of our soldiers. . . . It is not true that the combat against our so–called militarism is not a combat against our civilization, as our enemies hypocritically pretend it is. Were it not for German militarism, German civilization would long since have been extirpated. . . . We cannot wrest the poisonous weapon––the lie––out of the hands of our enemies. All we can do is proclaim to all the world, that our enemies are giving false witness against us. . . . Have faith in us! Believe, that we shall carry on this war to the end as a civilized nation, to whom the legacy of a Goethe, a Beethoven, and a Kant, is just as sacred as its own hearths and homes.

345. THE SUPERIOR CHURCH CONSISTORY: WAR AND THE REVIVAL OF CHURCH LIFE (AUGUST 11, 1914) From Die Christliche Welt elt, 1914, 437. trans. by Eric Lund. With great joy, all who love our folk see how under the distress of the war, forced upon us with outrageous boldness, the religious needs in our congregations are growing. Houses of God and worship services are full. The apparently dead spark of faith is being lit again. In many places the drafted are going to the army with the intercessory prayers of the congregation. One senses: God speaks to our folk in the distress of battles. And God be praised: our folk are finding their God again and speak to him as their shelter and their strong refuge. One can say: a field white and ripe for a spiritual harvest lives before us. 346. DIETRICH VORWERK: THE LORD’S PRAYER IN WARTIME (1914) From Dietrich Vorwerk. Hurr urraa und Halleluha: Kriegslieder Kriegslieder. (Schwerin in Mecklenburg, F. Bahn, 1914), 31. trans. by Eric Lund. Our Father, from heaven’s height Hasten to support the German people. Help us in this holy war! Let your name, like a star, light the way. Lead your German Reich to most glorious victories. Who will stand among the victors? Who will go into the dark sword-grave? Lord, your will be done! Although the bread of war is meager, Bring to the enemy daily death and tenfold woes! In your merciful forbearance, forgive every bullet and every strike that we misfire. Lead us not into the temptation to carry out your divine judgment too mildly. Deliver us and our allies From our infernal enemy And his servants on earth, For the kingdom, the German land, is yours; We must, through your armor-clad hand, become powerful and glorious.

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

347. HERMANN FRANKE: WAR SERMONS 1914 Franke (b. 1861) was a Lutheran pastor in Silesia at the time he preached this sermon. Later he was a pastor in Berlin. He received a doctorate from Halle and wrote a book on Christianity and Darwinism. From Kriegs–Pr Kriegs–Predigten edigten Bd I (Seyffarth: Liegnitz, 1914), 7–10, 27. trans. by Eric Lund. August 2, 1914, 8th Sunday after Trinity Matthew 12:46–50 We could draw many instructive parallels; we could say that as Jesus was treated, so also have our German folk been treated. Quietly and strenuously it has done its duty, fulfilled God’s will as best it knows it, and as far as it was humanly possible. The people have worked not only for themselves and their salvation, but for the wellbeing and the moral and religious progress of all humanity – they have worked for the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth. Ideal purposes have always been more highly valued by the Germans—certainly by its best members—than earthly gains. And what thanks have they received from the people, to whom they have ungrudgingly given their best? They at once associate the German nation with Beelzebub! It is accused of having incited and precipitated the war, it is charged with having wickedly invaded peaceful neighbors. And yet they all know perfectly well how good–natured and peace–loving the German Michel [traditional personification of the Folk] has been.10 They thought they had lulled him to slumber with their hypocritical songs of peace. When he has fallen fast asleep, then they would all attack him and strangle him. And the saddest things was that even in our own German house, there were many brethren who sided with our hypocritically peace–loving opponents and those who remained awake and cried, “Wake up, Michel. Remain strong and on guard, you German people. Look around. The enemies surround you,” were called warmongers. Now we see we are in good company when we are thus slandered. Our Master was called Beelzebub, so why should his imperfect disciples be treated any better! But what then is the will of God in this war? . . . It is not his will that one cry peace when there is and can be no peace, but rather that the folk as a whole and every individual give everything for the highest good of humanity, for freedom and honor and Fatherland and civilization and human progress. . . .

187

“God with us!” is an old Prussian call to battle. It should also now be our watchword. If God is for us, who can be against us? August 30, 1914 Sermon for the 12th Sunday after Trinity All battles, outward or inward—battles of conscience, mind and war—have to do in the end with truth and freedom. . . . They envy our freedom, our power to do our work in peace, to make progress by our competence, to fulfil our appointed task for the good of the world and humanity, to restore the world by the German nature, to become a blessing to the peoples of the earth. Wherever the German spirit fully comes into its own, there freedom also prevails. And have not our enemies required lies and venomous defamation in the endeavor to justify their aggression in the world’s eyes and their own? Does this not prove that the truth, too, is with us? Truth and freedom, those two great blessings, are in our Gospel promised by the Lord Himself. To whom? To his true disciples. . . . Here we touch on the old intimate kinship between the essence of Christianity and of Germanism. Because the two are so congenial, Christianity must find its fairest flowering in the German spirit. Therefore we must say: ‘Our German Christianity—the most perfect, the most pure.’ The joy of seeking the truth and of being free has always been the highest joy to Germans. . . . 348. PAUL ALTHAUS: THE WAR AND OUR FAITH IN GOD (1915) From Wilhelm Laible. Deutsche Theolog Theologen en über den Krieg Krieg. (Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1915), 221, 233, 235, 244. trans. by Eric Lund. War and faith in God: in what relation do they stand to each other? Are they not two irreconcilable enemies? Do they not appear to exclude each other as incompatible opposites? Christian faith and war—is it not like trying to mix fire and water if one contrives to bring into accord what is and must be alien in its innermost essence? Is not the Christian religion a searing protest against war and is not war the shameful bankruptcy of Christendom? That war may be a political necessity is evident at first glance. That the presently fearful war, which has burned almost the entire earth like a general conflagration, concerns not merely the honor and power-

188

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

position of our German folk but its very being or non-being, that our national independence, our entire economic and cultural future is at stake, is not hidden from understanding. The hate and perfidy of our enemies, who under the hypocritical guise of a struggle against German militarism and barbarism intend in truth nothing less than our ruin and the extermination of the German type and nature, have forced this outrageous war upon us and compelled us to take weapons in hand in defense of our people’s existence. But what does that have to do with our faith? What does this faith say about our conduct of the war? Indeed, how is the exercise of our religion now possible?

Fig. 7.2. Paul Althaus

What then does our faith mean? What is its inalienable content? It consists in the confident certainty that the eternal and almighty God who is love, our creator and father, rules the world in its entire scope according to his holy will so that he uses all beings without exception, the great and the small, the forces and laws of nature as well as the free acts of human persons and the course of human history, according to his all-wise counsel as a means to the working out of his eternal purpose of salvation. In whatever may therefore confront us, be it in indi-

vidual experiences or in harrowing world–historical events that impinge on our lives—the Christian sees, in them all, not the doom of a dark power of fate, nor the law of a rigid necessity nor the capricious play of blind chance but the workings of a worldcontrolling, just and at the same time gracious God. We take therefore every experience from whatever side it may come to us, however it may be conveyed directly from God’s hand, as his act of providence and dispensation. . . . But in so far as our faith is a faith in God it includes in it the unshakable certainty that God holds the world in his hand and, despite the dark, often so fearful secrets of the course of history, everything leads to one blessed end. Christian faith compels us to conceive of God as beyond the world but also in the world and its history. It is—theologically-academically expressed—the thought of transcendence and immanence which Christianity represents in its belief in God. . . . Also the war, as absurd as it may appear to us, forms a link in the chain of events, through which God brings to completion his holy purpose of love towards humanity and leads them to eternal consummation. . . . If we see the war in this way, we believe—because we have here throughout a judgment of faith—that we have then achieved a storm-free position, which cannot be shattered by any difficult hardships of war, not even if it should please God to subject our faith to the hardest test. If he should want to impose the deepest humiliation on our folk, as our fathers experienced in 1806, so we will not lose faith in him. Our faith in God is not dependent on the outer results of the war. And victory, as such, is not a judgment of God. Even if we should be convinced that we conduct a just war and fight for the highest and most holy good that God has entrusted to us, we are still far from the proud delusion as if we are perfect and merit no punishment. Even a folk trusting in God can need serious afflictions for its purification and renewal. Even a just war need not lead from victory to victory. We confidently hope, indeed, for a victorious conclusion to this bloody war—but not because we think ourselves so much better and more excellent than other folk, but because we must cherish the certainty that, if it can be traced back to him, God still has something great in mind for our richly gifted and highly blessed German folk for the promotion of his kingdom on earth. We, indeed, pray for a victory, but we do not want to control God’s world-governance with our prayers. We pray in humble submis-

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

sion to his all wise counsel, in obedient resignation to his powerful hand: “Father, your will be done. . . .”

Fig. 7.3. Reinhold Seeberg (1859–1935)

349. PETITION OF THE INTELLECTUALS (ANNEXATIONISTS) (JUNE 20, 1915) This petition was drafted by the Lutheran theologian Reinhold Seeberg and sent to Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, undersigned by 352 university professors. It summarized the annexationist perspective. The militant nature of the petition prompted a more moderate statement, drafted by Berlin history professor Hans Delbrück, which called for a negotiated peace. The latter was signed by 140 intellectuals including Adolf Harnack, Ernst Troeltsch, Max Weber, and Albert Einstein. From Klaus Böhme. Aufruf ufrufee und Reden deutscher Pr Prof ofessor essoren en im Ersten Weltkrieg eltkrieg. (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1975), 125–135. trans. by Eric Lund. The German people and their emperor have kept the peace for forty-four years, upholding it to the limit of their national honor and the preservation of their existence. . . . Since we Germans, with one accord from the

189

highest to the least, have raised our consciousness, not only of our outward, but also of our inner, spiritual and moral life, we must defend the culture of Germany and Europe against the flood of barbarians from the East and the cravings for revenge and domination in the West . . . But now, mere defense is no longer enough for us. . . . Now we want to protect ourselves with all our powers against a repetition of such attacks from all sides and the threat of a whole series of wars by a newly strengthened enemy. We want to set up a secured and enlarged homeland, as firm and as wide as possible, so that the independent existence of our race is guaranteed . . . We do not seek world domination, but want full worldwide recognition, corresponding to the extent of our cultural, economic and military powers. . . . 1. France—. . . We must ruthlessly weaken this country politically and economically for the sake of our own existence, and we must improve our military–strategic situation in comparison to it. . . . 2. Belgium—We must hold Belgium firmly in our hands, politically, militarily and economically. 3. Russia—. . . The safeguarding our borders and the foundation of our national growth, requires land, which Russia must give up. . . . 4. England, the Orient, colonies and overseas territories.—. . . Enforcement in the global economy, and assertion of German maritime and overseas validity in opposition to England. . . . 5. War reparations . . . 6. No cultural policy without power politics.—..... Concern for the German spirit does not depend upon the aims of war or the terms for peace. However, if we should say a word about the German spirit, the value of all national values, the possession of all national goods, the significance of its existence, the assertion and establishment of our people in the world and the reason for German superiority among the nations, we would emphasize: First, Germany must be politically and economically secure before it can pursue its spiritual vocations in freedom. Then, to those who want the German spirit without power politics, who desire only the so–called cultural politics, to them we cry out: We do not want a German spirit, which stands in danger, decayed, and disintegrating into a rootless folk spirit. . . . We want with our demands to create a healthy body for the German spirit.

190

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

350. OTTO BAUMGARTEN: CONCERNING ANNEXATION POLITICS (1917) From Ev Evang angelische elische Freiheit: Kirchliche Chr Chronik onik (1917), 190. trans. by Eric Lund. As I profusely explained in my most annoying book on Politics and Morality (Politik und Moral, 1916), a Protestant ethic in itself can take no offence at a policy of conquest or annexation. For that fits very well with Protestant Realpolitik or power politics as it was characteristically represented by Friedrich the Great and Bismarck. The preservation and expansion of power is the supreme law for the very viability of a national political system. I have never taken moral offense at the expansionist policy of Russia towards Constantinople nor Romanian annexation of the mainly Romanian–speaking parts of Hungary. . . . Concretely speaking, once it was proved to me that the nutritional reserves for an increased number of children in Germany can no longer be achieved within the old boundaries of Germany or by extensive internal colonization, I do not see how I can object from a moral standpoint to the annexation of the excellent land in Kurland (Baltic Livonia) which has already long been inhabited by German colonists. For absolute pacifism is definitely not a Protestant dogma. Protestantism generally accommodates all individuation with the confidence of divine dispensation, recognizes the divinely ordained division of humanity into nations, and strengths the character of (each) folk. . . . On the other hand, in my view, the vital interests of their own land prohibit Protestant politicians from pursuing an unlimited policy of conquest and annexation. . . . Our experiences until now with non– native populations within our borders shows that excesses in expansion and security policies have dire consequences to an enormous measure. In any case, fulfillment of the demands of economic associations and the Pan-Germans would require the complete crushing of England, which we can scarcely expect. ..... 351. THE GERMAN PROTESTANT CHURCH COMMISSION: ADDRESS ON THE REFORMATION JUBILEE DECEMBER (1917) From Allg Allgemeines emeines Kirchenblatt für das ev evang angelische elische Deutschland 66: 1917, 1. trans. by Eric Lund. On October 31, 1917, Protestant Christianity

thinks of the birth hour of the Reformation—the day on which, 400 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther nailed his theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg and thereby renewed the Church of the Gospel. We still do not know whether the beginning of a new year will bring us peace, which would allow for a greater celebration. Also, even if an honorable peace is celebrated in the victorious Fatherland, there will scarcely be no room for a festive mood. Nevertheless, we should not allow the joy of the victory of the Reformation, which was sent by God, wither away. . . . In the difficult storms of four centuries, our fathers have again and again found comfort and world–conquering power in the faith of the Reformation. Great men whom God has sent to our people were children of the Reformation, but its blessing is also revealed in the simple faith and the self–denying fulfillment of duty of the common man. All this makes us realize Martin Luther as a heroic figure who set an example of the evangelical form of life for his people, who gave us the Bible, the hymnbook, the catechism (and through them a uniform German language), and who, as the embodiment of the German essence, remains the greatest hero for our evangelical folk. We celebrate the memorial of the Reformation, not to glorify the man but rather to praise the Lord who sent him to his church. KAISER’S BIRTHDAY: REFORMATION ANNIVERSARY (JANUARY 27, 1917) From Ernst Rudolf Huber & Wolfgang Huber. Staat und Kirche im 19. Und 20. Jahrhunder Jahrhundert. Bd. III: Von der Beileg Beilegung ung des Kulturskapfts bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs eltkriegs. (Berlin: Duncker & Humboldt, 1983), #376: 839–40. trans. by Eric Lund. With your imperial and royal Majesty, the German people mark the celebration of your birthday for the third time in this terrible period of war . . . An unspeakably great responsibility rests on your Majesty, which becomes more difficult every day in the ever-increasing distress of this war. But, in the most difficult distress of earlier days the German people stood by their exalted rulers in all times with commendable strength, upholding faithfulness to their heavenly Lord by faithfulness to their earthly lord. So also now it is not only the pledge which the evangelical church of Germany declares to your Majesty in this festive hour, but also the fervent effort

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

of its congregations in the struggle forced upon the Fatherland. . . . The Evangelical Church is entering the anniversary year of the Reformation. The victory hymn of the greatest German man sounds against a world of enemies: “A mighty fortress is our God!” A faithful holding fast to the benefits of the Reformation vouches/guarantees also faithful holding fast to the Kaiser and the Reich and the power of victorious perseverance in the most fearful world war in world history. God the Lord bless our beloved Kaiser! He avows himself to your Majesty, as your Majesty avows to him. The prayers for our highly beloved Kaiser which today in the entire Fatherland go out from faithful evangelical hearts to the heart of God, will not be forgotten. 352. DECLARATION OF FIVE BERLIN PASTORS: A CALL FOR PEACE (OCTOBER 17, 1917) From Die Christliche Welt (October 17, 1917), 156. trans. by Eric Lund. In the month of the commemoration of the Reformation we undersigned Berlin pastors, in agreement with many Protestant men and women, bind ourselves to the following declaration, which should be an answer likewise to the many manifestations from neutral nations. We German Protestants reach out from the heart of brotherhood, in consciousness of common Christian values and goals, to all co-religionists, including those in enemy states. We recognize the root causes of this war in the anti-Christian powers which dominate the life of the people, in distrust, in glorification of power and greed, and we see, in a peace of understanding and reconciliation, a desirable peace. We see the impediment to an honest convergence of people especially in the calamitous reign of lies and phrases through which the truth is concealed or disfigured and through which delusions are spread. We summon all who wish for peace, in all countries, to a vigorous struggle against this impediment. We feel the duty of conscience, in the face of this terrible war, to strive henceforth with all decisiveness, in the name of Christianity, to banish war as a means of contestation among folk throughout the world.

191

POST WORLD WAR I ATTITUDES: TURMOIL DURING THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC 353. ADDRESS OF THE GENERAL SUPERINTENDENTS OF THE OLD PRUSSIAN PROVINCES: ANSWER TO VERSAILLES (1919) From Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die ev evang angelischen elischen Landeskirchen in Deutschland (1919), 349. trans. by Eric Lund. In the hour of deepest humiliation of our people, we turn to the Protestant congregations with a triple request. The first: The German Reich and its glory is broken; a time of stress and powerlessness lies ahead of us. But the Kingdom of our God remains unshaken. His foot is also in the great waters [Isa 43:16, Ps 77:19]. Therefore, let us hold fast to the faith that overcomes the world, to the living God and the one whom he has sent, Jesus Christ! And though we, defenseless, must submit to the cruel and outrageous conditions of our enemies—it is impossible to surrender the last and only thing that remains for us: our honor and our conscience. . . . The demand that we acknowledge that we are the only guilty party in the war sticks like a lie in the mouth, which blatantly violates our conscience. As Protestant Christians we raise a solemn holy protest before God and men against the attempt to apply this stigma to our nation. However one may judge the individual acts of the government of our Kaiser, the purity of his will, the blamelessness of his way of life, the seriousness of his personal Christianity and his deeply grounded feeling of responsibility remain certain. We may not be able to protect him by outer means, but here is our request: in unison with millions of German men and women, we call on our communities, in this emergency, to surround the Kaiser and his seriously ill wife, who is so exemplary for acts of Christian mercy, along with our German leaders and heroes, with the wall of our prayers. Humanity has forsaken us, but the cry of our plaint before God is able to prove to be a great power that is stronger than the evil of the world. The third request: Let us never grow weary, as long as God gives us life, in fearlessly doing our duty to alleviate the suffering, strengthen hope, and practice love. The core of our faith is our Lord Jesus Christ who has redeemed us. Let us prove ourselves

192

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

as his disciples in following him, and also build up our country in its power. . . . 354. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC (AUGUST 1919) From Martin Greschat and Hans-Walter Krumwiede, eds. Kirchen–und Theolog Theologieg iegeschichte eschichte in Quellen. Bd. V, Das Zeitalter der Weltkrieg eltkriegee und Revolutionen (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1999) #10, 22–24, trans. by Eric Lund. Article 135 All Reich inhabitants enjoy full freedom of faith and conscience. Undisturbed practice of religion is guaranteed by the constitution and is placed under the protection of the state. General state laws are not hereby affected. Article 136 Civil and civic rights and obligations are neither conditioned nor limited by the exercising of freedom of religion. The exercise of civil or civic rights, as well as admittance to public offices are independent of religious confession. Nobody is obliged to reveal his religious persuasion publicly. Public authorities may only ask about affiliation with a religious organization as far as rights and obligations depend on it or as required by an officially decreed census. Nobody may be forced to attend a religious act or ceremony, participate in religious practices or swear by a religious oath. Article 137 There is no state church. Freedom of association in religious organizations is guaranteed. There are no limitations regarding the merger of religious organizations within the Reich territory. Every religious community administrates its own affairs independently within the limits of all current laws. Religious societies acquire legal capacity according to general specifications of civil law. Religious societies, as far as they have been, remain corporations with a special legal status. Other religious societies have to be granted the

same rights on application, if they, by the means of their number and constitution, offer the warrant of permanence. If several religious societies with a public legal status form a confederation, the status of a public corporation is also extended to this confederation. Religious communities with the status of public corporations are entitled to raise taxes based on fiscal records and in accordance with state regulations. Religious communities are given equal status with civic organizations which have the purpose of cultivating a world-view. Inasmuch as the application of these regulations requires further details, these have to be established by state legislation. Article 138 State contributions to religious organizations, which are based on law, treaty or specific legal claim, are to be handled by state legislation. The Reich provides the principles for this. The right of religious societies and organizations to own institutions serving religious practice, education and public welfare, and to own respective endowments and other property are guaranteed. Article 139 Sundays and other nationally recognized holidays designated as days of rest from work and for spiritual edification continue to be protected by law. Article 141 Insofar as there is a demand for religious worship and pastoral care in the army, in hospitals, prisons or other public institutions, religious organizations are to be permitted to perform religious acts, although they have to refrain from any form of compulsion. Article 149 Religious instruction is a regular subject in schools, with the exception of those that are secular or without a confession. The granting of permission for this will be regulated by school legislation. It will be taught in accordance with the principles of the respective religious community, notwithstanding the state’s right of supervision. The granting of permission for religious instruction and participation in religious activities continues

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

to be an intentional act of the teachers. Participation in religious instruction or ceremonies and actions of declaring intent are to be left to the decision of those who have to regulate the religious education of children. Theological departments at universities continue to operate. Article 173 Until a Reich law will be proclaimed according to article 138, present state disbursements to religious organizations, based on law, treaty or other legal titles, will continue. 355. THE GERMAN EVANGELICAL CHURCH FEDERATION (DEK) CONSTITUTION (MAY 25, 1922) During the Weimar Republic, 28 territorial churches met in Wittenberg to create this federation. The key administrative units were the Kirchentag, the Kirchenbundesrat and the Kirchenausschuss. It lasted from 1922–1933, when reorganization took place under Nazism. From Kupisch, Karl. Quellen zur Geschichte des deutschen Pr Protestantismus otestantismus (1871–1945. (München, Hamburg: Siebenstern Taschenbuch Verlag, 1960), #40: 154–59. trans. by Eric Lund. #1 Purpose of the Federation The church federation has the purpose of protecting and representing the common interests of the regional churches and bringing about a close and lasting association to maintain the overall awareness of Protestantism and to apply the combined forces of the churches for the religious and moral world–view of the German Reformation—all this everything with the reservation of full independence of the federated churches in confession, constitution and administration. #5 The institutions of the federation are a) the German Protestant Convention (Kirchentag), b) the German Protestant Church Federation Council (Kirchenbundesrat), c) the German Protestant Church Committee (Kirchenausschuss). . . . #7 The Kirchentag (Church Convention) consists of 210 members. a) 150 members who are chosen by the upper synods of the individual territorial churches. . . . b) 35 more members who will be called from the Church Committee: namely 8 by nomination of the theological faculties, 15 by the

193

recommendation of teachers of religion and 15 by organizations extending throughout the entirety of the German territorial churches. . . . c) The remaining 25 members will be appointed as an equalization group by free resolution from the Church Committee. #8 The Church Convention period lasts six years. It includes of two regular sessions, one at the beginning of the period and the other regularly three years later. An extraordinary session may be held in urgent circumstances. . . . #11 (1) The Church Federation Council consists of representatives of the church administration of the territorial churches coming together in the federation. (2) Every territorial church had at least one voice in the church federation council. For the larger territorial churches, one vote is reserved for each half million Protestant inhabitants. No territorial church may be represented by more than two-fifths of the votes. ..... #14 The German Protestant Church Committee consists of 18 members delegated from the members of the church federation council. . . . #15 The Church Committee is the managing and executive body of the church federation. It shall be the representative of the federation to a full extent, including representation before courts and other authorities. . . . 356. THE DECLARATION CONCERNING THE FATHERLAND BY THE KIRCHENTAG (1927) From Kupisch, Karl. Quellen zur Geschichte des deutschen Pr Protestantismus otestantismus 1871–1945 (München, Hamburg: Siebenstern Taschenbuch Verlag, 1960), #45: 164–66. trans. by Eric Lund. . . . God is God of all people (nations), Jesus Christ is savior of the entire world. One should not equate the cause of God with the cause of any particular people (Volk). There is a community of faith and love, which connects all who profess Christ, across national boundaries and racial differences. We want to maintain this global sense of the Kingdom of God. We take seriously our collaboration in the work of Stockholm [1925 Conference on Life and Work] and other global tasks of Christianity. However, the diversity of people (Volk) is also ordained by God. Every nation has its special gift and task in the whole of humanity. Each also has a right to the Gospel in its

194

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

native language. No minority should be deprived of this right. We are German and want to be German. Our national character is given us by God. It is a duty, a double duty, to uphold this in a situation such as the present. We reject a world-citizenship that is indifferent to one’s own nation. Jesus our Lord, and Paul and Luther, each of them had a heart for his people, mourned over its misery and sin and struggle for its best interests. Christianity and German culture (Deutschtum) have been narrowly bound to each other for more than a millenium. . . . Nevertheless some want to alienate Christianity and German culture from each other, to set them against each other. This constitutes a deadly danger for our people. The church cannot remain silent about this. It calls for a struggle and the use of all powers for the ever fuller penetration of the people with the spirit of the Gospel. We must remain what we were, a nation that draws its deepest life forces from the Gospel. Such work on the soul of our people must happen especially in view of the inwardly alienated brethren among us. We can and do not want to leave them. The church proclaims that there is an eternal home about our earthly home. But, that does not mislead it to appreciate home and fatherland any less. As it seeks peace among the nations it stands up for the freedom and rights of its own people. It appreciates the joy of the homeland, the great figures, the creations and events of its national history, of German education and civilization. It views these assets in the light of God’s Word so as to purify and deepen the joy of them. It wants the situation in the Fatherland to be and become one in which all citizens, without exception, can feel at home. Today we see our people and country suppressed from the outside and inwardly torn and jagged. The moral foundations of the state and legal system are in a predicament. The church stands above parties. It serves all its members, regardless of the party to which they belong, with the same love, and all have the same rights in their midst. It has the task of applying the principles of the divine word. It allows and gives the state what belongs to the state. The state is a divine order for us with its own important tasks. True to the teachings of Scripture do the church prays for the people, the state and government. Equally, it has certain moral demands to make to the state. In particular, it cannot refrain from independently and boldly applying eternal moral standards to legislation and administration, and representing

the demands of the Christian conscience throughout public life. The church makes three demands of its members. It wants all to serve the whole state according to the best of their knowledge and conscience and to sacrifice for the sake of the whole. It wants everyone to be subject to the state for the sake of the word of God. It wants all to be conscious of their share of responsibility and to apply themselves to strengthen, improve and support the state. Such service for the Fatherland is also service to God. . . . NAZISM AND THE GERMAN CHRISTIAN FAITH MOVEMENT 357. THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST WORKER’S PARTY PLATFORM (1920) Trans. in http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/1708– ps.asp. Accessed June 9, 2016. 24. We demand freedom for all religious denominations within the state, so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral and senses of the Germanic race. The party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish materialist spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only come about from within the framework: common utility precedes Individual utility. 358. THE ORIGINAL GUIDELINES OF THE GERMAN CHRISTIAN FAITH MOVEMENT (1932) Trans. by Mary Solberg in A Church Undone: Documents fr from om the German Christian Faith Movement 1932–1940 1932–1940. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 81. 1. These principles are intended to show all faithful Germans the path and the goals that will lead them to a new church order. These principles are not intended to be or to replace a confession of faith, nor are they meant to undermine the confessional foundations of the Protestant Church. They are a confession of life. 2. We are fighting to achieve an integration of the twenty–nine constituent churches of the “German

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Evangelical Church Association” into one National Protestant Church [evangelische Reichskirche], and we march under the slogan and goal: Externally, one and strong in spirit, gathered around Christ and his Word, internally, rich and diverse, each Christian according to individual calling and style. 3. The name “German Christians” does not connote an ecclesiastical political party as known heretofore. It addresses itself to all Protestant Christians who are Germans. The era of parliamentarianism is over, in the church as well. The parties associated with various churches do not have the religious credentials to represent the people of the church; in fact, they stand in the way of the noble goal of our becoming a churchly people. We want a vigorous people’s church [Volkskirche], one that expresses the power of our faith. 4. We stand on the ground of positive Christianity. We confess an affirmative faith in Christ, one suited to a truly German Lutheran spirit and heroic piety. 5. We want to bring to our church the reawakened German sense of life and to revitalize our church. In the fateful struggle for German freedom and our future, the leadership of the church has proven to be too weak. Up to this point the church has not risen to the challenge of a determined struggle against godless Marxism and the Center Party [Catholics], so alien to our spirit; instead, it has made a compact with the political parties of these powers. We want our church to be front and center in the battle that will decide the life or death of our people. The church may not stand on the sidelines or dissociate itself from those who are fighting for freedom. 6. We demand a revision of the political clauses of this church compact, as well as a battle against irreligious and anti-Volk Marxism and its ChristianSocialist minions of every stripe. We do not see in this present church compact a daring confidence in God and in the church’s mission. The path to the Kingdom of God leads through struggle, cross, and sacrifice, not through a false peace. 7. We recognize in race, ethnicity [Volkstum], and nation orders of life given and entrusted to us by God, who has commanded us to preserve them. For this reason race-mixing must be opposed. Based on its experience, the German foreign mission has long admonished the German people: “Keep your race pure!” and tells us that faith in Christ does not destroy race, but rather deepens and sanctifies it. 8. We see in Home Mission, rightly conceived, a living, active Christianity that, in our view, is rooted not in mere compassion but rather in obedience to

195

God’s will and gratitude for Christ’s death on the cross. Mere compassion is charity, which leads to arrogance coupled with a guilty conscience that makes a people soft. We are conscious of Christian duty towards and love for the helpless, but we also demand that the people be protected from those who are inept and inferior. The Home Mission must in no way contribute to the degeneration of our people. Furthermore, it should avoid economic adventures and must not become a shopkeeper. 9. In the mission to the Jews we see great danger to our people. It is the point at which foreign blood enters the body of our people. There is no justification for its existing alongside the foreign mission. We reject the mission to the Jews as long as Jews have citizenship, which brings with it the danger of race-blurring and race-bastardizing. Holy Scripture speaks both of holy wrath and of self-denying love. It is especially important to prohibit marriages between Germans and Jews. 10. We want a Protestant church with its roots in the people, and we reject the spirit of a Christian cosmopolitanism. Through our faith in the ethnonational [völkisch] mission God has commanded us to carry out, we want to overcome all the destructive phenomena that emerge from this spirit, such as pacifism, internationalism, Freemasonry, and so forth. No Protestant clergy may belong to a Masonic lodge. 359. THE PRINCIPLES OF THE GERMAN CHRISTIAN FAITH MOVEMENT (MAY 1933) From Niederdeutsche Kirchenzeitung 3, 1933, 182. trans. by Eric Lund. We want a “Protestant Reich Church of Lutheran Character,” (Evangelische Reichskirche) incorporating the Reformed congregations, whose particularity will be guaranteed safeguarded. We do not want a state church, but also no church that is a state within the state. Rather, we want a Protestant Reich Church, which faithfully acknowledges the sovereignty of the National Socialist state and proclaims the gospel in the Third Reich. The Protestant Reich Church is the church of the German Christians, that is, Christians of the Aryan race. In this respect, it is also associated with the German Christians in foreign countries. The proclamation of the gospel among other peoples is the concern of foreign missions. The church that is organized this way should be neither the refuge of reaction nor a democratic-parliamentary forum for debate.

196

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

The Protestant Reich Church will contribute to the self-assurance of the people and will be led by the Reich Bishop. The Protestant Reich Church will be organized into no more than ten regional churches, each of which will be headed by a regional bishop. The Reich bishop will be Lutheran, consistent with the overwhelming majority of church members. A Reformed Reich vicar will stand by his side. The seat of the Reich bishop will be Luther’s city, Wittenberg. The Castle Church will be his parish. In a primary election on October 1933, the Protestant church people as a whole will approve the formation of the Reich Church, in according with the preceding directives, and will choose the person of the Reich bishop. All members of Protestant congregations will be entitled to vote, in accordance with national electoral law. This excludes Christians who are of non-Aryan descent. In accordance with the foregoing principles, the Reich bishop will accomplish the further setting up of the Protestant Reich Church. 360. GERMAN CHRISTIAN HANDBOOK: LUTHER AND HITLER (1933) Trans. by Mary Solberg in A Church Undone: Documents fr from om the German Christian Faith Movement 1932–1940 1932–1940. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), #6. On October 31, 1517, Luther nailed his NinetyFive Theses to the [door of] the Schlosskirche at Wittenberg. The hammer blows echoed like the strokes of a bell ringing in the beginning of a new era. The German soul had freed itself from the Roman straitjacket. A new stage in the history of our people was beginning. The German eagle stretched out its wings and the powerful swish of its beating wings awakened the German people. The message, “We have a gracious God,” and the message about the freedom of a Christian became the confession of this Germany, now so rudely awakened. Wary and suspicious, the international world power Rome waited to see what would happen. At the beginning Rome did not take the emerging Reformation seriously; in fact, they thought that if they offered the angry monk a bishop’s hat they would win him back for the Roman world power. “I was born for my Germans, and them will I serve,” was the response of this German Christian who after a difficult struggle had found his connection with God and who now would lead his German people

on the same path, even if it meant the breakup of the church. The papal bull was drawn up and sent out, and when on December 10, 1521, Luther consigned the papal bull [excommunicating him] and the canonical Roman law of the pope to the pyre at the Elster Gate in Wittenberg, he believed he had cleared the way for a new völkisch system of laws that would emerge out of the ancient law of blood and soil. Justification by faith, the wonderful message of the German Reformation, would show the way. But the [Holy] Roman Empire of the German nation was too closely coupled with the world power, Rome. The time had not yet come; only a few German princes understood the German prophet and, with him, the voice of the people. The Diet [parliament] at Worms witnessed a brilliant assembly of spiritual and worldly worthies, before whom the German reformer was to give an account of himself. Driven by his conscience, he had done nothing more than seek a relationship with God, and he felt compelled to establish this relationship for his people, too. The Diet at Worms, much like a “League of Nations,” did not understand this German man who was fighting for the freedom of his German people. The guardian of the Roman system of law, the German emperor, declared him an outlaw. But the seed that Luther, as God’s instrument, sowed among the German people germinated and bore fruit. Four hundred years have passed since then. Once again we stand at a turning point in history. On January 30, 1933, a new stage in the history of our people and Fatherland began. Starting with a small group of determined men who carry their Fatherland in their hearts as a sacred trust, a movement grew here in Germany that is today the movement of the entire German people. And if we ask ourselves today, how this was possible and where the strength came from, after the terrible misery our land has experienced, to bring about this rebirth of our nation, we must with astonished but faithful hearts recognize the overwhelming strength of an idea that can move the world and transform it: the idea of National Socialism. The agent of the National Socialist idea is Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler believed in Germany when there was nothing left to believe in. Just as our Dr. Martin Luther, with his “nevertheless” [“Dennoch”], and “even if the world were filled with devils,” fashioned the German Reformation and with it freed the core of the German soul, just so Adolf Hitler, with his faith in Germany, as the instrument of our God became the framer of German destiny and the libera-

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

tor of our people from their spiritual misery and division. . . . National Socialism and German Christianity belong together. They are two sides of one and the same thing, just as prayer and work belong together, or inner, invisible strength belongs with outer, visible structure. Just as a tree without roots must wither, so there is no such thing as Christianity without a people. But a people can only live and survive if it is ruled and sustained by an idea formed from the creative power of blood and soil, and only if this idea is suffused with the redemptive content of the Gospel. In these times we see how more and more people are being caught up in a blaze of excitement, and how the German people, seized by the radical change in progress, are waking up, as if from a bad dream, from a terrible delusion, and are seeing their Germany with different eyes because the idea of National Socialism has made it possible for them to experience their Fatherland in a new way. This renewal has sparked again in these people a burning love for their Volk and their Fatherland, and their hearts beat faster again when they think of Germany, because this thinking is once again being shaped by the voice of the blood, and this blood is once again bound up with the eternal law of blood and soil, of Mother Earth and the human Volk that she has brought into being and that lives upon her. During the last decades the laws of the divine order of creation have been disregarded far too often. This is why a new foundation has had to be laid for future generations. But the foundation of the German people’s life is inextricably bound up with God, Volk, and Fatherland. This is why God, Volk, and Fatherland must be a sacred experience—for the will to be a community is born out of this experience, and the spirit of sacrifice grows out of the will to be a community. And high above stands the bright banner: “I serve.” Oh, may our whole Volk be caught up in this experience! Then, despite the League of Nations and the intrigues of our enemies, there will be one Germany whose strong framework will be able to serve as a foundation for generations to come. . . . 361. LUDWIG MÜLLER: WHAT IS POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY? (1939) From Ludwig Müller. Was ist positives Christentum? (Stuttgart: Der Tazzelwurm Verlag, 2002), 99. trans. by Eric Lund.

197

Fig. 7.4. Bishop Ludwig Müller with Nazis (1933)

Between God and the Devil there is no compromise. Between good and evil just as little. The same also between the truth and a lie. Therefore [we acknowledge] the commandment and the claim of Christ: “Who is not with me, is against me!” [Matt 12:30]. Neutrality between truth and lies is impossible. Out of this inner awareness I became, in due course, a National Socialist. In Germany, Marxism once prevailed. Karl Marx was a fullblooded Jews and an absolute hater of Christianity throughout his life. Bolshevism and Communism are, according to their representatives, pure Marxism. If I were asked during the time of struggle: “What should one choose?” I would firmly answer: Either the far left or the far right, either Communism or National Socialism. Since now National Socialism stands on the ground of a positive Christianity, the decision for me was clear and simple. I became with full consideration and full conviction a National Socialist. I am of the opinion that later generations will not be able to understand the opposition of the clergy and the church against National Socialism. . . . If the church and its servants simply and unambiguously attempted to implement the either-or demand of its Lord, it would have also recognized the signs of the times. Then the priests and pastors of both churches and confessions in Germany would have become the first and most fanatical fighters for Adolf Hitler. . . . What would the German churches have become if Bolshevism had been victorious? Has not National Socialism actually rescued the church and its servants from its most bitter enemy? . . . Whoever weakens confidence in the Führer and undermines trust in the idea of National Socialism sins against our people and our country, because he practically operates the business of Bolshevism,

198

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

which is the declared enemy of positive Christianity and the outspoken enemy of God. Therefore the battle cry, for God’s sake, for the sake of a positive Christianity, for our people’s sake, for the sake of truth and love, must be: “Away with all separates and subverts, away with church disputes and away with confessions. There is only one God. There is only one Germany. One folk, one faith. . . . It is the task of the state and all organizations in the land to serve the whole people, so the church more than ever also has this task. But, if, as now among us in Germany, there are different churches, which are in conflict because of their historical development, that situation is completely intolerable for the inner unifying of the National Socialist state. The desire of the great mass of the people is also unambiguously clear that one people must have one faith, because the politically united German people cannot, in the long run, stand for a spiritual separation into different confessions and sects. . . . The young people and the future in Germany no longer belong to one or the other confessional church, but belong, rather, to the state, the folk, and the united German nation. Therefore the unity of the Reich requires the unity of faith. It can be deduced from the reality of national unity that the new German Church is not something alongside the state, even less against the state. It must become a normal part of the people and the state, like schools and the armed forces. Even Luther wanted a Rome-free German church with bishops and archbishops and a primate in Germania. This German longing was pushed back by the Counter-Reformation, but it never died and lives now more than ever. . . . 362. EMANUEL HIRSCH: WHAT THE GERMAN CHRISTIANS WANT FROM THE CHURCH—AN ASSESSMENT OF KARL BARTH’S ATTACK (1933) Trans. by Mary Solberg in A Church Undone: Documents fr from om the German Christian Faith Movement 1932–1940 1932–1940.” (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), #4. For us German Christians there is no talking with Karl Barth. He calls us “openly wild heretics” . . . He calls German Christians the “bad guys,” warning that the church must withstand the temptation they represent. For us there is no talking with Karl Barth.

Though aware of his responsibility to the church, he has closed his ears. To speak with others—those before whom he makes such an effort to blacken our good Christian name—is difficult. Reading what he has written, one is seized by a longing for the conscientiousness and thoroughness with which the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theologians of our church fought against heresy. There, every judgment was grounded in hard, clean work. There it was possible to seek clarification of the disputed questions. Karl Barth makes his condemnation of us “explicitly and emphatically, but still only in passing.” It suits his ecclesiastical sense of responsibility to dispense in this way with a church movement to which a whole host of people confess they have committed themselves, for God’s sake and the sake of the gospel. In this situation, what is to be done? The simplest and most obvious answer is to give an account of what one desires for the church, of the faith out of which the willingness to take this risk emerges. That is what I hope to do in what follows. . . . 3. Germanness [Deutschtum] Deutschtum] and Christianity It seems that Barth sees only paganism in the fact that the German Christians have dared to ask the Protestant church the question of the relationship between Christianity and the German character, [and] the question of whether men of non-German blood may lead the church. Whoever wants to understand us on this point must first appreciate fully a profound ecclesiastical failure of the last generation. Every human accomplishment and design is limited and bound by the natural character we bring with us into life. If the blood is tainted, the spirit also dies; for the spirit of both peoples and individuals arises from the blood. Only an intellectualistic generation so arrogant that it no longer recognizes any limits to human ability within the mystery of creatureliness could forget this. Forgetting, they have done infinite damage. Our people’s blood-bond was nearly undone. Had this process gone on fifty years more, the bearers of good, old, pure German blood would have become a minority among the leading sectors of our people. In its doctrine of creation, the church had the opportunity to keep holy the mystery of how strength and character are received through the blood. This it has not done. . . . The church must open its eyes to what is healthy in . . . change, in line with the will of God. It must help the state in its difficult work, rekindling the

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

sense of awe and loyalty to our blood and the willingness to bear children in all members of our people—even and especially the educated classes that are most resistant. Otherwise it is renouncing its role as teacher and shaper of our people, and will become for the people and its life an alien and bloodless shell. If, on the other hand, it takes up this task, then in the selection of its next generation of leaders it will not close itself to the new ethos that the state is seeking to realize. Should the church expose itself to the danger that in the future its offices will be flooded with the halfGermans whom the state excludes from its positions of leadership? How will it then be able to help with the correct formation and deepening of the German spirit and the German character? The questions are there, and however one responds to them, we have German Christians to thank that they have spoken them aloud, so that they cannot be ignored. None of them thought of suspending Eucharistic fellowship with Jewish Christians. . . . The question regarding those among us who are not German Christians by blood is just a part of a far deeper and more urgent question. It follows from the obligation of Protestant Christianity to be a church of the people that in a German Protestant church Germanness and Christianity must encounter each other in a deep intimacy that will determine the historical shape of both. . . . No one was more aware of our need to give birth anew in German to this word bestowed upon us, to actualize it concretely in a distinctively German way, in German life, than Martin Luther. His translation of the Bible into German testifies to the courage and the audacity with which he tackled this task. He strips Moses of his Hebrewisms, he lets the poet of the Psalms speak in German terms, even crying to God at solemn moments with German alliteration. He even dares to interpret Paul from the perspective of the Germanic understanding of freedom. “Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it; but if you can gain your freedom, seize the opportunity,” he has Paul say (1 Corinthians 7:21); what Paul really meant was, “Even if you can be free, remain instead a slave.” This is not a difference in the gospel, but it is the imbuing of the gospel with a different naturalhistorical character. If the purity of the gospel was not endangered because of what Luther dared to do, then God’s mercy will surely also protect us under the Lordship of Jesus Christ if we imitate him, wherever it is necessary to do so for love’s sake. The guarantee he gave us for the preservation of the gospel is the exuberant,

199

life-liberating force of the biblical word itself. That is what is so wonderful about this word: that, under its lordship, the natural-historical Volkstum, the living and creative power of a Volkstum, is not destroyed but heightened and refined. We Germans, and likewise other European peoples, would never have become what we have become, if the gospel, with its guiding majesty, had not come to us. And we will not remain what we are if we forget to bow to this majesty, even when it breaks and judges us, even when it seems strange to us. . . . 363. PAUL ALTHAUS: POLITICAL CHRISTIANITY: A WORD ON THE THURINGIAN GERMAN CHRISTIANS (1933) The Thuringian German Christians’ Church Movement began as a regional movement in 1928. It shared the commitments of the larger German Christian movement which supported Hitler. Althaus was a professor of theology at the University of Erlangen who had a deep commitment to the German Volk but never joined the German Christian movement for the reasons noted here. (Cf. doc. #348) Trans. by Mary Solberg in A Church Undone: Documents fr from om the German Christian Faith Movement 1932–1940. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), #15. German History as Salvation History . . . The Thuringians turn German history into salvation history. God has chosen the German people [Volk] to be the people of salvation for the whole world, the people of the kingdom of God. “The Lord of the nations [Völker] has fashioned our people out of soil, blood, and destiny to mature and become the people of the revelation of the triumph of his kingdom on earth.” The German people is thus a second Israel. Israel has decided against God, has failed to carry out the vocation God gave it. Now God has selected the German people to “become the counterpeople to the Jews . . . to perform for the world a truly redemptive service, a service no people on earth has done until this day.” Jesus says in Matthew 21:43: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” This passage can be taken to refer to the German people. Germans should pick up and carry forward the banner of Jesus Christ, “carry the banner

200

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

of [his] kingdom in the world.” “A salvation-people shall arise that will carry on his Son’s struggle, the struggle of the eternal Christ, the struggle of light, the struggle for the rebirth of the world out of faith in the Heavenly Father and his kingdom, until the end of the world.” Germany is to be a “parable,” to construct a reminder to the peoples of the eternal kingdom of God. The German Reich is this “parable” of the eternal kingdom of God, and it should be built up as such. This is the eternal purpose of the German mission. . . . In (Julius) Leutheuser’s view, Germany, beginning with the wars of liberation, has recognized and taken up its God-given calling, to fight God’s battle in the world against the powers of death and for the Reich, the German Empire, in which God’s Reich [kingdom] will take historical form. “God’s kingdom and the German Empire made a covenant.” But now, according to God’s will, the chosen people must walk the “way of the cross,” the path of suffering and death. “The World War became the Golgotha of the German Empire.” God did not want Germany’s death. We threw away our faith in Germany’s eternal mission, but God made Adolf Hitler his “instrument of faith in Germany.” “Because of Adolf Hitler’s faith, the Germans’ road of suffering and death could be transformed into resurrection. And so, through Adolf Hitler’s faith, the Golgotha of the World War became the path to resurrection for the German nation.” This is the German Easter and at the same time its Pentecost. “The Spirit of God has again fallen like fire from heaven, and has come to rest on at least one people of the earth, our German people.” This is German salvation history. “It is written over Germany: ‘A crucified people, a people resurrected. . . .’” The thoughts repeated here signify an intolerably religious, namely a messianic, inflation of political events, and at the same time an intolerable secularization—namely, a nationalizing of the reality of the kingdom of God. Both politics and theology are being violated here. . . . We are not a world-savior; we are not dreaming of our destiny’s messianic meaning for the whole world. Other peoples, too, have claimed to be saving the world and to be the chosen people. The Anglo-Saxons believed they were fighting the World War as a crusade for the cause of humanity, of freedom and justice. Over and over again, people imagine that it is necessary to dress up the mundane necessities of political action, the simple national content of the history of one’s own people, with high-flown messianic significance. But that is a misrepresentation of political events. The followers of Luther will oppose

it to the bloody end, here among us Germans just as much as among the Anglo-Saxons. . . . The story of God’s acts and salvation history are two different things. National rebirth, which happens also among the heathen and Turks, and rebirth through the resurrection of Jesus Christ are two different things. The grace of a historical renewal by means of a leader raised up by God and the grace of the Gospel are two different things. That first kind of grace does not break through the law of sin and death, under which all that is temporal must live; the grace of the Gospel explodes it. . . .’ The attempt to appoint the German people as the people of God of the new covenant is a bald-faced theological heresy. When Israel as a whole turned against God, and failed to recognize its calling and threw it aside, God’s people and the calling remained intact only in the holy remnant. This remnant was “the Israel of God.” That remnant no longer lives in a particular people, but rather in the community of Jesus Christ among all peoples. . . . . . . The church of Christ aspires to take shape in every people. But no people dare confuse its mission with that of the people of God, Christ’s church. It is not a people that brings “the Savior and those who are saved” to the world, but rather the community of Jesus Christ, by its witness to Jesus Christ. It is not the German people but the church that is the “counter–people to the Jews.” 364. MARTIN BORMANN: THE RELATION OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY (1941) From Martin Greschat and Hans-Walter Krumwiede, eds. Das Zeitalter der Weltkrieg eltkriegee und Revolutionen (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1999), 60b: 145–146. trans. by Eric Lund. National Socialist and Christian views are incompatible. The Christian churches rely on the ignorance of people and try to maintain the ignorance of the larger part of the people because that it is the only way the Christian churches can retain their power. In contrast, National Socialism is based on scientific foundations. Christianity has unchanging principles, which were set up almost two thousand years ago and have been increasingly solidified into unrealistic dogmas. National Socialism, on the other hand, if it wants to fulfill its task still further, will be steadily aligned with the newest findings of scientific research. . . .

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

201

therefore, the idea of establishing a Protestant Reich Church through the merger of various Protestant churches must be permanently abandoned because the Protestant Church is just as hostile to us as the Catholic Church. Any strengthening of the Christian church would merely work. . . . The interests of the Reich lie not in the overcoming but in the upholding and strengthening of ecclesiastical particularism. THE GERMAN CHURCH STRUGGLE: THE CONFESSING CHURCH AND THE RESISTANCE 365. THE PROGRAM OF THE STRUGGLE OF THE YOUNG REFORMATION MOVEMENT (1933)

Fig. 7.5. Martin Bormann (1934)

If we National Socialists speak of a belief in God, we do not understand God as the naïve Christians and their clerical beneficiaries do—as an anthropomorphic being which sits around somewhere in the spheres. We must open the eyes of humanity to the fact that there are unimaginably large number of bodies in the universe in addition to our highly insignificant earth, which are surrounded by countless bodies as the sun is by planets and these again by smaller bodies or moons. The force determined by the laws of nature which moves the countless planets in the universe we call the Almighty or God. The claim that this world-force is concerned about the fate of every individual being, every small earthly bacillus, and can be influenced by prayers or other astonishing things, is based on a good dose of naiveté or on business-related brazenness. . . . From the incompatibility of National Socialist and Christian concepts it follows that we must oppose any strengthening of existing Christian denominations and every demand of any newly emerging confession. We can make no differentiation between the various Christian confessions. For this reason,

The Young Reformation movement supported the unification of the churches of Germany but opposed state interference in the process and race-based discrimination. The more prominent members included Hans Lilje and Friedrich Gogarten. Later Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller joined the movement. From “Was fordert das Kampfprogramm der Jungreformatorischen Bewegung?” in online exhibition: Widerstand? Ev Evang angelische elische Christinnen und Christen im Nationalsozialismus ationalsozialismus. http://evangelischer–widerstand.de/html/view.php?type=dokument&id=44. Accessed June 9, 2016. trans. by Eric Lund. The Young Reformation Movement is a movement of the “young church,” which, leads the fight for the redesign of the church, on the basis of the Reformation message and unabridged biblical principles, while also standing on the ground of the German freedom movement. The Essence of the Church (1) We call for an Evangelical Church for the German nation. (2) We demand the reorganization of the church solely on the basis of the [true] character of the Church. The Evangelical Church of the German nation has proclaimed to the German people the word of the living God, who, as creator of heaven and earth created humans to live as members of a people (Volk) and race within his orders of creation, redeemed them as sinner through justification by

202

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

faith alone, and called them to live in the fellowship of the church through the power of the Holy Spirit. The new shape of the church can only be a church of unity with a lively structure. (3) We require that the foundation for the reshaping of the church be the Reformation confessions. The new confession that is required for the upcoming Evangelical Church of the German nation is an application of the Lutheran and Reformed confessions in response to the questions being addressed to the church today, i.e. marriage, folk [Volk], race, state. It rejects as heresy all views and doctrines that are contrary to the Gospel.

366. THE TASKS OF THE PASTOR’S EMERGENCY LEAGUE (1933) After the introduction of the Aryan Paragraphs, Martin Niemöller, a Lutheran pastor, called together the former members of the Young Reformation Movement to found the Pastors’ Emergency League (Pfarrernotbund). From “Aufgaben des Pfarrernotbundes” in Walther Hofer, ed. Der Nationalsozialismus: Dokumente 1933–1945 1933–1945. (Franfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1957), #68:133. trans. by Eric Lund.

The Construction of the Church (4) We call for the Reichsbishop to lead the church with full authority, with personal accountability and freedom to make decisions. We demand the unconditional recognition of Frederick von Bodelschwingh as the legally elected Reichsbishop, called by God to be the duly authorized leader of the Church. His person symbolically embodies the freedom of the Church, which is bound only to the Gospel. . . . Church and State (6) We require the church to align itself in joyful obedience to the state created by the German freedom movement. We believe that the German freedom movement is a gift of God to the German people. We therefore commit ourselves to it and to the state created by it, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. (7) We ask that the church, out of faith in the Holy Spirit, unconditionally acknowledge Christians of every nation and every race as equal members of one church before God, but that it call only Germans as its leaders, because of the [particular] mission given by God to the German people. (8) We demand unconditional freedom for the Church in its proclamation and in the shaping of its life. The Church must serve the nation with the word of God in incorruptible clarity. It can fulfill this service the German people only by complete freedom in its proclamation. Any restriction of this freedom makes her assigned service the German people impossible.

Fig. 7.6. Martin Niemöller (1952)

The church is concerned not only with right or wrong theology but also, and above all else, with right and wrong action, truth or falsehood, love or power, decisions of faith or calculation, with manipulation of the human spirit or of political coercion, in short with obedience and discipleship. . . . Our task is now to see theology in relation to our entire human existence—and the whole pastoral existence which is special to us as pastors and to follow the convergence which God has brought about and will bring through our real experiences. We will be led to a brotherhood that apprehends and encompasses all of life. Our defensive ecclesiastical-political

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

struggle must see to it that the professional civil service law, including the Aryan Paragraph, decided by the General Synod, does not come into effect, that an unevangelical Führer concept is not insinuated into the office of the bishop, that the image of Luther is not distorted among us, that the peripheral ruling by a group in the church is stopped in its districts and in sub-groups in the congregations, and that coercion in church life disappears. We must aggressively persist with the demands: depoliticization of the clergy, deparliamentization of the church. . . . 367. RESPONSES TO THE ARYAN PARAGRAPH IN THE CHURCH (1933) Trans. by Mary Solberg in A Church Undone: Documents fr from om the German Christian Faith Movement 1932–1940 1932–1940. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), #2. Paragraph 1 Only those persons may be called as clergy or officials in the general church administration who have the prerequisite educational training and enter into their office in unconditional support of the national state and the German Protestant Church. Those of non-Aryan descent or married to someone of non-Aryan descent may not be called as clergy or officials in the general church administration. Clergy or officials who marry a person of non–Aryan descent are to be dismissed. Who counts as a person of non-Aryan descent is to be determined by the regulations accompanying the laws of the Reich. Paragraph 3 Clergy or officials who given their previous activities offer no guarantee that they will act at all times and without reservation in the interests of the national state and the German Protestant Church [may] be retired. Clergy or officials of non-Aryan descent or married to someone of non-Aryan descent are to be retired.

203

THE ARYAN PARAGRAPHS THE ERLANGEN STATEMENT: PAUL ALTHAUS AND WERNER ELERT (SEPTEMBER 25, 1933) From Martin Greschat and Hans-Walter Krumwiede, eds. Kirchen-und Theolog Theologieg iegeschichte eschichte in Quellen. Bd. V Das Zeitalter der Weltkriege und Revolutionen Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1999), #43d:100. trans. by Eric Lund. Today more than ever the German people experiences the Jews in its midst as an alien ethnic body. It has become aware of the threat to its own life from emancipated Jewry and protects itself from this danger through exceptional regulations. As part of the struggle for the renewal of our people, the new government has excluded men of Jewish or halfJewish descent from holding important offices. The church must recognize the state’s fundamental right to implement lawful measures. In the present circumstances the church knows that it is called to a new awareness of its task, namely, to be the church of the German people [Volkskirche]. As part of that, the church must renew the fundamental principle of the ethnic bond between the officeholder and his congregation and apply it as well to Christians of Jewish descent. In the present situation the church’s position in the life of the people and the fulfillment of its duties would be hindered and severely impeded were its offices occupied, in general, by those of Jewish descent. The church must therefore require that Jewish Christians be restrained from assuming church office. This in no way disputes or limits their full membership in the German Protestant Church, any more than it does for any other members of our church who may not fulfill the conditions that would allow them to occupy church office. DIETRICH BONHOEFFER: THESES ON “THE ARYAN PARAGRAPH IN THE CHURCH” From Dietrich Bonhoeff Bonhoeffer er Works: orks:1932–1933 1932–1933,, Vol. 12 12. ed. by Larry Rasmussen. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 425–32. trans. by Isabel Best and David Higgins. The exclusion of Jewish Christians from the church community destroys the substance of Christ’s church, because First: it reverses the work of Paul, who assumed

204

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

that through the cross of Christ the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles had been broken down, that Christ has “made both groups into one” (Ephesians 2), that here (in Christ’s church) there should be neither Jew nor Gentile . . . but rather all should be one. Second: if the church excludes the Jewish Christians, it is setting up a law with which one must comply in order to be a member of the church community, namely, the racial law. It means that Jews can be asked at the door, before they can enter Christ’s church in Germany, “Are you Aryan?” Only when they have complied with this law can I go to church with them, pray, listen, and celebrate the Lord’s Supper together with them. But by putting up this racial law at the door to the church community, the church is doing exactly what the Jewish Christian church was doing until Paul came, and in defiance of him; it was requiring people to become Jews in order to join the church community. A church today that excludes Jewish Christians has itself become a Jewish Christian church and has fallen away from the gospel, back to the law. The German Christians say: The church is not allowed to undo or to disregard God’s orders, and race is one of them, so the church must be racially constituted. We answer: The given order of race is misjudged just as little as that of gender, status in society, etc. . . . In the church, a Jew is still a Jew, a Gentile a Gentile, a man a man, a capitalist a capitalist, etc., etc. But God calls and gathers them all together into one people, the people of God, the church, and they all belong to it in the same way, one with another. The church is not a community of people who are all the same but precisely one of people foreign to one another who are called by God’s Word. The people of God is an order over and above all other orders. “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? . . . Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” [Matt 12:48 and 50] Race and blood are one order among those who enter into the church, but it must never become a criterion for belonging to the church; the only criterion is the Word of God and faith. . . . The German Christians say: We don’t want to take away from Jewish Christians the right to be Christians, but they should organize their own churches. It is only a matter of the outward form of the church. We answer:

1. The issue of belonging to the Christian community is never an outward, organizational matter, but is of the very substance of the church. Church is the congregation that is called together by the Word. Membership in a congregation is a question not of organization but of the essence of the church. 2. To make such a basic distinction between Christianity and the church, or between Christ and the church, is wrong. There is no such thing as the idea of the church, on one hand, and its outward appearance, on the other, but rather the empirically experienced church is the church of Christ itself. Thus to exclude people forcibly from the church community at the empirical level means excluding them from Christ’s church itself. That part of the church that excludes another is, of course, the one that is truly shut out—that is the particular danger of the German Christians’ undertaking. 3. When the church’s organizers exclude anyone, they are interfering with the authority of the sacraments. Here in our church, Jewish Christians have been accepted, by the will of God, through the sacrament of baptism. Through baptism they are joined together with our church, and our church with them, by indissoluble ties. If the church that has baptized Jewish Christians now throws them out, it makes baptism into a ceremony, which implies no obligation on its part. . . . The German Christians say: The German church people [Kirchenvolk] can no longer endure communion with Jews, who have done them so much harm politically. We answer: This is the very point where it must be made crystal clear: here is where we are tested as to whether we know what the church is. Here, where the Jewish Christian whom I don’t like is sitting next to me among the faithful, this is precisely where the church is. If that is not understood, then those who think they cannot bear it should themselves go and form their own church, but never, ever, can they be allowed to exclude someone else. The continuity of the church is in the church where the Jewish Christians remain. In summary: The church is the congregation of those who are called, where the gospel is rightly taught, and the sacraments are rightly administered, and it does not

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

establish any law for membership therein. The Aryan Paragraph is therefore a false doctrine for the church and destroys its substance. Therefore, there is only one way to serve the truth in a church that implements the Aryan Paragraph in this radical form, and that is to withdraw. This is the ultimate act of solidarity with my church. I can never serve my church in any other way than by adhering to the whole truth and all its consequences.

Fig. 7.7. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in London, 1939

368. DIETRICH BONHOEFFER: THE CHURCH AND THE JEWISH QUESTION (1933) From Dietrich Bonhoeff Bonhoeffer er Works, Vol. 12 12, ed. by Larry Rasmussen. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 362–66. trans. by Isabel Best & David Higgins. There is no doubt that the church of the Reformation is not encouraged to get involved directly in specific political actions of the state. The church has neither to praise nor to censure the laws of the state. Instead, it has to affirm the state as God’s order of preservation in this godless world. It should recognize and understand the state’s creation of order—whether good or bad from a humanitarian

205

perspective—as grounded in God’s desire for preservation in the midst of the world’s chaotic godlessness. This judgment by the church on what the state does stands quite apart from any moralizing and is to be distinguished from every sort of humanitarianism, because of the radical separation between the place of the gospel and the place of the law. The actions of the state remain free from interference by the church. . . . History is made not by the church, but rather by the state. But it is certainly only the church, which bears witness to God’s entering into history, that knows what history is and therefore what the state is. . . . But the true church of Christ, which lives by the gospel alone and knows the nature of state action, will never interfere in the functioning of the state in this way, by criticizing its history—making actions from the standpoint of any sort of, say, humanitarian ideal. The church knows about the essential necessity for the use of force in this world and it knows about the ‘moral’ injustice that is necessarily involved in the use of force in certain concrete state actions. The church cannot primarily take direct political action, since it does not presume to know how things should go historically. Even on the Jewish question today, the church cannot contradict the state directly and demand that it take any particular different course of action. But that does not mean that the church stands aside, indifferent to what political action is taken. Instead, it can and must, precisely because it does not moralize about individual cases, keep asking the government whether its actions can be justified as legitimate state actions, that is, actions that create law and order, not lack of rights and disorder. It will be called upon to put this question as strongly as possible wherever the state seems endangered precisely in its character as the state, that is, in its function of creating law and order by force. The church will have to put this question with the utmost clarity today in the matter of the Jewish question. This does not mean interfering in the state’s responsibility for its actions; on the contrary, it is thrusting the entire burden of responsibility upon the state itself for the actions proper to it. . . . As long as the state acts in such a way as to create law and order—even if it means new laws and a new order—the church of the Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer cannot oppose it through direct political action. Of course it cannot prevent individual Christians, who know that they are called to do so in certain cases, from accusing the state of “inhumanity”; but as church it will only ask whether or not the state is creating law and order. In doing so the church will, of course, see the state as limited in two ways. Either too little law and order

206

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

or too much law and order compels the church to speak. There is too little law and order wherever a group of people is deprived of its rights: although in concrete cases it is always be extraordinarily difficult to distinguish actual deprivation of rights from a formally permitted minimum of rights. . . . At the other extreme from too little law and order, there can be too much law and order. This would mean the state developing its use of force to such a degree as to rob the Christian faith of its right to proclaim its message. (This does not apply to restriction of free conscience—that would be the humanitarian version, which is an illusion, since every state in its life impinges on the so-called free conscience.) This would be a grotesque situation, since it is from the Christian proclamation and faith that the state receives its own rights, so that it would be dethroning itself. The church must repudiate such an encroachment by the state authorities, precisely because it knows better about the state and the limits of its actions. The state that threatens the proclamation of the Christian message negates itself. There are thus three possibilities for action that the church can take vis-à-vis the state: first (as we have said), questioning the state as to the legitimate state character if its actions, that is, making the state responsible for what it does. Second is service to the victims of the state’s actions. The church has an unconditional obligation toward the victims of any societal order, even if they do not belong to the Christian community. . . . The third possibility is not just to bind up the wounds of the victims beneath the wheel but to seize the wheel itself. Such an action would be direct political action on the part of the church. This is only possible and called for it the church sees the state to be failing in its function of creating law and order, that is, if the church perceives that the state, without any scruples, has created either too much or too little law and order. It must see in either eventuality a threat to the existence of the state and thus to its own existence as well. There would be too little if any one group of citizens is deprived of its rights. There would be too much in the case of an attack, coming from the state, on the nature of the church and its proclamation, such as the obligatory exclusion of baptized Jews from our Christian congregations or a ban on missions to the Jews. If such a case, the Christian church would find itself in statu confessionis and the state would find itself in the act of self–negation. . . .

369. THE CONFESSION OF ALTONA (JANUARY 1933) Hans Asmussen and several other Lutheran pastors put together this statement in January 1933 a few months after “Bloody Sunday,” when Communists and National Socialists clashed in street battles in Hamburg. Altona is a district of Hamburg. This confession influenced the more famous Barmen Declaration, drafted in May of 1933. Trans. by Rolf Ahlers. Harv arvard ard Theolog Theological ical Review 77:3–4 (1984), 380–88. The grievous wrongs of public life are so apparent that no one can ignore them. . . . Lately people have begun to direct their questions to the church. . . . There are many people who request from the church nothing but material help. Others seek her alliance in the political struggle. Some expect her to consecrate and justify their political actions, while others seek to stimulate their own enthusiasm. The church cannot satisfy any of these requests. Rather, it is her obligation to hone the conscience and to proclaim the Gospel. But since these questions have been directed to the church, being her servants we will respond. To continue the reserve of the past would no longer be responsible. For the healing of our nation and our eternal salvation depend upon the church’s proclaiming of God’s Word to the troubles of our time, and upon the hearing and believing of this Word. Through this Word, it becomes manifest where state, political parties, and individuals have broken the orders decreed and ordained by God. This Word calls all people back to their proper place and in this way creates the primary presupposition for the process of healing. . . . Article 1: Of the Church We believe, teach and confess that the church is the multitude of those people who are called by the advent of God’s Word and in whom Christ is truly present. . . . We part company with all those who want to limit the church to a certain class of people. For the church is there for everyone, and her word is directed to all classes and parties. . . . Whoever wishes to subject the church’s proclamation to the dominance of political power, perverts this political power into a religion hostile to Christianity. . . .

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Article 2: Of the Limits of Humanity It is God’s order and command that human beings zealously devote themselves to the tasks that life sets before them. . . . But because of our unrighteousness God has made us subject to certain limits. . . . We condemn categorically the dream of a coming earthly empire of justice, peace and general welfare. ..... Any party that holds out such prospects becomes a religion and suggests we neglect the pressing tasks of the present time for the sake of a hazy vision of the future. . . . Article 3: Of the State We believe, teach and confess that God is the creator of the state. Because of sin, a strong authority must regulate the social life for which God has created us. . . . We condemn every deification of the state. If the state poses as the master over the conscience, it becomes anti-Christian. The state can never determine the command of God for the individual in any particular instance. . . .

care and bears the nation’s burdens as its own. Whenever this occurs the people will also be willing to share the burden of the government. Because we believe that God is the creator of life we must reject as sinful all contempt for life granted by God. Such contempt is apparent whenever a crime against life is not severely punished; when members of the nation are regarded as sub-human; when respect for the German nation is undermined, while the nation is surrender without defense to attacks and is at the mercy of the diplomatic games of all. . . . Even if it seems that the principle essence of the church’s proclamation does not stand out in this message, we believe nevertheless that everything that is said here is directed to the word of the cross and is shaped from its perspective. . . . 370. HANS ASMUSSEN: ADDRESS ON THE THEOLOGICAL DECLARATION AT BARMEN (1934)

Article 4: Of the Tasks of the State . . . God has created us as Germans. Therefore we should also will to be Germans. As every nation certainly has the right to life and the duty of life, so we Germans certainly have the same right and duty. Wherever our existence as Germans is threatened, a governmental authority has the God–given task to preserve nation and state in their Germanhood. But out life and the stability of our state are just as much threatened by unemployment and by the erosion of the economy. The governmental authority is under God’s command to do everything in its power to provide help. . . . We condemn the widespread development of political parties into political creeds. They thus imperil not only belief in God, but also the stability of the state. . . . Article 5: Of the Commandments of God We proclaim according to God’s commandments that every state and every nation must have religion. As a matter of fact, every state has its religion, be it only the religion of atheism or of the Lenin cult. . . . We believe that it is in accordance with God’s created order when the government rules with fatherly

207

Fig. 7.8. Hans Asmussen

208

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Reformed theologian Karl Barth drafted the Barmen Declaration in collaboration with Lutherans Hans Asmussen and Thomas Breit. This is Asmussen’s explication and defense of the confessional declaration Trans. by Arthur Cochrane in The Church’s Confession Under Hitler Hitler. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962), 248–63. . . . The Confessional Synod of the German Evangelical Church is not tantamount to the founding of a new Church. Rather, it is composed of representatives of those Confessional Churches which were united in 1933 by the constitution of the German Evangelical Church. It is, therefore, representative of the hitherto existing regional Churches in a legal succession. In the union by the constitution of 1933 it was not the will of the legislator that the existing churches should cease to be what they are: confessional churches. Consequently, the union bore the character of an alliance (federation) in which was carried further what had been already aspired to in the German Evangelical Church Federation (DEK). ..... We are not rebels, but for the sake of our responsibility to God and man we are bound to demand that neither we nor others be deprived of the possibility of meeting this responsibility by undermining the confessional and legal basis. We cannot in good conscience be members of a German Evangelical Church if in its words and actions it did not take seriously the fact that in its constitution it is bound to that confessional basis. . . . The common confession to the one Church of Jesus Christ unites us as representatives of this synod, and we are therefore united in the confessional and constitution basis of the German Evangelical Church. But we are united just as much by the shocking and destructive attack made upon the basis and essence of the German Evangelical Church to which it has been exposed for more than a year. We would sin against God and we would also deny the love for our people and the Fatherland required of us if we did not publicly call attention to this fact and register the sharpest protest. . . . This peril has become manifest through the teaching methods and actions of the ruling church party of the “German Christians” as well as by the Reich Church government carried on by them. It is not a case of occasional mistakes by individuals that one finds in administrative matters and could thus be removed. On the contrary. It is a question of a false doctrine all along the line and of a conduct that not only occasionally but systematically and comprehen-

sively opposes the gospel, the Confessions presently in force, and the constitution of the German Evangelical Church. . . . ON ARTICLE ONE: “We reject the false doctrine that the Church could and should recognize as a source of its proclamation, beyond and besides this one Word of God, yet other events, powers, historic figures and truths as God’s revelation. . . .” . . . The demand is constantly and everlastingly being made upon the Church and its members to acknowledge the events of the year 1933 as binding for its proclamation and exposition of Scripture, and as demanding obedience alongside Holy Scripture and over and beyond its claim. When we protest against this, we do not do so as members of our people in opposition to the recent history of the nation, not as citizens against the new state, nor as subjects against the civil magistrate. We are raising a protest against the same phenomenon that has been slowly preparing the way for the devastation of the church for more than two hundred years. . . . On Article Two: “ We reject the false doctrine as though there could be areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ but to other lords—areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him. . . .” . . . The reason we reject the (false doctrine) that beside him and his Word in Holy Scripture there are still other sources of revelation is not that we think we are called upon to force through a particular theological theory of knowledge. On the contrary, our protest against other sources of revelation is made in the knowledge that the claim of such other sources is a claim to divine authority and it therefore a denial of the wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption that have befallen us in Christ. . . . On Article Three: “We reject the false doctrine as though the Church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions. . . .” . . . When Jesus Christ is proclaimed as the Lord in the fellowship of brethren who are brothers not by birth but through rebirth, that is something quite dif-

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

ferent from a philosophical or cultural society making the cultivation of its convictions its business. There it is essential that the Church testify with its Word, and, by the character of its existence, be a sign set up that it is a Church only as the property of Jesus Christ, that it can live only from his comfort and direction. . . . This message and this existence are rendered impossible for the Church, however, in the moment the boundary between the Church and the world is blurred. It always happens when the Church is dominated by the free will and pleasure of sinners and no longer by the unchangeable Word of God of forgiveness in Christ. . . .

209

371. HELMUT GOLLWITZER: A SERMON ABOUT KRISTALLNACHT, BERLIN-DAHLEM (NOVEMBER 16, 1938) Trans. by Dean Stroud, ed. Pr Preaching eaching in Hitler’s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013), 115–26.

On Article Four: . . . Christ is not opposed to princes ruling and to rulers exercising power in the sphere of the world. We too are greatly concerned that we do justice to this right of the world. But likewise we earnestly desire as teachers, ministers, and members of the Church to be distinguished just in this regard from worldly princes and rulers in accordance with the Word of the Lord: “It shall not be so among you.” ..... On Article Five: “We reject the false doctrine, as though the State, over and beyond its special commission, should and could become the single and totalitarian order of human life, thus fulfilling the Church’s vocation as well. . . .” . . . The only reason we are being everlastingly accused of disloyalty is that Holy Scripture is not taken seriously in the way we do. Otherwise one would know and acknowledge that for us there cannot be any stronger obligation than that which with God’s help already obtains among us. . . . When the State proclaims an eternal kingdom, an eternal law, and an eternal righteousness, it corrupts itself and with it its people. When the Church preaches a political kingdom, an earthly law, and the justice of a human form of society, it goes beyond its limits and drags the State down into the mire with it. ...

Fig. 7.9. Pastor Helmut Gollwitzer, 1978

Luke 3:3-14—“O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come.?” Who then on this of all days still has a right to preach? Who then should be preaching repentance on such a day? Have not our mouths been muzzled on this very day? Can we do anything but fall silent? What good has all the preaching and the hearing of sermons done us and our people and our church? . . . What do we expect God to do, if we come to him now singing, reading our Bibles, praying, preaching, and confessing our sins as if we can really count on his being here and on all this being more than empty religious activity? Our impertinence and presumption must make him sick. . . . “O generation of vipers”—this is how an entire people is addressed [by John the Baptist]. A people (Volk) who according to everything we know about them was in no way whatsoever any worse than we are today. They were a people caught up in a justified war of self-determination from a foreign oppressor and a people that was trying eagerly and diligently to hear the divine law and to follow it. If John the Baptist were to raise the same cry today, we would most likely be denounced as a notorious traitor of the nation. Surely he would find himself condemned by the Protestant (Evangelische) Church as a shameful

210

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

public enemy of the people, and all church connection to him would be severed. . . . I am sure John’s call for repentance seemed uninteresting to many in his day. It is so in every age to the person who exchanges the serious confession of sin and prayer for the national propaganda! Whoever considers himself a Christian and yet shares the outrage over this call to repentance should at least know that he has exchanged God’s standard for the standard of the current political propaganda and has replaced the altar of divine justice with the altar of his own nation’s self-justification. . . . It is a good hour, may it be a blessing, when the blows of God’s judgment startle each of us, our nation (Volk), and our church out of our peace and security like the clapping hands of the beaters startle the rabbit, when the terrible blows drive you, dear friend, dear people, dear church, out of your daily mundane routine into this terrifying question: “Where then might I flee that I might escape?” A good hour then, this hour of ours, because our question must not remain without an answer! . . . Two questions dominate John’s call to repentance. The first has to do with the fleeing from the coming wrath, a question whose purpose is to flush us out time and again. . . . The second question raises a concern that only now arises: “What then should we do?” In answer John the Baptist places your neighbor right before your eyes just at the moment of forgiveness. The unwillingness to repent destroys the bridge leading to your neighbor. Repentance rebuilds this bridge. . . . Will the biblical warnings that today press upon us and come so near have more power than in the past? These warnings that are so practical, these warnings that point to such everyday things and uncomfortable things: Be hospitable without complaining? Bless those who persecute you! Do not be lazy doing what you must do! Speak for all who are speechless and speak up for the cause of all who have been abandoned! . . . Now just outside this church our neighbor is waiting for us—waiting for us in his need and lack of protection, disgraced, hungry, hunted, and driven by fear for his very existence. That is the one who is waiting to see if today this Christian congregation has really observed this national day of repentance. Jesus Christ himself is waiting to see. Amen.

372. THE MINISTRY OF WOMEN IN THE CHURCH: A VOTE OF THE CONFESSING SYNOD OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH OF THE OLD PRUSSIAN UNION (OCTOBER 1942) As fewer male pastors were available for ministry during the war years, the synod, for the first time in the history of German Protestantism, set out the conditions for women to serve as pastors or pastoral assistants. From Martin Greschat (Hg.) / Hans-Walter Krumwiede (Hg.) Das Zeitalter der Weltkrieg eltkriegee und Revolutionen 1999 (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1999), #67 163–64. trans. by Eric Lund. I. The Ministry of Female Vicars (1) The ministry of theologically educated women is a ministry of the word. It is directed towards women, youth and children. (2) The female vicar (Vikarin) will not exercise her ministry in congregational worship. Also, the task of leading a congregation does not belong to her. (3) No legal barrier should be erected against the full performance of her ministry where it extends to what men also do (Bible studies, visits to the sick, youth services etc.) (4) The female vicar may be assigned the right to pronounce the forgiveness of sins and to administer the sacraments. (5) The female vicar will be installed in a church service through the laying on of hands and the offering of prayers (Ordination). A formula for the appointment of a female vicar to ministry is to be designed corresponding to her assignment. (6) The female vicar is subject, like all other officials, to the church leaders. It she performs her ministry in a particular congregation, she serves under the authority of the leadership of this congregation, namely the church council and its chairman. . . . II. The Declaration of the Gospel through Women In times of need, in which the ordered preaching of the gospel from the mouths of men has fallen silent, the church leadership can permit women who are suitable for it, to preach the gospel in congregational worship. Holy Scripture testifies that the gift of prophecy

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

is also awarded to women (Exod.15:20; Judg. 4:4; 2 Kgs. 22:14; Joel 3; Luke 1:46ff; Acts 2:17; 21:9). In the fellowship of Jesus Christ, all believers are called to the royal priesthood (Rev. 1:6, 1 Peter 2:9). That precludes the passages in 1Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2, which prohibit women from teaching. Accordingly, this concurs with Luther that “for order, discipline and honor, women will remain silent when men speak. But if no man preaches,” it is necessary that a woman preach. Calvin interprets the instructions of the apostle in 1 Corinthians 14 no differently. . . . 373. PAUL TILLICH: THE DEFEAT OF NAZI BELIEF (JUNE 1943) From Ronald Stone and Matthew Lon Weaver, eds. Against the Third Reich: Paul Tillich’s Wartime Radio Br Broadcasts oadcasts into Nazi Germany (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), #34: 163–67. Trans. by Matthew Lon Weaver.

Fig. 7.10. Paul Tillich, 1962

National Socialism has understood how to set all Christian churches against it. It began with the German churches. The great church struggle of the first years of Nazi rule is still in the memory of all people

211

in and outside Germany. Niemöller’s cell in the concentration camp is a constant reminder not to forget that struggle, a reminder that is still heard today everywhere in the world. After the German churches, the churches of the conquered lands were forced onto the defensive by the Nazis and their collaborators, the Quislings. It is particularly the Norwegian church that has offered, and is still offering, resistance. The churches in Sweden, Denmark, and Holland sided with them. The spiritual power of this resistance is becoming greater and greater, and the force of the impact of the attack weaker and weaker. In reality, the churches have already won victory. The anti-Christian attack is repelled. The worldview of National Socialism has yet to become two decades old, and National Socialism itself won’t become any older. One can speak of all of these things as facts, although the National Socialists still rule an entire continent and all Christian churches in it are abandoned to them, defenseless. The struggle of the spirits is decided: against paganism, in favor of Christianity. Just as it was in the great final battle of the Roman Empire against the externally powerless church, so it was in the last ten years of the battle of the National Socialist tribal religion against the Christian spirit. Modern paganism has lost, just as ancient paganism did. The Christian principle has once again displayed its invincibility. . . . Why, in fact, has National Socialism led the battle against Christianity? Certainly not for the reasons for which many academics have attacked religion in past decades: because of its miracles and mysteries, because of its dogma and customs. All of that would have been completely unimportant to the National Socialists. This they would have willingly permitted from the churches, if they hadn’t suspected a real enemy in Christianity. The Nazis grasped, better than many Christians, what Christianity is about. They grasped that the crucial thing in Christianity is not teachings and forms of public worship but rather a particular attitude toward life. And for the sake of this attitude toward life, the Nazis started the battle against Christianity. Because the Christian attitude toward life is the complete contradiction of the Nazi attitude. People must decide in favor of one. And the Nazis have tried everything to prevent a decision in favor of Christianity, above all among the younger generation. For this reason, they have persecuted the churches. There are two attitudes toward life that have wrestled with one another in the Nazi’s battles with the churches. The attitude toward life as National Socialism represents it is older than Christianity. It comes

212

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

from the time when every tribe considered itself to be the greatest in the world. God belonged to the nation and the nation to god. They were indissolubly united with each other. When the nation fell, the god also fell. When the national became powerful, the god also became powerful. . . . That was the world that Christianity, and before it, the great prophets, found. They sought to take humanity beyond this world of fighting gods to something higher, to the one God and the one people of God, beyond all tribes and nations. They proclaimed the one divine law, the one truth, and the one justice for all. They proclaimed the God who looked not on tribe and nation and race but rather on the face of every person and on the justice in every nation. That was the message of the prophets and apostles. With that, they brought something new into the world, something great, insurmountable, against which all attacks in nearly three thousand years were unsuccessful. . . . Because the human heart says yes to the Christian message and not to the idolatry of the nation; yes to justice for all and to the unity of the human race. . . . What is now occurring in every hour on the battlefields is evidence of the truth with which Christianity has overcome the pagan world. When the Christian churches became lethargic and feeble, when they withdrew into the corners of pious feelings and old traditions, the space became free for the return of pagan national religion, which called itself National Socialism. . . . But finally, they struck against the rock of the Christian proclamation and broke into pieces, and the risen gods were sent with disgrace back into their thousand-year-old graves. ..... The world, which like the churches, was surprised and overrun for a moment by the German god, came to itself. It united itself, and the high priest of the German god, the German Führer, made it easy for the world to unite itself. . . . Allow me to say once again: what is now occurring on the battlefields, on the land, in the water, in the air, is the same as what occurred in people’s hearts, when they resisted the temptation to national idolatry. It is the breakdown of the new paganism, of the belief in the national god and his justice. It is the return of the German nation into the community of nations that accepts the Christian principles. The important thing is not whether they are good or bad Christians; true Christians are in the minority in all nations. The important thing is not even that the nations have converted to Christianity. Rather, the important thing is that they accept the Christian principle of the unity of humankind. The important

thing is that they stand for the unity of justice and the dignity of every person. . . . CHURCH RENEWAL AFTER WORLD WAR II 374. THE STUTTGART DECLARATION OF GUILT (OCTOBER 1945) Signers of the document included prominent members of the Confessing Church including Hans Asmussen, Martin Niemöller, Hans Lilje, and Otto Dibelius. From Martin Greschat and Hans-Walter Krumwiede, eds. Das Zeitalter der Weltkrieg eltkriegee und Revolutionen. (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1999), #73:187. trans. by Eric Lund. . . . With great pain we must admit: endless suffering was brought upon many peoples and countries by us. That which we have often testified to in our congregations, we state now in the name of the whole Church: We fought throughout long years in the name of Jesus Christ against the spirit that found its terrible expression in the National Socialist regime of violence; but we lament that we did not confess more courageously, praying more faithfully, believe more gladly, and love more ardently. A new beginning shall now be made in our churches. Grounded in the Holy Scripture and earnestly oriented toward the Lord of the Church, they start to cleanse themselves from the influences of alien beliefs and to reorganize themselves. We hope that the God of grace and mercy will use our churches as his instrument and give them full power to proclaim his word and to create obedience to his will among ourselves and our entire people. It fills us with great joy that we know ourselves to be sincerely connected with the other churches of the ecumenical community in this new beginning. We hope to God that by the common ministry of the churches the spirit of violence and revenge, which wants to become powerful again today, will be controlled throughout the whole world, and that the spirit of peace and love will prevail, the only spirit through which distressed humanity can find healing. So, we pray, at a time when the whole world needs a new beginning: “Veni creator spiritus!” (Come, Creator Spirit!)

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

375. RESOLUTIONS OF THE COUNCIL OF THE EKD ON DENAZIFICATION (MAY 1946) From Martin Greschat and Hans-Walter Krumwiede, eds. Das Zeitalter der Weltkrieg eltkriegee und Revolutionen (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1999), #74:190–92, trans. by Eric Lund. So-called denazification concerns the cleaning of the German people from the corrupting influences of National Socialism. The need for such cleaning is recognized by the Church. It led the fight against these influences in the Third Reich. It made sacrifices in this struggle, but also in the Stuttgart Declaration from October 1945 it confessed its guilt. These facts and the incumbent responsibility of the church before God give it the right and the freedom to express its serious concerns regarding the procedure being pursued today. (1) The church believes that everyone who committed a crime in connection with the rule of National Socialism must be punished. (2) . . . The punishment of members of National Socialist organizations through removal from their offices should only be done in those case where is can be proven that through their membership or their actions they personally abetted the crimes of National Socialism and were, therefore, accomplices or beneficiaries. . . . In addition to these fundamental reservations, the following details must be pointed out: (1) The removal of many people from positions, who are perceived to be blameless and whose dismissal results in financial impoverishment exceeds the measures that have been taken in recent years regarding the same matter in Germany. . . . (2) Certain questions in the questionnaire tempt people in many cases to lie and foster denunciations. This cannot be conducive to a moral rehabilitation of our people. (3) The prohibition of education for students who as youths held inconsequential leadership positions in National Socialist organizations or chose the military profession, often thereby to escape compulsion to join the Nazi party, creates a hopeless and aimless youth, which is likely to contribute to the revival radical slogans because it cuts off the path to a new future for them. III (1) The church is not defending the spirit of National Socialism when it airs these concerns, it knows that the decline in confidence in the legal system can become an obstacle to hearing the procla-

213

mation of divine commandments and divine grace. It is our conviction that our people can only come to a new beginning if they are able to hear the message of God’s word. (2) Only if necessary measures are taken with enlightened justice and responsibility before God will the way be cleared for the German people to find a new relation with the other peoples of the earth. 376. THE FORMATION OF THE EKD AND VELKD (1948) From Karl Kupisch. Quellen zur Geschichte des deutschen Pr Protestantismus otestantismus von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart. T. 1. (Hamburg: Siebenstern Taschenbuch Verlag, 1971), #11 60–72, #13 75–81. trans. by Eric Lund. The Constitution of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) 1948 Article 1 The Protestant church in Germany is a federation of Lutheran, Reformed and United churches. It respects the confessional foundation of the member churches and congregations and assumes that it will make its confession effective in the doctrine, life and order of the Church. Article 2 In the EKD the existing community of German Protestant Christianity is visible. With its member churches, the EKD affirmed the decisions taken by the first Confessing Synod in Barmen. It knows itself to be bound as the confessing church to activate the insights of the church struggle about the nature, order, and discipline of the Church. It calls upon the member churches to listen to the testimony of the brothers and help each other in a common defense against heresies, which are destructive to the Church. ... Article 22 The institutions of the EKD are the Synod of the EKD, the church Conference and the Council of the EKD. . . .

214

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Article 24 The Synod consists of 100 members chosen from the synodical bodies of the member churches and 20 members called from the council. . . . Article 25 The term of office of the Synod lasts for 6 years....... Article 28 . . . The Conference has the tasks of offering advice about the work of the EKD and the common concerns of member churches and of making suggestions to the Synod and the Council. . . . Article 29 The Council has the task of leading and governing the EKD. . . . Article 30 The Council consists of 12 members. 11 members will be jointly elected by the Synod and Conference through a secret ballot with a two–thirds majority. The Conference can make suggestions. An additional member will be the president of the Synod....... The Constitution of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany (VELKD) (1948) Article 1 The foundation of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church is the gospel of Jesus Christ as given in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and as primarily attested to in the confessional writings of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, especially in the unaltered Augsburg Confession of 1530 and the Small Catechism of Martin Luther. . . . Article 2 The United Church, in its member churches, joins forces with other Protestant churches in Germany in an alliance to preserve and promote the fellowship witnessed in the confessional battle at the Confessing

Synod of Barmen in 1934. The condemnations pronounced there remain applicable for its actions, as interpreted through the Lutheran confessions. . . . Article 8 The institutions of the VELKD are 1) the Bishop’s Conference and the presiding bishop, 2) the General Synod, and 3) the Church Board (Kirchenleitung). . . . Article 11 . . . The General Synod consists of 54 members, 28 lay and 14 clerical, sent from the synodical bodies of the member churches. . . . Article 12 The Church Board consists of the presiding bishop as chair, his deputy, the president of the General Synod and two additional members chosen from the General Synod, one lay and one clerical. THE LUTHERAN CHURCHES UNDER EASTERN EUROPEAN COMMUNISM 377. JOSEF HROMÁDKA: ON THE THRESHOLD OF A DIALOGUE (1964) The author was a Lutheran theologian from Czechoslovakia who played an important role after World War II in encouraging dialogue between Christians and Marxists. He was ordained in 1912 and participated in the merger of the Czech Reformed and Lutheran Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren in 1918. The advance of Nazism forced him into exile in 1939. After teaching at Princeton he returned to Prague to teach in 1947. From Communio viatorum viatorum, 7 no 2 Summer 1964 (Charles University in Prague, Theological Faculty), 119–46. The Meaning of Socialist Atheism Our dialogue with responsible builders of the new orders, especially with those who are following the path of Marx and Lenin in their ideas and practice, deals fundamentally with two questions. . . . The first question is simply this: is a socialist and communist society essentially stigmatized by a revolt against God

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

or is their atheism chiefly an auxiliary, a historical explainable mark of a social and political movement for new orders of society? . . . Let us look at the atheism of the worker’s movement, of Marx’s and Lenin’s socialist as compared with [the atheistic mood of Friedrich Nietzsche and atheism of the Faust type that ends in moral nihilism and in a ruthless trampling on the profound human relationships of love and humility, forgiveness and respect for man.] We need also historical perspective to understand the essence of the question. It is not sufficient to analyze atheism as an abstract doctrine, apart from its real roots in social conditions and in human desires, plans and goals. I venture to say that the socialist movement, as it appeared in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and as it resulted in the revolution of 1917 and in the building of new social orders in Easter Europe, is atheistic only in a secondary sense. Of course, it would be foolish not to take this socialist atheism seriously and to declare that it is an unimportant matter in the whole mighty revolutionary development under the leadership of Marxist or Leninist philosophy. But it is just as, or even more, dubious—and in a certain sense dangerous—to cope with the new historical reality in the sphere of the socialist society without a careful investigation of what is the ultimate and deepest motive of the socialist revolution or of the communist plans for the future. It is a special danger if a religious campaign against atheistic socialism has political motives, or if, indeed, it is motivated by fear of the economic losses and material consequences that the socialist transformation will cause the so–called free world. If we take into consideration the real situation of the modern, formally Christian society, with its real atheism, even though it is often disguised by respect for so-called religion and for the church, we must all the more emphatically, just because we are theologians and believing Christians, warn against a confusion of terms and against cheap propaganda in matters that are so supremely grave. We must even ponder whether what we call the atheism of genuine and responsible socialists (or communists) is not a profounder spiritual and moral expression of humanity that is the struggle against the new society in the name of God and traditional Christianity. We shall reflect with genuine attentiveness and with responsible study about the very roots of anti-religion and anti-ecclesiasticism in the ranks of those who began the movement of the modern proletariat against the old social wrongs, against the artificial division of human society into the rich and the poor, the satiated and the hungry, the privileged and the outlawed,

215

the exploiters and the exploited. We do not want to simplify historical reality. We only want to say that the true meaning, the starting point and the goal for modern socialism was the endeavor to help man, as such, to achieve genuine dignity and freedom, equality and brotherliness, to free him from the bonds of political oppression, from class privileges, from hunger and poverty, from social insecurity and material helplessness. . . . Or, as we have already said elsewhere: atheism is, in this connection, only an accompaniment to radical humanism. And in this radical humanism, there exists, in secularized form, all (or almost all) ethical and social emphases of a living biblical Christianity, that of medieval reformist as well as that of genuine Reformation. . . . It is important for us to understand the thesis that socialist anti–religious ideas are incidental to the endeavors for right and fitting conditions for a genuine humanity. Wherever the fight against religion comes to the fore, and especially where atheism takes on a vulgar, a sort of free-thinking form, it largely makes sterile the real meaning of the socialist struggle for humanity in all its social relationships, for personal integrity without selfishness and with disguised attempts to use others as a means to one’s own goals. What is Man? We now arrive at the second question of our dialogue with men and women of this world. It was already in the background of the preceding paragraph. Yes, it is man who matters. But what is man? Where lies the fundamental nature and destiny? This is where the believing Christian and the convinced communist (or Marxist in general) encounter each other. . . . The Gospel reminds us constantly that we cannot believe in God if we do not see man before us, that we cannot love God without loving man and that the actual meaning of faith is the liberation of man from his own ego, for service, for brotherly love, and for full solidarity with people in their sin and suffering, humility and struggle for a new life. In other worlds—the message of the Bible is certainly a sober view of man in his actual transgression, in his life, it is a message without illusions. But at the same time it is a joyous and hopeful outlook on the transformation of man, who has, at the depths of his humanity, been touched by the Word from above, and who has understood that it is necessary to fight without fear against evil and temptation, egoism and lack of live, injustice and arrogance at the most difficult and dangerous spots. . . . The biblical message

216

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

regards man in the whole fullness of earthly existence, in his corporeality, his conditionality and mortality. The life of faith does not take place on the level of the so–called spiritual life, separated from nature and matter, from pain and human instincts, from want and hunger, from death and the grave. The biblical message continually reminds us of solidarity among men, of mutual responsibility and dependence. . . . The believing Christian has not comprehended the deepest motives of true revolutionary enthusiasts aspiring to achieve guarantees of genuine humanity, and the Marxist has not penetrated below the surface of mediocre ecclesiasticism or vulgar religious emotion. They are separated from each other by the grave errors of the past, by prejudices and misunderstandings, the superstructure of uncritical attitudes and tradition, and by the long isolation from one another. Both must dig down to the foundations of their mission. . . . This is a difficult fight for self-criticism and selfexamination, but it is also a fight for man, as he lives beneath the surface and beneath the deposit that has accumulated from slogans, stereotypes and the errors of the past. . . . We long for the number of those genuine and enthusiastic builders of new orders among men to be as great as possible, and for their enthusiasm, conviction and self-sacrifice to have an attraction, especially for the young people and adolescents. Yet, it is important that the believing Christian descend to the depths of his faith in order to comprehend the people of this type who are around him, in order to feel the beat of their hearts, the zeal of their thoughts and the purity of their humanity. And we also long for these people, so mistrustful of everything that hints of religion and the church, not to be deceived by superficial or petrified phenomena and to reflect on the work of those who, in the name of their God, led by the prophets and the Gospel, have intervened in history, aroused the conscience of men, had a revolutionary effect (even if not by political means) on the structure and orders of social life.......

From Stasi Verseuchte Kirche? (Leipzig: Thomas Verlag, 1995). trans. by Ralph Radloff and Erwin Weber. http://helios.augustana.edu/~ew/des/ illustrated–articles/pamphlet.html Accessed June 15, 2016. Difficulties of Christians in the GDR The GDR was an atheistic state as well as a dictatorship. It had no interest in religious and independent-minded individuals who might place the state at risk and make it insecure. Therefore, steps had to be taken so that Christians could fit into the state. There were a number of possibilities for dealing with Christians: Denial of higher education and student acceptance, so that Christians would not be able to achieve positions of leadership (in the GDR they were the “cadre”)! Discrimination in career and chosen profession: Christians had no chance for advancement and in the last decade were able to be neither a state official nor a lawyer in good conscience. It was also often difficult for teachers. Christians often walked a tight rope. . . . In addition there were restrictions on travel, publications, assembly, vacation to spas and inexpensive union resorts! They compelled the youth to join communist youth organizations, etc. All of this is known. And in the past, the Western Press has made this known again and again. What is not known is what it meant for the individual Christian and for the Christian family to live in the GDR in everyday life. What is not known is with what emotions some parents brought their children to the first day of school. What is not known is what trying and humiliating conversations not only the parents, but also the children had with teachers and functionaries. . . . Or what does it mean, if again and again, here and there, people were arrested, without our knowing where they were held imprisoned, to whom we were not allowed to write, and to whom we were not permitted to bring a Bible? . . . What were the Alternatives for Christians?

378. DIETRICH MENDT: THE EAST GERMAN CHURCH AND THE STASI (1995) Dietrich Mendt was a Lutheran pastor in East Germany from 1954 until 1991. He served on the church council in Saxony from 1973 to 1983 and was the church superintendent in Zittau at the time of “die Wende.”

The first possible alternative: Leave the church and join the party. This was the simplest solution and it was preferred by the state. Many people preferred this path, in particular those, who no longer had any more inner connection with the church. (It is probably a similar group of people, who in the old Federal Republic of Germany resigned from the church out of opposition to the church tax.)

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The second possible alternative: Flee (before the time of the Wall) and later resettle in the West! Not only many intellectuals took this route before 1961, but also numerous children of evangelical pastors went “over there” to the West, so that they would have an opportunity to attend schools of higher learning. The motives were various. There were those who could not take it any longer in the GDR. They were afraid of not only losing their freedom but also their careers. They were unable to use their God-given talent, and also could not earn a good living, or at least make some “big” money. Among them were those who were convinced (that one cannot live in the GDR as a Christian) and those who were opportunists (those who were looking for an increase in the quality of their lives). . . . Adjusting to economic conditions in the West was preferred and more justifiable by many of them, rather than adapting to the political situation in the GDR. For some the GDR wasn’t such a bad place. As a matter of fact, they had a good life there. However, they lived in constant fear, that one day their luck would run out. Today people from this group of refugees belong to the harshest and most severe critics of the Church in the GDR. They have to prove, that a true Christian could not live in the GDR. Therefore, in their eyes, everyone who remained in the GDR was either half a Communist or a complete one. The third possible alternative: Adapt yourself carefully to the GDR. Join the CDU (Christian Democratic Party) and not the SED (Socialist Communist Party) in order to have peace and to be left alone. You become a member of the “Society for GermanSoviet Friendship.” Each time a law was passed, you decide anew whether or not you must protest against it, but most of the time could not find the courage to speak against it in an open debate. You went to vote, and in the most extreme cases you went into the voting booth and refused to cast your vote publicly, which was already something that required a bit of courage. This alternative was chosen by the majority out of consideration for the family, for fellow workers (you didn’t want to spoil their periodic bonuses), and out of consideration for oneself and one’s moral strength to resist. Finally, the fourth possible alternative was that people thought that God had an assignment for them in this country, namely a dual assignment: on the one hand, they had to bring the biblical message to this country and enlist people for Jesus Christ and his disciples, namely, to become missionaries, because they were convinced that there was no country in which

217

God was not at work. The text of [Psalm 18:39] gave help and consolation: “With God one is able to leap over walls!” They didn’t understand this Word of God as encouragement to flee over the Wall, but rather as a statement of the fact, that for God there are no Walls. For others it meant that they were equally responsible with God for the conditions in this country. They were always concerned about making the GDR more humane and more just in the spirit of Jeremiah 29:7 and his exhortation in the Babylonian Captivity of Israel: “Seek the welfare of the City.” And they believed that this would be possible. When Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Soviet Union in 1985, it was a confirmation that internal resistance accompanied by constant criticism of the state sometime had an effect and would be rewarded by God. And God did reward it in 1989, even if it was in a different way and a more radical way than we had thought. It was more than we were able to hope for in our most urgent prayers, and more than any West-German politician had considered possible. . . . . . . No one wanted to accept the idea that the GDR would last for a long time. Not until the Wall was built did it become clear that Christians had to “live” in this country and not merely “winter over.” And not until 1961 did the Church face the question seriously as to how a Christian could live in this state. From then on the Protestants and Catholics disagreed on how to live in the GDR . . . to protect and shield itself from the socialist–communist state and its temptations, the Evangelical Church, inspired by the gospel, sought to equip its members for service in this country and to this country. Out of this effort was created the not-very-clear and later misused and misunderstood evangelical formulation of the “Church in Socialism.” There had been a fairly great spectrum of opinions for the formulation of the “Church in Socialism.” After the Wall, there were some who previously had shared each others’ burdens, respected and supported one another, who now began to quarrel. What was “Resistance” and what was “Opportunism”? What was responsibility and what was not? . . . I was among those who placed hope in Socialism! We believed, that if one freed socialism from all distortions of Stalinism and the GDR, it could, under the right circumstances, become a healthy and competitive alternative to the market economy. And I have sought with others again and again for a basis which appeared to me to be appropriate. The bestknown attempt was probably that of the Erfurt

218

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Provost, Heino Falcke, who at a meeting of the Synod of United Evangelical Churches in the GDR, demanded a “Better Socialism.” Aside from the fact that in retrospect such hopes were obviously deceiving, they were also shattered, since the State considered such reforms, i.e., the so-called “Revisionism” as counterrevolutionary and therefore traitorous. In the files from the Leipzig Secret Police Headquarters, which are in front of me, there is, among others, a report about me: it says that my attempt to create a support group and small circles, which met in homes, was nothing other than the preparation of the church for possible illegal activities. . . . 379. KIRCHENTAG THESES: THE TIME OF SILENCE IS PAST (HALLE, 1988) A group of church members from Wittenberg who had been active in the peace and environmental movements presented these theses at the church conference meeting in Halle as proposals for a profound transformation of the GDR. From Friedrich Schorlemmer. Die Wende in Wittenberg tenberg. (Wittenberg: Drei Kastanien Verlag, 1997), 9. trans. by Eric Lund. Our country faces a crisis in the development of many areas of its life—in the midst of a world that is in crisis. Droughts and floods, famines and the extinction of species, water and air pollution, toxic disasters and atomic accidents are warning signs of a threat to life of global proportions. This compels us to abandon silence and to tolerate concealment no longer. Many thoughtful people around the world want, hope for and demand a fundamental change, new thinking, and a reversal of our life-threatening ways. . . . (1) Because we as Christians, in the freedom and commitment of faith, share responsibility for and are therefore complicit in what comes from this country, we believe it is necessary and imperative that we overcome our fear, our mistrust and our lack of expectations, recognize and grasp the opportunities for reversal, and candidly push, in critical solidarity, for the renewal of our society. (2) Because indifference, resignation and stagnation are spreading in society, and the number of people who withdraw and no longer want to live here is increasing, we believe it is necessary to talk openly about this and reshape basic living conditions so that more citizens experience social cooperation as meaningful. (3) Because the development of socialist states has

also tended through bureaucracy, the misuse of authority, conformism, dogmatism, the arbitrary exercising of power and fear to produce social depression, harming the very essence of socialism, we consider it urgent to disclose such phenomena and to overcome this deplorable state of affairs around us. (4) Because every citizen has a legitimate right to be fully informed about all relevant life issues, we consider it necessary to change our media policy to reflect the complexity and ambiguity of the real world in order to allow for personal judgment and to promote purposeful action. (5) Because a sustained track record of viewing society through rose-colored glasses, omitting or concealing errors and malpractice, does not encourage people to come to grips with accumulated problems, we consider it urgent to create a social climate of openness, truthfulness and critical acceptance of responsibility. (6) Because the existing electoral system hinders competition, we consider it essential to allow for recognizable opportunities to choose between candidates in all elections. . . . (11) Because the external peace policy of our country will be more credible and effective if it is proven in practice with the same persistence within society, we consider it a matter of urgency that the entire concept of education from kindergarten to vocational training and beyond change from the current system of military training to a new system of peaceful conflict management. (12) Because the Olof Palme Peace March in the GDR along with its disarmament impetus was a first step towards overcoming the internal practice of setting boundaries between the church and the state, we consider it necessary that this open and public dialogue continue in order to build confidence between nations and in our country. . . .11 (19) Because we need to leave the Earth livable for our children and grandchildren, we consider it urgent that even in a socialist country, there no longer be losers in the conflict between ecology and economy. . . . 380. THE PEACE PRAYERS IN LEIPZIG AND THE PEACEFUL REVOLUTION (1981–1989) From Christian Dietrich and Uwe Schwabe, eds. Freunde und Feinde—F einde—Friedensg riedensgebete ebete in Leipzig zwischen 1981 und 9. Oktober, 1989—Dokumentation 1989—Dokumentation. (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1994), documents 1, 187, 234. trans. by Eric Lund.

THE CHURCH IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The Start of the Peace Prayers at the Nikolai Church in Leipzig (1981) Invitation of the Arbeitsgruppe Friedensdienst (former Bausoldaten) sponsored by the Youth Pastors Dear Friends, From November 8 to 18, 1981 the Peace Decade will take place. During this period, every day at the same time, people should meet to pray for peace in as many congregations as possible. The decade will end with a service of repentance on November 18 at 7:30 p.m. in the Nikolai Church. We believe that prayers for peace have a special significance now in a politically tense situation. The Federation of Churches in East Germany will publish materials [a booklet with prayers, songs and information]. We would welcome suggestions for thematic aspect of the prayers. We ask you not only to advertise the event with the following poster, but also to give notification of the concluding worship service. Following the service of repentance we invite all volunteers to offer an evaluation. Letter of Pastor Christian Führer to the State Secretary Löffler (July 11, 1989) [Ed. note: This letter, explaining the purpose of the Peace Prayers, was addressed to Kurt Löffler, State Secretary for Church Issues, three months before the collapse of the GDR. The author, Christian Führer (1943–2014) was the head pastor at the St. Nikolai church, which was the primary rallying point for the peaceful demonstrations that led to “die Wende” (The Turnaround).] The service of prayer for peace in our city church had its origins in the peace decade. Since 1982, it has taken place weekly on Mondays. We have found a form of devotion that appeals to people of different opinions and conditions and fits with the missionary aspect of the concept “The church is open for all.” We are responsible for sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with all people and view humanity as a whole. These also extends to social concerns. We encounter people who have been rubbed raw by the socio–political sphere. They come—also as nonChristians—to us in the Church seeking understanding and conversation. In response to these concerns we offer the means at our disposal since the church is commanded to turn its attention in the name of Jesus to people who are in inner or outer distress. We also see it as our duty to contribute to conditions in our society, conditions under which people no longer

219

even bother to put in an application for release from citizenship in the GDR. We are realistic enough to know that not everyone will understand our attitude, much less appreciated it. In recent times different sides have reported very dissimilarly about our city church, St. Nikolai. The Church Council is especially concerned whenever superficial reporting—as in the Leipzig Volkszeitung article on June 24, 1989—contributes to obfuscation instead of understanding and peace. It could be otherwise as the article in the LVZ on July 4, 1989 shows. As we see no rational alternative to dialogue and consider the collective overcoming of problems to be necessary, the church council has decided to take this extraordinary step, to ask for a conversation with you, Mr. State Secretary. With utmost respect, Pastor Christian Führer Eye-Witness Report by Katharina Führer, on the Peace Prayers (September 1989) [Ed. note: The author is the daughter of the pastor of the Nikolai church who wrote the previous letter. This text shows the mounting tensions before the extra-ordinary turning point, one month later.] Today we witnessed the hitherto harshest police operation after the Peace Prayers in the Nikolai church. Already at noon cameras were mounted on the adjacent Brühl Street, the entire churchyard was closed off, and autos were towed away. Since the early afternoon, several police motorcycles stood in the square, while visitors to the Peace Prayers from outside [Leipzig] were warned to go into the church, for to remain outside would not be without consequences. There were checkpoints in the city, and, after extensive preparations, the time for the prayers to begin came at 5 p.m. The nave of the church and the first balcony was full. Our bishop personally greeted the Monday congregation and admonished them to go home peacefully at the conclusion of the devotional service. Superintendent Magirius read the letter that the church board had sent to the State Secretary in which a request was made, among other things, for an open and effective discussion about the causes of discontent and undesirable developments in our society. There was applause and then singing. Pastor Führer preached about a text from the Old Testament which tells us that God always reaches out his helping hand to us when, by human estimation, there appears to be no more way out. We sang, offered prayers, and rose for the blessing. The more than 1000 people in the church quietly left,

220

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

encouraged by the words of hope that the pastor pronounced. We will let no one persuade us that our Peace Prayers would be abused, because this house of God is a house of hope and should remain open to all. Small groups stood in the church square. Bystanders from the Leipzig populace had assembled again today outside the thick ranks of the riot police. Dogs barked and a voice from a megaphone could be heard from one of the green cars. “Citizens, leave the Nikolai churchyard. Failure to do so will result in police measures.”. . . . Only a few left. Now came the police measures. The scarcely prepared riot police, who would not look us in the eye, were pushed towards the crowd by the gray shirts standing in the second row, displaying their shoulder weapons, and by plain clothes men with bellowing commands and threatening hands. They circled the group. Closer and closer. Those who came from behind grabbed

individuals from the crowd. Partly this seemed deliberate, and partly without any system. . . . Each group of three policemen dragged one away. Whoever put up a defense was pulled away by the hair. Hands were twisted together behind backs. Fingers were bent. Many let themselves be led away in silence; others were carried away to the trucks. There were loud cries of women, men, and even children. Those forced away were not able to free those already taken into custody––as had happened on the previous Monday. . . . In the evening we heard reports about [East Germans fleeing through the opened fence at] the Austrian-Hungarian border. Even more people will leave our country. But what do we do who are still here? . . . The day after we learned about the 100 arrested who were set free again after midnight. . . . They were fined 3000 to 5000 Marks. . . .

8. Lutheran Theology in Twentieth Century Europe

German pastors and professors continued to be at the forefront of new developments in Lutheran theology and biblical studies during the Twentieth Century, but the first major turning point in Protestant thought after World War I was initiated by a Swiss Reformed pastor: Karl Barth (1886–1968). Barth finished his theological studies in Germany where he had been influenced by such notable liberal Lutherans as Adolf Harnack (1851–1930) in Berlin and Wilhelm Herrmann (1846–1922) in Marburg. While serving as a pastor in Switzerland after 1909, he began to question the adequacy of liberal theology, and in 1914 he completely repudiated its perspective when he discovered that many of the professors he had admired gave wholehearted support to the German war effort. Barth concluded that their understanding of Christianity was bankrupt because it manifested “uncritical and irresponsible subservience to the patterns, forces and movements of human history and civilization” (doc. #381). Barth attacked “Cultural Protestantism” for associating Christianity with German culture. He criticized the whole tradition of liberal theology from Schleiermacher to Ritschl to Harnack for focusing on human self-awareness and turning theology into “the philosophy of the history of religion in general.” In a notable metaphor Barth compared the trend in nineteenth century theology to opening the windows of Christianity to outside impulses (allowing “notoriously foul air” to blow in), while slamming shut some doors (i.e. blocking the influence of “all–important matters of Christian understanding”). Barth articulated an alternative theology in his “Commentary on Romans” (1919/1921) and in his multi-volume “Church Dogmatics” (1932–1967). He

contrasted Christianity (God’s self–revelation in Jesus Christ) to religion (futile human efforts to reach God through mysticism, rationalism, or historical inquiry.) He rejected the possibility of natural theology and, following Kierkegaard, stressed the “infinite qualitative difference” between God and humanity (the otherness of God). For Barth, theology is the proclamation of the Word that comes from God to humanity through the Bible, which bears witness to Christ. This was called Crisis Theology, after the Greek word for judgment, Dialectical Theology, because of its stress on the disjuncture between the human and the divine, or Neo-Orthodoxy because of its efforts to recover important themes found in theologians such as Luther and Calvin. This theological movement became even more important within both the Reformed and Lutheran churches when Barth, then teaching at the University of Bonn, became the leading force behind the condemnation of the German Christian movement in the 1930s and the prime author of the Barmen Declaration (see chapter 7). Other developments in biblical and historical studies also contributed to the diminishing influence of the liberal theology most closely associated with the Ritschlian School. In 1906, Albert Schweitzer had argued in “The Quest of the Historical Jesus” that the liberal Lives of Jesus, which pictured him as a spiritual Messiah inaugurating an ethical Kingdom of God, were historically inaccurate (see doc. #284). The ‘rediscovery’ of the Reformation in the Luther Renaissance stimulated by Karl Holl’s research during World War I also showed the divergence between the orientations of the liberal theologians and Martin Luther. Holl (1866–1926), who

222

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

originally taught patristics in Berlin, was a fervent nationalist who turned to the study of Luther in part to show the great contributions Germans had made to Christianity.1 He defended the achievements of Luther in response to disparaging portrayals of the reformer published by Catholic scholars and the critical assessments of him made by liberals such as Harnack and Troeltsch. In Harnack’s search for what was essential in Christianity, he had stated that neither the “whole Gospel” nor the “whole Luther” were of permanent value. In contrast to Troeltsch, who portrayed Luther as essentially a medieval person, Holl defended the cultural significance of Luther as a decisive contributor to the development of modernity. In a ground-breaking essay about Luther’s view of religion, published in 1921, Holl argued that Luther had rebuilt Christianity from the ground up and had touched on all the questions that concerned modern people. He especially emphasized Luther’s paradoxical view of God as both wrathful and loving and Luther’s attack on Renaissance efforts to “make religion a part of culture.” Holl stated that religion can never be merely “an aspect of civilization.” It must be an ultimate personal concern involving the commitment of one’s whole personality. In keeping with his new appreciation of the theocentric focus of Luther’s thought and Luther’s teaching on justification, Holl distanced himself from the pre-war liberal theologians, although he continued to be a political conservative (doc. #382). The non-rational aspect of religion and the “otherness” of God also received attention in Rudolf Otto‘s influential study of features of religious experience. Published in 1917, “The Idea of the Holy” was the most widely read theological book of that era. Otto (1869–1937), who taught at the University of Marburg from 1917 until his death, was directly influenced by Schleiermacher’s analysis of the distinctiveness of religious feelings, but his description of the content of the experience of the holy as an encounter with a “Wholly Other” (which was unapproachable and awe-inspiring but also attractive), fit well with Dialectical Theology’s conception of God. A Lutheran himself, Otto also noted Luther’s sense of God as a mystery whose ways of guidance are experienced as paradoxical (doc. #383). The closest Lutheran associate of Karl Barth in the early shaping of Dialectical Theology was Friedrich Gogarten (1887–1967). Gogarten described the postwar period as a time of cultural crisis. His characterization of his generation as one that stood “Between the Times” inspired the title of the journal that became the main outlet for the communication of

dialectical theology. With Barth, he rejected historicism and anthropocentrism and stressed the incapacity of humans to reach God through their own resources (doc. #384). However, in the 1930s, Barth and Gogarten became estranged, partly because of their differing views of natural theology, theological anthropology, and political ethics, and partly as a result of Gogarten’s brief affiliation with the German Christian movement. (see chapter 7) Gogarten distanced himself from the German Christians after a few months and did not joined the Nazi Party, but he never resumed a close collaboration with Barth. A number of more conservative, confessional Lutherans had serious reservations about Barth’s theology from the very start. Hermann Sasse (1895–1976) published a book, “What is Lutheranism?” in which he praised Barth for attacking liberal theology but faulted him for downplaying the theological differences between the Reformed and the Lutheran traditions (doc. #385). These differences included matters such as natural theology, the sacraments and the relation of law and gospel. Sasse was an opponent of National Socialism but refused to sign the Barmen Declaration because many of its proponents wanted to give it the status of a confession. Seeking a more distinctly Lutheran alternative to Barmen, he participated with Friedrich Bodelschwingh (1877–1946), Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) in the drafting of the Bethel Confession. After the war, Sasse also objected to the formation of the church federation (EKD), because it combined the Lutheran, Reformed and United churches. In 1949, he left Germany and spent the rest of his life teaching in Australia. Although Sasse was frequently critical of church union efforts, he was also active in the ecumenical movement, seeking further dialogue among all the churches that confessed the Nicene Creed. Karl Barth wrote an essay in 1935 on the relation of law and gospel, which perpetuated the debate with confessional Lutheran theologians. Barth argued that God’s grace is made known in both the law and the gospel, and that the most legitimate use of the law is as an expression of God’s will, following the declaration of God’s promises in the gospel. Werner Elert (1885–1954), Sasse’s colleague in Erlangen, was the most outspoken of several Lutheran theologians who thought Barth’s position was fundamentally erroneous. Claiming support from both the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther, Elert argued that Barth failed to recognize that God has a twofold manner of speaking: a word of judgment in the law and a word of grace in the gospel. The law must first play an

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

accusatory role before the gospel can be recognized as a message of deliverance (doc. #386). Elert and other Lutheran critics thought Barth had legalized the gospel, turning the life of faith into a life of obedience instead of a life of freedom. This was a revival of the perennial Lutheran-Reformed debate over whether there was a third use of the law as a guide to Christian living. For Elert, the law plays a continuing role after the declaration of the gospel, but only as a force exposing human sinfulness and pointing to the need for Christ. In 1941, Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), a biblical scholar at Marburg, provoked another round of debates through an essay, which asserted that the Bible presented a world-view that could no longer be accepted in modern times (doc. #285). Bultmann was also interested in constructive theology and had previously offered some support to Barth’s critique of liberal theology. After stressing the need to demythologize theology in order to allow the core message to come through, he sketched out an existential interpretation of Christianity influenced by the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Starting with an analysis of the problem of finitude and the unsuccessful human quest for self-contrived security, he argued that an encounter with “the Christ event” in the church’s preaching (kerygma) provided the only way to overcome anxiety and find “authentic life” (doc. #387). The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ interested him not so much as incidents in the life of a mythical figure in the past, but as redemptive events experienced by those who live by faith. Those who “make the cross of Christ their own” overcome a natural dread of suffering and find relief from the bondage that comes from attachment to transitory objects. A radical self-commitment to God, the abandoning of all security, allows a person to be open to the future. Many appreciated the frankness with which Bultmann discussed issues of myth and history, but he faced extensive criticism for his dependence on Heidegger’s philosophy of existence to modernize the Christian message. Theologians such as Helmut Thielicke (1908–1986) wondered whether an interpretation so detached from historical events could have the transformative effect that Bultmann claimed. He also faulted Bultmann for failing to differentiate between various types of myth. Thielicke considered the use of mythical forms to be a permanent aspect of human thinking and a legitimate vehicle for reflection on transcendental realities (doc. #388). Existentialism was the dominant form of European

223

philosophy in the period between 1920 and 1960, and it also deeply influenced the theology of Paul Tillich (1886–1965). He had briefly been a colleague of Bultmann and Heidegger in Marburg before becoming a professor in Frankfurt in 1929. After being dismissed by the Nazis in 1933, he went to the United States where he taught at Union Seminary (NY), Harvard, and the University of Chicago. In the structuring of his theology, Tillich used a “method of correlation.” He started with the questions that arise when people reflect on their existential situations and proceeded to show how Christianity provided answers. Thus, he wrote about matters such as the experience of anxiety that arises from realization of biological, moral and existential finitude. Viewing religion as the depth dimension of human experience, he encouraged each individual to evaluate what is the ultimate concern that determines his or her way of living (doc. #389). For Tillich, the central questions of all philosophical inquiry come back to the study of being or ontology, so this was the framework he used when he spoke of God and Christ. He defined God as the “ground of being” or “being-itself,” also suggesting that many people wrongly think of God as the highest entity or as “a person.” Addressing the problem of existential estrangement, he presented Christ as the one who was “the undistorted manifestation of essential being within and under the conditions of existence,” and, thus, the one who through his words, deeds, and suffering makes it possible for others to become “new creatures” (doc. # 390). Controversial figures such as Barth, Bultmann, and Tillich were the primary definers of the direction of theological reflection in the first half of the twentieth century, but the wider range of Lutheran thought across the span of the century can be illustrated by some examples from writings addressing ethics or the formation of the Christian life. There continued to be theologians who were strongly shaped by the traditions of Lutheran Pietism or Orthodoxy and others who were more influenced by new concerns that developed outside of Lutheranism. Adolf Koeberle (1898–1990) is an example of a theologian who continued to address some of the themes that were important for Pietists and nineteenth century NeoLutherans. A professor at Leipzig, Basel, and Tübingen, he is best known for his 1936 book on justification and sanctification. Koeberle explored the various ways people attempt to attain communion with God and noted their inability to sanctify themselves in God’s sight. Calling justification, “the mother” of sanctification, he stressed how forgiveness and

224

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

regeneration are both the work of God and how they are intimately connected (doc. #391). Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s most popular and influential book, Discipleship, written around the same time, also wrestled, in a sense, with the issue of justification and sanctification. Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), however, focused not so much on “the quest for holiness” (the title given to the English translation of Koeberle’s book) as on the relationship between the promise of grace and Jesus’ call to follow him. At a time when the Nazis were rapidly gaining power in Germany, Bonhoeffer lamented the inaction and indifference he saw in the churches. In this book on the Sermon on the Mount, written while he was teaching at the Confessing Church seminary in Finkenwalde, he suggested that complacency resulted from a misinterpretation of the message of justification by grace. Echoing Søren Kierkegaard’s attack on superficial bourgeois Christianity, Bonhoeffer warned against cheapening grace (preaching forgiveness without the call to repentance and discipleship). He emphasized the costly nature of grace or the recognition that grace entails sacrifice: both the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and the sacrifice involved in turning away from sin and living out a Christian vocation in the world (doc. #392). His own struggle to follow Christ led him to resist Nazi rule, and this political action cost him his life. He was executed by the Nazis on April 8,1945 at Flossenbürg concentration camp (see also chapter 7). At the other end of the spectrum from Koeberle, Dorothee Sölle (Soelle), a self–described Christian radical, manifested a much more tenuous relation to churchly Christianity and traditional ways of doing theology. She also looked beyond Lutheranism for resources to sustain the relevance of Christianity to modern life. After a period of youthful disdain for organized religion, she became interested in theology through the reading of Kierkegaard. Sölle (1929–2003) continued to be skeptical about many of the historical claims of Christianity and felt intellectually liberated when she became acquainted with Bultmann’s demythologization project. However, her own theology pushed the theme of liberation further to address a variety of ethical problems such as patriarchal social structures, economic inequality and political oppression. Sharing with Bonhoeffer a central concern for human relationships and the nurturing of Christian communities, she came to believe that developments in liberation theology, initiated in South America, had a direct relevance also to people like herself living in the “First World.” Aspiring “to go a little beyond Bultmann,” she became an advo-

cate for feminism and a defender of liberation movements in many parts of the world (doc. #393). Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book on discipleship and his other writings on ethics were appealing to a wide range of Lutherans—from conservative to liberal. Some of his comments in letters written while he was in prison, however, revealed a side of his thought that was more controversial. In 1944, he mused about the future of Christianity in an increasingly secular world (doc. #394). Feeling like the foundations had been pulled out from under Christianity as it had been known in the past, he wondered “how Christ can become lord of the religionless as well.” Is it possible to speak about God in a “worldly way” or be Christian without the garb of religion? Friedrich Gogarten (1887–1967) picked up on this set of questions and led the way in a debate about secularization, which became a major theological issue throughout the Christian world until the end of the 1960s. Influenced by Barth’s distinguishing between Christianity and religion, and Bultmann’s demythologizing of the biblical world-view, Gogarten argued that secularization is not so much a problem for Christianity as a process initiated by Christian faith in that Christianity desacralized a world that had once been reverenced as divine (doc. #395). He also used the theological claim that salvation is by grace through faith, apart from works, to clarify that active life in the world thereby becomes “secular.” Gogarten, however, also made a distinction between secularization and secularism. The latter is a problematic ideological form of secularization which capitulates to relativism and replaces the quest for personal wholeness with nihilism. Bonhoeffer’s thoughts about ‘religionless Christianity’ stimulated the so-called Death of God movement in Anglo-American theology, and Gogarten’s view of secularization strongly influenced Harvey Cox’s important 1968 book, The Secular City. Dorothee Sölle was also a participant in these radical conversations about the possibility of a post-theistic theology. She rejected the image of God as an omnipotent higher power intervening from beyond the world and talked about the possibility of “atheistically believing in God.” For Sölle, Christ plays the role of God when God is perceived to be absent. “God has no other hands than ours.” In such a situation, the important question for her is not “Do you believe in God?” but rather “Do you live out God?” (doc. #396). During the period when the debate about secularization was unfolding, several more confessionally-oriented theologians who had been students of

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

Barth and Bultmann also began to rethink theological methodology, drawing attention to the importance of history in relation to revelation and faith. Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928–2014), who had studied briefly with Barth, disagreed with the ahistorical or supra-historical approach of dialectical theology and its rejection of natural theology. He claimed that critical reason provides important insights for theology and that historical research and interpretation should be taken into account. In a number of books beginning around 1960, Pannenberg argued that the revelation of God takes place indirectly in historical events and that the resurrection of Jesus is the definitive disclosure of God’s power and love (doc. #397). The resurrection provides knowledge that becomes the basis of faith or trust in God. In Jesus—God and Man, published in 1964 while he was teaching in Munich, Pannenberg devoted extensive attention to the question of the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. Based on the accounts of the appearances of Jesus and on the traditions about the empty grace, he made a case for viewing the resurrection as “historically very probable” even though it has no analogy and is thus a challenge to modern historical presuppositions about what is possible (doc. #398). According to Pannenberg, revelation is not completely understood until the end of history, so the resurrection of Jesus has a special significance. It is the “pre–actualization” of the end of history and shows that Jesus is the final revelation of God. Gerhard Ebeling (1912–2001), who had been one of Bultmann’s students, was also more interested than his teacher in the real Jesus of history. For Bultmann, it is the proclamation about Jesus by the church which is most significant; for Ebeling, the kerygma must have a historical foundation, not only in the “that” of Jesus’ existence but also in the “what” of his character. It is important to understand the faith of Jesus because he teaches what faith means and awakens faith in others. Ebeling explored the nature of faith in a number of books, stressing the Lutheran theme of justification by faith, and speaking of Jesus as both the witness and basis of faith. Since it was the resurrection of Jesus that was most determinative in making the witness of faith the basis of the church’s faith, Ebeling, like Pannenberg, was interested in exploring the historicity of this event. He too analyzed the reports of the empty tomb and the biblical accounts of the appearances of Jesus, and gave most credence to the traditions related to post–crucifixion encounters with Jesus (doc. #399). However, Ebeling was more ambiguous than Pannenberg about the nature of what happened. “To say that Jesus is risen

225

from the dead does not mean that he returned to this earthly life.” It means that death was now behind him and he was “finally with God.” Ebeling was additionally important for the role he played along with Ernst Käsemann in the development of the New Quest of the Historical Jesus (see chapter 3), for his historical studies of Martin Luther’s thought, and for his contributions to hermeneutics. THE RECOVERY OF THEOCENTRIC THEOLOGY AND THE REJECTION OF CULTURAL PROTESTANTISM 381. KARL BARTH: EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (1957) Although this essay was written much later, in 1957, it recalls the decisive change that took place in Barth’s outlook at the start of World War I. From Karl Barth. The Humanity of God God. (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1960), 13–15. trans. by Thomas Wieser.

Fig. 8.1. Karl Barth (1962)

226

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Under the increasing pressure of advancing positivism in the second half of the (19th) century—here the name of Albrecht Ritschl is to be remembered—theology retreated to the epistemology and ethics of Kant rediscovered, and to an interpretation of Luther rediscovered in the light of Kant. Finally, only a small realm remained for the genuine religious experience of the individual. Theology turned into philosophy of the history of religion in general, and of the Christian religion in particular. . . . The actual end of the 19th century as the “good old days” came for theology as for everything else with the fateful year of 1914. Accidently or not, a significant event took place during that very year. Ernst Troeltsch, the well-known professor of systematic theology and the leader of the then most modern school, gave up his chair in theology for one in philosophy. One day in early August of 1914 stands out in my personal memory as a black day. Ninetythree German intellectuals impressed public opinion by their proclamation in support of the war policy of Wilhelm II and his counselors. Among these intellectuals I discovered to my horror almost all of my theological teachers whom I had greatly venerated. In despair over what this indicated about the signs of the time I suddenly realized that I could not any longer follow either their ethics and dogmatics or their understanding of the Bible and of history. For me at least, 19th-century theology no longer held any future. For many, if not for most people, this theology did not become again what it had been, once the waters of the flood descending upon us at that time had somewhat receded. Everything has its time. Evangelical theology in the true spirit and style of the 19th century continued to exist and some vestiges still remain. But in its former wholeness it is a cause which today is significantly represented by only a few. . . . It has already been said that when the Christian gospel was changed into a statement, a religion, about Christian self-awareness, the God was lost sight of who in His sovereignty confronts man, calls him to account, and dealing with him as Lord. This loss also blurred the sight horizontally. The Christian was condemned to uncritical and irresponsible subservience to the patterns, forces, and movements of human history and civilization. Man’s inner experience did not provide a firm enough ground for resistance to these phenomena. Deprived of a guiding principle man could turn anywhere. It was fatal for the evangelical Church and for Christianity in the 19th century that theology in the last analysis had nothing more to offer than the “human,” the “reli-

gious,” mystery and its noncommittal “statements,” leaving the faithful to whatever impressions and influences from outside proved strongest. 382. KARL HOLL: WHAT DID LUTHER UNDERSTAND BY RELIGION? (1917) From Karl Holl. What Did Luther Understand by Relig Religion? ion? ed. by James Luther Adams and Walter Bense. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 15–48. trans. by Fred Meuser & Walter Wietzke. Introduction Four centuries have elapsed since Luther’s posting of the Ninety-Five Theses ushered in a new era for Christianity. With each recurrence of this anniversary the Protestant church has felt the challenge to analyze itself and compare its present attainments with those of Luther. . . . Scientific, religious and ecclesiastical developments of the last generation have combined to create a situation that almost forces us to approach Luther from a particular vantage point. Where or not we regard it as progress, it is obvious that interest in particular religious doctrines has receded in the thought of the present and religion itself has become the object of our searching and reflection. . . . The most pressing religious questions for thinking people today are therefore of a very general kind. What do people really look for in religion? Does religion involve a relationship to an Absolute above and beyond oneself, or is it really only a relationship to oneself, to one’s own metaphysical ground of being? . . . Is religion, viewed historically, only a carryover from our most primitive stage, a tenaciously maintained residue of prescientific thinking, or is it something that transcends all mere rationality, the concealed motive force for the whole higher development of humanity? We do Luther no violence when we try to relate him to these questions. One side of him, it is true, is not at all amenable to this whole approach. For him there was no such thing as ‘religion in general’ or a religion of merely personal experience. He recognized only one true religion, the Christian; and he was able to think of it only as expressed in certain definite statements of faith, transmitted and preserved in the church. Nevertheless, Luther gained his own personal conception of the Christian religion only in a controversy with the Catholic church which forced him to deal with the issues at their most pro-

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

found level. The meaning of his Reformation is not exhausted in the fact that he changed certain doctrines and institutions of the Catholic church. He rebuilt from the ground up: that is, he began with the concept of God, and eventually touched all the questions that beset us today. We only recognize his uniqueness and depth, therefore, when we accentuate this side of his work. . . . Chapter 4–Luther’s Religion: A Religion of Conscience Luther’s religion is a ‘religion of conscience’ in the most pronounced sense of the word, with all the urgency and the personal character belonging to it. It issues from a particular kind of conscientious experience—namely, his unique experience of the conflict between a keen sense of responsibility and the unconditional, absolute validity of the divine will—and rests on the conviction that in the sense of obligation), which impresses its demand so irresistibly upon the human will, divinity reveals itself most clearly; and the more profoundly a person is touched by the obligation and the more sharply it contrasts with one’s ‘natural’ desires, the more lucid and unambiguous is the revelation. It is a basic principle with Luther that it is not what a person freely devises or ‘chooses’ that bears the stamp of the divine but rather what is imposed by a higher order, something that has to be done. . . . As over against his own ‘rational’ striving, Luther perceives the emergence in himself of another, unconditional will, which he is bound to distinguish from his own and yet cannot avoid recognizing as right. Thus the concept of God, and specifically of a personal God, is for Luther directly connected with the sense of obligation. It is precisely this kind of pressure that forms the basis of Luther’s certitude that he is dealing not with a fiction but with the living God. . . . To Luther, God himself proved his existence directly in the conscience. But from the outset he also suspected that all philosophical discussion of theological matters would lead to a God entirely different from the God of Christianity. The God who corresponds to ‘reason’ could only be the God of works–righteousness. For ‘reason’ must maintain the principle that God is pleased with one who strives for a ‘blameless’ way of life. A God who is concerned for the sinner is incomprehensible from this point of view. . . . The grounding of religion in conscience also implied that in the order of ideas the concept of God

227

should become the governing one. If religion is primarily obligation, then it is necessary first of all to explain the will that stands behind this obligation. Luther’s thinking is strictly ‘theocentric.’ While for the philosopher, God is the ultimate concept that is reached only after the world and humanity, for Luther, God is the point of departure first enabling him to apprehend both. . . . He had finally come to understand God as the One who draws to himself, that is, as love, and he was convinced that he had thereby caught a glimpse into the very heart of God. But another aspect of God’s nature, which had likewise become important in his experience, immediately collided with this love. Luther’s conscience had led him to recover the Pauline doctrine of the wrath of God which had been suppressed in the West, mainly by Augustine. It corresponded to his sober sense of God’s holiness. God must be angry with us—that is, he must condemn—not only the sinner but also the relatively righteous person, for with God there is no intermediate ground between Yes and No: only what which is perfect can stand before him; he can only reject and annihilate the imperfect. . . . While Luther affirmed the coexistence in God of wrath and love, it confronted him with a very serious question. He had no intention of carrying his notion of God’s wrath to the point where God could only condemn and destroy the developing life in the world, which is, after all, God’s own creation. The concept of divine love opposed such a view. But Luther was no more inclined to suspend or weaken the concept of wrath by means of the concept of love. Both wrath and love had to be upheld in all their fullness. Yet he felt constrained to see the unity behind the antithesis. A word of Scripture gave him the answer. It was the passage in which Isaiah (28:21) speaks of wrath as an ‘alien’ and ‘strange’ work of God. From this, Luther concluded that wrath and love in God are not on the same level. Love is his ‘proper’ work, wrath is not. Wrath is the mask behind which God hides himself. It belongs to God’s nature that he reveals himself even in this antithesis. He does this, however, not out of caprice but according to a definite plan. God uses wrath to accomplish his goal, to dispose of the hindrances that stand in the way of the complete achievement of his highest purpose. . . .

228

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Chapter 7– Luther’s Concept of Christian Activity . . . It was not by accident that he came into conflict with Erasmus, the noblest representative of religious humanism, and that he carried on this controversy with unusual earnestness and religious power. In Erasmus, Luther attacked ‘enlightened’ religion, not because he himself was too medieval to appreciate it, but because he had a more profound understanding of the essence of religion. The Renaissance wanted to make religion a part of culture. It wanted to develop traditional Christianity by obliterating his distinctive elements in favor of a common religion of humanity. Luther moved in the opposite direction. With primitive Christianity as his source, he reaffirmed the powerful motives that distinguished Christianity from all other religions and allowed them full sway. Relentlessly he emphasized that the concern of religion is not whether I want to have anything to do with God but whether God wants to have anything to do with me, the individual human being. Religion thus takes the form of a struggle—a life-and-death struggle between a person and God. It demands, even when peace with God has been attained, the commitment of the total personality. For the faith in which religion culminates is always a conquest of powers that are operative in and around us, which we can only master by permitting ourselves to be completely overcome by God. But this characteristic sets religion apart from every other human concern and makes it unique. Religion can never be merely an aspect of civilization, a mere ‘cultural religion’ (Bildungsreligion). Religion is either ultimate personal concern or it has no meaning at all. When it is only one concern among others it loses its seriousness and finally degenerates into a feeble type of self-enjoyment. This is the message that made Luther the great awakener of the conscience in his day. It brings him as close to our generation as to his own. . . . 383. RUDOLF OTTO: THE IDEA OF THE HOLY (1917) From Rudolf Otto. The Idea of the Hol oly: y: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational Rational. (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1923), 4, 12, 13, 20, 23, 25, 31, 42, 104, 112. trans. by John W. Harvey.

Fig. 8.2. Rudolf Otto (1920s)

. . . Religion is not exclusively contained and exhaustively comprised in any series of ‘rational’ assertions; and it is well worth while to attempt to bring the relation of the different ‘moments’ of religion to one another clearly before the mind, so that its nature may become more manifest. . . . Let us consider the deepest and most fundamental element in all strong and sincerely felt religious emotion. Faith unto Salvation, Trust, Love—all these are there. But over and above these is an element which may also on occasion, quite apart from them, profoundly affect us and occupy the mind with a wellnigh bewildering strength. Let us follow it up with every effort of sympathy and imaginative intuition wherever it is to be found, in the lives of those around us, in sudden, strong ebullitions of personal piety and the frames of mind such ebullitions evince, in the fixed and ordered solemnities of rites and liturgies, and again in the atmosphere that clings to old religious monuments and buildings, to temples and to churches. If we do we shall find we are dealing with something for which there is only one appropriate expression: mysterium tremendum. . . . The Element of Awefulness To get light upon the positive ‘quale’ of the object of these feelings, we must analyze more closely our phrase mysterium tremendum and we will begin first with the adjective. ‘Tremor’ is in itself merely the perfectly familiar and

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

‘natural’ emotion of fear. But here the term is taken, aptly enough but still only by analogy, to denote a quite specific kind of emotional response, wholly distinct from that of being afraid, though it so far resembles it that the analogy of fear may be used to throw light upon its nature. . . . Of modern languages English has the words ‘awe’, ‘aweful,’ which in their deeper and more special sense approximate closely to our meaning. . . . The Element of ‘Overpoweringness’ (‘majestas majestas’) It will be felt at once that there is yet a further element which must be added, that, namely, of ‘might’, ‘power’, ‘absolute overpoweringness’. We will take to represent this with the term ‘majestas’, majesty—the more readily because any one with a feeling for language must detect a last faint trace of the numinous still clinging to the word. The ‘tremendum’ may then be rendered more adequately, ‘tremenda majestas’, or ‘aweful majesty.’ This second element of majesty may continue to be vividly preserved, where the first, that of unapproachability, recedes and dies away, as may be seen, for example in Mysticism. . . . The Element of ‘Energy’ or Urgency There is, finally, a third element comprised in those of ‘tremendum’ and ‘majestas,’ awefulness and majesty, and this I venture to call the urgency or energy of the numinous object. . . . Luther’s ‘omnipotentia Dei’ in his De Servo Arbitrio is nothing but the union of ‘majesty’—in the sense of absolute supremacy– with this ‘energy’, in the sense of a force that knows not stint nor stay, which is urgent, active, compelling, and alive. . . . Chapter 5 The Analysis of ‘Mysterium Mysterium’ . . . We have now to turn to this, and try, as best we may, by hint and suggestion, to get to a clear apprehension of what [‘mysterium’] implies. The “Wholly Other” . . . Any one sensitive to the use of words would commonly feel that the idea of ‘mystery’ (mysterium) is so closely bound up with its synthetic qualifying attribute ‘aweful’ (tremendum) that one can hardly say the former without catching an echo of the latter,

229

‘mystery’ almost of itself becoming ‘aweful mystery’ to us. But the passage from the one idea to the other need not by any means be always so easy. The elements of meaning implied in ‘awefulness’ and ‘mysteriousness’ are in themselves definitely different. The latter may so far preponderate in the religious consciousness, may stand out so vividly, that in comparison with it the former almost sinks out of sight; a case which again could be clearly exemplified from some forms of Mysticism. Occasionally, on the other hand, the reverse happens, and the ‘tremendum’ may in turn occupy the mind without the ‘mysterium.’ We need an expression for the mental reaction peculiar to it; and here, too, only one word seems appropriate thought, as it is strictly applicable only to a ‘natural’ state of mind, it has here meaning only by analogy: it is the word ‘stupor.’ Stupor is plainly a different thing from tremor; it signifies blank wonder, an astonishment that strikes us dumb, amazement absolute. . . . Taken in the religious sense, that which is ‘mysterious’ is—to give it perhaps the most striking expression —the ‘wholly other’ (θάτερον, anyad, alienum), that which is quite beyond the sphere of the usual, the intelligible, and the familiar, which therefore falls quite outside the limits of the ‘canny,’ and is contrasted with it, filling the mind with blank wonder and astonishment. . . . Chapter 6 The Element of Fascination The qualitative content of the numinous experience, to which ‘the mysterious’ stands as form, is in one of its aspects the element of daunting ‘awefulness’ and ‘majesty,’ which has already been dealt with in detail; but it is clear that it has at the same time another aspect, in which it shows itself as something uniquely attractive and fascinating. There two qualities, the daunting and the fascinating, now combine in a strange harmony of contrasts, and the resultant dual character of the numinous consciousness, to which the entire religious development bears witness, at any rate from the level of the ‘daemonic dread’ onwards, is at once the strangest and most noteworthy phenomenon in the whole history of religion. . . . The ‘mystery’ is for him not merely something to be wondered at but something that entrances him; and beside that in it which bewilders and confounds, he feels a something that captivates and transports him with a strange ravishment, rising often enough to the pitch of dizzy intoxication; it is the Dionysiac element in the numen. . . .

230

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Chapter 12 The Numinous in Luther Certain set phrases, constantly recurring in Luther and very typical of him, are specially significant in this connection, as showing the strong feeling he had for the non–rational aspect of the divine nature in general. . . . He can indeed tell in quite a homely and popular way ‘how strange a lord our God is’ and refer this to the fact that God does not esteem or count as the world counts, and that he disciplines us by the strange ways of his guidance. Such expressions are of general currency; but others—and these the more characteristic—strike a loftier note. God is altogether ‘mysteriis suis et iudiciis impervestigabilis’ (beyond tracking out in his mysteries and judgments). . . . And his concern is not simply to note this as an inconceivable paradox, to acknowledge it and bow before it, but to recognize that such a paradox is essential to the nature of God and even its distinguishing characteristic. . . . The Lutheran school has itself not done justice to the numinous side of the Christian idea of God. By the exclusively moral interpretation it gave to the terms, it distorted the meaning of ‘holiness’ and the ‘wrath of God,’ and already from the time of Johann Gerhard and onward Lutheranism was returning to the doctrine of divine απάθεια or passionlessness....... Schleiermacher was the first to attempt to overcome rationalism, most boldly and uncompromisingly in the rhapsody of his Discourses (Speeches), with less heat and more subdued tone in his Glaubenslehre (The Christian Faith) and his theory of the ‘feeling of absolute dependence’. . . . It will be a task for contemporary Christian teaching to follow in his traces and again to deepen the rational meaning of the Christian conception of God by permeating it with its non-rational elements. . . . LUTHERAN RESPONSES TO BARTH’S DIALECTICAL THEOLOGY 384. FRIEDRICH GOGARTEN: THE CRISIS OF OUR CULTURE (1920) Gogarten taught systematic theology at Jena, Breslau, and Göttingen. He was also actively involved in the demythologization debate associated with Rudolf Bultmann (doc. #285 and 387) and the debate about secularization (doc. #395).

From James M. Robinson, ed. The Beg Beginnings innings of Dialectic Theology, Vol. 1. (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1968), 283–300. trans. by Louis DeGrazia & Keith Crim. Our Concern . . . Today our world is experiencing a convulsion—of which the war was but a mild omen—and the tragedy of such a self-deception, which has in fact already had a large number of traceable consequences, would be merely laughable compared to the tragedy this self-deception will result in if it is reenacted today. . . . . . . We seek that point of view from which the course of events is something more than just a colorful, varying series of changes. . . . But from the point of view which we now hope to attain, the present moment, that is, the moment which demands to be lived precisely now, is that moment which demands nothing more, in fact, than to be lived precisely now. ... What the Concept of the “Human”’ Means according to the Psychological, Philosophical, and Religious Point of View . . . From [the psychological viewpoint] man as he actually is, with his contingencies, weaknesses, and virtues, his insights and his errors remains an essential factor, or even the essential factor. . . . The philosophical viewpoint removes at least contingency from the human product. Philosophically considered, accidental psychic concentration is not decisive, but is a matter of indifference. The philosophical point of view is true when it proceeds strictly according to some principle by which the philosopher connects the moment with the Absolute. And even though the rigidity of this ordering, of this regularity, is identical with the love of the Absolute, which like all love desires a union with the beloved, it remains bound to the discursiveness of reason and can never be anything but a rigidly ordered motion toward the Absolute. Man will always be here with his reason, and the Absolute there. . . . From the religious viewpoint, however, this motion is no longer seen as a motion from one thing to another, that is, from man to God. Nor does the eternal striving come into consideration; it is meaningless here, for a thousand eternities would not suffice to walk the path which leads from man to God.

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

And should this motion, this ceaseless striving, remain, it will be the most miserable of torments; for with every step one takes along this path, the distance increases, while the prospects of ever reaching the end diminish. The religious point of view has meaning only insofar as it retains nothing but God, only insofar as everything human disappears from it, only when it crosses the border into a realm different in its very roots, and only when man’s busyness ceases and God’s activity begins. Therefore, what occurs in this moment no longer belongs to the general relativity of events, nor can it spring from the context of events and man’s event-determining energy or passivity; nor can it have any influence—as cause or effect—upon the general development of world history. . . . What happens in this moment, then, is exclusively God’s act, and will remain so. . . . The Religious Point of View: An Intertwining of a Total Valuing with a Total Devaluation of the World . . . Winning this point of view in all its purity depends completely upon whether we are successful in seeing the event in such a way that it no longer belongs to the general human stream of events but becomes and remains God’s most personal act. Here, then, is the greatest difficulty presented to us by every religious manner of thinking which is religious in its substance, and not just in its posturings and rhetoric. ... In the light of [the knowledge of God’s reality], everything—good and bad, life and death, heaven and hell becomes worthless, an insubstantial wraith. For in this light is revealed the fact that all reality has become a mirror in which man observes his own essence and tries to make his smallness and wretchedness a bit less shabby that it really is. This is why reality cannot endure before the light of God. However, once God’s light has shone upon reality and everything has disappeared before it—pride, unworthiness, egocentricity, sloth, arrogance, and anxiety—and all the things which claimed the reality of this world as their property and their salvation—when these things have disappeared, then the world becomes anew the pure creation of God, and all things and events become the mirror of divinity. . . . The Decisive Question . . . Do we today have a religion which is being

231

drawn into the crisis of culture and which must therefore defend itself against the crisis? Or do we have a religion which itself precipitates a crisis of culture, a crisis which is only being mildly hinted at, parabolically announced by the other crises, and which reveals itself within and through the immanent evolution of culture itself? . . . We must be absolutely clear about this antithesis, this either-or, because we are concerned about a clear understanding as to where our place in the world should be and what sort of task we should fulfill therein. We have, then, either a religion which seeks to be the soul of culture, which therefore—to resume the expression we employed before—is itself the strength immanent in the larger sphere of contingencies known to us as culture, and at the same time the most subtle and direct expression of that strength. Or else we have a religion which is a constant crisis of this and every culture. . . . Culture-religion defends itself violently—for its own peculiar nature is at stake-against that way of thinking which does intend an utter negation, namely against the attitude which regards the world in its present state as the world of apostasy, of the Fall, and of original sin. The culture–religion knows no apostasy and no original sin; it knows only evolution, development and progress. And if it wishes to get outside the flow of time, to come into contact with eternity, then it submerges itself into the fecund source from which all evolution derives. But this submersion is in truth nothing but an abstracting from time and reality; it is—if I may return to what I said at the outset—an act of ignoring, rather than an insight; it is an evasion, not an elevation. In practicing this submersion, the culture-religion leaves time and reality where and as they are; it does not take all time and reality along with itself, in order that it may place both them and itself before God’s annihilating holiness. . . . There exists one and only one possibility of freeing oneself from the world and time, and it exists in this aforesaid point, where God’s holiness annihilates both world and time. . . . The Decision And then the light of God shines forth upon the world and upon us in all its purity, no longer refracted by our human nature; and the power of God can go forth freely, no longer repressed by our own will. . . . Everything which separated us from God is now cleared away, and we stand naked before him, retain-

232

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ing nothing for ourselves. And it is equally crucial that we do not again place ourselves between self and God. The Judgment

a Lutheran pastor around Berlin and then became a professor in Erlangen in 1927. From Hermann Sasse. Her Heree We Stand—N Stand—Natur aturee and Char Character acter of the Luther Lutheran an Faith aith. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1946. 153–70. trans. by Theodore Tappert.

We have now to consider the direct application of the insight which we have attained in our deliberations to our contemporary situation, that is, to the crisis of our culture, in which we manifestly find ourselves today. . . . The sense of what I have been saying up to this point is—to sum up—as follows: religiously viewed, every crisis of culture is but a mild omen, a parable of that total crisis which religion means for every culture. . . . The judgment which religion passes on culture ..... does not attack random shortcomings, one here, one there, as do all moralists who want to censure this or that failing. It not only attacks an entire cultural epoch, passes sentence of death upon it, and issues the death warrant; it attacks culture as culture. And we must go even further; this judgment is not directed to one particular time, or lifted from the whole of time, but directed to all time itself. This judgment does not attack a particular part of the world, lifted from its surrounding parts—it attacks the whole world. . . . What, then, should we do? . . . We fled the judgment long enough that we should certainly know by now that by so doing we will not bring one single soul to God. Rather, we will deprive him of the one which we already intended to give him—our own. As it turns out, we will remain exactly where we finally found ourselves—in the annihilating, creating act of God. That is, exactly at that point from which Jesus Christ speaks today, just as he spoke two thousand years ago: Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. 385. HERMANN SASSE: WHAT IS LUTHERANISM? (1934; 2ND EDITION 1936) After studying with liberal theologians in Berlin, Sasse turned to a more confessional form of Lutheranism after reading Wilhelm Löhe’s Three Books about the Church. He reacted negatively to the undogmatic Protestantism he encountered on an early visit to the United States. Sasse first served as

Fig. 8.3. Hermann Sasse (1930s)

Lutheran Doctrine and the Modern Reformed Theology of Karl Barth . . . The significance of the Barthian theology cannot be described better than by applying these words to it, mutatis mutandis. Its significance does not lie primarily in its doctrinal content. There is hardly a thinker in the history of recent theology who could afford publicly to change his opinions as often as Karl Barth has done. . . . Although Barth’s development has led to painful breaches in the ranks of his followers (for example, his former friends, Brunner, Gogarten, and Merz have deserted him), the great mass of his adherents has followed him faithfully through all his metamorphoses. Indeed, the tremendous authority which he exercises over his disciples is nowhere more evi-

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

dent than in their matter-of-course acceptance of his every change. . . . What is the secret of this power over the minds of men which Barth exercises far beyond the limits of the German-speaking world? It cannot be explained by his personality alone, nor simply by his bold way of thinking which confronts men with absolute alternatives, nor solely by the forcefulness of his speech. Its explanation lies rather in the fact that he caused the greatest upset which the theological world has known for generations. It is possible—in fact, it is probable—that all the evangelical churches will have to repudiate his teachings and that he will finish, like many another brilliant theologian before him, by being a sectarian. Nevertheless, his name will live on in the history of theology as that of the great conqueror of liberal theology. . . . Others, before Barth, have said many of the things which he has said, and often they have said them better. For it was not as if the church of the nineteenth century lacked mighty prophets. But Barth’s voice was heard chiefly because he spoke at the right time. His Epistle to the Romans appeared the year after the close of the World War, which European civilization was in a state of collapse. Since modern Protestantism thought of Christianity as the culmination of this civilization, as its highest fruitage, Christianity was now implicated in the great judgment pronounced on the proud civilization of western mankind. Barth, following in the wake of the great nineteenth century critics of ecclesiastical Christianity, Kierkegaard and Overbeck, unsparingly exposed the falsification of revelation, of faith, and of the church in modern Christianity . . .”2 . . . Three periods in the development [of Barth’s thought] may be clearly discerned: the period of the Epistle to the Romans, the period of the first and second editions of the Dogmatik (1927–1932), and the period of his polemical writings (since 1933). The first period was marked by his prophetic call to awaken the slumbering church: Barth’s new constructive ideas, meanwhile, were laboriously struggling for expression. The second period was marked by an attempt to overcome theological subjectivism and at the same time discredit the theology of the last two centuries by constructing a new dogmatic. These doctrinal studies, and especially his analysis of Catholic theology, led Barth to the recognition of the profound relationship between modern Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in the doctrines of man and grace. However, from this correct and generally accepted fact Barth proceeded to draw a conclusion which brought him into sharp conflict both

233

with Lutheran and with Reformed theologians (for example, Emil Brunner and Otto Weber). In his legitimate desire to oppose the false theologia naturalis which Catholicism holds in common with modern Protestantism, and which is the principle source of false conceptions of the Christian faith, Barth launched into a violent attack not only on the theology of his former friend and associate, Emil Brunner, but also on every theology which acknowledges a revelation of God apart from the Scriptures. Thus Barth came out in open conflict with postRationalistic Protestantism on the one hand, and with Lutheran and Reformed Orthodoxy, which recognized a revelation generalis, on the other. More than that, he entered the list against the Reformers [Luther and Calvin]. . . . The fate of the Barthian theology will be decided in the controversy over “natural theology” which has grown out of these questions. It does not appear that Barth’s theses will be accepted. Up the present time, neither Lutheran nor Reformed theology has been able to adopt it, and this for the simple reason that the so-called Thomism, which the Reformers are supposed to have retained, was already present in the New Testament. . . . Considered as a whole in his relation to the doctrinal standards of the Lutheran Church and the Reformed Church, there can be no question about the Reformed background of Karl Barth’s teachings. That his theology is fundamentally Reformed is reflected in the fact that he constantly appeals to the authority of Calvin and the Reformed Confessions, which he has studied more earnestly than any other theologian of our day. It is reflected even more in the decisions he makes with respect to particular doctrinal questions. For example, he has held fast to the Extra–Calvinisticum in the doctrine of Christology.3 . . . Although Barth, like Luther, likes to dwell upon the basic meaning of Baptism, the objective gift of this Sacrament is something quite different for him than it is for the Reformer. . . . In his teaching of the Lord’s Supper, too, although he repudiates Zwingli and has taken more pains than many other Reformed theologians to understand the Lutheran teaching, Barth remains within the Reformed tradition of John Calvin. . . . We have already referred to him as a spokesman of the Reformed Church when we quoted his objection to Luther’s distinction between the Law and the Gospel. Again and again he raises this objection. “We hear the Law of God when we hear the Gospel. The two dare not be separated. This is what concerns me most about the Lutherans”. . . . However, if the Law and the Gospel are clas-

234

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

sified together in this way, faith and obedience can no longer be kept apart. But this in turn will jeopardize the evangelical conception of faith, and hence also the sola fide. . . . There is another side of his theological position which requires attention. . . . His theology is eclectic. He rediscovered the Reformation—Luther as well as Calvin—and, by giving Luther, a Calvinistic twist and emphasizing the great Lutheran heritage of Calvin, he came to the conclusion that the Reformation and its theology were essentially a unity. . . . Accordingly Karl Barth has gradually become a confirmed opponent of confessionalism and an advocate of union with the Lutherans. . . . Hence he suggests, as he did in the last issue of the periodical, Zwischen den Zeiten [Between the Times]: “If the time has ever come for a union between good Lutherans and good Reformed people (I know how few of either there are today), a union, that is to say, in a new ‘confession of war’ against the form which Satan has most recently assumed, now is the time!” ..... During the church controversies of the last few years, Barth and his disciples have tried to establish such a union in Germany. The “Confessional Union” proposed by Barth is comprehended in the Bekennende Kirche—the “Confessing Church,” as it is called by the Barthians. . . . But who are these “good” Lutherans and “good” Reformed people? As circumstances have revealed, they are those Reformed and Lutheran Christians who are Barthians, or who have at least accepted the Theological Declaration of Barmen, proposed and largely prepared by Barth for the common testimony of Lutherans and Reformed against the heresies of our day—that is, prepared for a new Confession to express agreement between the two communions. . . . In these circles only those are considered “good” Lutherans (that is, orthodox Lutherans) who have accepted the Barmen Declaration as a Confession, and who expound the Augsburg Confession in accord with it. . . . This is the profound tragedy in Barth’s development. The danger of sectarian constriction in his teachings, which we noticed in his battle with the theologia naturalis, has here become a reality. The Bekennende Kirche with its Barmen Confession, in behalf of which Barth has already demanded ecumenical recognition, has become a new church, a church which must be repudiated as a sect by the Reformed Church as well as by the Lutheran. . . . Since this is the state of affairs, neither the Lutheran Church nor the Reformed Church can take

Barth’s proposed union seriously. While thanking him for the revival which he has brought about, both churches must decidedly reject his plans for a reconstruction of the church. 386. WERNER ELERT: LAW AND GOSPEL (1948) Elert, Hermann Sasse, and Paul Althaus all taught at the same time at the University of Erlangen. Althaus also wrote extensively about the law-gospel question. Elert and Althaus were actively involved in the issues associated with the church struggle before World War II (see also doc. #348, 363, 367). From Werner Elert. Law and Gospel Gospel. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), 1–37. trans. by Edward Schroeder. For Paul the apostle a great deal was at stake, to say the least, in the proper distinction between law and gospel; for Luther, ultimately everything. For Paul, as well as for Luther, law and gospel stand in substantive dialectical opposition to each other. When the law speaks, the gospel is silent. When the gospel speaks, the law must hold its peace. This substantive dialectical divergence was, however, gradually smoothed over in the subsequent theology of Lutheran orthodoxy. The divergence was transformed into a sequence (first one and then the other) or into a more or less friendly coexistence. . . . In the theology of rationalism the issue actually was no longer under discussion. Wegscheider no longer even considered it worthwhile to direct one of his critical epkriseis against it, for the law as well as the gospel achieved one and the same goal in man, “moral improvement.” Neither did the subsequent theology dependent upon him. But the same applies to Schleiermacher’s antipode, Kierkegaard, who with sublime finesse also succeeds in developing a fresh concept of faith still indifferent to the divergence between law and gospel. . . . Albrecht Ritschl and Wilhelm Herrmann at least took up the theme once more, but at the same time they barricaded an entire generation from an understanding of it by presenting it as but one variation of their own private theme, the relation between “religion” and “morality.” Dialectical theology, too, initially had no interest in the divergence between law and gospel. It envisioned its own task as the re-establishment of the distance between God and man which had been lost in theology since Schleiermacher. This distance dialectical theology saw as consisting in the ontic contrast between creator and creature and in the noetic con-

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

trast between divine revelation and human reception of the revelation. The essential thing in revelation, strictly speaking, is thus not what God says but that he speaks, not what man hears, but that he hears. The distinction between law and gospel at this point is insignificant, for in both cases divine speaking and human hearing constitute the polarity. . . . Karl Barth had already presented his view of the issue in his monograph of 1935 entitled, Gospel and Law. He states that law and gospel stand in a dialectical relationship. Absolutely correct. But the question remains what one means by dialectic. If one means thereby a dialectic of the substance, this would imply what we said at the outset, that when the one speaks the other is reduced to silence, and vice versa. Law and gospel speak contradictory lines and therefore can never talk in unison. According to Barth, however, law and gospel merely designate one and the same act of God, the content of which is always the same, although it is manifested in God’s twofold manner of speaking. When God speaks in the law, it is simultaneously a promise, therefore also gospel. When God speaks in the gospel, on the other hand, he simultaneously expresses his demanding will, and therefore it is law. “The Law is nothing else than the necessary form of the Gospel, whose content is grace.” The explanation for this reduction of the substantive dialectic of law and gospel to the verbal dialectic of form and content lies in Barth’s statement: “The very fact that God speaks to us, that, under all circumstances, is, in itself, grace.” The idea that God speaks only grace to man is a fundamental error. . . . It is clear that Barth’s statement about the law as only the form of the gospel coincides exactly with this view of the law in Calvin. . . . For if the law is a demonstration of God’s grace, then it grants nothing less than what the gospel itself grants, namely, God’s grace, and the gospel itself never can do anything but confirm it. Then the law is in fact, as Calvin teaches, the end of God’s way with man. The gospel then stands in the service of the law. But in this line of reasoning three things have been overlooked. In the first place the promises of the law, which to be sure the law does contain, are not applicable unconditionally, but only on condition. . . . Thus God promises his grace only on the condition that the law is fulfilled. Here the fundamental difference between the law and the gospel becomes immediately apparent. The law promises mercy to the righteous who have fulfilled it, the gospel to sinners who have not fulfilled it. Secondly, the law contains in precise co-ordina-

235

tion with its promise of reward, a threat of punishment. It is a law of retribution, both for good as well as for ill. This is the way the law understands itself, and this is how the entire Old Testament understands it. Not only Paul, but also Christ himself understands it thus. . . . Therewith we have already touched upon the third and gravest error of this interpretation. The law is understood only as God’s legislation. Here God appears as a legislator, in analogy to a human lawgiver who with his law is only seeking to answer the question of his subjects: “What should we do?” . . . St. Paul, on the contrary, understands the law as God’s juridical activity. God’s legislative action stands in the service of his juridical action, that is, his functioning as judge. . . . The Meaning of Christ’s Death . . . All men who are what they are by virtue of the works of the law are, according to the apostle, under the curse (Galatians 3:10). It is the curse of nomological, lawful existence which is revealed in the cross of Christ. . . . The dying Christ, however, not only reveals the curse of the law; he takes it upon himself. He dies voluntarily. In his crucifixion he is “reckoned with the transgressors” (Mark 15:28). Precisely that is what he himself wanted when he became “the friend of sinners.”. . . This is how the evangelists report it, and this is how Paul and the other apostles understand Christ’s death. Therewith they have taught us to view it in terms of God’s juridical action. For the final thing that must yet be said is that in dying voluntarily Christ dies obediently. He dies because God wills it. The fulfillment of God’s will which Christ carries out, however, is not the fulfillment of God’s legislative will (i.e. the law as a rule for life), but the fulfillment of his juridical will. “He trusted to him who judges justly’’ (1 Pet. 2:23). The death of Christ is judgment. God is here administering justice according to the law of retribution. . . . The retribution consists in this, that one atones for all, that by God’s performing one act of judgment all share in the righteousness that “leads to life” (Rom.5:18). . . . If in redeeming us from the curse of the law Christ has redeemed us from the fear of punishment, then he has also redeemed us from the hope of reward. Neither the one nor the other can henceforth determine our attitude toward God. Rather, from God’s side the relationship is grace alone; from our side, faith alone. In place of the coercive order of the law (and every low is coercive since it entails

236

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

compulsion) there now prevails between us and God the freedom of the children of God (Gal 3:23–4:7). ..... Is the Law still valid for Christians? . . . The purpose of the law is to expose man’s sin and to hold evildoers in check, at least externally. We have seen that Jesus and the apostles actually did preach and apply the law as lex semper accusans. And in Romans 13, Paul also ascribes to it the political function when he expects government to apply the principle of retribution. Here then we have the proper place for the law in the preaching of the church and in the life of its members. . . . Here the law has its necessary and abiding place in the preaching of the church as well as in the lives of its members. It serves not in the construction of the new man but in the destruction of the old. . . . To be led by the Spirit means not only to be led by Christ, but also to be driven to him, since we are constantly in anguish by reason of the law’s incessant accusation. The “proper function” of the law is, in the language of the old dogmaticians, the usus elenchticus, its function in “exposing” our sin and “convicting” us of sin, and therefore also always the usus paedagogicus which drives us to Christ. . . . DEMYTHOLOGIZING THE KERYGMA 387. RUDOLF BULTMANN: DEMYTHOLOGIZING IN OUTLINE (1941) This is the second part of a seminal essay. The first part is excerpted in doc. #285. From Rudolf Bultmann. “New Testament and Mythology” in Kerygma and Myth Myth: A Theolog Theological ical Debate Debate. ed. by Hans Werner Bartsch. (London: SPCK, 1954), 17–41. trans. by Reginald Fuller. Human Existence apart from Faith . . . St. Paul sees that the life of man is weighed down by anxiety (μέριμαν, 1 Cor. 7:32ff). Every man focuses his anxiety upon some particular object. The natural man focuses it upon security, and in proportion to his opportunities and his success in the visible sphere he places his “confidence” in the “flesh” (Phil 3:3f), and the consciousness of security finds its expression in “glorying” (καυκασθαι). Such a pursuit is, however incongruous with man’s

real situation, for the fact is that he is not secure at all. Indeed, this is the way in which he loses his true life and becomes the slave of that very sphere which he had hoped to master, and which he hoped would give him security. . . . Since the visible and tangible sphere is essentially transitory, the man who bases his life on it becomes the prisoner and slave of corruption. . . . The Life of Faith The authentic life, on the other hand, would be a life based on unseen, intangible realities. Such a life means the abandonment of all self-contrived security. This is what the New Testament means by “life after the Spirit” or “life in faith”. For this life we much have faith in the grace of God. It means faith that the unseen, intangible reality actually confronts us as love, opening up our future and signifying not death but life. The grace of God means the forgiveness of sin, and brings deliverance from the bondage of the past. The old quest for visible security, the hankering after tangible realities, and the clinging to transitory objects is sin, for by it we shut out invisible reality from our lives and refuse God’s future which comes to us as a gift. But once we open our hearts to the grace of God, our sins are forgiven; we are released from the past. This is what is meant by “faith”: to open ourselves freely to the future. . . . It means radical self–commitment to God in the expectation that everything will come from him and nothing from ourselves. Such a life spells deliverance from all worldly, tangible objects, leading to complete detachment from the world and thus to freedom. . . . The Event of Redemption Christianity without Christ? . . . We seem to have overlooked one important point, which is that in the New Testament faith is always faith in Christ. . . . It claims that faith only became possible at a definite point in history in consequence of an event—viz. the event of Christ. Faith in the sense of obedient self-commitment and inward detachment from the world is only possible when it is faith in Jesus Christ. . . . (Man) is capable of knowing that his authentic life consists in self-commitment, but is incapable of realizing it because however hard he tries he still remains what he is, self-assertive man. So in practice authen-

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

tic life becomes possible only when man is delivered from himself. It is the claim of the New Testament that this is exactly what has happened. This is precisely the meaning of that which was wrought in Christ. At the very point where man can do nothing, God steps in and acts—indeed he has acted already—on man’s behalf. . . . The event of Jesus Christ is therefore the revelation of the love of God. It makes a man free from himself and free to be himself, free to live a life of self–commitment in faith and live. But faith in this sense of the word is possible only where it takes the form of faith in the love of God. Yet such faith is still a subtle form of self-assertion so long as the love of God is merely a piece of wishful thinking. It is only an abstract idea so long as God has not revealed his love. That is why faith for the Christian means faith in Christ, for it is faith in the love of God revealed in Christ. . . . The Demythologizing of the Event of Jesus Christ The Cross . . . By giving up Jesus to be crucified, God has set up the cross for us. To believe in the cross of Christ does not mean to concern ourselves with a mythical process wrought outside of us and our world, or with an objective event turned by God to our advantage, but rather to make the cross of Christ our own, to undergo crucifixion with him. The cross in its redemptive aspect is not an isolated incident which befell a mythical personage, but an event of “cosmic” importance. . . . The crucifying of the affections and lusts includes the overcoming of our natural dread of suffering and the perfection of our detachment from the world. . . . The real meaning of the cross is that it has created a new and permanent situation in history. The preaching of the cross as the event of redemption challenges all who hear it to appropriate this significance for themselves, to be willing to be crucified with Christ. ... How do we come to believe in the cross as the cross of Christ and as the eschatological even par excellence? How do we come to believe in the saving efficacy of the cross? There is only one answer. This is the way in which the cross is proclaimed. Christ meets us in the preaching as one crucified and risen. He meets us in the word of preaching and nowhere else. he faith of Easter is just this—faith in the word of preaching. . . .

237

388. HELMUT THIELICKE: THE RESTATEMENT OF NEW TESTAMENT MYTHOLOGY (1942) Helmut Thielicke studied with Barth in Bonn and Althaus in Erlangen. He lost a position at the University of Heidelberg because of his opposition to National Socialism but later taught at Tübingen (with Köberle and Ebeling) and then in Hamburg. Many of his books on theology and ethics became popular because they were very accessible to laypeople. He was also famed for his preaching. From Hans Werner Bartsch, ed. Kerygma and Myth: A Theolog Theological ical Debate (London, SPCK, 1954), 138–74. trans. by Reginald Fuller. Bultmann’s essay on the demythologizing of the New Testament has become an event which everybody is talking about. I deliberately speak of it as an event of more than theological or academic significance: it is an ecclesiastical event. My reasons for so doing are as follows: Bultmann has asked the question whether salvation history, in its formal aspect at any rate, is to be regarded as myth rather than history, and as myth not only in its outer framework but in its essential core, in the event of Jesus Christ. When the Reformers made sola fide the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae, [an article on which the church stands or falls] they meant by faith faith in Jesus Christ, fides Jesu (objective genitive). The Reformers were not concerned with faith as a subjective disposition as contrasted with works, but with its object, Jesus Christ. . . . Only when faith is controlled by its object and riveted to Christology does it become the articulu stantis et cadentis ecclesiae. It is not merely faith as such, but, more important, the historical basis of faith, which belongs to the standing and falling of the Church. If that be so, then Bultmann’s challenge, concerned as it is with the contamination of that historic basis with mythology, affects the very foundation of the Church. . . . Bultmann is not just a voice in the wilderness. He is the mouthpiece of a quite definite spirit of the age. More than that, he represents a historism which grew out of the swaddling clothes of the History of Religions, passed through dialectical theology, and reacted negatively to it. All this means that the Church is challenged here to take a confessional stand. . . . As a matter of fact, we all draw the distinction between mythology and truth, but the point at

238

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

which we draw it varies with our school of thought or our individual preferences. The vagueness —nay more, the downright insincerity—of much modern preaching may be gauged from the way we tend to draw the line between truth and mythology at different points, at one point in the study and at another point in the pulpit. . . . The only way to penetrate to the eternal truth behind the mythological husk is, according to Bultmann, not to eliminate the mythology but to interpret it. The real purpose of myth (e.g. the creation stories) is not to give an account of what actually happened in the past, or what may happen in the future (e.g. another ice age), but to convey a particular understanding of human life. . . . The truth then embodied in myth is not scientific, but anthropological, or better, existential. The question is, what particular understanding of man’s Being does the New Testament convey? . . . If the content of the New Testament message is, as Bultmann claims, an “understanding”, the emphasis lies in the subjective element, the change in our self–consciousness which produces that understanding. This experience may be in some way be connected with an event of revelation, and it may be necessary first to extract the distinctive Christian self–consciousness, but that does not make it any the less subjective. . . . At first sight it would appear that Bultmann has done more justice to the kerygma as event, when compared with Liberal Protestantism. But we cannot delude ourselves as to the status of this event. We get the impression . . . that the event is a kind of inference deduced from the Christian or the existential understanding of human life. Thus it would appear that the new understanding of existence is rendered possible only by an act which stands in the background—i.e. Christ. But this act never comes out into the open, any more than Kant’s hypothetical God. We seem to be relegated with the men of the New Testament to Plato’s famous cave. All we see is the shadows of our own consciousness, and all we can do is to draw inferences about the reality which lies behind them and produces the effect. Of the kernel of history which transcends myth, Bultmann can speak only in negative terms. . . . We said earlier that for Bultmann the crucial event takes place in the human consciousness. . . . It needs an event to bring it to birth. It must as it were be “cranked up” like the universe in Deism. Such would seem to be the fundamentally negative implication in Bultmann’s thought about the event which underlies

the New Testament kerygma and the understanding of human life of which it is the expression. . . . What matters in theology, however, is not the recognition of the event, but the status accorded to it. Is the history recorded in the New Testament just a vague reality which underlies the Christian consciousness, the contours of which can no longer be recovered, or is it not rather the event par excellence, quite apart from our subjective consciousness. . . . This raises the question—and it shows how radical Bultmann is that he is prepared to face it —as to what happens to this understanding of human life once it has been created. Is it detached from the event which gave it birth and left suspended in mid-air? Does it become philosophical and unhistorical? Must we not conclude with Lessing in the “Education of the Human Race” that the aim of God’s revelation of himself in history was to render it superfluous by becoming an abstract idea loosed form its historical moorings—in fact, an understanding of human life? Or, to put it concretely in reference to Bultmann’s problem, is not the Christian understanding of human life detached from its basis in history, which is Christ? Does not Christianity become a philosophy of existence? Does there not come a time when the child no longer needs a teacher to guide him? Does not Christ become an outworn myth of ever-decreasing importance? . . . When we remember that Bultmann’s startingpoint is the tension between mythology and science, it would seem here that we have an entirely new solution to the problem. Both mythology and science are legitimate approaches to the truth. There is no question of the one becoming outmoded by the other in the process of historical development. The two approaches are complementary. . . . Whenever mythology is translated into scientific and rational terms there is an inevitable loss of meaning and consequent superficiality, which shows the inadequacy of the scientific approach to this kind of truth. And if such is the case, then Bultmann’s demand that we should replace the mythical view of the world by a scientific one falls to the ground. . . . We conclude with the consequences which the mythological setting of the kerygma . . . will have for our preaching. . . . The mythological elements represent a permanent aspect of human thinking. If this be true, then it is of the utmost consequence for our preaching to lay bare the background of truth which lies concealed beneath the outer crust of myth. . . . In our preaching we must observe the distinction between the various types of myth. . . . There are

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

myths which are indispensable vehicles for the transcendental realities, and others which are legendary embroidery or accretions from non-biblical religions. Then there are myths which are pictorial clarifications of some historical fact, and others which are straightforward historical reports, which despite their apparently mythological form are to be regarded as directly historical. This represents a considerable advance on the terms within which Bultmann has discussed the problem. . . . In examining Bultmann’s thesis and his personal orthodoxy care should be maintained to avoid anything like a heresy hunt. This is pioneer work, and there are bound to be casualties on the way. The Church should rather keep in view Bultmann’s ultimate objective, which is to secure a firm basis for her own proclamation. . . . It is not the road which determines our communion with the Church, but our direction, not the steps we tread, but the end on which our eyes are fixed. EXISTENTIAL THEOLOGY 389. PAUL TILLICH: THE NATURE OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY Paul Tillich used the method of correlation described here in other popular books dealing with existential problems, such as The Religious Situation” (1932), The Courage to Be”” (1952) and The Dynamics of Faith”” (1957) See also doc. #373 addressing the church struggle during World War II. From Paul Tillich. Systematic Theology Theology. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951). Volume I: 3–5, 12–14, 60–64. Message and Situation . . . A theological system is supposed to satisfy two basic needs: the statement of the truth of the Christian message and the interpretation of this truth for every new generation. Theology moves back and forth between two poles, the eternal truth of its foundation and the temporal situation in which the eternal truth must be received. . . . The “situation” to which theology must respond is the totality of man’s creative self–interpretation in a special period. Fundamentalism and orthodoxy reject this task, and, in doing so, they miss the meaning of theology. ..... Luther was unprejudiced enough to use his own nominalist learning and Melanchthon’s humanist

239

education for the formulation of theological doctrines. But he was not conscious enough of the problem of the “situation” to avoid sliding into orthodox attitudes, thus preparing the way for the period of Protestant Orthodoxy. Barth’s greatness is that he corrects himself again and again in the light of the “situation” and that he strenuously tries not to become his own follower. Yet he does not realize that in doing so he ceases to be a merely kerygmatic theologian. In attempting to derive every statement directly from the ultimate truth—for instance, deriving the duty of making war against Hitler from the resurrection of Christ—he falls into using a method which can be called “neo–orthodox,” a method which has strengthened all trends toward a theology of repristination in Europe. The pole called “situation” cannot be neglected in theology without dangerous consequences. Only a courageous participation in the “situation,” that is, in all the various cultural forms which express modern man’s interpretation of his existence, can overcome the present oscillation of kerygmatic theology between the freedom implied in the genuine kerygma and its orthodox fixation. . . . Two Formal Criteria of Every Theology This, then, is the first formal criterion of theology: The object of theology is what concerns us ultimately. Only those propositions are theological which deal with their object in so far as it can become a matter of ultimate concern for us. . . . The question now arises: What is the content of our ultimate concern? What does concern us conditionally? The answer, obviously, cannot be a special object, not even God, for the first criterion of theology must remain formal and general. If more is to be said about the nature of our ultimate concern, it must be derived from an analysis of the concept “ultimate concern.” Our ultimate concern is that which determines our being or not-being. Only those statements are theological which deal with their object in so far as it can become a matter of being or not-being for us. This is the second formal criterion of theology. Nothing can be of ultimate concern for us which does not have the power of threatening and saving our being. The term “being” in this context does not designate existence in time and space. Existence is continually threatened and saved by things and events which have no ultimate concern for us. But the term “being” means the whole of human reality,

240

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

the structure, the meaning and the aim of existence. ..... The Method of Correlation . . . Systematic theology uses the method of correlation. . . . The method of correlation explains the contents of the Christian faith through existential questions and theological answers in mutual interdependence. . . . The answers implied in the event of revelation are meaningful only in so far as they are in correlation with questions concerning the whole of our existence, with existential questions. Only those who have experienced the shock of transitoriness, the anxiety in which they are aware of their finitude, the threat of nonbeing, can understand what the notion of God means. . . . Being human means asking the questions of one’s own being and living under the impact of the answers given to this question. And, conversely, being human means receiving answers to the question of one’s own being and asking questions under the impact of the answers. In using the method of correlation, systematic theology proceeds in the following way: it makes an analysis of the human situation out of which the existential questions arise, and it demonstrates that the symbols used in the Christian message are the answers to these questions. The analysis of the human situation is done in terms which today are called “existential.”. . . . The Christian message provides the answers to the questions implied in human existence. These answers are contained in the revelatory events on which Christianity is based. . . . There is a mutual dependence between question and answer. In respect to content the Christian answers are dependent on the revelatory events in which they appear; in respect to form they are dependent on the structure of the questions which they answer. God is the answer to the question implied in human finitude. This answer cannot be derived from the analysis of existence. However, if the notion of God appears in systematic theology in correlation with the threat of nonbeing which is implied in existence, God must be called the infinite power of being which resists the threat of nonbeing. In classical theology this is being-itself. If anxiety is defined as the awareness of being finite, God must be called the infinite ground of courage. In classical theology this is universal providence. If the notion of the Kingdom of God appears in correlation with the riddle of our historical existence, it must be called the meaning, fulfillment, and unity of his-

tory. In this way an interpretation of the traditional symbols of Christianity is achieved which preserves the power of these symbols and which opens them to the questions elaborated by our present analysis of human existence. 390. PAUL TILLICH: THE MEANING OF GOD AND THE REALITY OF CHRIST (1951–1957) From Paul Tillich. Systematic Theology Theology. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951). Volume I: 211, 235–45; Volume II: 119–25. Volume I, Part II: Being and God The Reality of God—The Meaning of God “God” is the answer to the question implied in man’s finitude; he is the name for that which concerns man ultimately. . . . It means that whatever concerns a man ultimately becomes god for him, and, conversely, it means that a man can be concerned ultimately only about that which is god for him. The Actuality of God God as Being The being of God is being-itself. The being of God cannot be understood as the existence of a being alongside others or above others. If God is a being, he is subject to the categories of finitude, especially to space and substance. . . . Many confusions in the doctrine of God and many apologetic weaknesses could be avoided if God were understood first of all as being-itself or as the ground of being. . . . Since God is the ground of being, he is the ground of the structure of being. He is not subject to this structure; the structure is grounded in him. He is this structure, and it is impossible to speak about him except in terms of this structure. God must be approached cognitively through the structural elements of being-itself. These elements make him a living God, a God who can be man’s concrete concern. . . . “Personal” God does not mean that God is a person. It means that God is the ground of everything personal and that he carries within himself the ontological power of personality. . . . Ordinary theism has made God a heavenly, completely perfect person who resides above the world and mankind. The protest of atheism against such a highest person is

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

correct. There is no evidence for his existence, nor is he a matter of ultimate concern. God is not God without universal participation. “Personal God” is a confusing symbol. Faith in the almighty God is the answer to the quest for a courage which is sufficient to conquer the anxiety of finitude. Ultimate courage is based upon participation in the ultimate power of being. When the invocation of “Almighty God” is seriously pronounced, a victory over the threat of non-being is experienced, and an ultimate, courageous affirmation of existence is expressed. . . . Volume II: Existence and the Christ— The Reality of Christ New Being is essential being under the condition of existence, conquering the gap between essence and existence. For the same idea Paul uses the term “new creature,” calling those who are “in” Christ, “new creatures.” “In” is the preposition of participation; he who participates in the newness of being which is in Christ has become a new creature. . . . The term “New Being” as used here, points directly to the cleavage between essential and existential being—and is the restorative principle of the whole of this theological system. The New Being is new in so far as it is the undistorted manifestation of essential being within and under the conditions of existence. It is new in two respects: it is new in contrast to the merely potential character of essential being; and it is new over against the estranged character of existential being. It is actual, conquering the estrangement of actual existence. . . . The first expression of the being of Jesus as the Christ is his words. The word is the bearer of spiritual life. The importance of the spoken word for the religion of the New Testament cannot be overestimated. The words of Jesus, to cite but two examples of many, are called “the words of eternal life,” and discipleship is made dependent upon “holding to his words.” . . . The second expression of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ is his deeds. They also have been separated from his being and made into examples to be imitated. He is not considered to be a lawgiver but as himself being the new law. There is much justification in this idea. If Jesus as the Christ represents the essential unity between God and man appearing under the conditions of existential estrangement, every human being is, by this very fact, asked to take on the “form of the Christ.” . . .

241

The third expression of the New Being in Jesus as the Christ is his suffering. It includes his violent death and is a consequence of the inescapable conflict between the forces of existential estrangement and the bearer of that by which existence is conquered. Only by taking suffering and death upon himself could Jesus be the Christ, because only in this way could he participate completely in existence and conquer every force of estrangement which tried to dissolve his unity with God. . . . . . . The term “New Being,” when applied to Jesus as the Christ, points to the power in him which conquers existential estrangement or, negatively expressed, to the power of resisting the forces of estrangement. To experience the New Being in Jesus as the Christ means to experience the power in him which has conquered existential estrangement in himself and in everyone who participates in him. . . . ETHICS AND THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 391. ADOLF KOEBERLE: JUSTIFICATION AND SANCTIFICATION (1936) From Adolf Koeberle. The Quest for Holiness oliness. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1936; reprinted by St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1982), 1–18, 38, 51–53, 95, 115, 124, 252–53. trans. by John Mattes. Man’s Attempt to Sanctify Himself in God’s Sight . . . A glance at the history of the religious and spiritual aspirations of mankind shows us that the attempt to attain to communion with God has always been made in three ways, that at the end come very close to each other. Whenever and wherever the question concerning God has arisen among a people or in the life of an individual we meet with a grandiose attempt to possess God and to become sure of him by means of increased spiritual power. . . . The sanctification of conduct by the strengthening of the will; the sanctification of the emotions by a strenuous training of the soul; the sanctification of thought by a deepening of the understanding; moralism, mysticism and speculation, there are the three ladders on which men continually seek to climb up to God, with a persistent purpose that it seems nothing can check; a storming of Heaven that is just as

242

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

pathetic in its unceasing efforts as in its final futility. ..... [The will:] Both among Christians and among non-Christians these varied efforts to gain holiness have entailed much discipline, labor and devotion. Half yearningly, half defiantly the attempt is made to compel God’s favor by moral fervor. It is a struggle to gain personal righteousness by way of the law, which can hardly be gainsaid by our enervated, irresolute times. All these attempts have one trait in common, they do not regard the human will as evil, as something that absolutely separates us from God, that is a deadly offence against his holiness, but only as something that is weak and imperfect, whose defects must continually be overcome. . . . [The emotions:] Besides the attempt to construct a bridge across to God by the power of the human will the effort is often made to draw near to God by an intensification and stimulation of the powers of character and soul. Humanity has always tried this second method as eagerly and as enthusiastically as the first. . . . The emotions are regarded (not only since the days of Schleiermacher) as being, even more than the will, the special province of religion, the central point were God’s contacts are made. . . . Mysticism lives on the assurance that in the depth of our souls flow hidden springs of divinity. Though in contrast to the glorification of natural life it may regard the surface of our spiritual consciousness as ever so unclear and corrupt, yet, if we only penetrate deeply enough into the innermost being of the soul, we will come at least to a “secret, blissful sphere,” into a holy temple enclosure, untouched by sin, where the “hidden, inner, pure essence of the soul” rests in God, where the inner principle recognizes itself as a part, as a breath of the divine nature. . . . [The understanding:] The two viae eminentiae of the will and soul which we have been considering have been the two most commonly used by men, in all ages, as a means of attaining to union with God. But besides them there is a third way, the via sapientiae. . . . Just as in the common opinion of mysticism God finds himself in the essence of the soul, so here God, the Absolute, the Infinite Spirit finds himself in the finite spirit. The autonomous reason that sprang from the divine Logos is able to evolve out of itself the ultimate metaphysical truths (Descartes’ lumen natural, Spinoza’s amor intellectualis). . . . In the process of thought the existing unity with the eternal spirit is realized anew each time. The same assured feeling of a self-contained power that the moralism of the will possessed is here shared by the self-cre-

ating reason in connection with the possibilities of knowledge that lie open to it. . . . In its last analysis, that which always gives men renewed courage and strength to continue climbing these steep paths is the secret proud feeling of satisfaction in being able to develop and grow by a self-achieved or at least a cooperative process of sanctification. . . . God’s Judgment on Man’s Self–Sanctification If it is hard for man to humble his defiant will before the judgment of God, it is still harder to surrender the illusions of his spiritual riches but hardest of all is to admit the inadequacy and helplessness of his own understanding and judgment. . . . That moral efforts end in helplessness, that spiritual aspirations collapse in weariness we are ready on occasion to admit. But just as besieged troops after having been compelled to surrender two outlying fortifications become so much the more tenacious in the defense of their last stronghold, so man called to account by God gathers together his remaining strength for the defense of his own powers of understanding. . . . But we are reminded that the Bible in its attack on human presumption does not make the least exception on this point. . . . Man’s Justification before God How does Jesus differ fundamentally from all others who have been founders of some form of religion? He does not give directions for the purification of the soul like those which in all mystery religions are accounted the indispensable condition for any communion with divinity; He does not point men to the creative springs within his own soul that through them he might find the satisfaction of devotion; He does not make wisdom and virtue conditions of his fellowship. Just the opposite is true. Without regard to any moral attainments, spiritual fervor or intellectual wisdom, he “receives sinners and eats with them.” . . . He makes the claim that as the Reconciler mediating between God and man, he is the turning point of the ages. He is not content to be one among many doors that lead to the father’s house, or one way among a number of possible roads, but he calls himself “the door,” “the way” that alone leads to true communion with God. He is the only bridge on which man can cross the abyss of sin that separates him from God. . . .

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

Sanctification as the Work of God Just as forgiveness is exclusively God’s work and every cooperation or conditioning activity on man’s part is completely excluded, so regeneration is an energy that comes simply out of Christ’s victory and does not require our supplementary efforts. It is not fitting to teach justification evangelically and then in the doctrine of sanctification to turn synergistic. Man’s willing, feeling, thinking, when it is centered in itself knows only one spirit, as we saw in the first chapter, the spirit that says: “Go to, let us build us a city and a tower who top may reach into heaven; and let us make us a name” [Gen 11:4]. If in this selfexaltation it is just man’s fall that finds expression, so the Spirit of God begins his work of renewal by causing this exaltation to collapse and by teaching a complete self-knowledge that penetrates to the very root of all things. . . . But today, since the “Theology of Crisis” has proclaimed the judging power of the Spirit in our will, emotions and intellect while maintaining an intentional reticence concerning the healing effect of redemption on these three fundamental factors of our existence and believes it necessary to warn others against such statements, a further discussion is necessary. . . . The work of the Spirit is directed towards positive ends. God does not stop with the eradication of the evil root; the planting and fruition of a new seed is equally his concern. The will that imagines itself free (liberum arbitrium) is shown its bondage, and the enslaved will (servum arbitrium) is liberated (liberatum arbitrium). Even the world of the emotions is subject to the progress of this holy regulation. . . . If there is a power in sin that darkens the understanding, so in Christ there is a power illuminating the Spirit. . . . The Relation of Justification and Sanctification Sanctification without the grace of justification first make men self-satisfied, then self-tormenting; first brings false security, and then false anxiety. But where any undertaking is supported by the purifying promise of forgiveness the false feeling of power that comes from self-esteem will be missing as well as the false despair of the hour of despondency. . . . The connection between [justification and sanctification] is actually so intimate that if one were to perish the other would be taken away and “where one remains and is rightly used, it also brings the other with it.”. . . . It is sure that since justification

243

is the mother of sanctification the chief stress will always be laid on the word of forgiveness. But since the daughter “sanctification” though she cannot beget the mother “forgiveness” can destroy her, the significance must be presented with all emphasis in evangelical preaching. . . . Anyone who continually keeps both sides in view will deal with a phenomenon like Pietism, for example, in a somewhat more cautious and kindlier manner than is common in the “Theology of Crisis.” . . . 392. DIETRICH BONHOEFFER: THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP (1937) From Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 4. ed. by Geffrey Kelly & John Godsey. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 43–55. trans. by Barbara Green & Reinhard Kraus. Costly Grace Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace as bargain-basement goods, cut-rate forgiveness, cut-rate comfort, cut-rate sacrament; grace as the church’s inexhaustible pantry, from which it is doled out by careless hands without hesitation or limit. It is grace without a price, without costs. It is said that the essence of grace is that the bill for it is paid in advance for all time. Everything can be had for free, courtesy of that paid bill. The price paid is infinitely great and, therefore, the possibilities of taking advantage of and wasting grace are also infinitely great. What would grace be, if it were not so cheap? . . . Cheap grace means justification of sin but not of the sinner. Because grace alone does everything, everything can stay in its old way. “Our action is in vain.” The world remains the world and we remain sinners “even in the best of lives.” Thus, the Christian should live the same way the world does. In all things the Christian should go along with the world and not venture (like sixteenth-century enthusiasts) to live a different life under grace from that under sin! The Christian better not rage against grace or defile that cheap grace by proclaiming anew a servitude to the letter of the Bible in an attempt to live an obedience life under the commandment of Jesus Christ! The world is justified by grace, therefore—because this grace is so serious, because this irreplaceable grace should not be opposed—the Christian should live just like the rest of the world! . . .

244

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Cheap grace is that grace which we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is preaching of forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of the community; it is the Lord’s Supper without confession of sin; it is absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living and incarnate Jesus Christ. Costly grace is the hidden treasure in the field, for the sake of which people go and sell with joy everything they have. It is the costly pearl, for whose price the merchant sells all that he has; it is Christ’s sovereignty, for the sake of which you tear out an eye if it causes you to stumble. It is the call of Jesus Christ which causes a disciple to leave his nets and follow him. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which have to be asked for, the door at which a man has to knock. It is costly because it calls us to discipleship; it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it therefore makes them live. It is costly, because it condemns sin; it is grace, because it justifies the sinner. Above all, grace is costly because it is costly to God, because it cost God the life of God’s Son—“you were bought with a price”—and nothing can be cheap to us which is costly to God. . . . Grace is costly, because it forces people under the yoke of following Christ; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” . . . During the Reformation, the providence of God reawakened the gospel of pure, costly grace through God’s servant Martin Luther by leading him through the monastery. Luther was a monk. He had everything and wanted to follow Christ in complete obedience. He renounced the world and turned to Christian works. He learned obedience to Christ and his church, because he knew that only those who are obedient can believe. Luther invested his whole life in his call to the monastery. It was God who caused Luther to fail on this path. God showed him through Scripture that discipleship is not the meritorious achievement of individuals, but a divine commandment to all Christians. . . . Luther saw the monk’s escape from the world as really a subtle love for the world. In this shattering of his last possibility to achieve a pious life, grace seized Luther. In the collapse of the monastic world, he saw God’s saving hand reaching out in Christ. He seized it in the faith that “our deeds are in vain, even in the best life.” It was a costly grace, which gave itself to him. It shattered his whole existence. Once again, he had

to leave his nets and follow. The first time, when he entered the monastery, he left everything behind except himself, his pious self. This time even that was taken from him. He followed, not by his own merit, but by God’s grace. He was not told, yes, you have sinned, but now all that is forgiven. Continue on where you were and comfort yourself with forgiveness! Luther had to leave the monastery and reenter the world, not because the world itself was good and holy, but because even the monastery was nothing else but world. Luther’s path out of the monastery back to the world meant the sharpest attach that had been launched on the world since early Christianity. The rejection which the monk had given the world was child’s play compared to the rejection that the world endured through his returning to it. This time the attack was a frontal assault. Following Jesus now had to be lived out in the midst of the world. What had been practiced in the special, easier circumstances of monastic life as a special accomplishment now had become what was necessary and commanded for every Christian in the world. Complete obedience to Jesus’ commandments had to be carried out in the daily world of work. This deepened the conflict between the life of the Christian and the life of the world in an unforeseeable way. The Christian had closed in on the world. It was hand–to–hand combat. Luther’s deed cannot be misunderstood more grievously than by thinking that through rediscovering the gospel of pure grace, Luther proclaimed a dispensation from obeying Jesus’ commandments in the world. The Reformation’s main discovery would then be the sanctification and justification of the world by grace’s forgiving power. For Luther, on the contrary, a Christian’s secular vocation is justified only in that one’s protest against the world is thereby more sharply expressed. A Christian’s secular vocation receives new recognition from the gospel only to the extent that it is carried on while following Jesus. . . . Luther said that grace alone did it, and his followers repeat it literally, with the one different that very soon they left out and did not consider and did not mention what Luther always included as a matter of course: discipleship. Yes, he no longer even needed to say it, because he always spoke as one whom grace had led into a most difficulty following of Jesus. The follower’s own teaching [“by grace alone”] was, therefore, unassailable, judged by Luther’s teaching, but their teaching meant the end and the destruction of the Reformation as the revelation of God’s costly grace on earth. The justification of the sinner in the

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

world became the justification of sin and the world. Without discipleship, costly grace would become cheap grace. When Luther said that our deeds are in vain, even in the best of lives, and that, therefore, nothing is valid before God “except grace and favor to forgive sins,” he said it as someone who know himself called to follow Jesus, called to leave everything he had up until this moment, and in the same moment called anew to do it again. His acknowledgement of grace was for him the final radical break with the sin of his life but never its justification. Grasping at forgiveness was the final radical rejection of a self-willed life; it was itself his first really serious call to discipleship. It was a “conclusion” for him, although a divine conclusion, not a human one. His descendants made this conclusion into a principled presupposition on which to base their calculations. That was the whole trouble. If grace is the “result” given by Christ himself to Christian life, then this life is not for one moment excused from discipleship. But if grace is a principled presupposition of my Christian life, then in advance I have justification of whatever sins I commit in my life in the world. I can now sin on the basis of this grace; the world is in principle justified by grace. I can thus remain in my bourgeois-secular existence. Everything remains as before, and I can be sure that God’s grace takes care of me. The whole world has become “Christian” under this grace, but Christianity has become the world under this grace as never before. . . . Cheap grace was very unmerciful to our Protestant church. Cheap grace surely has also been unmerciful with most of us personally. It did not open the way to Christ for us, but rather closed it. It did not call us into discipleship but hardened us in our disobedience. . . . The word of cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than any commandment of works. . . . 393. DOROTHEE SÖLLE: RUDOLF BULTMANN AND POLITICAL THEOLOGY (1987) From Dorothee Soelle. The Window of Vulner Vulneraability—a Political Spirituality Spirituality. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 122–31. trans. by Linda Maloney. . . . I come from the liberal Protestant middle class in which Kant and Goethe played a much greater role than the Bible or Luther. Intellectual doubt concerning the content of the church’s teachings was, in the enlightened climate in which we grew up, simply

245

a matter of course. Virgin birth, empty tomb, miracle stories and dogmas—who could be interested in such things? There was, of course, something in this tradition that held me: Jesus Christ this man tortured to death yet neither nihilistic nor cynical like so many people of my acquaintance after the German catastrophe. But this man from Nazareth was disguised by the church’s tradition: the platitudes in confirmation instruction, the boredom of worship services and their authoritarian claims, and finally the neo-orthodoxy encountered in religion class, which insisted that God had to be “totally other” than all our ideas. Even if there were a Christian substance, I could not recognize it in its ecclesial packaging.

Fig. 8.4. Dorothee Sölle

In this connection—I am referring to the end of my school years, the last two years in the preparatory school I attended up to 1949—Rudolf Bultmann . . . was a help to me. He was . . . both enlightened and Christian. I did not have to surrender my intellect at the church door. He was a teacher, and I came to know him better and better through his writings as a man of impeccable honesty, a thinker in the tradition of Lessing who would not permit himself to be cowed either by institutions like the church or by traditions like those of the Bible and who at the same time as I heard was quite devout. . . . How could the two things go together: thinking and believing, criticism and piety, reason and Christianity? Bultmann responded to these questions with his program of demythologization. . . . In fact, I did experience Bultmann’s ideas as liberating and so did many others. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in July 1942 “Bultmann has let the cat out of the bag, not only for

246

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

himself but for very many people and I am delighted. He has dared to say what many people (I include myself) have repressed inside themselves without being able to overcome it.” The cat has gotten out of the mythological bag: the stories of Jesus’ empty tomb and his resurrection, the idea that his resurrected form was visible and tangible, are legends, forms in which the first disciples expressed their faith in terms compatible with their worldview. . . . Bultmann’s thought was the focus of discussion up to the middle of the 1960s. He did not complete the process that began about the time, which I would call the politicization of Christian conscience. But the theology that today is as controversial as was that of Bultmann in his own time is the theology of liberation—not liberation from myth, but from material suffering, which, in a Christian view of things not only robs the starving of hope and destroys them, but does the same to those who starve them for the sake of their own security. Under the concept of liberation theology—to come to my second point—I include not only the Latin American theology called by this name, but a worldwide movement, carried on by many different groups, of Christians who are no longer prepared to make use of theology to justify existing injustice. It is, to take an image from its more important symbol, an exodus theology that makes the departure from each and every Egypt of oppression its own theological theme. Redemption is understood as liberation: Christ is the liberator. To build a world in which justice will be possible, and therefore peace as well, means working towards the reign of God—a work that can never be completed but that is nonetheless indispensable. I cannot go into all the branches of this genuine theology, but I want to try to trace the lines leading from Bultmann to liberation theology, in order to arrive at some theological statements for the liberation of the rich, white middle classes of the First World as well. The existential interpretation, with its criticism of the objectification imposed by the myth on life’s fulfillment, was supported, for Bultmann and Heidegger as well, by a far-reaching critique of that Western philosophy, Greek in origin, that understood Being as being-in-itself prior to any relationship to another. The basis of Bultmann’s criticism of Western philosophy was the counter-position of Hebrew and Greek thought, and in this conflict he located himself, despite all his great inner devotion to the Greeks, on the side of biblical Hebraic thought. We must finally learn how to think like Hebrews and stop thinking metaphysically like Greeks. Pre-

cisely this driving force plays a major role in Latin American liberation theology, based on the fact that Greek philosophy—especially, of course, Aristotelianism, which has been so influential in the West—proceeds from the idea of a Being as beingin-itself, independent of relationship to others. Western thought perceived objects as subordinated to a dominant subject, instead of developing, as did the Hebrews, an ontology of being-in-relationship. . . . If I regard Bultmann’s affection for Heidegger’s thinking as unfortunate, it nevertheless indicates a problem that we should take into account: It has since become evident, within liberation theology, that the consequence of this abstractive ontology of being-in-itself is that one not only regards the objects as objects, but treats them as objects. Domination and subordination are the specific Western forms in which relationships are conceived: divide et impera—divide and conquer. . . . The spirit of this philosophy of subjugation of the object by a relationless subject leads to what the Mexican liberation theologian José Miranda has analyzed in his important book Marx and the Bible, as a culture of injustice. . . . Our false ontology, in which relationship is nothing but domination, also leads us to disguise and tame the contradictoriness of the reality. Our positivist notion of science makes us blind to the deepest dimensions of reality—namely, human consciousness that demands liberation. . . . This is exactly what one finds in the German university. Truth, as Bultmann had critically remarked, is understood in Greek fashion as something observed, and not in practical Hebrew fashion as what one does with one’s life. . . . The First World, whose citizens we are, is characterized by and owes its successes to: 1) an objectivizing theory of knowledge that ignores contradictions and the needs of humanity; 2) an idea of history without hope, in which hope has only a private meaning; and 3) that ontology of the subject without needs, which chooses, uses, and abandons its objects because it knows itself independent of them. Liberation theologians today are working to overcome this ontology and this theology, as Rudolf Bultmann did before them. . . . Today I understand my theology as an attempt to do liberation theology in the First World. But in this process, my understanding of myth has also changed. . . . I need a different language from that of explanation, definition, and criticism in order to express with any clarity at all what is at stake. And that is the point at which I believe I aspire to go a little beyond Bultmann—not backward into Biblicist naiveté, into

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

a pre-Enlightenment world, but passing through the Enlightenment into a new language, which we are working on today in liberation theology, a language we are searching for and one we really need. . . . Meaningful theology . . . invites the return of myth. Narrative or story is sought out and not banished as impure. That is also one of the criteria of liberation theology: that it tries to think from the point of view of the poor, the blacks, or women, and tries to bring in the reality of their lives by means of story. . . . The model of German scholarship that dominated the world churches for so long is by this time totally finished. . . . When I ask myself what Rudolf Bultmann would have said about this new discussion, I think it would probably have been both yes and no. No to the myth, if it represents merely a return to the irrational. . . . Yes to the myth if it represents a post–naïve turning toward something, a third step that leads from naive faith through liberating demythologizing critique to a reappropriation of the hope promised through the myth for all people. . . . CHRISTIANITY AND SECULARIZATION 394. DIETRICH BONHOEFFER: RELIGIONLESS CHRISTIANITY (1944) From Letters and Papers fr from om Prison in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Works, Vol. 8.. ed. by John deGruchy. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), trans. by I. Best, L. Dahill, R. Krauss, N. Lukens. Letter to Eberhard Bethge (April 30, 1944) . . . What keeps gnawing at me is the question what is Christianity, or who is Christ actually for us today. The age when we could tell people that with words—whether with theological or with pious words—is past, as is the age of inwardness and conscience, and that means the age of religion altogether. We are approaching a completely religionless age; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore. Even those who honestly describe themselves as ‘religious’ aren’t really practicing that at all; they presumably mean something quite different by ‘religious.’ But our entire nineteen hundred years of Christian preaching and theology are built on the ‘religious a priori’ in human beings. ‘Christianity’ has always been a form (perhaps the true form) of ‘religion.’ Yet if it becomes obvious one day that

247

this a priori doesn’t exist, that it has been a historically conditioned and transitory form of human expression, then people really will become radically religionless—and I believe that that is already more or less the case (why, for example, doesn’t this war provoke a ‘religious’ reaction like all the previous ones?). What does that then mean for ‘Christianity’? The foundations are being pulled out from under all that ‘Christianity’ has previously been for us, and the only people among whom we might end up in terms of religion are the last of the knights or a few intellectually dishonest people. Are those supposed to be the chosen few? Are we supposed to fall all over precisely this dubious lot of people in our zeal or disappointment or woe and try to peddle our wares to them? Or should we jump on a few unfortunates in their hour of weakness and commit, so to speak, religious rape? If we are unwilling to do any of that, and if we eventually must judge even the Western form of Christianity to be only a preliminary stage of a complete absence of religion, what kind of situation emerges for us, for the church? How can Christ become Lord of the religionless as well? Is there such thing as a religionless Christian? If religion is only the garb in which Christianity is clothed—and even this garb has looked very different in different ages—what then is a religionless Christianity? Barth, who is the only one to have begun along these lines, nevertheless did pursue these thoughts all the way, did not think them through, but ended up with a positivism of revelation, which in the end essentially remained a restoration. For the working man or any person who is without religion, nothing decisive has been gained here. The questions to be answered would be: What does a church, a congregation, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life, mean in a religionless world? How do we talk about God—without religion, that is, without the temporally conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, the inner life and so on? How do we speak (or perhaps we can no longer even ‘speak’ as we used to) on a ‘worldly’ way about ‘God’? How do we go about being ‘religionless–worldly’ Christians, how can we be εκ-κλησια, those who are called out, without understanding religiously as privileged, but instead seeing ourselves as belonging wholly to the world? Christ would then no longer be the object of religion, but something else entirely, truly lord of the world. But what does that mean? In a religionless situation, what do ritual and prayer mean? Is this where the ‘arcane discipline,’ or the difference (what you’ve heard about from me before) between the penultimate and the ultimate, have new significance? . . .

248

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

395. FRIEDRICH GOGARTEN: SECULARIZATION AND CHRISTIAN FAITH (1953) From Friedrich Gogarten. Despair and Hope for Our Time ime. (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1970), 9–13, 28–29, 72, 80–82, 108, 150. trans. by Thomas Wieser. Introduction Contemporary history is more and more marked by the peculiar phenomenon called secularization. ..... Secularization has come to be understood as a cultural process: the transposition of originally Christian ideas, insights, and experiences into those of human reason in general. . . . What is recognized and experienced by reason changes from a divine to a human reality; the reality which thus far was caused solely by God and hence accessible only through faith now becomes a reality caused by man by virtue of his reason. Man now assumes the responsibility to fashion this reality on the basis of his rational insights and experiences. . . . The relationship of man to himself and to the world is fundamentally being changed. This change is very peculiar because ideas and insights of Christian origin determine this relationship of man to himself and the world which has assumed a new meaning through secularization. On the other hand, this relationship is totally different from that conceived by the Christian faith where it is God who places man into this relationship to himself and the world so that man may experience in this relationship his dependence upon God. On the contrary, it is his independence which man now realizes in this secularized relationship to himself and the world. . . . These peculiarities and apparent contradictions raise the crucial question whether secularization is alien and opposed to the nature of the Christian faith, imposed on it and hence destructive toward it, or whether secularization is a process naturally derived from the nature of Christian faith. . . . The question of the meaning of secularization in terms of its relation to the Christian faith is all the more urgent since today the dangers which are connected with secularization are becoming increasingly visible. Can man, who through secularization has become the independent lord over the world and himself, fulfill the task confronting him; or, having undertaken this task in the name of freedom, is he about to destroy this

freedom in a most gruesome way? This question becomes more crucial every day. . . . The Christian Understanding of the World In order to answer the question of the relationship of secularization to the Christian faith we need to clarify the latter’s understanding of the world. . . . The first and foremost statement about the meaning of the Christian faith for the world is the freedom from the world if offers man. . . . “World” does not stand for—at least not primarily—something like sensuality or distraction. Rather, we should think of “world” in terms of the orderly cosmos of the Greek or the all-embracing divine principalities and powers which in pre-Christian understanding determined the life of men. What is meant by “world” becomes abundantly clear when the close ties between the “world” and what theology calls “law” are recognized. It is therefore the orderly world, anchored in the law, from which Christian faith frees us. The apostle Paul, proclaiming freedom from the law as freedom from the stoichea, the legalistic powers of the world, could not be more explicitly. In his view, these stoichea are powers which possess divine and allpermeating force [Galatians 4]. However—and this is the knowledge gained by Paul through faith in Christ—since they belong to the created world, they are not in essence gods and therefore are no gods at all. . . . Man’s Responsibility for the World . . . Galatians speaks . . . of the freedom of the Christian from the world. This is not freedom in the negative sense that the world does not concern him anymore, but in the very positive sense as lordship over it, lordship of the son and heir (Gal 4:1, 7). . . . To be lord over the world means two things. First, it means not to be from the world, not to have one’s being enclosed by the world like the gentiles, who worship the creature instead of the creator. Second, it means to be responsible for the world in order that it remain God’s creation, as indicated in Romans 8:19f. ... The Starting Point of Secularization For the Christian, therefore, the world is effectively rid of the demonic powers whom he should serve as do the gentiles which offer them sacrifices [1 Corinthians 10]. He looks at the meat of the sac-

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

rificial animals on the market as no longer being endowed with the power of the demons to whom these animals are offered. For him it is ordinary, secular meat, if I may use the term already here. . . . Historicizing Human Existence Secularization involves the call for freedom of man vis-à-vis the world and for his lordship over it. This freedom results from the prior freedom, grasped in faith, of the Son for the Father through which the mythical world is transformed into a historical world. Through this call the world is secularized. For the man who hears the call “all things are lawful,” the world is no longer permeated and dominated by the “many gods and lords.” (1 Cor 8:5) The gods and lords are dethroned, the stoichea of the world have become poor and miserable. The world with everything in it has become, shall we say, something natural. It is merely world, secular world. . . . To be sure, secularization, involving the historicization of existence, is a post-Christian phenomenon in the sense that it has been created by the Christian faith. But while the starting point of secularization belongs to the nature of this faith—in that faith could not be justifying faith without the works being secularized—the post-Christian character of secularization does not signal the prior demise of the Christian faith. Rather, it means that secularization, in its seed as well as in its fully matured form, constitutes a test for faith which it must meet for its own sake, that is, in order to remain faith and to avoid degeneration into a legalistic Christian religion. . . . Secularization and Secularism At this point we must distinguish between two fundamentally different kinds of secularization. . . . One view of secularization can be characterized in terms of remaining within the secular. It can stand the world as being “only” the world. It recognizes the limits of reason: that it knows of the idea of the wholeness as the highest possible thought, but that it cannot answer the questions raised by this thought and hence never passes beyond questioning ignorance. This view involves greatest watchfulness regarding the limits of reason. The other view of secularization, which today is much more popular, can best be called secularism. It arises at the point where the questioning ignorance regarding the whole is no longer maintained. Either the ignorance or the quest

249

is abandoned. Accordingly, secularism assumes two forms. One is the secularism of ideologies and doctrines of salvation which seek to answer the quest for the wholeness. . . . Most of these doctrines have rightly hold only an ephemeral significance. Others, however, have achieved historic effects and power. They are those forces which gave expression to forces that determined the life of the epoch. The other secularism declares implicitly or explicitly every quest useless and nonsensical which reaches beyond anything that can be seen and touched. Questions concerning the whole must be left aside since they cannot be answered at any rate. This kind of secularization has lately come to be called nihilism. Since in terms of our argument secularization is a necessary and legitimate consequence of the Christian faith, the question arises as to the relationship of secularism to this faith. . . . The relationship between faith and secularization, as long as both are true to their nature, cannot be interpreted in terms of competition. . . . The task of faith regarding secularization is, therefore, to help it to remain in its secularity. It can do so by remaining true to its nature as faith, by continually distinguishing . . . between the divine reality of salvation and the earthly–worldly meaning of human action. Christianity and the Christian Faith We now return to the question . . . of whether faith provides an answer to the ignorant questioning which is the only way to know of and to be guided by the wholeness of human existence and of the world, as secular man assumes responsibility for the world in modern science and technology. . . . Christianity, whether understood in general historical or in theological terms, claims that the affirmations of the Christian faith concerning salvation are the answer to that ignorant questioning. It is convinced to possess in this answer the divine revelation of salvation for man and the world. . . .

396. DOROTHEE SÖLLE: CHRIST THE REPRESENTATIVE—AN ESSAY IN THEOLOGY AFTER THE DEATH OF GOD (1965) From Christ the Repr Representative esentative. (Philadelphia: Fortress, Press, 1967), 140.

250

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Christ’s Identification with God The One who plays God’s Role God has changed. What happened to Moses at the burning bush belongs to an irrevocable past. What St. Francis felt and experienced is no longer open to us to experience as something immediate. Luther’s anxieties can be explained by the psychoanalysts and stripped of their unconditionality. The progressive awakening of the consciousness has excluded these possibilities of attaining certainty about God. In whatever way we may interpret the objectification of God in the past—miracles, providential dispositions, channels of continuing revelation—such objectifications have been carried away by the flood of advancing critical consciousness. We are no longer under any necessity to attribute these objectifications to God, to see his hand in domains ruled by historical, sociological, and psychological laws, or where blind chance pursues its course. In this changed world, God needs actors to take his part. So long as the curtain has not rung down and the play still goes on, God’s role cannot be left unfilled. God’s leading player is Christ. Christ takes the part of God in the world, plays this role which without him would remain unfilled. His identification with God takes place, so to speak, behind the ontological problem of God’s being (a problem clearly unsoluble with the means available to our ontology), and makes that problem anachronistic, since God is present in Christ’s playing of his part, though no longer as the directly experienced God....... Because God mediated himself into the world, all immediacy has come to an end since Christ. God now appears in mediation, in representation. Christ plays God’s role in the world—that and nothing else is what incarnation means. With this way of mediation, there is of course no longer any room for lordship, or power, or any of the other kingly attributes of God. The Christ who represents God has come into the world in such a way that his representation is now the only possible experience of God: a religious experience, but not in the usual sense of one which culminates in a direct experience of the holy, of the fascinans and the tremendum. Of course, the new profane and worldly representation of God, established in helplessness and suffering, does not abolish the older form of religious experience, which continues tenaciously both within and outside the church. But it does make such religion super-

fluous—merely the survival of something man no longer needs, and which diminishes in power and influence the more man’s social and natural ills are eliminated. The new and progressive reality of the represented God, who is himself absent, shows that retreat to a God, experienced as present, is simply a private affair with no claim whatever to authority. What can be real for us is the actor who plays God’s role, the leading player, who is followed by many others. What he, the leading player, did—we can do too. Namely, play the role of God in conditions of helplessness. We can claim God for each other. Certainly this play-acting of ours retains the provisional character of al theatrical performances. God, too, is not so fully represented by his representative as to leave nothing of himself still to come. Nevertheless, the identification of God, which Christ ventured and pioneered, means that this identification is at the same time possible for us. We, too, can now play God for one another. HISTORY, FAITH, AND THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST 397. WOLFHART PANNENBERG: HOW IS GOD REVEALED TO US? (1975) From Wolfhart Pannenberg: Faith and Reality Reality. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1977). 50–67. trans. by John Maxwell. (1) The Presupposition: The Hidden God To ask how God is revealed to us already implies that the reality of God is not everywhere and always equally accessible. To know God is no constituent part of our natural endowment. . . . Ancient Israel was aware of this: “No one can see God and live” (Exod 33:20). . . . That God is hidden has not, however, remained simply a biblical reminiscence for the intellectually aware men of our age in particular, for it has been experienced as an intellectual destiny in the last hundred years more deeply than ever before. . . . It was another expression of the same intellectual destiny when, after the first World War, Rudolf Otto and Karl Barth proclaimed God as the ‘wholly other,’ when Luther’s idea of the hidden God was rediscovered and almost at the same time Karl Jaspers spoke of the Transcendence to which man is indebted but which remains so incomprehensible to him that even

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

the word ‘God’ appears all–too–human to denote it....... (2) Theophanies? If God is usually hidden, then it would seem that revelation must be sought in special extraordinary events in which God himself appears. The oldest traditions of Israel, in fact—in an analogous way to other religions—do tell of miraculous appearances of Yahweh. These do not, however, signify what we mean by revelation in the strict sense as God’s selfrevelation. Self-revelation implies disclosure of actual being. A theophany, however, need not amount to that. . . . (3) God’s Self–Demonstration by History According to the biblical traditions, the mysterious being who in the oldest period did not even possess a name of his own but was designated as the God of Abraham, the Fear of Isaac, or the Mighty One of Jacob, and then appeared to Moses as Yahweh, showed himself to be God by the historical deeds he performed. . . . The power to manifest Yahweh’s deity is, in fact, not attributed only to this or that individual event, but is increasingly ascribed to whole patterns of events. . . . Apocalyptic, however, for the first time regarded all that happens as a single history, at the end of which the glory of Yahweh will be made manifest. . . . (4) . . . If we are to speak in a biblically well–founded way of Jesus Christ as the revelation of God, this has to be done on the basis of the Old Testament expectations. If the end of all history did not actually take place in Jesus of Nazareth, he would not be the revelation of God in the full sense of the word, for in that case the God of Israel, ever producing what is new, would manifest himself in ever new ways by his deeds, even after Jesus and beyond him....... The resurrection of the dead, of course, since the Babylonian exile had been the end of all history awaited by the Jews. If Jesus has risen from the dead to that life which is of a totally different kind from ours, if, in other words, he did not merely return for a time to this mortal life, then in him that end has already taken place, which for all other human beings down to the present is still in prospect. This was emphasized by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. . . . By Jesus’ resurrection, the God of Israel is revealed as the God with power over all that happens in his-

251

tory; for he who holds the end of all things in his hand, is also master of the things themselves. . . . In the event of Jesus’ resurrection, however, not only the power of God but also his love for us is revealed. For Jesus’ resurrection opens for those in union with him access to their goal as human beings, future life; and sin, which separates them from it, is overcome. ..... The God of Israel is revealed in the full sense only in Jesus. All earlier self-demonstrations by his action, for instance by the leading out of Egypt and the giving of the promised land to Israel, are by comparison purely provisional; they are not a definitive self-disclosure, and therefore cannot be called in a strict sense God’s self-revelation. What happened in and through Jesus cannot, however, be superseded by any future events, because in him precisely the end of all things has occurred. Consequently Jesus’ resurrection, and in its light the rest of all history and actions, is the one unique revelation of the deity of the one God. . . . (6) Knowledge of God and Experience According to all we have said so far, the revelation of God took place at a certain point in time, long ago. Only by way of knowledge of what happened then, is it revealed to the individual today. . . . The revelation event itself remains tied to the past point of time of Jesus’ own life-history. Even in hearing the proclamation there is no direct experience of revelation, but only the reference to what happened then, and to its validation in the present. Consequently no one needs to wait for special experiences or to work himself up into anything of the sort for God to be revealed to him; he only needs to look at what happened then and ask how it stands the test of present–day reality. . . . (7) Revelation and Grace The fact that the demonstration of the deity of the God of Israel in the life–history of Jesus is a matter of insight and knowledge, does not render faith superfluous. . . . For faith involves the participation of the believer himself in the reality in which he believes, and this cannot be replaced by any knowledge. Moreover, faith always has to do with the future. The believer attaches his own future to what he has come to recognize. Precisely for that reason faith cannot be its own basis. Faith as pure

252

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

risk would be blind credulity. Trustful belief needs a ground on which to build. . . . The relation between knowledge of revelation and faith, is clear from the words of Exodus 14:31....... Because the Israelites in their wonderful deliverance from their Egyptian pursuers recognize the hand of Yahweh, they trust themselves for the future to him and to his ‘servant’ Moses. . . . Trust in the promised resurrection to life is certainly opposed to what we human beings experience in ourselves (cf. Rom 4:19ff), but that trust is not a frivolously accepted risk or a blind readiness to believe authority in view of the witness of the apostles, but is grounded on Jesus’ resurrection which has already occurred. Is God only revealed to faith? Anyone who recognizes the deity, power and love of the God of Israel by the life-history of Jesus comes thereby to trust in him. Anyone who will not trust himself to the God revealed in Jesus’ resurrection will also obscure for himself any recognition of the history which reveals God, even if he once possessed it. . . . 398. WOLFHART PANNENBERG: JESUS’ RESURRECTION AS A HISTORICAL PROBLEM (1964) From Wolfhart Pannenberg. Jesus-God and Man Man. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1968), 88, 91, 96, 98, 105. trans. by Lewis Wilkins and Duane Priebe. The Easter traditions of primitive Christianity divide into two different strands: the traditions about appearances of the resurrected Lord, and the traditions about the discovery of Jesus’ empty grave. . . . In the oldest stratum of tradition . . . both strands are still separate: Mark reports the empty tomb (ch. 16); Paul reports only appearances of the resurrected Lord (1 Corinthians, ch. 15). Historically, then one must investigate both traditions separately. I will begin with a summary of the tradition of the appearances. ..... In view of the age of the formulated traditions used by Paul and of the proximity of Paul to the events, the assumption that appearances of the resurrected Lord were really experienced by a number of members of the primitive Christian community and not perhaps freely invented in the course of later legendary development has good historical foundation. ... To maintain, first, that the appearances were produced by the enthusiastically excited imagination of the disciples does not hold, at least for the first and

most fundamental appearances. The Easter appearances are not to be explained from the Easter faith of the disciples; rather, conversely, the Easter faith of the disciples is to be explained from the appearances. All the attempted constructions as to how the faith of the disciples could have survived the crisis of Jesus’ death remain problematic precisely in psychological terms, even when one takes into account the firm expectation of the imminent end of the world with which Jesus presumably died and in which his disciples lived. It cannot be disputed, that, in spite of all this, Jesus’ death exposed the faith of the disciples to the most severe stress. One could hardly expect the production of confirmatory experiences from the faith of the disciples that stood under such a burden. ... The second principal difficulty of the “subjective vision hypothesis” consists in the number of the appearances and their temporal distribution. It has been asserted that Jesus’ disciples were especially prone to visions and that the manifoldness of the appearances may be explained through a sort of chain reaction resulting from the first appearance to Peter. But now, with regard to the first part of the argument, insofar as the traditions permit a judgment, the enthusiastic manifestations in primitive Christianity were primarily a result of the appearances of the resurrected Lord. The second part of the argument, the assumption of a mental chain reaction, is questionable because the individual appearances did not follow one another so quickly. In the sequence of the appearances at least three stages that are temporally separated from one another to an extent that is not insignificant must be distinguished. . . . The possibility of the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection has been opposed on the grounds that the resurrection of a dead person even in the sense of the resurrection to imperishable life would be an event that violates the laws of nature. Therefore, resurrection as a historical event is impossible. Yet it appears that from the perspective of the presuppositions of modern physics judgments must be made much more carefully. . . . Natural science expresses the general validity of the laws of nature but must at the same time declare its own inability to make definitive judgments about the possibility or impossibility of an individual event, regardless of how certainly it is able, at least in principle, to measure the probability of an event’s occurrence. . . . If the appearance tradition and the grave tradition came into existence independently, then by their mutually complementing each other they let the assertion of the reality of Jesus’ resurrection, in the

LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE

sense explained above, appear as historically very probable and that always means in historical inquiry that it is to be presupposed until contrary evidence appears. . . . 399. GERHARD EBELING: THE NATURE OF FAITH (1959) From Gerhard Ebeling. The Natur aturee of Faith aith. (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1961), 58–70. trans. by Ronald Gregor Smith. Chapter 5: The Basis of Faith How did Jesus, the witness of faith, become the basis of faith? That is simply the precise formulation of the historical question: how did the transition take place from Jesus himself to the church’s proclamation of Christ? The answer of the Christian tradition is quite specific and unanimous. At the point of transition is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. . . . The faith which now took hold of the disciples and which they bore witness to was faith in this Jesus. It is entirely to this primitive faith in Jesus that we owe the tradition about Jesus. And however dubious it may be how far this primitive faith in Jesus—and all the new elements which appeared along with it—could really appeal to Jesus, nevertheless, in one point there is an indisputable and decisive connection with Jesus, namely, that Jesus and faith are indissolubly connected. His message, his influence, his way, his whole life was a witness of faith which aimed at summoning to faith and at awakening faith. Jesus so devoted himself to this mission that his death was the extreme fulfilment of the witness of faith, and thus the summary of his life. To be committed to Jesus now meant to be committed to faith. . . . The faith of early Christianity understood itself in terms of Jesus having reached the goal, but exclusively in the form of testifying that Jesus is risen. . . . That the witness to the resurrection of Jesus has this significance we must at least take notice of, as a historical fact. But this is just what seems to one who is concerned with Christian faith to be an oppressive burden. How is one meant to understand “risen from the dead”? . . . Can we agree with a good conscience with St. Paul, and draw the harsh consequence that if Christ is not risen then Christian proclamation and faith itself are meaningless? Do the words of the Creed, “the third day he rose again from the dead,” not stand in a series of other similarly problematic assertions, such as those about the Virgin Birth, the

253

Descent to Hell, and the Ascension? How can we simply swallow all this literally, or at any rate in the way a modern man thinks he has to understand it, with his urge to historical and physical objectification? One important correction requires to be made straightaway. It is wrong to put all the clauses from the second article of the Apostles’ Creed on the same level. . . . If we stick to the New Testament writings, we find that the Virgin Birth and the Descent to Hell are mentioned only in very few places and without exception in late material. . . . But it is quite a different matter with the mention of the Resurrection of Jesus. If every reference were collected, we should have to write out a very large part of the New Testament. . . . If we now turn to this particular question of the Resurrection of Jesus, we must guard against error by saying in advance three things. First, we must clearly recognize, what I have already suggested, that the Resurrection of Jesus is not to be regarded as one object of faith alongside others, as though Easter only added the Resurrection of Jesus as something to be believed along with everything else. . . . Second, we must keep in mind that, since we have to do with the Person of Jesus himself, we are not speaking of an object of faith, but about the witness of faith who becomes the basis of faith. . . . And lastly, he who is concerned with the nature of Christian faith has every reason to show, at this point above all, perseverance and courage for the truth. It is unworthy of Jesus and of Christian faith to dodge the issue here, whether by making a sacrificium intellectus along with weighty assertions of what we do not understand, or by deceiving oneself and other by means of apologetic and dialectical tricks, or by making do with a phantom faith, in resigned or superficial mood. In my opinion, the very existence of Christianity it at stake, in the way it answers this question: whether it repeats the confession of the risen Jesus half-heartedly and with a bad conscience, or whether it does it with conviction, joyfully and convincingly, finding itself at the source and basis of faith. . . . The New Testament references to the Resurrection of Jesus fall into three main groups. The first is the well-known Easter stories which are found in the closing chapters of the four Gospels. The second is composed of the formulas of proclamation or confession. The third is a single text, which really belongs in the second group, but for various reasons must be given a special place, namely, 1 Corinthians 15:3–8. . .. Now Paul, as he explicitly says, is quoting in 1

254

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Corinthians 15 a tradition that he has received. This therefore reaches back much earlier than the year 56. . . . What is of crucial importance is that this text takes us quite close to the event which it describes. And the mention of certain witnesses by name, who were still alive, made this tradition susceptible of control. Moreover, Paul knew the chief witnesses personally. . . . Paul himself adds the reference at the end to his experience at Damascus. . . . [But] If we take everything together, then what we learn seems to be meagre. . . . If we now turn back, from these sparse, sober and reliable statements, to the richly embellished Easter stories of the Gospels, it is clear that in many regards pious imagination was at work. Admittedly the Gospels are restrained in comparison with the apocryphal Gospels, which went much further. . . . Two stories of the tomb testify to the Resurrection in a certain negative way, proceeding from the discovery that the tomb was empty. . . . It is obviously impossible to clarify every detail with certainty. But some things can be established with certainty, and others with a high degree of probability. . . . The whole of the rest of the tradition, including the Pauline, is silent about the empty tomb. . . . And if the fact of the empty tomb is never used as an argument, by St. Paul or anywhere else, and if even in the earliest tradition quoted in 1 Corinthians 15 there is nothing about the discovery of the empty tomb, then it appears that no significance was attached in the message of early Christianity to the fact, so far as the tradition of it was known at all. . . . It is probable

that the accounts of the empty tomb are part of late additions. . . . But now comes the most important task in interpretation—to go on from the historical analysis of the Easter tradition to explain what faith in Jesus really means. Why must this faith be faith in him as risen? . . . What does “faith in Jesus” mean? It means to let him, as the witness of faith, be the basis of faith, and thus to have to do with him and to enter upon his way: to participate in him and his way, and thus to participate in what which is promised to faith, namely, the omnipotence of God. To believe in the Crucified One, this Crucified One, in the witness of faith which he fulfilled in dying, means to believe in the omnipotence of God, it means to confess the power of the God who raises from the dead. To have faith in Jesus and to have faith in him as the Risen One are one and the same. But one cannot rejoice in the Resurrection of Jesus unless one recognizes that the Cross of Jesus must now become the central content of the message of faith. . . . What does “resurrection of the dead” mean? The best help for understanding this is to abandon any effort to form an image or ideas of it. That Jesus is risen from the dead does not mean that he returned to this earthly life as one who has death ahead of him once again. But it means that he, the dead one, has death (not just dying, but death) finally behind him, and is finally with God and for this reason is present in this earthly life. . . .

9. Lutherans in North America, 1865–2016

After the Civil War in the United States, Southern Lutherans continued their institutional separation from their co-religionists in the Northern states, with the General Synod South going its independent way from the northern General Synod. The Southern Lutherans, supplemented by other independent Southern Lutheran synods, formed the United Synod South in 1886. African-American Lutherans, who had been part of these congregations before the war, were generally excluded from them after the war, and independent African-American Lutheran congregations struggled to survive, briefly forming the Alpha Synod in the Carolinas in 1889. Some Northern Lutherans occasionally undertook missions with African-Americans, and the congregations of the Alpha Synod were included in the mission work of the Missouri Synod, while the Ohio Synod also had its own missions. In the North, confessional and theological issues from the 1850s persisted through the war, sharpened and developed into a full schism in 1867, when a number of synods broke away from the General Synod to form a rival, more strictly confessional body, the General Council (doc. #400). A number of existing Lutheran regional synods were divided in the process, resulting in a further proliferation of organizations. The new General Council hoped to unite all of the more strictly confessional Lutheran bodies in North America, including the new immigrant Lutheran denominations, such as the Missouri, Ohio, and Iowa synods, but the latter were not confident of the confessional soundness of the new General Council, and did not join it (doc. #402). Thus in the post-Civil War period the American Lutherans out of the colonial or Muhlenberg tradition were

divided into three separate denominations, the General Synod, the General Council, and the United Synod South. Additional denominations were formed by the newer immigrant Lutherans, which generally remained independent of these three. The Germans who began to arrive in large numbers after 1840 formed their own denominations, which grew rapidly after the Civil War. These were often the strongest in the areas of the Midwest and Upper Midwest states, and the Canadian Prairie provinces. Largest of these Lutheran denominations was the Missouri Synod, which, despite its regional name grew to be a large national denomination. There were others, as well, including the Iowa, Ohio, Buffalo, Wisconsin, and Texas synods (among others), all ministering to the needs of the large numbers of newly arrived immigrants. Hoping to lead these denominations, the Missouri Synod formed a new national federation of synods, the Synodical Conference, in 1872. Designed to be a way of uniting these strict confessional Lutherans, and to counter the General Council, this organization did not achieve its full goal due to the outbreak of theological controversies among them. A major theological battle over the doctrine of Predestination (or Election), raged on during the 1870s and 1880s, with Missouri on one side, and Ohio and Iowa on the other (docs. #403–405). Though Missouri became the largest of these groups, its dominance of these groups was not unchallenged. The pace of immigration of Scandinavian immigrants to North American also increased at a dramatic rate after the Civil War, with millions of them generally settling in the center of the continent. Since these Scandinavians were at least all nominally

256

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Lutherans (from the Scandinavian Lutheran State Churches), it seemed to foretell the formation of very large Scandinavian-American denominations. Though the ethnic denominations they did form were the largest organizations in their respective ethnic communities, they only recruited a minority of the new immigrants. These Scandinavian-American Lutheran denominations struggled into existence, and there were never enough pastors, congregations, and funds to adequately reach out to all the new immigrants (doc. #401). As well, some Scandinavia immigrants decided to join English-speaking “American” denominations, or to form nonLutheran denominations. Some new immigrants even decided to exercise their new-found religious freedom by joining no denominations whatsoever, or simply lived in areas that were not served by the ethnic denominations. Though these Scandinavian-American Lutheran denominations came out of the State Churches, they were not intended as replicas of the formal, State-Church Lutheranism from Europe. Many of the leaders of Scandinavian-American Lutheranism were deeply influenced by the Pietist awakening that was sweeping through the Scandinavia during this time, which was strongly critical of the State Churches. The structure and theology of these Scandinavian-American denominations were generally Pietistic in nature. Among Swedish-Americans, the largest denomination was the Lutheran Augustana Synod, independently formed in 1860. There were, however, also in the Swedish-American community other denominations, including the Covenant, Free, Methodist, and Baptist denominations, which, though much smaller, competed with Augustana. The Swedish Methodists and Baptists early on achieved their own independent status, while the separation of the Covenant and Free groups took longer, spurred by a bitter dispute over the doctrine of the Atonement (doc. #407). This dispute, which had begun in Sweden in the 1870s over the teaching of Pietist leader Paul Peter Waldenström, spread to North America, and led to the formation of the Free and Covenant denominations in 1880s. Though the struggle weakened the Augustana Synod, it did push this denomination toward a more consciously confessional Lutheran position. Immigrants from Norway also formed a number of different denominations, but these separate groups all remained Lutheran in North America (doc. #408). Working off disputes in the Church of Norway, the boundaries of this Lutheran tradition were formally defined by two different groups; the Norwegian

Synod (1853) a formal, confessional Lutheran denomination, closest to the Church of Norway, while the low–church, pietistic Hauge Synod tradition followed the Haugean revival of Christianity in nineteenth-century Norway. There were also several groups in the middle, which took positions between the Norwegian Synod and the Haugeans. The Norwegian-American Lutherans, especially the Norwegian Synod, were also deeply affected by the Election Controversy in the 1880s, and denominations and many congregations were divided by the controversy. A number of the centrist Norwegian-American Lutherans came together in 1890 to form the United Norwegian Lutheran Church, which became the largest of these denominations. Immigrants from other Scandinavian countries followed similar courses. Danish-Americans divided into two separate Danish-American denominations, the first following Danish theologian N.F.S Grundtvig and his ideas of a folk–church for all Danes (the so-called “Happy” Danes), and the second group following the leadership of Danish Pietist leaders, who wanted a strictly moralistic church (the so-called “Holy” Danes). Because Danish immigration was smaller, as were these competing denominations, they did not draw in a large proportion of the Danish-Americans. Among Finnish immigrants to North America, who came relatively later, there were similar religious divisions along the line of developments in Finland. The largest Finnish-American denomination was the Suomi Synod, which, though Pietist in nature, was closest to the Lutheran Church of Finland. A second group of Finns, following Pietist leader Frederick Hedberg, formed its own denomination, which eventually became a part of the Synodical Conference and eventually the Missouri Synod. Yet still a third group were the Finnish Apostolic or Laestadians, inspired by Pietist leader Lars Levi Laestadius. This movement splinted into a number of different factions (perhaps a dozen or more) and continue to maintain an existence separate from other Lutherans and from each other. Icelandic immigrants to the United States and Canada formed their own Icelandic Synod. Lutheran immigrants came from a variety of countries beyond Germany and Scandinavia. There were also Lutherans from Eastern Europe, including Slavic Lutherans like Wends and Poles, and German settlers from Hungary and Romania; these were smaller groups, and did not form their own denominations. The Lutherans from Slovakia did form two different Slovak Lutherans in the United States, one of which associated with the Missouri Synod, while the other

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

joined the General Council. Lutherans from the eastern Baltic regions, including Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians, often formed ethnic congregations, as did Lutherans from Slovenia. Germans who settled in Russia in the eighteenth century also immigrated to the upper Midwest and Canada in the late nineteenth century, and also formed distinctive Russian-German congregations, usually affiliated with one of the German-language American Lutheran denominations. With this large immigration of European Lutherans to North America, the Lutheran became a large Protestant family of denominations, the third largest such family in America, after the Methodists and Baptists by 1900. However the Lutherans were internally divided into at least a dozen larger denominations, as well as many other smaller ones. Except for the colonial, Muhlenberg Lutherans in the East, most North American Lutherans still did not use English in their churches, which limited their influence outside their own communities. Still they were large enough to be influential in certain areas, especially the American Midwest. These ethnic-based Lutheran congregations were a vital part of the immigrant communities, and helped the immigrants settle into the New World. With the growth of American Lutheranism and its congregations, there was a parallel development of Lutheran institutions to serve them. The second half of the nineteenth century was generally a period of great growth in religiously-based institutions for social service and education, and most of the different American Lutheran bodies joined in this trend, developing hospitals, orphanages, and institutions for the aged and infirm. Today, Lutherans are known for quality colleges and universities, many of which were established during this period. Most Lutherans sent their children to public elementary and secondary schools, but the Missouri Synod developed its own system of parochial schools. This was also the time when American and Canadian denominations were sending missionaries overseas to Asia and Africa. Though North American Lutherans had limited resources, and though the domestic needs were of first priority (doc. #411), many Lutheran denominations raised money to assist foreign mission efforts, and early American Lutheran missions were established in India, Liberia, China, and South Africa (see chapter 11). By the beginning of the First World War, many American Lutherans were still living in separate ethnic–language communities and congregations (socalled “hyphenated” Americans), as a part of their ethnic groups while moving slowly into the larger

257

North American culture. The descendant of the colonial Lutherans, the Muhlenberg tradition, were firmly assimilated into American culture (doc. #406), but most nineteenth century Lutheran groups were still using the European languages in worship and theology. Because a considerable stream of newer arrivals kept coming from Europe until 1914, the Lutheran denominations were slow to begin the language transition to English, though many of their younger member still pushed for a greater rate of change. At the beginning of the twentieth century there was the first wave of Lutheran denominational mergers, including the reunion of the three Muhlenberg groups in 1918 to form the United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA). A large majority of the Norwegian-American Lutherans denominations overcame their divisions in 1917 to form the Norwegian Lutheran Church in America (doc. #410), while many of the Midwestern German groups (but not the Missouri Synod) formed the American Lutheran Church (1930–60) in 1930. This was just the beginning of a century of mergers and readjustments for American Lutherans. One of the biggest turning points for American Lutheranism was the First World War (1914–1918). Initially isolationist, and mildly sympathetic to the German cause, Lutherans often expressed suspicion of the British and French, and worried that these nations would drag America into the war. When America did enter the war in April 1917, the national mood was decidedly anti-German and, by extension, anti-foreign, and a wave of xenophobia threatened all American Lutherans (doc. #412). German-speaking groups were especially targeted, but laws and restrictions on the use of foreign languages in schools and churches threatened the immigrant denominations. To prove their patriotism, American Lutherans protested their support of the allied war efforts; young Lutheran men enlisted in the armed forces, and other Lutherans bought large numbers of war bonds. To minister to Lutherans in the service, these denominations had to overcome old divisions, and cooperate in forming the National Lutheran Commission on Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Welfare, and as far as they could Lutherans joined the national mobilization. Because of the upheavals of the war, American Lutherans were thrust into a more prominent position in World Lutheranism. Because European Lutheran mission societies were unable to support the African and Asian missions, American Lutherans had to step in and care for these “orphaned” missions. Relief of war-ravaged Europe, especially Lutheran

258

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

churches in Eastern Germany and Poland also became their responsibility. These effort showed the need for closer cooperative efforts among themselves, and prompted the formation of a permanent coordinating group, the National Lutheran Council, in 1918. More than anything else, the First World War greatly accelerated the transition to the use of English among all Lutherans in North America. Because of war-time xenophobia, the drastic limits on immigration, and pressure from younger generations of Lutherans, the transition to the widespread use of English went very quickly. Before the war, the immigrant languages were vastly in the majority, but by 1930 the transition to English was virtually complete. This transition also pushed for greater unity and even further mergers, as the ethnic Lutheran denominations had now lost their linguistic reason for independent existence. Complicating the push toward greater cooperation and merger, however, were continuing theological and confessional differences. In the 1920s there were two major Lutheran denominations, one on each end of the Lutheran spectrum; the new ULCA on the one side, was most open to merger and American religious culture, while the strictly confessional Missouri Synod on the other side demanded complete doctrinal agreement before closer fellowship could even be contemplated (doc. #415). Between these two groups were seven other Midwest Lutheran denominations, Scandinavians and Germans, all members of the National Lutheran Council along with the ULCA. These groups argued about substance and strategies for closer Lutheran work and even merger, along with a new issue raised by the transition to English, the nature of Biblical authority and new approaches to the study of the Bible (docs. #409 and 414). Despite the virtual cessation of European immigration after the First World War, Lutheranism in North America continued to grow, from 3.7 million baptized members in 1920 to 4.7 million in 1935. The social and cultural changes in America presented Lutherans with a challenging new world; trying to hold to a strict personal morality, they rejected dancing, movies, the new popular culture, and deplored the flaunting of Prohibition laws during the 1920s. Like many other sectors of public life, the Lutheran denominations and their people were deeply affected by the ravages of the Great Depression, 1929–41. Quite a number of Lutheran institutions were closed during this time, and all forms of ministry suffered from the lack of funding; many struggled to survive (doc. #416). Lutherans worried about events in

Europe and Asia during the 1930s, but remained in a traditional isolationistic position. When America entered the Second World War in 1941, American Lutherans again rallied to the national cause, and enthusiastically supported war efforts. As with the previous war, the end of the Second World War left Lutherans even further involved with the leadership of world Lutheranism. The devastation of the Lutheran heartland in Germany, the general weakness of all European Lutheran churches, and the advances of communism meant a huge problem with refugees and displaced persons, as well as ruined Lutheran churches (see chapter 7). Lutheran mission churches in the global South were often without support and missionary leadership. Raising millions of dollars for the relief and resettlement of those displaced, and for the reconstruction of European churches, American Lutherans took the lead. They were generally instrumental in forming the post–war ecumenical agencies, including the Lutheran World Federation (1947), the World Council of Churches (1948), and the National Council of Churches (1950), in which many Lutheran denominations (but not Missouri) belonged (see chapter 12). The social dislocations of the Depression and the Second World War led to a post-war shift, including the demographic challenge of the “Baby Boom” (1946–1964), with the birth of millions of children. The building of new homes and suburban communities was rushed to meet pent-up demand, and Americans also increasingly moved to new areas in the South and West. All these factors necessitated the formation of thousands of new congregations, the expansion of others, and the education of thousands of new pastors. Existing congregations were forced to expand their facilities and their ministries. Social service agencies, hospitals, colleges, and seminaries all were spread to their limits, and expanded their facilities. The numerical peak of Lutherans in North America, at about 9 million members, occurred in the middle of the 1960s. This expansion came in the midst of renewed questions about efforts at Lutheran cooperation and continuing merger negotiations (doc. #417). In an age of centralization in many areas of society and business, fostered by the ideas of the efficiency of larger organizations and bureaucracies, Protestants followed suit by forming ever larger and more consolidated denominations. This idea appealed to many Lutheran leaders, too, who felt that they could be more effective and have a larger impact if the various Lutheran denominations could merge together. But

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

mergers were difficult to produce, due to practical issues and lingering theological and confessional issues. Because of these differences, it was not immediately likely that the ULCA and the Missouri Synod (the largest two groups) would participate in common negotiations, so the seven centrist Lutheran denominations had to develop new strategies for merger negotiations. These centrist Lutheran denominations eventually split over this question, and developed two parallel merger negotiations in the 1950s. One group, including the ULCA, Augustana, the Finns, and one of the Danish denominations formed the Lutheran Church in America in 1962 (LCA) (doc. #419). Two Norwegian groups, the other Danish church, and the ALC (1930–1960) came together in the American Lutheran Church (ALC 1960–1988) in 1960 (doc. #418). While a comprehensive merger was not accomplished, these two new denominations, along with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), together represented over 95 per cent of all North American Lutherans. Along with these mergers, Lutheran leaders also pushed for greater cooperation and coordination between these three American Lutheran denominations, again with an eye towards a great impact and efficiencies. A major step in this direction was the formation in 1966 of the Lutheran Council in the USA, important because for the first time it brought the LCMS into direct cooperation with other American Lutherans. Another major cooperative milestone was the declaration of pulpit and altar fellowship between the LCMS and the American Lutheran church. These new church organizations also had to address the divisive cultural, social, and political changes of the 1960s, including the war in Vietnam, the youth movement, Civil Rights, and the Women’s Liberation movement. Having traditionally avoided direct comment on such kinds of issues, Lutherans struggled to address these challenges within their denomination. There were new attempts within them to address racial issues and reach out to AfricanAmerican communities (doc. #420). The ordination of women was the focus of a joint study, and while the LCA and ALC decided to ordain women, the LCMS decided not to (doc. #421). Within the LCMS, all these new developments and closer relations to other Lutheran caused a conservative backlash, and increased conflict between “conservatives” and “moderates” within the denomination. These tensions developed into open conflict in 1969 with the election of a new, conservative president, J.A.O. Preus (1920–1994), who went after

259

synod moderates, especially the faculty at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. These attacks caused a walkout of most of the seminarians and 45 of 50 faculty members, who proceeded to form Christ Seminary in Exile (Seminex) (doc. #422). The dispute escalated through the LCMS, and in 1976 some moderate pastors and congregations withdrew from the LCMS to form the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Congregations (AELC). With all these new development and institutional changes within the denominations, the growth of American Lutheranism, which peaked in the mid-1960s, flattened out in the 1970s and 1980s. Changes in the role of women in society, and their movement into the paid workforce in large numbers affected the local congregation, who had formerly relied on women’s unpaid volunteer leadership. With the withdrawal of some of its moderates into the AELC, the LCMS was increasingly dominated by conservative leadership, which diminished the chances of closer relations or merger with the ALC and LCA. Further merger negotiations began in 1982 between the LCA, ALC, and AELC, which eventually resulted in the formation of a new denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), in 1988. With about 5.2 million members at its beginning, the ELCA represented two–thirds of all American Lutherans, with the LCMS at about 2.5 million members. During this time Canadian Lutherans also formed new Lutheran denominations in their country, moving away from the American Lutheran denominations. Another development during the last decades of the twentieth century were attempts by these North American Lutheran denominations to become more ethnically diverse, seeking to include more African American and Hispanic members, with some limited success. Renewed immigration to the United States after 1965 brought a new wave of immigrants, especially from the global South, including Lutheran immigrants from newer churches in Africa and Asia, who formed their own ethnic congregations. Assisting these new immigrants and refugees, Lutheran social service agencies formed one of the largest networks of religiously–based organizations in North America. At the formation of the ELCA in 1988, the new denomination faced some difficult issues, including some that had not been resolved during the merger process. Overly optimistic budget projections created a financial crisis in the new domination, while contentious issues concerning the nature of the ministry, church structure, and ecumenical relations disrupted

260

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

the new denomination. A proposal for full fellowship with the Episcopal Church in 1999, necessitating changes within the ELCA, was passed (doc. #422), but occasioned a split within the ELCA, and the formation of a new denomination, the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, in 2001 (ch. 12, doc. #516). Difficult questions surrounding human sexuality, especially the decision of the ELCA in 2009 to ordain homosexual pastors (doc. #424), led to the formation of another breakaway group, the North American Lutheran Church, in 2010 (doc. #425). As with other American mainline Protestant denominations, Lutheran bodies began to decline in membership, with the ELCA numbering 3.8 million members by 2015, and the LCMS at 2.3 million members in the same year. Still a strong denominational family, North American Lutherans remain numerous in the American Midwest and Upper Midwest, as well as in parts of Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, and Texas. There were about seven million Lutherans, in about 17,000 congregations in North America as of 2015, also maintaining a number of prominent institutions of higher education, and a large network of social service agencies. North American Lutherans also are leaders within the worldwide Lutheran communion, connecting to the European Lutheran churches and the increasingly numerous Lutheran churches in the global South. 400. KRAUTH: THESES ON FAITH AND POLITY (1866) Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823–1883) was one of the leaders of the confessional revolt against “American Lutheranism” in the General Synod. He became the leading theologian of the new General Council when it was formed in 1867. Here he sets out his confessional position. From: Richard C. Wolf, ed., Documents of Luther Lutheran an Unity in America merica. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 143–48. Fundamental Principles of Faith and Church Polity I. There must be and abide through all time, one holy Christian Church, which is the assembly of all believers, among whom the Gospel is purely preached, and the Holy Sacraments are administered, as the Gospel demands.

To the true Unity of the Church, it is sufficient that there be agreement touching the doctrine of the Gospel, that it be preached in one accord, in its pure sense, and that the Sacraments be administered conformably to God’s Word. II. The true Unity of a particular Church, in virtue of which men are truly members of one and the same Church, and by which any Church abides in real identity, and is entitled to a continuation of her name, is unity in doctrine and faith and in the Sacraments, to wit: That she continues to teach and to set forth, and that her true members embrace from the heart, and use, the articles of faith and the Sacraments as they were held and administered, when the Church came into being and received a distinctive name. III. The Unity of the Church is witnessed to, and made manifest in, the solemn, public and official Confessions which are set forth, to wit: The generic Unity of the Christian Church in the general Creeds, and the specific Unity of pure parts of the Christian Church in their specific Creeds; one chief object of both classes of which Creeds is, that Christians who are in the Unity of faith, may know each other as such, and may have a visible bond of fellowship. IV. That Confessions may be such a testimony of Unity and bonds of Union, they must be accepted in every statement of doctrine in their own true, native, original and only sense. Those who set them forth and subscribe them, must not only agree to use the same words, but must use and understand those words in one and the same sense. V. The Unity of the Evangelical Lutheran Church . . . depends upon her abiding in one and the same faith, in confessing which she obtained her distinctive being and name, her political recognition and her history. VI. The Unaltered Augsburg Confession is by preeminence the confession of that faith. The acceptance of its doctrines and the avowal of them without equivocation or mental reservation make, mark and identify that Church which alone in the true, original, historical and honest sense is the Evangelical Lutheran Church. VII. The only churches, therefore, in any land which are properly in the Unity of that Communion, and by consequence entitled to its name, Evangelical Lutheran, are those which sincerely hold and truthfully confess the doctrines of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession. VIII. We accept and acknowledge the doctrines of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession in its original sense as throughout in conformity with the pure

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

truth of which God’s Word is the only rule. We accept its statements of truth as in perfect accordance with the Canonical Scriptures: we reject the errors which it condemns, and believe that all which it commits to the liberty of the Church, of right belongs to that liberty. 401. PREUS: SEVEN LECTURES ON THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION AMONG THE NORWEGIANS IN AMERICA (1867)

Fig. 9.1. Herman Amberg Preus

Herman Amberg Preus (1825–1894) was one of the founding pioneer pastors of the Norwegian Synod in the United States. Here he addresses many of the leaders of the Church of Norway, explaining the frontier conditions, and why it was not possible to replicate many of the Norwegian church elements in North America. From: Herman Amberg Preus, Viv Vivacious acious Daughter: Seven Lectur Lectures es on the Relig Religious ious Situation Among the Norweg orwegians ians in America. trans. Todd W. Nichol. (Northfield MN: Norwegian-American Historical Association, 1990), 33–47. My esteemed audience! Before beginning these lectures I would like to express my regret that on this occasion our Norwegian Lutheran Church in Amer-

261

ica could not have had another more capable and talented spokesman to sketch the life of our communion, its characteristics, and the conditions under which it works. If I venture to make the attempt myself it is because I deeply love this communion. I have devoted the best days of my youth to it and, so long as the Lord preserves me, I will consecrate to it the energies of my manhood. I would gladly wish for this communion to be an object of your fraternal love and sympathy here in this country. I cannot, however, express how it has saddened me to witness so much here to convince me that we are instead an object of complete indifference, misunderstanding, even harsh judgment. And yet it is your countrymen who settle and build, who labor and struggle way over there in the far west of America. To be sure, they have departed from you and the Fatherland, but does that deprive them of every right to fraternal sympathy? Is their departure in itself a crime over which any of you dares to set himself up as judge, a lapse which gives you the right to exclude them from participation in the communion of’ faith and its love . . . If he is going to remain in the faith of his fathers, the Norwegian emigrant to the American west has to consider how, with God’s help, he can make a Norwegian Lutheran church in his new home. To preserve the faith of their fathers for themselves and those who come after them, the Norwegian emigrants had to take things into their own hands, dispose themselves into congregations, procure pastors, and build churches. In a word, they had to take steps to meet all the exigencies of establishing and maintaining Norwegian Lutheran congregations in the Norwegian settlements. The Norwegian emigrants took the business in hand. They arranged themselves into Lutheran congregations, they called pastors, they got religious schools underway, and the congregations united into a communion that bears the name, “The Synod for the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.” . . . In those places the first task is to organize and order a congregation. Procedures vary depending on whether time is plentiful or scarce and on the state of affairs among the people. Sometimes it happens as it did in New York: the pastor preaches a few times, administers baptism, and then gathers those individuals interested in the kingdom of God and in whom he has reason to believe there is Christian earnestness. In association with them he works out the basic provisions for a Lutheran congregation; then he calls these men to a meeting in which they unite them-

262

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

selves into a Lutheran congregation and in which they assent and bind themselves to the general rules of the congregation. One of the stipulations will certainly contain provision for admission of members, according to which the concerned person communicates with the pastor who tests his knowledge of Christianity, talks with him, and examines his religious witness. If the pastor finds nothing hindering admission, he commends the candidate to the congregation and requests any in the congregation who may have legitimate grounds for objecting to the admission, to inform the pastor of it before the next service of worship. There being no objection, the applicant is received during divine service or at a parish meeting during which the pastor addresses him and bespeaks God’s blessing on him. If objection is made and found legitimate, the matter is put before a congregational meeting for decision. When the congregation is first organized, the pastor does not as a rule have time for this sort of procedure. He may have only one or two days in which, if possible, to hold a congregational meeting, order the congregation, preach, catechize the children, hear confession, baptize, administer the Lord’s Supper, conduct burials, etc., and perhaps consecrate the cemetery. It may be as much as a quarter or half a year before he can come again. Sometimes he simply has to do things in short order. He takes down the names of those wishing to join the congregation, examines their testimonials, addresses a few words to the gathering about what is required of an upright member of a Christian congregation, inquires if any of the applicants is such that his life or conduct does not fit him for membership in a Christian congregation, and receives all against whom no objection or complaint is raised. He then reviews the structure of the congregation and, with the consent of all and with no changes being proposed by those who will belong to the congregation, the congregation is founded. But what a congregation! You must understand that the state of affairs is sometimes terrible. Indeed, the longer this crowd of our countrymen has been without the public ministry, the more evident it is that the pastor has come, unfortunately, not to a people spiritually languishing but to a people almost dead. There is great dullness and ignorance among the mature and even more among the young. Many of them walk in the vain and sensual ways of the world. Many of the grown folk are caught up in a sumptuary drunkenness or in an avaricious concern for their substance that shows itself in all kinds of sharp dealing in business and conduct, in usury, in sinful speculation, and in wheeling and dealing

which, rooted as it is in unbelief, extinguishes charity and hinders its exercise. And this the pastor has to deal with from 50 to 100 miles away in only a few visits a year. Congregations like this cannot simply be indoctrinated, chastised, admonished—in a word, built up—but must rather be instructed and trained up to take care of themselves and to undertake the responsibilities of the church, the purely spiritual as well as the more practical. They must be led to selfgovernment concert with their pastors to exercise the authority of the church, the “Office of the Keys” given by God to the congregations to keep and freely to exercise. It is true, is it not, that this is a herculean task? It is a task so gigantic and important that had he not a faith strengthened by the rich promises of the Lord who in his Word has promised to strengthen the faint and who perfects his power in weakness, the servant of the Lord, sensing his unworthiness, could be tempted to despair and give up the work. You will perhaps say: Is it comprehensible, is it at all possible that congregations like this can possess and exercise the authority of the church and ecclesiastical government? Is not the reason a synod is formed to exercise authority in the leadership and governance of the congregations? Answer: Because of the way we have initially to organize congregations due to the shortage of pastors, it is certainly true that many are received as members whom it would be desirable to exclude. These people do make congregational self-government difficult, so much so that before the congregations mature they are exposed to internal dissensions and quarreling easily leading to division. And sometimes a close sifting is, in fact, necessary to separate those that are plainly of different spirits. If congregations could come into existence along the lines I sketched earlier, everything would be easier and in the future many dangerous battles could be avoided. But, as we see it, even under conditions as they are, there can be no talk of anything other than placing the real governance of the church in the hands of the congregation; this excludes talk of a transfer of any essential authority to the synod. If, especially in the beginning, the existence of the congregation is precarious, the cause is not to be found in the polity but in the congregation itself and in its spiritual condition. It would not improve the situation and dangers would not be avoided but only temporarily evaded were ecclesiastical authority and the governance of the congregations—transferred to the synod. Not only would we depart from the simple exposition of God’s Word which entrusts the office of the keys to the individual congregations, not only

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

would we multiply difficulties in church order across the board, but were we to do this we would thereby set up an ecclesiastical authority and place a power in its hands which would undoubtedly—as ancient and modern church history teaches us—come to play pope among us as surely as does the one who sits in Rome. At the same time, presuming that they would allow the power to be taken from them, the congregations would be fettered and deprived, I daresay, of one of the chief and most powerful incentives toward awakening and developing the life of the church as well as of an interest in ecclesiastical responsibilities and an enthusiasm for working toward the good of the church and the extension of God’s kingdom as a whole. 402. QUESTION OF PULPIT AND ALTAR FELLOWSHIP—THE GALESBURG RULE (1875) One of the key issues dividing Lutherans in the nineteenth century was the question of fellowship, and who was allowed to commune and preach in Lutheran congregations. The General Council here is trying to strike a balance between contending positions. From: Richard C. Wolf, ed., Documents of Luther Lutheran an Unity in America merica. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 171–78. At the Akron convention the discussion centered on the subjects of the exchange of pulpits and mixed communion, brought before the Council by the Synod of Iowa, in a paper, in which that Synod stated— “We cannot as yet rest satisfied with the declaration of the General Council given at the Convention held at Lancaster, Ohio, concerning the questions of communion and pulpit fellowship from the fact that the thing desired is not the mere pastoral advice how to act in certain difficult cases, but the establishment of the confessional principle. We have indeed perceived with pleasure that in the verbal declarations of the Reverend President of the General Council this confessional principle was clearly and unequivocally expressed. But as this declaration was only given verbally, and not incorporated in the official declaration of the General Council, there is still lacking for us the sure guarantee that this declaration can really be considered as that of the General Council. We therefore instruct our delegate to the General Council to urge that this confessional principle, hitherto only expressed verbally, be also made an official expression of the General Council.” At the request of the Council the delegate of the

263

Synod of Iowa presented the views of the Synod he represented, after which President Krauth was requested to reduce to writing the verbal statements made by him as the sense of the declarations delivered at Lancaster, Ohio, in 1870, and present the paper to the convention. The President accordingly submitted the following statement: I. The Rule is: Lutheran pulpits are for Lutheran ministers only. Lutheran altars are for Lutheran communicants only. II. The Exceptions to the rule belong to the sphere of privilege, not of right. III. The Determination of the exceptions is to be made in consonance with these principles, by the conscientious judgment of pastors, as the cases arise. The statement made by the President was accepted by the Council as the sense of the declarations previously made, and was ordered to be “transmitted to the Iowa Synod as the answer returned to the question asked by them through their delegate.” But this simple, clear, explicit declaration by no means settled the matter, though it had been fully discussed and carefully considered, and had been accepted by the Council as satisfactory. True, no mention was made in reference to it at a few subsequent conventions; but this silence was no sign that all were fully satisfied with the statement made by the President. In 1875, at the Galesburg convention, the Rev. Dr. J. Ruperti, of the New York Ministerium, again brought the subject before the Council for discussion, in some propositions on the subjects of Pulpit and Altar Fellowship, and the Relation of Synods and Congregations. The consideration of the propositions on “Pulpit and Altar Fellowship” occupied several sessions of the Council. After a protracted discussion, the following was adopted as the action of the Council: “That the General Council expresses its sincere gratification at the progress of a true Lutheran practice in different Synods, since its action on communion and exchange of pulpits with those not of our Church, as well as the clear testimony in reference to these subjects, officially expressed by the Augustana Synod, at its convention in 1875; nevertheless we hereby renewedly call the attention of our pastors and churches to the principles involved in that testimony, in the earnest hope that our practice may be conformed to our united and deliberate testimony on this subject, viz.: the rule, which accords with the Word of God and with the confessions of our Church, is: ‘Lutheran pulpits for Lutheran ministers only—Lutheran altars for Lutheran communicants only.’ ”

264

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

403. MISSOURI’S THIRTEEN THESES ON PREDESTINATION (1881) C.F.W. Walther of the Missouri Synod was one of the main protagonists of this controversy, which arose when others accused him of a Calvinist position on this doctrine. The Missouri Synod forcefully defended itself on this issue. From: Richard C. Wolf, ed., Documents of Luther Lutheran an Unity in America merica. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 199–203. Thesis I. We believe, teach, and confess, that God loved the whole world from eternity, created all men unto salvation, no one unto damnation, and wills the salvation of all men; and we, therefore, reject and condemn the contrary Calvinistic doctrine with all our heart. Thesis II. We believe, teach, and confess, that the Son of God came into the world for all men, took away and atoned for the sins of all men, and perfectly redeemed all men, no one excepted; and we, therefore, reject and condemn the contrary Calvinistic doctrine with all our heart. Thesis III. We believe, . . . that God calls all men through the means of grace earnestly, that is, with the intention that through them they should come to repentance and to faith, be preserved also in faith unto the end and, thus, finally be saved, to which end God offers to them, through the means of grace, the salvation purchased by Christ’s satisfaction, and the power to apprehend it in faith; and we, therefore, reject and condemn the contrary Calvinistic doctrine. . . . Thesis IV. We believe, . . . that no man is lost because it was not God’s will to save him, because God had passed by him with his grace, and had not also offered to him the grace of constancy, and it was not his will to give this grace to him; but that all men who are lost, are lost by their own fault, namely, on account of their unbelief and because they pertinaciously resist

the word and grace unto the end, of which contempt of the word the cause is not God’s predestination, but man’s perverse will, which rejects or perverts the means and instrument of the Holy Ghost which God offers to him through the call, and resists the Holy Ghost who wants to be efficacious and work through the Word. Thesis VI. We believe, . . . that the divine decree of election is unchangeable and that, therefore, no elect can become a reprobate and be lost, but that every elect one is surely saved; Thesis VII. We believe, . . . that it is foolish and dangerous for the soul, that it leads either to carnal security or to despair, if one will become, or be, sure of his gracious election or his future eternal salvation by means of searching the eternal divine, secret decree, and we reject and condemn the contrary doctrine as a pernicious, enthusiastic error with all our heart. Thesis IX. We believe, . . . 1st, that the election of grace does not consist in a mere divine foreknowing of which men are saved; 2nd, that election of grace is also not the mere purpose of God to redeem and save men, so as to be a universal one and to pertain to all men in common; 3rd, that election of grace does not concern those believing for a time only (Luke 8, 13.); 4th, that election of grace is not a mere decree of God to save all those who would believe unto the end. We, therefore, reject and condemn the contrary erroneous doctrines of the Rationalists, Huberians, and Arminians. . . . Thesis X. We believe, . . . that the cause which moved God to elect the elect, is only his grace and the merit of Jesus Christ, and not anything good foreseen by God in the elect, not even faith foreseen by God in them. ..... Thesis XI. We believe, . . . that election of grace is not the

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

mere divine foresight or foreknowledge of the salvation of the elect, but even a cause of their salvation and of all that which pertains to it,

265

We believe, . . . that “God has yet kept secret, and concealed, and reserved to his wisdom and knowledge alone, much of this mystery” of election, which no man can or shall search out, and we, therefore, reject it, if any undertake to inquire curiously into what is not revealed, and to reconcile with their reason what seems contradictory to our reason, whether this is done by Calvinistic, or by Pelagian-synergistic human doctrines.

thus election properly speaking, is not the cause of faith. 3. The mystery in election consists not in this, that we do not with certainty know from the Word of God according to what rule God proceeded in the selection of persons, but in this: (a) That no one except God knows who belongs to the elect; (b) That we creatures are unable to fathom and comprehend the wonderful guidance and dispensations of the grace of God towards individuals as well as whole nations. 4. The certainty of the individual that he belongs to the elect is, before his hour of death, conditional or regulated [geordnete].

404. OHIO’S FOUR THESES ON PREDESTINATION (1881)

405. KRAUTH: ON THE CONTROVERSY ON PREDESTINATION (1884)

On the other side of the Predestination (or Election) issue were the theologians of the Ohio and Iowa synods, who held that God does indeed predestine people to salvation, but only in view of the faith that God knows that they will have. From: Richard C. Wolf, ed., Documents of Luther Lutheran an Unity in America merica. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 203–4.

The doctrine of Predestination became a contentious one between the confessional Lutherans of the late nineteenth century. Krauth, on the outside of these battles, attempts to go back to the Lutheran confessions of the sixteenth century to understand the issues involved. From: Charles Porterfield Krauth, “The Controversy on Predestination,” Luther Lutheran an Church Review Review, 3, 1884, 68–71. The time is well spent in any discussion which is devoted to clearly settling what is the question? If the disputants in the Synodical Conference agree upon a statement, made in simple good faith, as to what are the points on which they are one and what are the points on which they differ—we may hope for final peace. Till they can do this the more they discuss the doctrine of election the more they will muddle the mind of the Church, and the further they will be from a decision. The question, Is our faith a cause of God’s election or an effect of it? must be carefully defined before men can wisely take, sides upon it. Considered as a question of the relation between man and God the answer would be made in one way. Considered as a question as covering the case between one man and another the answer would be reversed. What is the cause of my faith? The generic action of God’s election or choice. He chose to provide redemption for lost man. He chose that a divinehuman Savior should consummate it. He chose that the Spirit should apply it. He chose the Word and sacraments as organic instruments of it, and these links of choices form the generic chain of election.

Thesis XII.

Our Confession Concerning Election 1. If by election we understand, as is done in the Formula of Concord, the entire “purpose, counsel, will, and ordination of God pertaining to our redemption, vocation, justification, and salvation,” we believe, teach, and confess that election is the cause of our salvation and of everything that in any way pertains to it, therefore, also of our redemption and vocation, of our faith and perseverance in faith. Thus understood, election precedes faith as the cause precedes its effect. 2. But if by election, as the dogmaticians generally do, we understand merely this, that from eternity God elected and infallibly ordained to salvation certain individuals in preference to others, and this according to the universal way of salvation, we believe, teach, and confess that election took place in view of Christ’s merit apprehended by faith, or, more briefly stated but with the same sense, in view of faith. According to this understanding faith precedes election in the mind of God, as the rule, according to which one selects, precedes the election itself, and

266

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

This election is the cause of faith. Without it there would be no object of faith, no vocation to it, no overcoming by grace, of natural inability. From this point of view, “Predestination, or the eternal election of God pertains only to the good and beloved children of God and is the cause of their salvation.” This is beyond dispute, for the generic election “procures their salvation, and fixes the order of those things which pertain to it.” It is very clear too why “this predestination of God” is in such sense the foundation of our salvation “that nothing but the triumph of the gates of hell could overthrow it.” For if “this predestination” is overthrown we have no elected salvation, no elected Savior, no elected work of the Spirit, no elected means of grace—all are gone. And the bare possibility of faith goes with them. And from this point of view is manifest why it is so great and obvious an error “that not alone God’s pity and the most sacred merit of Christ, is the cause of the election of God, but that there is also something in us which is a cause of the divine election, for the sake of which cause God has chosen us to eternal life.” Our faith is the outcome and practical finality of this election–an effect in which the cause comes to its consummation. ... Now comes the other question, no longer as between man and God, but as between man and man. Election as generic contemplates all men alike—its redemption is universal, its intention to add a number of points which were to show what language on the disputed question was Calvinistic and what was not. . . Though it is only a fragment, still we think the readers of the review, and especially the Alumni of our seminary, are entitled to this paper, which sets forth the principles underlying the whole controversy in such forcible, clear, and dispassionate language. It is the voice of one who through his whole life aimed to be a faithful servant of the Lutheran Church, but never of a party. A Savior, the Savior of all, its Spirit the gift purchased for all, its means are objective forces, which put all men to whom they come on a common plane of responsibility and above the simple condition of natural helplessness. Why do men in completely parallel relations to this election move in opposite directions? The one believes, the other disbelieves. Is the election of God in any sense the cause of the difference? The answer of the Calvinist is: Yes. The answer of the Lutheran is: No. The election of God is indeed the cause of the faith of the one, but it is neither positively nor negatively, neither by act nor by failure to act, the cause of the unbelief of the other. Hence it is not the cause of the difference. . .

There is a noticeable difference between our Lutheran divines in the sixteenth century and those of later date, but we do not believe there is a conflict. In the sixteenth century the struggle was for the true doctrine of election. As the warfare with Calvinism grew hotter there was a fierce conflict with the error of reprobation. Luther and our earlier divines over against the Pelagianism of Rome, made most prominent election as it is related to the grace of God—and in this relation it is the cause of faith—the faith is conditioned by the election of God as its necessary pre-supposition. The later divines over against the absolutism of Calvinism brought into prominence election as it is related to the responsibility of man. In this relation, election is not the cause of the difference in result, for while faith is the result of it in the believer, want of faith is not the result of it in the unbeliever. 406. LUTHERAN WORSHIP: THE COMMON SERVICE OF 1888 A major element leading to the reunification of the divided churches of the colonial, Muhlenberg tradition, was the development of a common liturgy and hymnal for the three of them. This liturgy and accompanying hymnal showed a return to a more formal worship from the sixteenth century. From: S.E. Ochsenford, ed., Documentary History of the Gener General al Council of the Ev Evang angelical elical Luther Lutheran an Church in North America. (Philadelphia: General Council Publishing House, 1912), 443–47. The inception of the Common Service dates from the Twelfth convention of the General Council, held at Zanesville, Ohio, in 1879. At that convention the committee on correspondence with the General Synod of the South made the following recommendation, which was adopted: “That the inquiry of the General Synod South in regard to our co-operation with them in the preparation of a Service Book, be referred to the Church Book Committee, with authority to take such steps in the matter as may seem best to them.” The committee on Church Books, stating that the communication from the General Synod South, “inviting the General Council to cooperate with it in the preparation of an Order of Public Worship, suited for the use of all Lutheran Congregations,” referred to the committee for consideration, made the following recommendations, which were adopted:—“That the General Council consents to cooperate in the preparation of an Order of Service for the use of Evangelical Lutheran Con-

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

gregations, provided, that the rule which shall decide all questions arising in its preparation shall be: The common consent of the pure Lutheran Liturgies of the sixteenth century, and where there is not an entire agreement among them, the consent of the largest number of those of the greatest weight:— “That the committee on Church Books be authorized to act for the Council. “That the committee is authorized to submit for the consideration of the Council any changes in the Church Book, now set forth for use, which may be deemed necessary to make them conform more perfectly to the above rule. “That in regard to the inquiry as to co-operation in the preparation of a Service Book, the visitor appointed by us, be requested to lay the resolution adopted before the General Synod of North America.” At the Greensburg convention, 1880, the Rev. Dr. B. M. Schmucker reported: “The action of the committee was communicated to the General Synod of North America and favorably received by that body. Its committee was instructed to co–operate with the committee on the Church Book to the end proposed. No further communication has as yet been received.” 407. THE AUGUSTANA SYNOD AND THE CONFLICT ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT (1872–1878) Statement of the Augustana Synod The Swedish Lutherans were divided in the 1870s by a controversy over the doctrine of the atonement, sparked by the teachings of revival leader P.P. Waldenström. The controversy spread to the Swedish American churches, resulting in the defection of some to the Covenant and Free Churches. From: G. Everett Arden, Aug ugustana ustana Heritag Heritage: e: The History of the Aug ugustana ustana Luther Lutheran an Church. (Rock Island IL: Augustana Book Concern, 1963), 176–77, 184–85. a. Sin separated man from God and caused a change both in man’s attitude to God and in God’s attitude to man. Sin is a rebellion against God, it causes an infinite guilt and must be punished. b. God is the Holy Judge who cannot, because of his holiness, leave sin unpunished. c. As true man and true God, Christ brought an eternal reconciliation between man and God. By his perfect obedience to God’s will and His innocent suf-

267

fering and death, he paid man’s debt, and achieved the righteousness which is sufficient for God. As a sign that Christ’s suffering and death were a sufficient satisfaction, God raised him from the dead. d. Through faith in Christ man shares the fruits of Christ’s atoning work. Man is reconciled to God, no matter whether he believes or not, but he does not have any benefit of the Atonement as long as he does not repent and believe the Gospel. This interpretation of the Atonement is in conformity with the Third Article of the Augsburg Confession which says of Christ: “. . . true God and true man, who was born of the Virgin Mary, truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried, that he might reconcile the Father to us and be a sacrifice not only for original guilt but also for all actual sins of man.” Princell and the Augustana Synod J. G. Princell was one of the followers of Waldenström, and in the midst of this increasingly bitter controversy was excommunicated from the Augustana Synod. H. H. Pastor J. G. Princell New York City Dear Brother: At our last synodical convention I was instructed to write to you, and on account of your absence from the meeting, your neglect to ask for an excuse from said meeting and your failure to send in your annual report regarding your work, to call your attention to Chap. 1, Article 8 of the synodical constitution and bring you a fraternal reminder that you are expected to obey these regulations as long as they are in effect. Furthermore, on the basis of factual information I have received, I must kindly request you to give an explanation regarding our very confessions. It seems that you are not in agreement with the position of the Synod on the doctrine of the atonement, nor on the question of relationships with other denominations. The viewpoint of the Synod in both of these matters has been explicitly expressed and, since an unequivocal assent to this position is a condition for synodical membership, any deviation from said position must be considered as a breach of trust. I hope that you will kindly give me your explanation of the foregoing at your very earliest opportunity. Fraternally, E. Norelius President of the Augustana Synod Since Pastor Princell by the spoken and written word has publicly denied the biblical and Lutheran doctrines concerning atonement and justification,

268

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

but has requested time for reconsideration of his viewpoint, therefore, resolved, that Pastor J. G. Princell be suspended from the holy office of the ministry until he publicly acknowledges his errors. 408. THE LUTHERAN FREE CHURCH: STATEMENT ON CONGREGATIONAL AUTONOMY (1897) The nature of the church, especially the independence of the local congregation, was one of the key issues facing the Norwegian–American Lutherans. Supporters of the autonomy of the congregations withdrew from existing denominations to form the Lutheran Free Church. From: Lars Lillehei, Augsburg Seminary and the Luther Lutheran an Free Church (Minneapolis: n.p., 1928), 158–61. Guiding Principles and Rules for the Lutheran Free Church 1. The Congregation is, according to the Word of God, the right form of the Kingdom of God on earth. 2. The congregation consists of believers who, by using the means of grace and the spiritual gifts as directed in the Word of God, seek their own and their fellowmen’s salvation and eternal blessing. 3. The congregation needs, according to the New Testament, an external organization with register of its members, election of officers, stated times and places for its meetings, etc. 4. As not all members belonging to the external organization of the congregation always are believers, and as such hypocrites often falsely seek consolation in the external relation with the congregation, it is the sacred task of the congregation to purify itself by a quickening preaching of the Word of God, by earnest exhortation and admonition, and by exclusion of manifest and perverse sinners. 5. The congregation governs its own affairs under the authority of the Word of God and the Spirit, and acknowledges no other ecclesiastical authority or government as a higher tribunal. 6. The free congregation esteems and cherishes all the spiritual gifts which the Lord gives it for its spiritual upbuilding, and endeavors to quicken the gifts and further the use of them. 7. The free congregation gladly accepts the mutual help which congregations can give one another in the labor of promoting the Kingdom of God.

8. Such mutual help consists partly therein, that the spiritual forces of one congregation render aid to those of another by free •conferences, mutual visits, laymen’s activities, etc.; and partly therein that the congregations, voluntarily and at the prompting of the Spirit of God, co-operate in solving such problems as are beyond the ability of the individual congregation. 9. Among such objects can be specifically mentioned: the Theological Seminary, the distribution of Bibles and of other books and papers, Inner Missions, Foreign Missions, Missions among the Jews, Deaconess Institutes, Orphanages and other works of charity. 10. Free congregations have no right to demand that other congregations shall subject themselves to their opinion, will, judgment or decision; for which reason every dominion of a majority of congregations over a minority is to be rejected. 11. The joint-agencies which are found desirable for the cooperation of congregations—such as larger or smaller meetings, committees, officers, etc.;—may not, in a Lutheran free church, impose on the individual congregation any duty, obligation, restriction, or burden, but has the right only to present motions and requests of congregations and individuals. 12. Every free congregation, like every individual believer, is moved by the Spirit of God and has the right of his love, to do good and to work for the salvation of souls and the awakening of spiritual life as far as its ability and strength reaches. In such a free, spiritual activity, the congregation is not circumscribed by parochial limits or synodical boundaries. 409. KOREN: THE INSPIRATION OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES (1908) Ulrik Vilhelm Koren (1826–1910) was one of the pioneer leaders of the Norwegian Synod. Toward the end of his life he addressed that body, strongly urging a strict understanding of the inspiration of Scripture, foreshadowing a fight over the issue that would occupy American Lutherans in later decades. (For more on this issue, see chapter 3.) From: Ulrik Vilhelm Koren, The Inspir Inspiration ation of the Hol olyy Scriptur Scriptures es, tran. John Linnevold. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1944).

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

Synodical Address at the General Convention of the Norwegian Synod, Chicago, 1908 There is no middle course between accepting the Scripture as being wholly inspired by the Holy Spirit and rejecting the Scripture as the Word of God. For if Scripture really is the Word of God, as it claims to be, and as Christians ever since apostolic times have believed it to be, it cannot be left to any man to decide which parts of Scripture are of God and which are not. The so-called “Christian consciousness” has often been appealed to by teachers since the time of Schleiermacher (1834), and according to it they have sought to determine what in Scripture is of God and what is not of God. But whence came the “Christian consciousness”? Either it came from the Holy Scriptures, which demand obedience in all things and which expressly warn us against going beyond “that which is written” (1 Cor. 4:6), or the so-called “Christian consciousness” must be derived from special, later revelation, telling us which parts of Scripture we need not believe. As far as we know, however, no one has claimed to have received such a later revelation from God; and if any one made such a claim, we should demand proof thereof: “the signs of an apostle . . . in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds” (2 Cor. 12:12). Until such proof is produced, we must and will believe the Scriptures as they are recorded, if we would be faithful Christians. Scripture itself distinguishes between revelation and inspiration. Whereas revelation is a direct communication from God to a human being concerning things which a man could not otherwise know, inspiration is a definite, powerful working of the Holy Spirit upon such persons as He has chosen to be His instruments either for speaking or writing. Whereas revelation is given of God through the “Word” which from eternity “was with God and is God,” inspiration is given by God the Holy Spirit. At the same time that we reject both of these onesided human conceptions as lacking foundation in the Word of God, we must according to the Scripture itself cling to the unshakable assurance the Scripture has given us of its unassailable authority, namely, that in all of its parts it gives us the whole truth. As proof of the inspiration of the Old Testament we have the Savior’s own words about the infallibility of the Scriptures (John 10:35 et al). In the inspiration of the New Testament we see the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise to the apostles, “The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all

269

things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26, cf. Acts 11:16, et al). “But when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come.” Here is the promise of both revelation and inspiration. What they have not known will be revealed to them, and the Spirit will guide them into all truth so they will not err in its presentation. They are chosen to be the Savior’s witnesses; therefore, they are to be endowed with power from on high, as Jesus said in Luke 24:48ff . . . No one who has read Luther with any degree of attention can doubt his position. To Luther, Scripture is unassailable, and in the faith in verbal inspiration he never wavered. “Scripture brooks not this separation between letter and spirit,” he said in his clash with Emser, and in that conviction he persisted. Concerning Melanchthon, it is enough to refer to his famous word in the Apology, Art. II, “Could these words by chance have escaped the Holy Spirit?” The belief of the Reformers was also held by their successors, with Chemnitz as their leader. Chemnitz’s co-worker in the Formula of Concord, Nic[olaus] Selnecker, took the same position. He writes . . . “As the Holy Scripture is the living word of the living God, so is also its entire content throughout not human or carnal, —but heavenly, divine, spiritual, and lies beyond and above the scope of human reason, full of spirit and full of life.” . . . The first apostasy within the Lutheran Church was due to Rationalism, and occurred after the middle of the eighteenth century; the last and the most serious defection was caused by so-called higher criticism a century later. When we read the New Testament we see that we need not be surprised at such doubting of scriptural authority. How often did not our Lord Jesus say, “The servant is not greater than his lord.” He adds, “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also” (John 15:20). Furthermore, how often has He not said, “Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me”? The Word of God in the Bible is analogous to the person of our Savior. Jesus Christ is at once human and divine, yet only one person. So also the Word of God has both a human and a divine element, yet is only one word. In the days of His humiliation Christ was challenged and mocked because He said He was the Son of God—an attitude which is reflected in our day as well, “Can this lowly person be the Son of God?” Similarly, the word of the Spirit in the

270

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Bible is opposed and ridiculed because of the simple form in which it appears, written by unlettered and unlearned men. “Can this simple word be the Word of God?” There is another similarity also between the treatment of our Lord Jesus and of the word of the Holy Spirit in the Bible. Concerning the witnesses summoned at the trial of Christ it is recorded, “Neither did their witness agree together.” Likewise, the “learned” so-called scientists of our day who attack the word of the Holy Spirit in the Bible do not “agree together.” With no other weapon than “it is written” Jesus strove against the power, of the devil and won the victory, and when that word enters the human heart, it has power to conquer all temptations, yea death itself. Therefore, the motto of our Synod is this one word: Gegraptai, “It is Written.” 410. RESOLUTION OF THE ELECTION CONTROVERSY: THE MADISON AGREEMENT (1912) The Election Controversy was particularly difficult among Norwegian Americans, resulting in divided congregations and synods. The pivotal step in resolving the controversy came with this agreement in 1912, which defined the range of acceptable positions on the issue. From: The Union Documents of the Ev Evang angelical elical Luther Lutheran an Church. (Minneapolis: The Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1948), 38–41. 1. The Union Committees of the Synod and the United Church, unanimously and without reservation, accept that doctrine of election which is set forth in Article XI of the Formula of Concord, the so-called “First Form,” and Pontoppidan’s Truth unto Godliness, question 548, the so-called “Second Form of Doctrine.” 2. Since both the conferring bodies acknowledge that Article XI of the Formula of Concord presents the pure and correct doctrine of the election of the children of God unto salvation as taught in the Word of God and the Confessions of the Lutheran Church, it is deemed unnecessary for church unity to set up new and more elaborate theses on this article of faith. 3. However, since it is well-known that in presenting the doctrine of election two forms of doctrine have been used, both of which have won acceptance and recognition within the orthodox Lutheran Church, some, in accordance with the Formula of

Concord, include under the doctrine of election the whole order of salvation of the elect from the call to the glorification (Formula of Concord, Part II, Art. XI: 13–24), and teach an election “unto salvation through the sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth,” while others, with Pontoppidan, in agreement with John Gerhard, Scriver and other recognized teachers of the Church, define election more specifically as the decree concerning the final glorification, with faith and perseverance wrought by the Holy Spirit as its necessary presupposition, and teach that “God has appointed all those to eternal life who He from eternity has foreseen would accept the offered grace, believe in Christ and remain constant in this faith unto the end”; and since neither of these two forms of doctrine, thus presented, contradicts any doctrine revealed in the Word of God, but does full justice to the order of salvation as presented in the Word of God and the confessions of the Church, we find that this should not be cause for schism within the Church or disturb that unity of the spirit in the bond of peace which God wills should prevail among us. 4. Since, however, in the controversy over this question among us, there have appeared words and expressions—justly or unjustly attributed to the respective parties—which seemed to the opposite party to be a denial or to lead to a denial of the Confession, we have agreed to reject all errors which seek to explain away the mystery of election (Formula of Concord, Part II, Art. XI: 38–64) either in a synergizing or a Calvinizing manner, in other words, every doctrine which either on the one hand would deprive God of his glory as only Savior or on the other hand would weaken man’s sense of responsibility in relation to the acceptance or rejection of grace. 411. AFRICAN-AMERICAN LUTHERANISM IN ALABAMA (1915) Lutheran work among the African–Americans in the South was sporadic, but at times effective. The work of African–American leader Rosa Young, who established Lutheran schools and congregations in Alabama, is remarkable for her effectiveness and influence. From: Rosa Young, Light in the Black Belt Belt, (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1950). Neenah, Alabama Oct. 27, 1915 Rev. C. F. Drewes, St. Louis, Missouri Dear Friend: I am writing you concerning a school I have orga-

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

nized. I began teaching here in 1912 with seven pupils in an old hall where the cattle went for shelter. Since then I have bought with money collected in the community five acres of land and erected a fourroom school house thereon, besides a chapel which we are working on now, bought 45 seats, five heaters, one school bell, one sewing machine, one piano, a nice collection of useful books, and 150 Bibles and New Testaments for our Bible Training Department. I am writing to see if your conference will take our school under its auspices. If you will take our school under your auspices, we will give you the land, the school building and all of its contents to start with. If you cannot take our school, I beg the privilege to appeal to you to give us a donation to help us finish our new chapel. No matter how little, any amount will be cheerfully and thankfully received. This school is located near the center of Wilcox County, twelve miles from the county seat of Wilcox County, fifty-four miles from Selma, Alabama, two miles from the L and N Railroad, amid nearly 1,500 colored people. The region is friendly; both white and colored are interested in this school. I hope you will see your way clear to help us. Yours humbly, Rosa J. Young

271

well organized. They further resolved to retain the writer as a teacher at a salary of $20.00 a month. Thus was my prayer answered. The coming of the Lutheran Church into Alabama was providential. God only used me and the Rosebud school as instruments to place this Church in the Black Belt and to lead us poor sinners out of spiritual darkness into light. To begin with, I knew nothing about the Lutheran Church and the great mission work it was carrying on among the colored people, and I had only a faint knowledge of Luther and the Reformation; but Jesus, who knows all things, knew all about the Lutheran mission. Jesus is well pleased with the work of the Lutheran Church and willed to take my little Rosebud school and make out of it a Lutheran school, a Christian school, a Bible school for the saving of souls. God, who is able to do all things, could have used any of the other sources to whom I had so earnestly appealed for help to sustain the school, but he caused every other source to which I applied to refuse me help until I had applied to the right source. It was God who moved the hearts of Director Drewes and the sainted Pastor Bakke to take the steps they did. Yes, it was the hand of God. It was a direct answer to my prayer. Many a day I walked from my home to school, praying every step, asking God to take my school, not to let it die, to make out of it a great religious center. Mrs. J. Lee Bonner also prayed for me and my school. God answered these prayers by sending the Lutheran Church down into the Black Belt to lead us out of darkness into light. “What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.” Let us always wait for the blessed hereafter. 412. AMERICAN LUTHERANS AND THE CHALLENGES OF WORLD WAR I (1918)

Fig. 9.2. Seventh and eighth grade class, Trinity Lutheran parochial school, Montgomery, Alambama, 1947

I mailed my letters and went along praying day and night, asking the Lord to move some one’s heart to heed our Macedonian cry, “Come over and help us.” I believe in prayer; prayer will bring you things that nothing else can. . . That day, January 3, 1916, was a memorable day for our Alabama missions. The Holy Spirit worked wonderfully among the members of the Mission Board. The Board resolved to enter the door of opportunity at once. They instructed Rev. Bakke to return to Alabama and stay there until the work was

Lutherans faced a strong wave of anti-foreign xenophobia during the First World War. Here Editor Theodore Graebner, of the Missouri Synod’s Lutheran Witness, comments on the issues and the Lutheran response to such attacks. From: Theodore Graebner, “Unjustified Aspersions (editorial),” Luther Lutheran an Witness 37, May 28, 1918, 168–69. Five months ago the Lutheran Witness cautioned against a spirit which says, in effect: No one has a right to doubt our loyalty; a dignified silence is the proper answer to all slanders of our place. To charge pastors who take part in loyalty demonstrations and patriotic programs with weak-kneed kow-towing to

272

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

public sentiment is, to say nothing more, a most unjust aspersion, and almost as dangerous to the welfare of our Church as the optimism of those who say: “This thing is blowing over,” or: “The constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion are sufficient to protect our schools and churches.”

413. KNUBEL-JACOBS: THE ESSENTIALS OF THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH (1919) As American Lutherans looked toward cooperation and merger after the First World War, they debated the parameters for such movements toward unity. Frederick Knubel and Charles M. Jacobs of the ULCA offered an expansive proposition for unity in Lutheran essentials. From: Richard C. Wolf, ed., Documents of Luther Lutheran an Unity in America merica. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 301–12. A. Concerning the Catholic Spirit in the Church

Fig. 9.3. Lutherans ministering at Word War I camp, NLCSSW; Rev. Julius Deckman and John W. Link at Camp Sevier, Greenville, South Carolina

The Lutheran Witness believes that our honored President Pfotenhauer was completely justified in saying in Der Lutheraner: “In several localities our pastors have been requested to make patriotic speeches, and a number of them have complied. Inasmuch as this has been done for the purpose of protecting our churches against unjust insinuations and accusations made during these times of excitement, and for the purpose of promulgating our doctrine concerning the Government, we deem this action distinctly praiseworthy.” Enlightened public opinion will be found in harmony with this statement. At Enid, Okla., one of our men addressed a large patriotic gathering some weeks ago. The St. Louis Republic commented as follows: No doubt, there are many loyal Americans of German origin who know their loyalty to be unquestionable, and feel that a response on their part to a suggestion that they take an open stand would imply an admission that they had been justly doubted. But even the law of the land does not take loyalty for granted. Every oath of office carries a promise to support the Constitution. Where a class of citizens has been misrepresented by a limited, but noisy minority of their number, it is an entirely dignified thing on their part to state their position, and discredit those who have brought question upon them.

I. In its confessions the Evangelical Lutheran Church declares its belief that there is “one holy Church,” which, “will continue forever.” It defines this Church as the “congregation of saints and true believers.” . . . II. This one holy Church performs its earthly functions and makes its presence known among men through organized groups of men and women who profess to be believers in Jesus Christ. In these groups the Word of God is preached and the Sacraments are administered. To such groups, also, the name of “Church” is given in the New Testament and in the Confessions of our Church. III. The existence of this one holy Church is not capable of demonstration. It is a “mystery” that can be apprehended only by faith. To the eyes of men it appears we believe that there is not one Church, but only many Churches; nevertheless we believe that there is but one Church of Jesus Christ. This conviction rests partly upon our belief in the continued life of Christ in all His Christians, binding them together in one spiritual Body of which He is the Head and building them up into one spiritual Temple, of which He is the Corner-stone. Partly it rests upon our belief in the efficacy of the Word of God and the Sacraments as means of grace. For we believe that wherever the Word of God is preached and the Sacraments are administered, the Holy Spirit creates faith in Christ. In every such place, therefore, there are believers in Jesus Christ, and wherever there are believers, there the Church is present. For this reason we call the Word and the Sacraments “marks” or “signs” of the one holy Church. VI. No single group of Christians has ever possessed all the attributes of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church in perfection or completeness;

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

therefore it is not possible for any such group to claim that it is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. . . . On the other hand, it is inevitable that one such group shall display these attributes of the one holy Church in fuller measure and in truer, or completer, form than another, or than all others. For this reason it is necessary that, when occasion arises, any such group of Christians shall define its relationship to other groups which also bear the name of Church and claim to be expressions of the one holy Church, as well as to other groups and organizations which do not make that claim. . . . VII. Such definition must always be framed in the spirit of catholicity. Moved by that spirit, a Church will 1. Seek to secure agreement with others in matters of doctrine, by declaring unequivocally what it believes concerning Christ and His Gospel, and by endeavoring to show that it has placed the true interpretation upon that Gospel . . . 2. Approach others without hostility, jealousy, suspicion, or pride, in the sincere and humble desire to render Christian service and with a genuine willingness to receive benefits in return. 3. Grant cordial recognition to all agreements which are discovered between its own interpretation of the Gospel and that which others hold. 4. Seek to co-operate with others in works of serving love, according to the teaching of Jesus in Mark 9:39 and 40. Nevertheless the spirit of catholicity does not require a Church to surrender its interpretation of the Gospel unless convinced of error, and the desire for co–operation, even in works of love, dare not lead a Church to a denial of conviction or to the suppression of testimony to what it holds to be the truth. . . . In the judgement of the members of this Conference a time has come when the Evangelical Lutheran Church Bodies in America should unite in defining their relations and attitude toward one another and to other Churches, and also to certain organizations, tendencies, and movements which have assumed, or are assuming large importance in the religious and secular life of America.

273

B. Concerning the Relation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church Bodies to One Another The Evangelical Lutheran Church Bodies represented in this Conference recognize it as a fact that each of them subscribes those Confessions of Faith which have always been, and still are, regarded as true standards of Evangelical Lutheran doctrine. No one of these Bodies has any reason to believe that any other subscribes to these Confessions insincerely, or teaches any other doctrine than that set forth therein. We therefore declare that each of these Bodies is in unity of the Lutheran Faith with every other, and that these Bodies together do form one Church, according to the principle set forth in the Augsburg Confession, Art. VII,—“To the unity of the Church it is enough to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacrament.” C. Concerning the Organic Union of Protestant Churches In view of the widespread discussion concerning the organic union of the Protestant Churches in America, we declare: I. That we hold the union of Christians in a single organization to be of minor importance, as compared with the agreement of Christians in the proclamation of a common Gospel. We believe that the one holy catholic and apostolic Church exists through and under the most divergent forms of external organization. . . . D. Concerning Co-operative Movements In view of the many proposals for co-operation of the Protestant Churches in various departments of practical activity, and in view of the number of organizations already formed, and in process of formation, for the carrying on of such co–operative work, we declare I. That it is our earnest desire to co-operate with other Church Bodies in all such movements as we can consider proper fields for the activity of the Church and in all such works as can be regarded as works of serving love, through which the faith of Christians finds expression; provided, however, that such cooperation do not involve a denial of conviction, or the suppression of testimony to what we hold to be the truth. . . . II. That we cannot, however, give general approval to any and all co-operative movements and organizations of the Churches, since we hold that

274

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

co-operation is not an end of action, but merely a means to an end. Our attitude toward such organizations and movements must always be determined by a consideration of the purposes which each seeks to accomplish, of the principles on which each rests, and of the effect which our participation will produce upon the independent position of our Church as a witness to the truth of the Gospel as we confess it....... 414. THE MINNEAPOLIS THESES (1925) Building on the previous Chicago Theses (1919), this declaration defined a move limited and conservative approach to Lutheran unity, including the declaration that the Bible was “inerrant and infallible.” Written by Norwegian leader Hans G. Stub, it was adopted by several of the centrist American Lutheran denominations. From: The Union Documents of the Ev Evang angelical elical Luther Lutheran an Church. (Minneapolis: The Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1948), 81–83. The synods signatory to these Articles of Agreement accept without exception all the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments as a whole, and in all their parts, as the divinely inspired, revealed, and inerrant Word of God, and submit to this as the only infallible authority in all matters of faith and life. 1. These synods also, without reservation, accept the symbolical books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, not insofar as, but because they are the presentation and explanation of the pure doctrine of the Word of God and a summary of the faith of the Lutheran Church, as this has found expression in response to the exigencies arising from time to time. (The Norwegian Lutheran Church of America ..... has officially accepted only the three Ecumenical Creeds, the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, and Luther’s Small Catechism. This position does not imply that the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America in any way rejects the remaining symbolical books of the Lutheran Church . . . but . . . it has not been deemed necessary to require formal subscription to the entire Book of Concord.) 2. Adherence to our confessions pertains only to their doctrinal content (i.e., the doctrines declared to be the divine truth and the rejection of the opposite doctrines), but to these without exception or limitation in all articles and parts, no matter whether a doctrine is specifically cited as a confession or incidentally introduced for the purpose of elucidating or proving some other doctrine. All that pertains to the

form of presentation (historical comments, questions purely exegetical, etc.) is not binding. These synods agree that true Christians are found in every denomination which has so much of divine truth revealed in Holy Scripture that children of God can be born in it; that according to the Word of God and our confessions, church fellowship, that is, mutual recognition, altar and pulpit fellowship, and eventually cooperation in the strictly essential work of the church, presupposes unanimity in the pure doctrine of the Gospel and of the confession of the same in word and deed. Where the establishment and maintenance of church fellowship ignores present doctrinal differences or declares them a matter of indifference, there is unionism, pretense of union which does not exist. They agree that the rule, “Lutheran pulpits for Lutheran pastors only, and Lutheran altars for Lutheran communicants only” is not only in full accord with, but necessarily implied in, the teachings of the divine Word and the confessions of the evangelical Lutheran Church. This rule, implying the rejection of all unionism and syncretism, must be observed as setting forth a principle elementary to sound and conservative Lutheranism. IV. Points of Doctrine After discussion of these theses the representatives came to the conclusion that we are in full agreement . . . pertaining to these questions. The Lodge Question 1. These synods agree that all organizations or societies, secret or open, as are either avowedly religious or practice the forms of religion without confessing as a matter of principle the Triune God or Jesus Christ as the Son of God, come into the flesh, and our Savior from sin, or teach instead of the Gospel, salvation by human works or morality, are anti-Christian and destructive of the best interests of the church and the individual soul, and that, therefore, the Church of Christ and its congregations can have no fellowship with them. 2. They agree that a Lutheran synod should not tolerate pastors who have affiliated themselves with any anti-Christian society. And they admonish their pastors and congregations to testify against the sin of lodgery and to put forth earnest efforts publicly and privately to enlighten and persuade persons who are members of anti-Christian societies, to sever their connection with such organizations.

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

415. A BRIEF STATEMENT ON THE DOCTRINAL POSITION OF THE MISSOURI SYNOD (1932) The Missouri Synod was involved in some of the doctrinal discussions with other American Lutheran denominations, but held to the necessity of complete doctrinal agreement before fellowship or cooperation. This document defines its basic doctrinal positions. From: Richard C. Wolf, ed., Documents of Luther Lutheran an Unity in America merica. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 381–92. 1. We teach that the Holy Scriptures differ from all other books in the world in that they are the Word of God . . . because the holy men of God who wrote the Scriptures wrote only that which the Holy Ghost communicated to them by inspiration. . . . We teach also that the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures is not a so–called “theological deduction,” but that it is taught by direct statements of the Scriptures. . . . Since the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God, it goes without saying that they contain no errors or contradictions, but that they are in all their parts and words the infallible truth, also in those parts which treat of historical, geographical, and other secular matters. . . . 2. We furthermore teach regarding the Holy Scriptures that they are given by God to the Christian Church for the foundation of faith. . . . Hence the Holy Scriptures are the sole source from which all doctrines proclaimed in the Christian Church must be taken and therefore, too, the sole rule and norm by which all teachers and doctrines must be examined and judged.—With the Confessions of our Church we teach also that the “rule of faith” according to which the Holy Scriptures are to be understood are the clear passages of the Scriptures themselves which set forth the individual doctrines. . . . The rule of faith is not the man–made so–called “totality of Scripture.”. . . Of God. 10. We teach that conversion consists in . . . a man, having learned . . . that he is a lost and condemned sinner, is brought to faith in the Gospel, which offers him forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation for the sake of Christ’s vicarious satisfaction. . . . 11. All men, since the Fall, are dead in sins . . . For this reason . . . faith in the Gospel, or conversion to God, is neither wholly or in the least part the work

275

of man, but the work of God’s grace and almighty power alone. . . . 12. . . . we reject every kind of synergism. . . . We reject also the doctrine that man is able to decide for conversion through “powers imparted by grace,” since this doctrine presupposes that before conversion man still possesses spiritual powers by which he can make the right use of such “powers imparted by grace.” 17. Holy Scripture sums up all its teachings regarding the love of God to the world of sinners, regarding the salvation wrought by Christ, and regarding faith in Christ as the only way to obtain salvation, in the article of justification. Scripture teaches that God has already declared the whole world to be righteous in Christ . . . that therefore not for the sake of their good works, but . . . by grace, for Christ’s sake, He justifies, . . . accounts as righteous, all those who believe in Christ . . . believe, accept, and rely on, the fact that for Christ’s sake their sins are forgiven. . . . 18. Through this doctrine alone Christ is given the honor due Him. . . . And through this doctrine alone can poor sinners have the abiding comfort that God is assuredly gracious to them. We reject as apostasy from the Christian religion all doctrines whereby man’s own works and merit are mingled into the article of justification before God. For the Christian religion is the faith that we have forgiveness of sins and salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. . . . 20. Before God only those works are good which are done for the glory of God and the good of man. ..... Such works, however, no man performs unless he first believes that God has forgiven him his sins and has given him eternal life by grace, for Christ’s sake, without any works of his own. . . . We reject . . . the assertion . . . that works must be placed in the fore, and “faith in dogmas”—meaning the Gospel of Christ Crucified for the sins of the world—must be relegated to the rear. Since good works never precede faith, but are always and in every instance the result of faith in the Gospel, it is evident that the only means by which we Christians can become rich in good works . . . is unceasingly to remember the grace of God. ..... Hence we reject . . . any attempt to produce good works by the compulsion of the Law or through carnal motives. 21. . . . we hold with Scripture that God offers and communicates to men the spiritual blessings purchased by Christ, namely, the forgiveness of sins and the treasures and gifts connected therewith, only through the external means of grace ordained by Him. These means of grace are the Word of the Gospel, in every form in which it is brought to man,

276

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

and the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and of the Lord’s Supper. The Word of the Gospel promises and applies the grace of God, works faith and thus regenerates man, and gives the Holy Ghost. . . . Baptism, too, is applied for the remission of sins and is therefore a washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. . . . Likewise the object of the Lord’s Supper . . . is none other than the communication and sealing of the forgiveness of sins. . . . 24. We believe that there is one holy Christian Church on earth, the Head of which is Christ and which is gathered, preserved, and governed by Christ through the Gospel. . . The Christian Church, in the proper sense of the word, is composed of believers only . . . which means that no person in whom the Holy Ghost has wrought faith in the Gospel ..... can be divested of his membership in the Christian Church; and . . . that no person in whose heart this faith does not dwell can be invested with such membership. . . . 25. Since it is by faith in the Gospel alone that men become members of the Christian Church, and since this faith cannot be seen by men, but is known to God alone . . . therefore the Christian Church on earth is invisible . . . and will remain invisible till Judgment Day. . . . 28. On Church-Fellowship.—Since God ordained that His Word only, without the admixture of human doctrine, be taught and believed in the Christian Church . . . all Christians are required by God to discriminate between orthodox and heterodox church-bodies, . . . and, in case they have strayed into heterodox church-bodies, to leave them. . . . We repudiate unionism, that is, church-fellowship with the adherents of false doctrine, as disobedience to God’s command, as causing divisions in the Church . . . and as involving the constant danger of losing the Word of God entirely. . . . 31. By the public ministry we mean the office by which the Word of God is preached and the Sacraments are administered by order and in the name of a Christian congregation . . . 32. Although the office of the ministry is a divine ordinance, it possesses no other power than the power of the Word of God . . . that is to say, it is the duty of Christians to yield unconditional obedience to the office of the ministry whenever, and as long as, the minister proclaims to them the Word of God. . . . If, however, the minister . . . were to go beyond the Word of God, it would be the duty of Christians not to obey, but to disobey him, so as to remain faithful to Christ . . . we reject the false doctrine ascribing to the office of the ministry the right to demand obedi-

ence and submission in matters which Christ has not commanded. 34. Although both Church and State are ordinances of God, yet they must not be commingled. Church and State have entirely different aims. By the Church, God would save men. . . . By the State, God would maintain external order among men. . . . Accordingly we condemn the policy of those who would have the power of the State employed “in the interest of the Church” and who thus turn the Church into a secular dominion; as also of those who, aiming to govern the State by the Word of God, seek to turn the State into a Church. 42. . . . we reject every type of Millennialism, or Chiliasm. . . . According to these clear passages of Scripture we reject the whole of Millennialism. . . . 416. AMERICAN LUTHERANS AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION (1933) Two letters here illustrate the human cost of the Great Depression on Lutherans and their churches. The first, from a Lutheran layman, explains his inability to contribute to the church. The second, from a pastor, shows the financial hardship of the ministry in this time. From: Letter from Arthur Quanbeck, “From the Mail Bag,,” Luther Lutheran an Messeng Messenger er, March 1, 1933, 11. Seven years ago I bought a farm of 240 acres. I made a small payment down and the first few years 1 was able to make enough so that I could pay my interest and taxes and a little on the principal; but the last two years my income has been so small that I have been unable to pay interest and taxes . . . We have enough to eat; but could easily use more clothing. My Sunday-suit and shoes were bought in 1929 and my overcoat in 1919 and my wife’s and children’s clothes have been mostly made-over things for many years . . . With wheat selling at 28 cents a bushel, butterfat at 13 cents a pound, eggs at 10 cents a dozen, turkeys at 16 cents a pound, and cattle and hogs at from 1 to 4 cents a pound you can easily see where a farmer cannot get very far in paying taxes, interest on six or seven thousand dollars, and operating expenses and then, in addition to this, poor crops. There are thousands of farmers in just as bad shape as I am and many much worse. I write this so that pastors and others who seem to think that there is nothing but willingness and right spirit lacking among our people may see that there are very good reasons why not so much is coming in in donations from our

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

farmers as might be expected. It is not just miserliness in regard to God’s work. It is plain helplessness and no one feels worse about it than the farmers themselves. From: “Letter, E.O. Valborg to G.A. Brandelle,” September 11, 1933, Brandelle Presidential papers, Augustana Special Collection, Archives of the ELCA, Elk Grove Village IL. Dear Dr. Brandelle: Grace and Peace! The undersigned, and. his family is living under very uncomfortable circumstances here—at Trade Lake -West Sweden Wis., and I have decided to write you for advice. I am not getting my salary, it seems to me, as I should get it. My two congregations are now in arrears on my salary to the amount of $1,315.00 in lieu of the fact that I have waived a percent of it equal to the percent of reduction of salaries for the professors at our colleges since 1930. This year, 1933, I offered to refund 25% of my salary to both of my congregations. Trade Lake refused to accept my offer. They want “35% or more” refunded. So I decided to rely upon their mercy to me and let them decide to pay me as salary for 1933 a sum equal to 55% of all the congregational income. So far they have paid me only $25.00 instead of original $80.00 per month. To me this kind of treatment of their pastor seems unkind and unchristian for kindness and loyal service. I did not come here on my own initiative, nor by strategy or cunningness. I came here on account of a letter of invitation to proof preach in 1928.After proof preaching I got an entirely unanimous call, without any solicitation whatever on my part, except that I offered to consider the call prayerfully if it were extended to me. When the call came, after due prayerful consideration, I accepted it in good faith, and have served, as it seems to me, in kindness and patience, loyally, faithfully, and, just as efficiently as in any of my previous fields. I have given my whole life to the Lord’s work since I was nineteen years old, in school and in active pastoral work. During all these years I have not managed to lay up anything to live on and am dependent entirely on my salary, myself, my wife, and three children in minor ages. Do you think my people can break the contract of my call in view of my fair and reasonable refund of it each year, on account of the depression, without my own personal consent? And what would you advise me to do about their getting so very far in arrears on my salary. Could you possibly get me a call to some other field so I could move away from here?

277

417. STATEMENT OF THE FORTY-FOUR (1945) A group of forty-four Missouri leaders issued this statement in 1945, in which they declared their wish for the Synod to be more open to cooperation and fellowship with other Lutherans, beyond the strict limits traditionally defined. From: Carl S. Meyer, ed., Moving Frontiers: Readings in the History of the Luther Lutheran an Church – Missouri Synod. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1964), 422–24. We, the undersigned, as individuals, members of Synod, conscious of our responsibilities and duties before the Lord of the Church, herewith subscribe to the following statement: We affirm our unswerving loyalty to the great evangelical heritage of historic Lutheranism. We believe in its message and mission for this crucial hour in the time of man. We therefore deplore any and every tendency which would limit the power of our heritage, reduce it to narrow legalism, and confine it by man-made traditions. We affirm our faith in the great Lutheran principle of the inerrancy, certainty, and all–sufficiency of Holy Writ. We therefore deplore a tendency in our Synod to substitute human judgments, synodical resolutions, or other sources of authority for the supreme authority of Scripture. We affirm our conviction that the Gospel must be given free course so that it may be preached in all its truth and power to all the nations of the earth. We therefore deplore all man-made walls and barriers and all ecclesiastical traditions which would hinder the free course of the Gospel in the world. We believe that the ultimate and basic motive for all our life and work must be love—love of God, love of the Word, love of the brethren, love of souls. We affirm our conviction that the law of love must also find application to our relationship with other Lutheran bodies. We therefore deplore a loveless attitude which is manifesting itself within Synod. This unscriptural attitude has been expressed in suspicions of brethren, in the impugning of motives, and in the condemnation of all who have expressed differing opinions concerning some of the problems confronting our Church today. We affirm our conviction that sound exegetical procedure is the basis for sound Lutheran theology. We therefore deplore the fact that Romans 16:17, 18 has been applied to all Christians who differ from

278

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

us in certain points of doctrine. It is our conviction, based on sound exegetical and hermeneutical principles that this text does not apply to the present situation in the Lutheran Church of America. We furthermore deplore the misuse of First Thessalonians 5:22 in the translation “avoid every appearance of evil.” This text should be used only in its true meaning, “avoid evil in every form.” We affirm the historic Lutheran position concerning the central importance of the una sancta and the local congregation. We believe that there should be a re-emphasis of the privileges and responsibilities of the local congregation also in the matter of determining questions of fellowship. We therefore deplore the new and improper emphasis on the synodical organization as basic in our consideration of the problems of the Church. We believe that no organizational loyalty can take the place of loyalty to Christ and His Church. We affirm our abiding faith in the historic Lutheran position concerning the centrality of the Atonement and the Gospel as the revelation of God’s redeeming love in Christ. We therefore deplore any tendency which reduces the warmth and power of the Gospel to a set of intellectual propositions which are to be grasped solely by the mind of man. We affirm our conviction that any two or more Christians may pray together to the Triune God in the name of Jesus Christ if the purpose for which they meet and pray is right according to the Word of God. This obviously includes meetings of groups called for the purpose of discussing doctrinal differences. We therefore deplore the tendency to decide the question of prayer fellowship on any other basis beyond the clear words of Scripture. We believe that the term “unionism” should be applied to acts in which a clear and unmistakable denial of Scriptural truth or approval of error is involved. We therefore deplore the tendency to apply this non-Biblical term to any and every contact between Christians of different denominations. We affirm the historic Lutheran position that no Christian has a right to take offense at anything which God has commanded in His Holy Word. The plea of offense must not be made a cover for the irresponsible expression of prejudices, traditions, customs, and usages. We affirm our conviction that in keeping with the historic Lutheran tradition and in harmony with the Synodical resolution adopted in 1938 regarding Church fellowship, such fellowship is possible without complete agreement in details of doctrine and

practice which have never been considered divisive in the Lutheran Church. 418. THE AMERICAN LUTHERAN CONFERENCE: TESTIMONY ON FAITH AND LIFE (1952) During the 1950s, five denominations comprising a cooperative group, the American Lutheran Conference, proposed this document as defining their common theological position, and their approach to Lutheran unity. Four of these groups merged together in 1960 to form the American Lutheran Church (1960–1988). From: Richard C. Wolf, ed., Documents of Luther Lutheran an Unity in America (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 498–511. The Lutheran church bodies making up the American Lutheran Conference have now walked and worked together for a period of more than twenty years. They have learned to know one another both as to doctrine and as to manner of life. They have been associated as brethren serving the Lord. Coming out of varying backgrounds as to national origin and as to distinctive trends in church life and practice, they have learned to cherish one another’s contributions to the fulness of the Church’s life in Christ. Through closer acquaintance and deepening fellowship they have found that the common roots of their faith, in the Holy Scriptures and in the Lutheran Confessions, have given them a common life in communion with the one Lord and Savior. Their loyalty to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, their Lutheran heritage, and the desperate need of the world seem to call for further exploration of the possibilities of closer fellowship, greater understanding, and closer organizational co-operation or union. They hold the basic prerequisite of all such attempts to be an adequate unity and witness with regard to the essential realities of the Christian faith. Their life and experience together these past two decades lead them to believe that such an essential unity exists among them. As an expression of their common Christian faith and a witness to their understanding of the historic Lutheran confessions and to the theological agreement which has been found to exist among them, they join in this united testimony to our time and situation:

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

The Word We believe that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God, given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit for the purpose of man’s salvation. Through the Scriptures the Holy Spirit informs and convinces us that His Word is true, that He will keep all His promises to us, and testifies in our hearts that our faith in Christ is not in vain. . . . We bear witness that the Bible is our only authentic and infallible source of God’s revelation to us and all men, and that it is the only inerrant and completely adequate source and norm of Christian doctrine and life. We hold that the Bible, as a whole and in all its parts, is the Word of God under all circumstances regardless of man’s attitude toward it. . . . The Bible is the Word of God, given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit through human personalities in the course of human history. . . . We acknowledge with humble gratitude the condescending love of God in speaking to men through the agency of human language. We reject all rationalizing processes which would explain away either the divine or the human factor in the Bible. The Holy Scriptures contain both Law and Gospel, but the primary content of the Holy Scriptures is the Gospel. The Law is brought into the service of the Gospel by working in man a realization of his sinfulness and of his need for redemption, by awakening in him the terrors of conscience since he stands under the wrath of God, and by revealing to him God’s holy will. The Gospel brings to the penitent sinner the assurance of God’s pardon and the promise of victory over sin. We hold it basic to the right use of the Bible as the authoritative revelation of God to man that it must be its own interpreter. All interpretation of Scripture must be in the light of Scripture itself with its central theme: God’s loving purpose to save men in Christ. Concerning Life and Practice Though heirs of a common Reformation heritage, the Churches constituting the American Lutheran Conference have sprung from different nationalistic backgrounds and have been led through diverse experiences in arriving at the juncture where they seriously consider organic merger. According to the freedom inherent in the Gospel each has developed its distinctive church life and established its own practices. As they contemplate losing their individual

279

identity in organic union, it seems good to set forth clearly certain matters pertaining to Christian life, forms of worship, and churchly practice concerning which misunderstandings might possibly arise. I. Liturgical Trends . . . the New Testament Church had no divinely prescribed liturgy. . . In accord with sound New Testament teaching, the Lutheran Church has confessed that for the true unity of the Church it is sufficient to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments, and that it is not necessary that human traditions, rites, or ceremonies, instituted by man, should be everywhere alike. Inasmuch as every public order of worship should implement a sinner’s encounter with the living God, it follows that every part of the service should relate the sound theology of Law and Gospel to the worshipper. In historical Lutheranism this has tended toward a continued liturgical emphasis, in which certain fixed forms have followed; a rather uniform pattern as a guide for man’s true worship of God. ..... A rampant heterogeneity in forms can readily militate against a common confessional witness. We commend, therefore the current concern for uniformity in liturgical practices. On the other hand, we express warning against the peril of equating form with faith. Within the true faith, ample variety of outward expression must be allowed, and the right of each congregation to determine its form of worship must be recognized. 419. JOINT COMMISSION ON LUTHERAN UNITY’S STATEMENT OF AGREEMENT ON UNITY (1958) Four of the other American Lutheran denominations that did not join in the merger that created the ALC in 1960 came together to form the Lutheran Church in America in 1962. This is their statement of theological unity, one that avoided the terms “inerrant and infallible” to describe their view of the authority of Scripture. From: Richard C. Wolf, ed., Documents of Luther Lutheran an Unity in America merica. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 554–65. After hearing the reading and interpretation of the doctrinal statements of the four churches here represented, the Commission rejoices to note that we have among us sufficient ground of agreement in the

280

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

common confession of our faith, as witnessed by the Lutheran confessions, to justify further organic union of our churches, including the formulation of a proposed constitute having in it articles on doctrine and practical matters of organization.

as the primary witness to God’s redemptive act in Christ, for which the Old Testament prepared the way and which the New Testament proclaims. In the Church’s continuing proclamation of this Gospel the Holy Scriptures fulfill their basic purpose as Word of God. As such they are normative for the faith and fife of the Church. 4. They accept the three ecumenical creeds, namely, the Apostles, the Nicene, and the Athanasian, as true declarations of the faith of the Church. 5. They accept the Unaltered Augsburg Confession and Luther’s Small Catechism as true witnesses to the Gospel, and acknowledge as one with them in faith and doctrine all churches that likewise accept the teachings of these symbols. 6. They accept the other symbolical books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, the Smalcald Articles, Luther’s Large Catechism, and the Formula of Concord as further valid interpretations of the confession of the Church. 420. LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA: STATEMENT ON RACE RELATIONS (1964)

Fig. 9.4. Four acolytes bringing together quartered pieces of a large candle to symbolize the merger forming the Lutheran Church in America, Detroit, Michigan, 1962

The Committee on Doctrine and Living Tradition . . . prepared a Preliminary Doctrinal Statement. . . . After several minor amendments, the Joint Commission on Lutheran Unity adopted it in the following form: 1. The church bodies represented by the Joint Commission on Lutheran Unity hold in common that the Holy Spirit creates and sustains the Church through the Gospel and thereby unites men with Christ through faith and to one another in the fellowship of that faith. 2. They further hold that the Word of God is essentially “the Gospel of God concerning His Son,” i.e., the good news of God’s creative and saving grace made manifest in Christ. The title “Word of God” belongs primarily to Christ Himself, the Word incarnate, for in Him God reveals and imparts Himself to men. It applies derivatively to the Christ–centered message of the Old and New Testaments, as well as to the proclamation of the Gospel in the Church. 3. They treasure the Holy Scriptures, therefore,

A major social change after the Second World War was the struggle over African Americans to gain their civil rights in the United States. American churches struggled to understand and support this movement, and the social and political changes that it necessitated. From: Second Biennial Convention of the Lutheran Church in America, July 2–9, 1964. Found in Christa Klein and Christian von Dehsen, Politics and Policy: The Genesis and Theology of Social Statements in the Luther Lutheran an Church in America. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 267–70. The current racial revolution has thrust the church into a time of travail and perplexity but also of opportunity and hope. Injustice, which for a long time was either ignored, rationalized, or mutely borne, is now seen more clearly for what it actually is. Injurious discrimination based on race is a violation of God’s created order, of the meaning of redemption in Christ, and of the nature of the church. Implicit in such discrimination often are unbiblical views of God and of humanity. The church must oppose such false views with all the power of the truth of God: in its prayer and worship, in its theological thought, in its nurture of the personal life, in

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

its institutional forms, and in individual and corporate action in society. At the heart of the life of the church is prayer. In the Prayer of the Church, we find the great pleading and thanking voice of hundreds of thousands of Christians assembled each Sunday for the worship of God. Unless we mean what we say, and live as persons who intend to do what we mean, the holy gravity of our prayer itself condemns us. In the Prayer of the Church we petition: Sanctify and unite thy people in all the world, that one holy Church may bear witness to thee, the God and Father of all. Here we pray that God may heal—“Sanctify and unite”—the church in order that it may “bear witness” to the “God and Father of all” in whom alone the world finds healing. We pray that, our unity of communion being manifest, we may hold out to a broken world the salvatory meaning of God’s parenthood. This requires a unity that is visible and tangible. It requires Christians to seek out and receive one another as brothers and sisters without regard to nation, race, or culture. It means that a racially segregated church is institutionalized disobedience. Having thus prayed for the integrity of our witness as a church, we pray for the nation and its structures of law and authority: “Preserve our Nation in righteousness and honor. . . Grant health and favor to all who bear office in our land . . . and help them to acknowledge and obey thy holy will.” When spoken in the Prayer of the Church, “righteousness” points to the “right” that God wills; “honor” implies being approved by God because of our obedience to that “right.” This petition indicates that the church supports the rule of law and the civil government which administers and interprets it. At the same time it means that the church must oppose any law or governmental practice which under the guise of rightful authority perverts justice. In particular it means that the church must oppose any force which would prohibit the expression of its inclusiveness according to “thy holy will”. . . The problem of the relations between persons of different races, particularly between white and Black [sic] persons, is here exposed. To stand before God and pray, “take from us all hatred and prejudice,” and then as a praying church to discriminate among persons on any such sinful basis is a contradiction of this prayer. Finally we pray: “All these things . . . grant us, O Father, for his sake who died and rose again, and now liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.” In

281

prayer God’s peculiar people acknowledge that they are freed for a strange new life before God and among their neighbors. The Prayer of the Church illumines the way of the church. Some things are no longer ours to decide. The decision has been made—and forever. In a time of travail and opportunity, perplexity and hope in race relations, the church needs to pray—and to act in accord with its prayer—“for his sake who died and rose again” and who reigns “world without end.” The substance of the church’s action in all matters of racial discrimination is determined for it and stands as a permanent testimony each time the church prays or confesses its faith or proclaims its message. The forms of the church’s action on the specific ecclesiastical, political, economic, and social expressions of racial discrimination are subject to human judgment and must be directed to specific times, places and circumstances. In obedience to the Lord of the church and in repentant acknowledgment that urgent occasions require fresh resolutions, the 1964 Biennial Convention of the Lutheran Church in America, issues a renewed call to action to include the following elements: 1. No congregation, synod, agency, or institution of the church in its communion and varied ministries should discriminate against any persons on the grounds of race. 2. The publications of the church should present an objective picture of racial diversity and emphasize the Christian’s responsibility in the struggle for racial justice. Editors should be realistic in their use of pictures and descriptive materials for such publications so as to reflect the inclusive character of the church. 3. The church, together with its congregations, synods, agencies and institutions, should support its concern for racial justice in all its business involvements and should give critical scrutiny to its own employment practices. In the calling of pastors and the employing of staff the congregations of this church should not make the race of the candidate a qualification for consideration. 4. The church, its congregations, synods, agencies and institutions should initiate programs and support occasions in which Christians acknowledge the imperative of worship, fellowship, and mission without regard to race. 7. Christians are committed to the rule of law as an expression of the moral law of God. Nevertheless, it must be recognized that laws have been and may in the future be enacted, or social customs may exist, which are believed to be in basic conflict with

282

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

the constitutional law of the land or the moral law of God. In such circumstances, the church, its congregations, synods, agencies and institutions, including their representatives, as well as individual members, are recognized as free by all lawful means, including participation in peaceful public demonstrations, to urge repeal or invalidation of such laws or to effect change of such customs. If and when the means of legal recourse have been exhausted or are demonstrably inadequate, Christians may then choose to serve the cause of racial justice by disobeying a law that clearly involves the violation of their obligations as Christians, so long as they are a. willing to accept the penalty for their action; b. willing to limit and direct their protest as precisely as possible against a specific grievance or injustice; c. willing to carry out their protest in a nonviolent, responsible manner, after earnestly seeking the counsel of other Christians and the will of God in prayer. In all of this, we are guided and supported by the normative teaching of the church in Article XVI of the Augsburg Confession: Christians are obliged to be subject to civil authority and obey its commands and laws in all that can be done without sin. But when commands of the civil authority cannot be obeyed without sin, we must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29). 421. STATEMENTS ON THE ORDINATION OF WOMEN (1967–2016) Another major social transformation in the 1960s was the movement for greater rights for women. Lutheran denominations struggled with the question of the ordination of women to be pastors. This statement from the Lutheran Council in the USA set out the arguments for and against; the LCA and ALC decided to ordain women, while the LCMS did not. A Statement of Findings Relating to the Requested Study on the Subject of the Ordination of Women (From: Raymond Tiemeyer, ed., The Ordination of Women. Report of the Division of Theological Studies, LCUSA. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1970), 51–54.) 1) Until recent times it has been the case in Lutheran churches, as in Christendom generally, that the ordained ministry be limited to men because of

long-standing and inherited custom, sociological and psychological factors, and, more specifically, biblical references, notably at 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 and 14:33-36, which preclude women teaching or speaking in church. 2) In actual practice, however, strict and literal enforcement of what these passages say has probably nowhere fully existed, and women in different Lutheran churches have thus increasingly been permitted to go without veils; take part in public worship, join in liturgy and hymns; lead worship in choirs; speak and teach in church schools, on Sundays and weekdays, asking questions of teachers and instructing males as well as females; vote and hold positions of leadership in the church; and in some cases be ordained to a ministry which is partial or total. 3) Today, in a time of widespread change, women are achieving new dignity, rights, and responsibilities in all areas of life in the world, so that one can properly speak of a “revolution” in the status of women. 4) While the Gospel is determinative for the church’s ministry, not contemporary developments, and that Gospel does not change from age to age, nonetheless it is necessary to ask from time to time whether areas of the church’s life such as practices regarding the ordained ministry do properly reflect that Gospel and the will of the church’s Lord in the world amid the new situations. We must ask whether what we have been accustomed to continues warranted in the face of what we are actually doing in some instances and amid what is happening in God’s world, and is the fullest expression currently possible of faith and of the Spirit’s activity. Lest we miss the ongoing work of God and promptings of his Spirit, we are called to consider anew what we have readily assumed. B.1) In examining the biblical material and theological arguments we find the case both against and for the ordination of women inconclusive. a. “Ordination” in our sense of the term is not a topic addressed in the New Testament—there has been a long history of development—and the ordination of women was not a question discussed in the Lutheran confessions. b. The biblical passages and theological arguments invoked against the ordination of women are not fully persuasive because, e.g., of exegetical obscurities (are “women generally” or only “wives” referred to in them?), possible internal contradictions (does 1 Corinthians 14 give the same answer as 1 Corinthians 11?), and the impossibility (and undesirability) of consistent literal application (veils; total silence of

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

women in church?). In short, for every interpretation some objection can be raised, and to every argument some objection found. On the other hand, passages and arguments employed to urge ordination of women are likewise not fully decisive either, and here, too, objections and exceptions occur. Some of the arguments offered on both sides are inconsistent or rest on unbiblical, unevangelical assumptions. 2) There are also, besides these arguments, sociological and psychological considerations, pro and con. We are convinced that such factors are significant and that assessing such non-biblical factors is indeed “biblical.” But neither the objections to the ordination of women, serious as they are, nor the positive potentials which some see, settle the issue. 3) The “ecumenical argument” concerning the relation of the decision by one church to what other Lutherans and other Christians do on this question deserves serious weighing, but does not decide the issue either; if some groups appear irrevocably set against the ordination of women, others, it is to be noted, have already begun the practice, and some churches assumed to be most opposed to the practice are or seem to be open to discussion of it. C. 1) Thus no one argument or set of arguments settles the matter clearly one way or another at this point for us. 2) It would not be realistic to insist that individual Lutheran bodies should tailor their decisions or delay them indefinitely so as to conform with all other Lutherans, let alone the whole ecumenical world (the fact is that varying degrees of difference of practice already exist), but it is hoped that any single church would seek to act only after consultation with fellow Lutherans and with sensitivity to the entire ecumenical spectrum. 3) If there are no conclusive grounds for forbidding the ordination of women and no definitive ones for demanding it, it follows that a variety of practices at any given time remains possible amid common confession; indeed, question can be raised to what extent doctrinal matters in the strict sense are here involved (theological aspects, yes, but whether “in the doctrine of the Gospel” is another matter). 4) We have been forced to observe again and again in our study that the ordination of women is part of larger questions: (a) the ordained ministry; (b) the work of the laity in ministry of the whole people of God today; (c) the church. Also involved is a hermeneutical question which lies not fully resolved among Lutherans on how one interprets and applies Scripture.

283

5) We urge, therefore, that appropriate commissions of the participating churches share in further joint study of broader topics of the “ministry,” “laity,” and “church” as a context in which such specific questions must be addressed, and invite representatives of the churches to join with us in exploring fully these areas. (Adopted by the Standing Committee of the Division of Theological Studies, March 7-8, 1969)

Fig. 9.5. The first woman ordained as a Lutheran pastor in the United States, Elizabeth Platz, November 22, 1970

Report of the Ordination of Women (From: Reports and Actions of the Fifth Gener General al Convention of the American Luther Lutheran an Church, October 21–27, San Antonio, Texas. Minneapolis: Office of the Secretary of the ALC, 1970, 326–28.) Recommendations of Study Committee This committee submitted the following resolution: WHEREAS, A Statement of Findings Relating to the Requested Study on the Subject of the Ordination of Women has been adopted and made available by the Standing Committee of the Division of Theological Studies, Lutheran Council U.S.A.; and WHEREAS, The ad hoc Committee on the Ordination of Women concurs in the Statement of Findings; and WHEREAS, The American Lutheran Church accepted the following statement in 1964 with reference to ministry: “Since the ministerial office is not precisely defined in the New Testament, and since the duties of early officers were varied and interchangeable, and since the needs of the church down through the centuries are subject to variation, we are led to Luther’s con-

284

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

clusion, namely, that God has left the details of the ministerial office to the discretion of the church, to be developed according to its needs and according to the leading of the Holy Spirit.” (1964 Reports and Actions, p. 140); and WHEREAS, Men and women are both resources for ministry in the church and each other in the pastoral role; and WHEREAS, Women are prepared to serve and have been certified for call and ordination; therefore be it Resolved, That the Church Council be requested to recommend to the General Convention which will meet in San Antonio in October of 1970, that women be eligible for call and ordination in The American Lutheran Church. Recommendations of the Church Council ACTION BY THE CHURCH COUNCIL: 70.6.96 To recommend that women be eligible for call and ordination in The American Lutheran Church. ACTION BY THE CONVENTION: C70.24.77 To adopt. (YES—560; NO—414; Abstention—1) The Church Council recognized that, especially during the transitional period that would follow, should the General Convention approve the ordination of women, there would be many practical issues to be faced by women who will serve as parish pastors. From: Alvin Barry, “What About the Ordination of Women?” Website of the LCMS, “Belief and Practice,” at https://www.lcms.org/ belief–and–practice, accessed October 17, 2016. Many denominations ordain women to the pastoral office, even some Lutheran churches. It is important that Missouri Synod Lutherans be able to give a kindly response and explanation to those who may question our position on this issue. We have an opportunity to speak the truth in love. What does God say about women serving in the pastoral office? The Lord teaches us through His Word that women are not given the responsibility of serving the church as pastors. . . God has given His church many gifts. Among them is the gift of the office of the public, pastoral ministry. We receive what God gives, in the way He has given it, and in the form He has given it. We do not tell God that His gift is not good enough for us, or that we don’t like the form in which He has given the gift. We receive God’s gifts as He gives them,

with thanks and praise. We rejoice in the opportunities God has given us, as His redeemed people, to serve Him in the church, and in our daily lives. The church which wishes to remain faithful to the Word of God cannot permit the ordination of women to the pastoral office. The Bible says that we are all one in Christ. Don’t these words imply that women may serve as pastors? There are those churches which believe that St. Paul’s words in Gal. 3:28 mandate the service of women as pastors: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” But this verse does not teach that there is no distinction between these various groups; rather, it teaches the equality of salvation that all Christians have in Christ Jesus our Lord. Paul wants us to know that all individuals are equally sinful and equally saved by the work of God through Jesus Christ. Gal. 3:28 does not contradict or overturn St. Paul’s comments elsewhere. This passage does not speak to the issue of the ordination of women; instead it is speaking of the equality of our salvation in Christ, for which we praise the Triune God, but it certainly does not mean that all may serve as pastors. The issue of the ordination of women is not a matter of “human rights” or “church traditions” or various human opinions and customs. Nor is it a matter of “discrimination against women.” Various social reformers in our culture would have us believe that men and women are totally interchangeable and that their God-given differences simply have no bearing on life in this world. Not only does this run contrary to the clear testimony of nature, it also contradicts the Bible. The Bible teaches us a different view of God’s creation. The Scriptures teach us that both men and women were created in the image of God, but are two distinct and special creations of God. We praise God for His wisdom in creating human beings as both man and woman. We believe that God has gifted men and women with different responsibilities and duties. For example, men are gifted by God to be husbands and fathers; women are gifted by God to be wives and mothers. So also in the church, God has gifted men and women with different, though complementary, opportunities and responsibilities for service. Why then do some churches ordain women as pastors? Here again, as with so many issues, the reason for differences we have with other church bodies is based on their differing attitude toward the Scriptures. Our Synod affirms the truth that the Holy Scriptures are God’s perfect and errorless revelation

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

to us. We receive what God has given to us in His Word. We are not free to overlook that Word, ignore it, explain it away, or otherwise disregard what the Lord has revealed through the Apostle Paul. Churches that ordain women have chosen to regard St. Paul’s writings as his own personal opinions. This is a difficult position to maintain in light of the fact that St. Paul goes out of his way, on more than one occasion, to repeat his position on this matter, and explicitly declares that this is not merely his personal opinion, but a command of the Lord. 422. CONFLICT IN THE LUTHERAN CHURCH MISSOURI SYNOD: THE SEMINEX WALKOUT (1974) Theological tensions between the conservatives and moderates within the LCMS peaked in 1974, when the synod moved against moderate faculty at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. A large majority of students and faculty left to form Christ Seminary in Exile, or “Seminex.” From: Frederick Danker, No Room in the Br Brothotherho erhood: od: The Pr Preus–Otten eus–Otten Purg urgee of Missouri. (St. Louis: Clayton Publishing House, 1977), 302–4, 311–18.

Fig. 9.6. The procession (“walkout”) of students and faculty out of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, to form Christ Seminary in Exile (Seminex), February 19, 1974

Document of Dismissal, Concordia Seminary Board of Control WHEREAS certain members of the faculty, administrative staff and the guest faculty, since on or about the 22d day of January, 1974, have failed and omitted to carry out their responsibilities and functions as employees under their contracts of employment, and WHEREAS, although said members of the

285

faculty, administrative staff and guest faculty whose names are set forth on the schedule attached hereto and made a part hereof, thereafter were requested by the Acting President to resume their said responsibilities and functions, said members of the faculty, the administrative staff and the guest faculty have failed and omitted to comply with such request, and WHEREAS none of said members of the faculty, administrative staff or guest faculty, has a legal or other right, while continuing in the employment of Concordia Seminary, to not carry out the responsibilities and functions for which he was employed NOW, therefore, be it resolved that: The Board of Control directs the faculty, administrative staff and guest faculty to resume their respective responsibilities and functions as employees under their contracts of employment on February 19th, 1974, that on or before 12 noon February 18, 1974, they signify their assent and agreement in writing to Acting President Scharlemann to so resume their responsibilities and functions as aforesaid and those members of the faculty, administrative staff and guest faculty who fail to comply with the foregoing, having heretofore breached their respective contracts of employment, and they being in continuing breach of their contracts of employment have terminated their employment which results also in a termination of all of the rights and privileges of their respective positions with Concordia Seminary, including, but not limited to the following: 1. No salaries to be paid to said members of the faculty and the administrative staff for any period subsequent to the 18th day of January, 1974; 2. No payments be made to any such members of the faculty or of the administrative staff, who provides his own living quarters, for housing allowance or in lieu of rent, for any period subsequent to the 18th day of January, 1974; 3. No such member of the faculty who is housed in any of the seminary-owned homes shall be provided with such housing subsequent to February 28, 1974; 4. No payments shall be made to such members of the guest faculty for services heretofore rendered by them; and 5. All members of the faculty, administrative staff, and guest faculty whose names are set forth on the attached schedule shall remove their personal belongings from offices on the campus heretofore used by them and shall vacate such offices on or before February 28, 1974.

286

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Concordia Seminary-in-Exile Concordia Seminary-in-Exile (“Seminex”) is the temporary name for a joint effort of the vast majority of the student body, faculty, and executive staff aimed at completing programs of theological education. Seminex means that the same students and faculty are getting back to the same synodically approved curriculum working out of the same Lutheran confessional commitment. Seminex is not a new seminary, not a new institution; it is Concordia Seminary, but in exile. Seminex represents not a departure from synod but a commitment to the synod which has been rapidly departing from the best in its tradition. It is the only way we can see to complete theological education and simultaneously to call the synod back to its own evangelical fountainhead. Seminex is an effort on the part of all of us—students, faculty and staff—to be true to our callings, loyal to our synod, faithful to our Lord. We are students, faculty and staff of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, and we desire to continue serving within the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. But why exile? . . . We cannot return to our classes and pretend that we can have business as usual, even though we would like to. . . What makes it impossible? The synodical administration and seminary Board of Control are silencing the Word of God, stifling the Biblical Gospel. That scriptural Gospel, which is the heart and focus of our synod’s teaching and the wellspring of fraternal and evangelical actions and relationships, is under siege and is being crushed into silence. Think what has recently happened to the teaching of the Gospel and to evangelical procedure. In the spring of 1970 President Preus appointed a Fact Finding Committee to investigate the teaching at Concordia Seminary and later published to the entire synod his judgements about our teaching (Report of the Synodical President, 1 September 1972.) The Board of Control after many hours of personal interviews of individual faculty members voted by secret ballot, exactly one year ago today, on February 19, 1973, to “commend” each member of the faculty. Commending meant that no professor was guilty of false doctrine and that each did accept without reservation the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions. Not satisfied with the conclusion reached by the Board of Control, President Preus sought to achieve his goals in new ways. He carefully orchestrated the New Orleans Convention (July 6–13, 1973), by stacking floor committees and controlling the entire

convention process. The Convention gave him what he wanted: a new standard of orthodoxy (his own “A Statement of Scriptural and Confessional Principles”), a new Board of Control at Concordia Seminary and a specific resolution (3–09) condemning the doctrinal position of the faculty majority as “false doctrine ..... not to be tolerated in the church of God.” New Orleans set in motion a reversal of our traditional evangelical procedures and of our heritage of Lutheran Confessional thinking. The turmoil of New Orleans with its deep polarization and its total disregard for the sizable minority has in the months since New Orleans been transplanted to our campus and other schools as well as to synodical boards and staffs, as the divisive and sectarian policies of New Orleans have been implemented. . . The Board has in its February 17 action given its answer: it has fired the faculty majority and executive staff. In doing so, the Board of Control has evaded the doctrinal issue in which it claims to have so much interest. It turned a deaf ear to the appeal of students and faculty that it act with integrity and honesty. Instead, it used merely political and legal force to get rid of us, with no discussion of the central doctrinal issue. President Preus has written much in recent days about forums and committees and discussions for achieving reconciliation. And yet it was Vice President Edwin C. Weber, President Preus’ agent on the Board of Control, who introduced the motion to fire us if we would not capitulate. We have been counseled by some of our friends in the church to begin Seminex classes at 801 DeMun. The action of the Board of Control makes that procedure impossible and indeed illegal. We have been fired and ordered to vacate these premises. If we want to teach, we must do so at another place. The ‘Seminex’ Resolution: Seminarian James Wind moved adoption. It read: On January 21, 1974, students at Concordia Seminary declared a moratorium on all classes. We took this action in order to confront the crisis at our seminary and in our church. We declared to the Board of Control that the moratorium would remain in effect until either specific charges of false doctrine were brought against specific professors or those professors were exonerated. The Board of Control has done neither. Instead, the contracts of our teachers have been terminated. We believe this response of the Board of Control to be both unchristian and immoral. For this reason, we find it impossible in good conscience to continue our education under

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

the present seminary Board of Control. Instead, we will continue to pursue our calling as students in preparation for ministry in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod under the terminated faculty. We believe they are innocent of any charges of false doctrine and, in fact, are faithful to the Holy Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions. We therefore resolve to resume our theological education in exile, trusting in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. 423. LUTHERANS AND EPISCOPALIANS: CALLED TO COMMON MISSION (1999) During the late twentieth century, Lutherans began to negotiate agreements on closer fellowship with some other Christians. This agreement between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church was controversial, because of the requirement that Lutherans adopt the “Historic Episcopate” as a means for the interchange of clergy. From: Sven Oppegaard and Gregory Cameron, eds., Anglican–Luther Anglican–Lutheran an Agr greements: eements: Reg Regional ional and International Agr greements, eements, 1972–2002. (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, Office for Communication Services, 2004), 231–42. The Lutheran-Episcopal Agreement of 1982 identified as its goal the establishment of “full communion” between The Episcopal Church and the churches that united to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. . . This agreement describes the relationship between our two church bodies. It does not define the church, which is a gift of God’s grace. We therefore understand full communion to be a relation between distinct churches in which each recognizes the other as a catholic and apostolic church holding the essentials of the Christian faith. Within this new relation, churches become interdependent while remaining autonomous. Full communion includes the establishment locally and nationally of recognized organs of regular consultation and communication, including episcopal collegiality, to express and strengthen the fellowship and enable common witness, life, and service. Diversity is preserved, but this diversity is not static. Neither church seeks to remake the other in its own image, but each is open to the gifts of the other as it seeks to be faithful to Christ and his mission. They are together committed to a visible unity in the church’s mission to proclaim the Word and administer the Sacraments.......

287

Agreement in the Doctrine of the Faith The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and The Episcopal Church recognize in each other the essentials of the one catholic and apostolic faith as it is witnessed in the unaltered Augsburg Confession, the Small Catechism, and The Book of Common Prayer of 1979 (including “Ordination Rites” and “An Outline of the Faith”), and also as it is summarized in part in Implications of the Gospel and “Toward Full Communion” and “Concordat of Agreement” . . . Anglicans and Lutherans use very similar orders of service for the Eucharist, for the Prayer Offices, for the administration of Baptism, for the rites of Marriage, Burial, and Confession and Absolution. We acknowledge in the liturgy both a celebration of salvation through Christ and a significant factor in forming the consensus fidelium [the consensus of the faithful]. . . We acknowledge that one another’s ordained ministries are and have been given by God to be instruments of God’s grace in the service of God’s people, and possess not only the inward call of the Spirit, but also Christ’s commission through his body, the church. We acknowledge that personal, collegial, and communal oversight is embodied and exercised in both our churches in a diversity of forms, in fidelity to the teaching and mission of the apostles. We agree that ordained ministers are called and set apart for the one ministry of Word and Sacrament, and that they do not cease thereby to share in the priesthood of all believers. They fulfill their particular ministries within the community of the faithful and not apart from it. The concept of the priesthood of all believers affirms the need for ordained ministry, while at the same time setting ministry in proper relationship to the laity. . . In order to give witness to the faith we share, we agree that the one ordained ministry will be shared between the two churches in a common pattern for the sake of common mission. In the past, each church has sought and found ways to exercise the ordained ministry in faithfulness to the apostolic message and mission. . . The churches will over time come to share in the ministry of bishops in an evangelical, historic succession . . . “Historic succession” refers to a tradition which goes back to the ancient church, in which bishops already in the succession install newly elected bishops with prayer and the laying-on-of hands. At present The Episcopal Church has bishops in this historic succession, as do all the churches of the Anglican

288

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Communion, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America at present does not . . . As a result of their agreement in faith and in testimony of their full communion with one another, both churches now make the following commitment to share an episcopal succession that is both evangelical and historic. They promise to include regularly one or more bishops of the other church to participate in the laying-on-of-hands at the ordinations/ installations of their own bishops as a sign, though not a guarantee, of the unity and apostolic continuity of the whole church. With the laying-on-of-hands by other bishops, such ordinations/installations will involve prayer for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Both churches value and maintain a ministry of episkope as one of the ways, in the context of ordained ministries and of the whole people of God, in which the apostolic succession of the church is visibly expressed and personally symbolized in fidelity to the gospel through the ages. By such a liturgical statement the churches recognize that the bishop serves the diocese or synod through ties of collegiality and consultation that strengthen its links with the universal church. It is also a liturgical expression of the full communion initiated by this Concordat, calling for mutual planning and common mission in each place. We agree that when persons duly called and elected are ordained/installed in this way, they are understood to join bishops already in this succession and thus to enter the historic episcopate. 424. THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA: ON HUMAN SEXUALITY (2009) Another deeply divisive issue among ELCA Lutherans was the question of sexuality, especially the proposal for the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals to the Lutheran ministry. This is the study document that proposed such a change in the ordination standards. From: “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust,” Social Statement of the ELCA. Website of the ELCA, accessed October 17, 2016. https:// www.elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/SocialStatements/Human-Sexuality. “Gift and Trust” Social Statement Summary In order to understand “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust,” a social statement of the Evangelical Lutheran

Church in America (ELCA), it is necessary to note three foundational approaches that undergird the text: • This social statement is grounded in key Lutheran principles that inform the way Lutherans discern how to live faithfully in a complex world. These include Scripture as the living Word of God, justification by grace through faith on account of Christ, and the Lutheran vocation to serve the neighbor in the midst of daily life. • Scripture teaches that we are created for relationship. The fundamental orientation of this document is the differentiation of right relationship from wrong relationship. Our model of right relationship is God’s absolutely trustworthy faithfulness to God’s promises and to God’s people; therefore, this statement proposes that all human relationships be considered in light of trust, faithfulness, and commitment. In relation to sexuality, both human behavior and the social structures we create are worthy when they foster trust, commitment, and protection for those who are vulnerable. • Human sexuality is not limited to what is private or individual, but is profoundly shaped by cultural forces and practices. Economics, business and advertising, social roles, medicine and science, and the myriad ways we entertain ourselves—these all are relevant to a consideration of sexual self-understanding and to the ways we act in our relationships with others. Moreover, it is essential to understand the ways social structures shelter, sustain, and protect personal, familial, and social relationships. Part of the calling of this church is to evaluate social forces and social structures in light of what is good for the neighbor. “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust” addresses the question: how do we understand human sexuality within the context of Jesus’ invitation to love God and love our neighbor? (Romans 13:9-10; Galatians 5:14.) This social statement begins with a discussion of key Lutheran principles that inform the way Lutherans discern how to live faithfully in a complex world. It focuses particularly on how human sexuality relates to the Lutheran vocation to serve the neighbor. Central to this vocation of serving the neighbor is the building and protecting of trust in

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

human relationships and social institutions. In accord with Scripture, trust is understood as a fundamental character of right relationship. In response to God’s faithful (trustworthy) relationship of love in Christ for the world, we seek to be trustworthy in our human sexuality and to build social institutions and practices where trust and trustworthy relationships can thrive. When God created human beings, sexuality was made integral to their nature. Sexuality is a good and wondrous gift, a rich and diverse combination of relational, emotional, and physical interactions and possibilities. Because of sin, however, it also can cause great harm. This statement affirms the role of God’s law in the world to reveal sin, constrain wrong behavior, and point the way for all to serve the neighbor. God’s law instructs us how to protect and nurture relationships and build up the community. Sexuality and Social Structures that enhance Social Trust No relationships or social structures can thrive in the absence of trust. Two such foundational social structures are marriage and the family. Lutherans believe that God works through these structures for the good of society. The trust and mutuality afforded by marriage offers one of the most beautiful, abiding, and transformative forms of human relationship. This church understands marriage as a covenant of mutual promises, commitment, and hope authorized legally by the state and blessed by God. The historic Christian tradition and the Lutheran Confessions have recognized marriage as a covenant between a man and a woman. The lifelong commitment and public accountability of marriage provide the context for trust to grow and people to thrive, creating the possibility for the care and support of children and others who are vulnerable. The public promises of marriage between a husband and wife also protect the community by holding people accountable to their vows. Fidelity to promises blesses all who depend on this trust within and beyond the marriage. Precisely because marriage is the place where deep human trust and needs abide, it also can be a place of great harm. Many experience neither love nor trust within marriage. Particular care must be taken to support and find safe haven for all who are at risk within a marriage. This church will provide pastoral support for all who are divorced and for the special concerns of blended families, children of divorced parents, and the particular tensions that may accompany family breakdown and transition. It is only within the last decades that this church has begun to understand in

289

new ways the need of same-gender oriented individuals to seek relationships of lifelong companionship and commitment as well as public accountability and legal support for those commitments. This has led to differing understandings about the place of such relationships within the Christian community. Disagreements exist in this church and in the larger Christian community about whether marriage is also the appropriate term to use to describe similar benefits, protection, and support for same-gender couples entering into lifelong, monogamous relationships. Although at this time this church lacks consensus on this matter, it encourages all people to live out their faith in the local and global community of the baptized with profound respect for the conscience–bound belief of the neighbor. This church calls for mutual respect and for guidance that seeks the good of all. As we live together with disagreement, the people in this church will continue to accompany one another in study, prayer, discernment, pastoral care, and mutual respect. This church regards the family as an indispensable social institution because of its role in establishing conditions of trust and protection for the vulnerable. The erosion of safety or trust within a family, in particular due to sexual abuse or the betrayal of promises and commitments, constitutes a flagrant harm precisely because it occurs within the context where trust is most assumed. In this country and in our congregations, families are formed in many ways. All families have responsibility for the tasks of providing safety, shielding intimacy, and developing trustworthy relationships. Lutherans take great care to support whatever creates and sustains families as a foundation and support of trust. The context of a healthy family nurtures growth, enhances trust, and offers protection. This is especially true for children and youth as they grow into sexual maturity. Safety within and outside the family is of overriding importance. Congregations and other ministry sites must continue in their efforts to be safe places for children and youth. The ELCA regards the over–exposure of emotionally maturing children and teens to adult sexuality as a failing on the part of adults and society. It challenges all individuals and institutions in society to fulfill their responsibility to protect and nurture children and youth and provide for their appropriate development. This church will give particular attention to the sexual education of children and teens, including how children and youth are supported and accompanied in their sexual and relational formation.

290

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Sexuality and trust in relationships One does not need to be in an intimate relationship to experience one’s sexuality. This means that throughout life we need to find life-enhancing and appropriate ways of giving expression to this complicated dimension of ourselves. A healthy sense of sexuality is related to having a healthy body image. This church teaches that caring for the body and following the practices that lead to physical and emotional wellness are part of the stewardship of created goodness. This church calls attention to the immense value of friendship for people in all stages of life. The violation of trusting relationships for sexual purposes is offensive and unacceptable. As trust and entrusting are established in a relationship, physical expression naturally becomes more intimate. For this reason the church teaches that degrees of physical intimacy should be carefully matched to degrees of growing affection and commitment. Therefore, this church opposes non-monogamous, promiscuous, or casual sexual relationships because such transient encounters do not allow the context for trust in sexual intimacy. This church does not favor cohabitation relationships outside of marriage, although it does recognize the social forces at work that encourage such practices. This church believes that the deepest longing for a sense of personal worth, long-term companionship, and profound security, especially given the human propensity to sin, are best served through binding commitment, legal protections, and the public accountability of marriage, especially where the couple is surrounded by the prayers of the community and the promises of God. Sexuality and Social Responsibility Social forces and contexts have significant influence on human sexual behavior. This church must be prepared to speak out where such forces cause harm. It will oppose in particular all forms of sexual exploitation within and outside this church. Justice for women in church and society must continue to be an important dimension of Lutheran response. This church notes with grave concern both the public commodification of the human body as an economic asset and the billion-dollar global sex market. The possibility of profit is not a sufficient moral basis to use human sexuality for purposes that harm individuals or undermine social trust. Christian responsibility includes naming economic forces and monitoring the ways they constrain or support healthy

individual choices and social structures. This church will work with public and private institutions to create structures, policies, and practices of accountability to support social norms of protection. This church does not tolerate the abuse of the ministerial office for personal sexual gratification. Such violations not only cause grave harm to individuals and congregations, but also severely damage the credibility of the public ministry to which this church and its leaders are called. The workplace requires appropriate boundaries maintained through respect, good sense, best practices, and legal protections. This church remains committed to its efforts to make congregations, synods, and church-wide offices safe and healthy places to live and work. Seeking the Spirit’s guidance, this church discerns direction for living amid all the complexities, conflicts, sorrows, discoveries, and joys of social and individual life. As simultaneously captive to sin and yet liberated and forgiven people of faith, we walk together humbly yet boldly toward God’s promised future. 425. NEW LUTHERAN DENOMINATIONS: THE LUTHERAN CONGREGATIONS IN MISSION FOR CHRIST (LCMC), AND THE NORTH AMERICAN LUTHERAN CHURCH (NALC) (2001/2010) Centrist Lutherans in the ELCA found it difficult to accept that denominations’ decisions on Ecumenism and Sexuality. Some of them left the ELCA to form two new denominations, the LCMC (2001) and the NALC (2010), together numbering over half a million members and over 1,000 congregations. From: “About Us: Who We Are,” Website of the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, accessed October 17, 2016. https:// www.lcmc.net/who–we–are. “Who We Are” Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ is an association of congregations and individuals who are: free in Christ; accountable to one another; rooted in the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions; [and] working together to fulfill Christ’s Great Commission to go and make disciples of all nations. LCMC is an association of congregations. We have a great respect for the reality that the church is where the people of God gather together around Word and Sacrament. The local congregation is

LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1865–2016

where the church becomes a concrete reality for God’s people. At the same time we are joyously aware that each congregation is a part of the greater body of Christ. The actions of each congregation within our association reflect on our association as a whole. And the actions of our association reflect on the whole body of Christ. For this reason we have committed ourselves to a common set of ministry standards. Congregations have significant latitude in ordering and shaping ministry in their local setting, and we intentionally have made joining and leaving the association simple. We have also agreed to a disciplinary process for addressing congregations whose actions violate our agreed-upon statements of faith and practice. From: “About Us: History,” Website of the North American Lutheran Church. Accessed October 17, 2016. http://thenalc.org/history/. The NALC is a fast-growing Christian church in the Lutheran tradition, uniting more than 141,000 Lutherans in more than 400 congregations across North America. The NALC embodies the theological center of Lutheranism in North America and stands firmly within the global Lutheran mainstream. We are a church family committed to the author-

291

ity of the Bible as the inspired Word of God. In keeping with the Lutheran Confessions, we believe all doctrines should and must be judged by the teaching of Scripture. The NALC was constituted on August 27, 2010 in Columbus, Ohio, at a Convocation organized by the church reform movement Lutheran CORE. One year earlier, a similar gathering of Lutheran CORE had directed its leadership to develop new organizational alternatives for faithful Lutheran Christians in North America. In response to numerous requests from congregations for the creation of a new Lutheran church, Lutheran CORE developed A Vision and Plan for the North American Lutheran Church and Lutheran CORE, published in February 2010. Six months later, our new church was formed. The NALC has been blessed with extraordinarily rapid growth. At the time of the constituting Convocation in August 2010, seventeen congregations had voted to join the NALC. Six years later, that number had grown to more than 400 congregations. Of those, roughly 70 are mission congregations, reflecting the priority placed on missions and evangelism by the NALC. We give thanks to God for all that has been accomplished, and seek His guidance as we move into the future with excitement.

10. Lutheranism in Scandinavia, 1750–Present

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY By the middle of the eighteenth century the Scandinavian countries were solidly Lutheran by the means of their respective State Churches. In Sweden and Finland, the Lutheran church was the only allowable religious option for the people, with the King of Sweden at the head. A similar situation was to be found in Denmark and Norway. The bishops and clergy of the State Churches formed their own political and social class, with representation in the Parliament. Local pastors served as agents of the state, recorded census and tax information, and, with the local secular authorities, kept a rein on public morality and orthodoxy. At times, pastors even operated as physicians, tended to the sick and gave inoculations. The idea was for a Lutheran version of Christendom within each kingdom, where church and state worked very closely and supported each other. Political inclinations towards royal absolutism, while never particularly successful, had the effect of making the church-state relationship even tighter. The theology of these Scandinavia State Churches was of seventeenth-century Lutheran Orthodoxy, by way of the German universities. The stress was on “correct doctrine” as the means of ensuring the faithfulness of the church, and the Lutheran confessional writings were the authority. But there was a flourishing religious life within these countries, as well. Churches were built and expanded, and pastors visited around the homesteads in their parishes, examining the people on their knowledge of Luther’s Small Catechism. In remote rural areas, where it was difficult to attend worship on a regular basis, people gathered in homes to hear Luther’s sermons read

aloud, and for the singing of hymns. The Scandinavian churches developed a rich traditional of congregational singing and hymnody, which continued to the present. Early in the eighteenth century the renewal movement of Pietism started to take root in Scandinavia, moving north from Germany. This movement came through a number of different, unofficial channels. Students from the north went to Germany to study at Pietist institutions, especially the University of Halle, and returned home with these new ideas. Sweden lost the disastrous Great Northern War (1713–1721), but a number of Swedish prisoners of war experienced religious revivals in their prison camps, and eventually returned home with renewed religious enthusiasm. Moravian missionaries moved into Scandinavia, especially into Denmark and Sweden, where their religious influence was strongest, but where they also came into conflict with local religious and political authorities. The Pietists critiqued the religious condition of the Scandinavian State Churches as being “spiritually dead,” and the clergy as mere functionaries. Perhaps this was true in part, but there were those clergy who did take their spiritual work seriously. Many Pietists initially sought to build renewal within of the State Church parishes, and they were joined in this by some pastors, who were also personally convinced by the theology of the renewal. But in other areas parish pastors and local bishops resented the Pietist critique, and moved to assert their own religious control over these popular movements. Revivals and awakenings spread in some regions, and people would gather together to read spiritual literature and to pray; sometimes these people would

294

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

be referred to as “läsare” (Readers). Popular Pietism sometimes took a radical turn; opposition from the State Church sometimes led to a searching critique of the nature of the Christian community, and the rejection of the State Church parishes as “godless” organizations that mixed together the pious and the profane, and did not push for moral regeneration. Radical groups, too, sometimes, showed evidence of religious heterodoxy, with religious “prophets” leading small bands of “true believers.” Alarmed and threatened, Church and State leaders pushed back against these movements, and put legal controls in place to rein in these movements. Acts against Conventicles (lay religious gatherings) were passed to outlaw any religious gatherings without the leadership or supervision of the clergy, as well as a prohibition of lay preaching (doc. #426). These conventicle acts generally remained in effect until the middle of the nineteenth century, although their enforcement was sporadic and sometimes arbitrary. The renewal movements were curtailed by these actions, as well as others, but they did not die out completely. The theology of renewal was quietly kept alive in many homes and among the Readers, especially in remote rural areas. Pastors sympathetic to the renewal movements encouraged its work among their parishes, and protected the pious from interference. Some church leader and pastors, such as Henric Schartau (1757–1825) in southern Sweden, continued the tradition of preaching for conversion and revival, although attempting to keep this “Churchly Pietism” within the bounds of the State Church parishes. Scandinavians were not allowed any other religious options besides Lutheranism, and all citizens of the kingdoms were considered to be Lutheran. There was some flexibility for foreigners living in these kingdoms (such as Germans and Huguenot refugees), who were allowed their own Protestant congregations. The influence of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and rationalistic theology from Germany and England, became increasingly evident in Scandinavia toward the end of the century, especially in some of the universities and among the upper ranks of the clergy. Religious rationalism was sometimes an issue for leaders of the renewal movements, who castigated the “unbelieving” clergy, but it was not often noticeable on the parish level, where older customs and rhythms of religious tradition mostly continued to hold sway.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY At the turn of the nineteenth century Scandinavia was still not yet generally affected by the new movements and ideas that were stirring in other parts of Europe. Still overwhelmingly agrarian and rural, Scandinavian societies had not changed much over the course of the previous centuries. But the nineteenth century began the process of a sustained and profound transformation that eventually lifted this area from relative poverty and backwardness to the modern, urban, technological societies that mark these northern European countries today. Change occurred throughout the levels of society, but perhaps affecting the peasant and working classes the most, and in the nineteenth century many of these changes had important impacts on their religious lives, as well. The first stirrings of the great nineteenth-century religious awakening in Scandinavia occurred in Norway, with the religious movement led by lay preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771–1824). The young Hauge was concerned about the state of his soul, and in 1796 while plowing a field he experienced a dramatic conversion experience that transformed his life (doc. #427). He felt compelled to begin itinerant preaching among the Norwegian people, even though this violated the laws of Norway. His preaching and writings ignited a strong revival in sections of the country, but also incurred the wrath of church and state officials. Hauge was harassed and eventually imprisoned, but this did not check the religious revival, and Hauge’s influence continued to grow. Judging many of the parish churches and clergy in the Church of Norway to be spiritually deficient, his followers often formed their own “prayer houses” (Bedehus) which essentially functioned as separate congregations, though Hauge urged his followers to remain within the sacramental graces of the State Church. After Hauge’s death the movement continued, often combined with nascent Norwegian nationalism that had been kindled by the adoption of the Norwegian constitution in 1814. For a short period, Grundtvig’s theological ideas about the Church were popular in Norway, but this was short-lived. The awakening in Norway was revived in the 1850s through the influence of Gisle Johnson (1822–1894), a layman and theological professor at the University in Oslo (doc. #428). An unlikely candidate to lead revivals, Johnson was bookish and somewhat personally reticent, but through his preaching, and later his writings, he brought new life and a needed shape to the revival movements begun

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

by Hauge. Johnson gave formal theological shape to the revivals, and tied them closer to the Church of Norway. By means of his academic position he was able to influence an entire generation of Norwegian Lutheran pastors, and thus make the Church more sympathetic to the revival movements, as well. Later in the nineteenth century there were a few separatist, free-church movements in Norway, but these were not as numerous and influential as there were in Sweden. In Sweden, the awakening movements of the eighteenth century continued early in the next century through the influence of Henric Schartau, dean of the cathedral at Lund. His religious awakening focused on a calm, gradual movement toward religious renewal and morality. Schartau stressed religious education and disapproved of conventicles and lay activity outside of the parishes (doc. #432). The awakenings were also continued in Northern Sweden among the “Readers,” and occasionally flared up into conflict with Church officials; a religious “prophet,” Eric Jansson (1808–1850), led an influential group which eventually immigrated to America. In Northern Sweden and Finland, the powerful preaching of Swedish pastor Lar Levi Laestadius (1800–1861) also revived the religious awakening in the 1840s (doc. #436); this movement would find its permanent form among the Apostolic Lutherans in Finland. The most influential movement within Sweden was, however, led by Carl Olof Rosenius (1816–1868), through his preaching, writings and hymns (doc. #433). Rosenius initially worked with an English Methodist evangelist in Stockholm, George Scott, and it was through this encounter that Anglo-American religious influences were introduced into the Swedish awakening. Unlike older forms of Swedish piety, the new Rosenian piety was more focused on the joyous acceptance of the transformation of the believer, through being freed from the demands of the law. Rosenius was very influential through his religious journal, Pietisten, and through the establishment in 1856 of the National Evangelical Foundation (NEF), an institution that worked to support and give shape to the awakening movement in Sweden. An important aspect of these revivals came through the new hymnody of such writers and composers such as Carolina Sandell Berg, Oskar Ahnfeldt, and Rosenius. After Rosenius’ death in 1868, the leadership of the movement was taken by Swedish pastor Paul Peter Waldenström (1838–1917). Quite different in temperament from Rosenius, Waldenström was more

295

willing to come into conflict with the Church of Sweden, which came to a head in 1872 with his sermon on the Atonement, which questioned the traditional Lutheran confessional position on this doctrine (doc. #434). The ensuing controversy split the NEF and revival movement, part of which remained formally Lutheran and connected to the Church of Sweden, while another section distanced itself and formed the Swedish Mission Covenant in 1878. Some within the Covenant, including Waldenström, remained nominally within the Swedish Church, while other separated from it, aided by the repeal of the Conventicle act in 1858. Swedes returning from American brought with them Methodist and Baptist ideas, and these churches were also established in Sweden about mid–century. Later in the century there was an equally important Pentecostal movement in Sweden. Religious life in Denmark was continued through into the nineteenth century by means of the State church as well as older awakening movements. The Moravian influence was important, especially through their settlements in Jutland. A new influence came into the Church of Denmark through Danish pastor and educator Nikolai F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872), especially through his preaching, writings, and hymnody. Grundtvig advocated the religious transformation of the entire Danish nation through the Lutheran parishes; he argued that renewal of the church would also be the renewal of the people and the nation, in upholding a distinctive Danish culture (doc. #429). His followers established meeting halls and Folk High Schools where both religion and Danish culture were studied. His influence throughout the Danish church was felt the strongest through his very popular hymns. Two theological challenges came at Grundtvig and the Danish State Church from very different directions. To modern readers, the most well-known of these came from the philosopher and religious critic, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). Fiercely opposed to the whole idea of Christendom and any fusion of Christianity with Danish culture, Kierkegaard saw true Christianity as antithetical to these aspects of contemporary Danish society (doc. #430). For Kierkegaard, Christianity was an extremely difficult path, and in constant opposition to “the world,” in stark opposition to the “easy” religiosity of Danish Lutheranism. The other critic of Grundtvig and the State Church was Vilhelm Beck (1829–1901), a Lutheran pastor, who emphasized traditional Pietist themes, especially conversion and strict, personal morality. He, too, attacked the “cul-

296

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

tural Christianity” of the Church of Denmark, but unlike Kierkegaard Beck established a distinctive religious movement in Denmark through the Danish “Inner Mission,” which developed its own meeting halls for outreach and preaching (doc #212). The religious situation in Finland was similar to the other northern countries in some ways, but distinctive in others. Traditionally Finland had been a part of the Swedish kingdom, and Swedish influence in the Church of Finland had been dominant. But as a result of the Napoleonic wars, Finland was attached to Russia (until its independence in 1917), occasioning the rise of Finnish nationalism during the nineteenth century, which often intersected with movements for religious awakening. The revivals of Swedish pastor Laestadius took root most firmly among Finns in the northern part of the country, creating a revivalistic movement centered on repentance and conversion, led by lay people, which became the Laestadian or “Apostolic” Lutheran tradition (doc. #436). Another strong revivalist was the peasant lay preacher Paavo Ruotsalainen (1777–1852), who similarly ignited an intense revival movement in Finland at mid–century. By his preaching and writings, including letters, he attacked the State Churches and the low moral state of the common people, though he, like Hauge, argued against separatism (doc. #435). A third movement, inspired by Finnish Lutheran pastor Frederick G. Hedberg (1811–1893), was also very important in Finland at this time, especially in Swedish–speaking areas of western Finland. As in the rest of the northern areas, the Church of Finland struggled to deal with these revival movements, sometime appreciative of their religious fervor, but worried about possible religious excesses and inclinations toward separatism. The religious enthusiasm generated within these countries spurred the creation of movements and institutions to continue the spread of religious awakenings at home and abroad, and to address serious social conditions. There was also a revival of hymnwriting and composing, which became a central facet of these Awakenings (doc. #437). Modeled on Anglo–American examples, Scandinavians developed non-denominational groups to further religious activities, including Bible and tract societies, temperance societies (to address rampant abuse of alcohol), and groups to address the needs of the poor and indigent. Independent mission societies were formed to support foreign missions, and similar groups were later formed within the State churches. This century saw increasing social, economic, and political changes within these Scandinavian king-

doms, which were often difficult for the churches to address. Growing populations and the lack of farmland greatly increased population pressures, and a significant number of Scandinavians (in some places 20% to 25% of the population) immigrated, mainly to North America. Though church officials sought initially to discourage immigration, fearing the immigrants would be lost to Lutheranism, the immigrants founded their own Lutheran denominations in North America, and interchanges between them and their counterparts in Europe brought new ideas into the Scandinavian religious world (see chapter 9). Social and political transformations were equally striking. There was a growth of urbanization and industrialization in these countries, with the rise of labor unions and movements to expand democratic participation in governance, whose proponents often saw the leaders of the Churches as being unwilling or unable to deal with these new changes. In the later part of the nineteenth century there was the growth of socialism and anti-clericalism among labor leaders and some intellectuals, mirroring developments in the rest of Europe (see chapters 2 and 4). The rise of secularism can be traced to the latter part of this century, although initially the impact on the State Churches was not widespread. There was, however, a general political willingness to weaken the exclusive bonds between the States and their official churches; the Conventicle acts and similar restrictions were repealed, and limited religious pluralism was granted, generally limited initially to nonLutheran Protestant groups. There were often rather interesting alliances formed over these issues, bringing together the revival and free-church movements and the new social democratic forces, at least in support of these new measures. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY By the end of the nineteenth century, the movements for religious awakening and revival had waned and become institutionalized in congregations and societies, though their influence remained strong, especially in the rural areas. Protestant theological liberalism, coming up from Germany, had made great inroads in the universities and in certain areas of the State churches, leading conservative groups to grow increasingly suspicious of church leaders and officials (see chapter 6). Already in the nineteenth century these awakening groups had set up their own training schools, intended for home and foreign mission work, but increasingly they began to train their own pastors, as well, especially among the Free

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

churches. In reaction to the liberalism at the University of Oslo, conservatives set up a rival institution to train pastors, the Menighetsfakultet (Congregational Faculty) in 1908. Tensions rose between liberals and conservatives in the State Churches, as new theological ideas were circulated within the parishes. Conservative leaders, such as Ole Hallesby (1879–1961) in Norway (doc. #438), and Bishop Bo Giertz (1905–1998) in Sweden (doc. #446) attempted to counteract the growth in liberal theology. Other leaders embraced the new theologies, especially Swedish archbishop and ecumenical pioneer, Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931), and other newer theologians (ch 12, doc. #521). The First World War came as a shock to the Scandinavian churches; although these countries were not directly affected by the war, all of Europe felt the trauma of war on such a massive scale, whose brutality seemed to question the assumptions of Liberal Protestantism. Many Lutheran leaders in Scandinavia were mildly sympathetic to their co-religionists in Germany, although the Danes, who had lost territory to the Germans during the nineteenth century were not. More fearsome to them, however, was the rise of communism in the Soviet Union, especially to those in Finland and the Baltic states who struggled to maintain their recent independence from Russia. The Neo-Orthodox theological revolution in Germany, led by Karl Barth and others was not particularly influential in Scandinavia, because of its roots in Reformed Protestantism. The Scandinavian Lutherans, however, played a prominent role in the postwar “Luther Renaissance,” especially led by theologians such as Gustaf Aulén (1879–1977) (doc. #439), Anders Nygren (1890–1978) (doc. #440), and Regin Prenter (1907–1990) (doc. #441). Within the State Churches, most notably in Sweden, there had long been tensions between the proponents of High Church and Low Church theologies, especially over issues such as the historic liturgies of Christianity, the nature and powers of the pastors, and the position of the bishops. In their transition away from papal control in the sixteenth century the Scandinavian churches moved rather seamlessly into Lutheran churches, and adopted the authority of the Lutheran confessional documents. Yet many of the medieval traditions had been maintained within these churches as well, and these elements occasioned controversy. The revival of High Church Lutheranism around the University of Lund in southern Sweden was echoed in other places, creating conflict with the heirs of the nineteenth century awakenings, who generally rather Low Church.

297

New ecumenical ties, especially with the Church of England, such as the Swedish-Anglican agreement on intercommunion in 1922, also added to these tensions. (ch. 12, doc. #503). After the First World War, Scandinavian Lutherans played an important role in attempting to rebuild relations among world Lutherans, ties that had been strained by the war. Many were also active in panChristian ecumenism, including the Faith and Order movement, and the parallel Life and Work movement, championed by Swedish Archbishop Nathan Söderblom, who sponsored a very successful meeting of the latter group in Stockholm in 1925. This was also a time when Scandinavian Lutherans were active in missionary efforts around the world, especially in Africa, India, and China. War and instability in many of these areas, the world-wide economic depression of the 1930s, and the growth of military tensions in Europe were factors that compromised these activities. The Second World War (1939–45) had a direct impact on the Scandinavian countries (see chapter 7). Denmark and Norway were invaded by the Germans in 1940, while Sweden remained neutral (but had to accede to certain German demands). Finland fought the “Winter War” against the Soviet Union, and the Finns and the Baltic countries sought German assistance in trying to fend off the Communist threat. The Nazi occupation of Germany and Norway challenged the Lutheran State Churches to re-examine their support for government and their relations to it. In 1942, the Norwegian bishops resigned en masse from the State Church in protest of the actions of the Germans and their Quisling collaborators (doc. #442). In Denmark there was resistance as well; the Lutheran pastor Kai Munk (1898–1944) issued fiery underground sermons to stiffen the resistance of the Danes, though Munk himself was captured and executed by the Nazis in 1944 (doc. #443). After the Second World War, problems continued. Much of Europe, especially Germany and Eastern Europe was in ruins, and there were millions of displaced persons to be housed, along with refugees from Eastern Europe and the Baltic countries fleeing the Communist takeover of their countries (doc. #444). Baltic Lutherans set up ethnic “Churches in Exile” in Scandinavia, while the Finns had to carefully negotiate relations with their powerful Soviet neighbors, who had seized a portion of eastern Finland. These political developments caused leaders of the State Churches to continue their reappraisal of their relations to their governments, and to the new political realities of post-war Europe (doc. #445). In

298

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

addition to these pressures, the growing secularism and religious pluralism in the Scandinavian countries led many church leaders to examine new paradigms for their churches; the idea of these churches as “Folk Churches,” rested in among the people of the nation, became an increasingly popular concept for the Scandinavian church leaders. Social, political, and economic shifts in Scandinavia accelerated after the Second World War, with great impact on the churches, whose attendance and participation, as well as impact on society, continued to wane. Christians attempted to maintain their position in the political realm through the development of Christian Democratic parties, but these were generally less than successful in stemming the tide of liberalism and secularism. New radical ideas came into Scandinavia in the 1960s, and some of these liberal ideas became lodged in certain parts of the State Churches as well. One of the most important aspects of these trends was the question of ordaining women to the Christian ministry, which the Scandinavian State Churches all eventually agreed to, starting in the 1960s, but these decisions also increased tensions within the churches from those who opposed the decisions (doc. #447). By the 1990s, the churches in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark had come to elect women as bishops, as well. The impact of important Scandinavian Lutheran theologians continued after the Second World War, and provided a needed alternative to the domination of German Lutheran theologians, some of whom had been tainted by their relations with the Nazi regime. Gustaf Aulén and Anders Nygren continued theological work started before the war, and were joined by their Swedish colleague (and critic) Gustaf Wingren, who continued the Swedish Luther renaissance, and later branched out into more contemporary themes, including environmentalism (doc. #448). Conservative Swedish Lutheran Bishop and theologian Bo Giertz (1905–1998) challenged the general trend toward liberalism among Scandinavian Lutheranism, and stressed the importance of the liturgy (doc. #446). Danish Lutheran theologian Regin Prenter produced an important study of Luther and the Holy Spirit, and also wrote an important theological work for lay persons (doc. #441). Toward the end of the twentieth century, Finnish Luther scholar Tuomo Mannerma (1937–2015), and others with him developed the “Finnish School” of Luther research; influenced by their contacts with Orthodox theology, they sought to explore the concept of “theosis” or “divinization,” as a way to understand and appropriate Luther’s theology (doc. #449).

Toward the end of the twentieth century, the growth of secularism and the decline in church participation led many to call for radically restructuring the official relations between Church and State, and the influences of the churches in education and other areas of society. It was officially recognized in a number of decisions that the Scandinavian countries were officially secular and pluralistic nations, and that the official positions of the State Churches should be curtailed. Church leaders continued to pursue the conceptual revolution of considering their churches as rooted in the people and not the state (the Folk Church model). In 2000 the Church of Sweden was officially dis-established from the Swedish State, while the other countries continue to re-examine their own situations (doc. #458). Secularism in Scandinavian societies reached the point by the end of the twentieth century that the usual markers of religiosity (church participation, belief in God, etc.) had declined to very low levels. Yet a majority of inhabitants in the Scandinavian countries still maintain their membership in the State Churches (however nominal), and continue to pay their church taxes to support it, whether for religious, cultural, or social reasons (docs. #450 and 451). The majority of Scandinavians also continue to use the parishes for life-cycle rituals, such as baptism, confirmation, marriages, and funerals. Yet even in these areas the rates are declining, and the long-term trends are unclear (doc. #453). The Lutheran Churches in Scandinavia continue to do their work and serve society in many ways in the midst of these transitions and changes. 426. THE CONVENTICLE ACT OF SWEDEN (1726) In response to the growing influence of Pietism, especially in areas outside the direct control of the State Church, governments in the Scandinavian countries issued laws forbidding unsupervised religious activities, especially small-group prayer meetings, called conventicles. From Karl Olsson, By One Spirit Spirit. (Chicago: Covenant Press, 1962), 26–27. (paragraph 2). . . But that in private houses men and women, old and young, known and unknown, few or many should have the freedom to congregate under the pretext of practicing their piety sand particular to worship and that in these places there should be preaching and exposition of the pericopic texts as well as the explication of prayers and novel

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

prayer practices—this we consider neither useful nor needful, but rather a dangerous novelty, which destroys good order in our Christian congregations and ultimately, under certain circumstances, leads to selfwill, abuses, and many serious disorders. It is to be feared that many out of ignorance or misunderstanding of their Christian faith could be easily led into erroneous concepts and doctrines not in accordance with the pure evangelical doctrine. This is so, furthermore, because such conventicles cannot be proved necessary for the practice of a true Christianity since our Kingdom, God be praised, has the great advantage that among us the Word of God in plentifully taught and preached, and everyone is free to practice his own piety in his own house. We consider it, therefore, advisable to eliminate and to forbid such illegal conventicles, so that he who holds or permits them [shall be fined or imprisoned]. 427. HANS NIELSEN HAUGE: ON HIS CONVERSION EXPERIENCE (1817) The spiritual leader of the nineteenth-century religious awakening in Norway was Hans Nielsen Hauge, a lay Christian leader. Because his itinerant preaching and small group conventicles were against the law, Hauge was harassed by government officials, and imprisoned for years. From “Religious Experiences,” Autobiogr utobiographical aphical Writing of Hans Nielsen Haug auge. e. trans. by Joel M. Njus. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1954), 33–71.

Fig. 10.1. A Low Church devotion as may have been convened by Hans Nielsen Hauge. Painting by artist Adolph Tidemand (1814–76)

From early youth until my twenty-fifth year, I,

299

Hans Nielsen Hauge, was of an outwardly quiet temperament. I had no desire to fight and little inclination to join in the merriment of my companions. Rather I became depressed when I went to parties and saw and heard the noisy gaiety. I was especially grieved when people started quarreling. My father had warned me against cursing and misusing the name of God; so from childhood I had a deeply instilled dislike for such things. I never danced, cared little for games or music, and would not go to taverns. But when somebody told stories or talked about religious or spiritual things, I was deeply interested. It is true I acknowledged my sins when I communed, but my worldly carelessness, instability, and disobedience to my parents disturbed my conscience. Often after remorse over sin and a renewal of good intentions to walk the way of the blessed, I was well satisfied, found my pleasure in God, sang spiritual songs, and so forth. . . . The older I grew, the more I lost my capacity for noble feeling. Various anxieties began to weigh heavily upon me as on different occasions I met with adversity and experienced fear. Terror overwhelmed me when I was in the dark, just as if evil spirits were after me. Such things troubled me until I was twenty-five years old. . . . Finally, by prayerful reading of the Bible and other Christian books I began to get more knowledge of God’s will as well as the desire to do His will with my whole heart. Now I developed an aversion for all sins and talked about what I believed to others so that different ones began to make fun of me and call me “holy.” Some people said that if I continued to devote so such time to reading, I would lose my mind. That was what had happened to many others who had read too much, they averred. I answered that I could not believe that those who meditated upon God’s Word would lose their minds but would rather gain wisdom to practice those things that are pleasing to God. God also gave me grace to meditate more upon His will. I thought about His omnipotence and how much He has created for the good of us human beings. I reflected upon His immeasurable greatness and goodness. I sensed how wonderful it would be to be His child and believed that I could become this if I only had a true desire to do so. “Alas,” I thought, “many seek to win honor and respect in the world. Some are proud because they are of a high social class or have parents that are rich in the things of this world. Of what help are these things in death! But to have God as Father, to be His child, surpasses anything the mind can comprehend.” I cannot describe

300

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

how exalted and happy I felt during such moments of contemplation. But I know that I fell far short of truly being a child of God, especially in this: loving Him above all things and being humble of heart. I prayed a great deal for grace to practice these virtues and to learn to know His will, both what to do and what not to do. “If Thou, my Father, wilt give me power, create Thy love in my heart and preserve me in humility, then I will serve Thee with all my strength. I will sacrifice everything, even my own life, as did the early martyrs, rather than depart from Thy commandments.” These and similar feelings filled my heart when I was alone, away from all human associations. The desire to please God grew more and more. In prayer to Him, I would kneel in heartfelt unworthiness of the great goodness He had shown me, ashamed because I had not served the Lord as I ought. Sometimes I fell on my knees and prayed almighty God for the sake of His Son to establish me on the spiritual rock, Christ Jesus. For I believed that then even the gates of hell would be powerless against me. I called upon the God of my salvation to reveal His Son’s love in me and grant His Holy Spirit to expose my wretchedness and impotence and teach me the way I should walk in order to follow in the footsteps of Christ. One day while I was working outside under the open sky, I sang from memory the hymn, “Jesus, I Long for Thy Blessed Communion.” I had just sung the second verse: Mightily strengthen my spirit within me, That I may learn what Thy Spirit can do; Oh, take Thou captive each passion and win me, Lead Thou and guide me my whole journey through! All that I am and possess I surrender, If Thou alone in my spirit mayest dwell, Everything yield Thee, O Savior most tender, Thou, only Thou, canst my sadness dispel.

At this point my mind became so exalted that I was not myself aware of, nor can I express, what took place in my soul. For I was beside myself. As soon as I came to my senses, I was filled with regret that I had not served this loving transcendently good God. Now it seemed to me that nothing in this world was worthy of any regard. That my soul experienced something supernatural, divine, and blessed; that there was a glory that no tongue can utter—that I remember as clearly as if it had happened–only a few days ago. And it is now nearly twenty years since the love of God visited me so abundantly.

Nor can anyone argue this away from me. For I know all the good that followed in my spirit from that hour, especially a deep, burning love to God and my neighbor. I know that I received an entirely changed mind, a sorrow for sin and a desire that other people should become partakers with me of the same grace. I know that I was given a special desire to read the Holy Scriptures, especially Jesus’ own teachings. At the same time I received new light to understand the Word and to bring together the teachings of all men of God to one focal point: that Christ has come for our salvation, that we should by His Spirit be born again, repent, and be sanctified more and more in accord with God’s attributes to serve the triune God alone, in order that our souls may be refined and prepared for eternal blessedness. 428. GISLE JOHNSON: SANCTIFICATION AND REGENERATION OF THE SINNER (1897) The preaching and writing of Gisle Johnson gave the revival movement theological shape. Very different from Hauge, Johnson was a pastor, theological professor, and church leader whose work kept the revival movement within the Church of Norway. Here he deals with sanctification, a perennially difficult issue in Lutheran theology. From Gisle Johnson, An Outline of Systematic Theology for Use in Lectur Lectures. es. trans. by Johan Koren. M.Div. thesis, Association of Free Lutheran Congregations Seminary, Minneapolis, 1983. 2. The Quickening of the Sinner. As one justified by God, the believer knows himself essentially also to be quickened or made alive by Him. The objective redemption given in justification is inseparably and indissolubly linked to a subjective redemption, in which the sinner’s longing for liberation from the miserable state which is the necessary result of his unrighteousness has been satisfied. This is a restitution of man’s original, normal personal existence, which, as the abolition of that “death” which is the “wages of sin,” essentially consists of the quickening of the one who has died, in the gift of a new life. This quickening finds its necessary prerequisite in justification. Just as God can only give the sinner the gracious gift of new life when He has graciously accepted him in justification, and removed the wall of partition which the guilt of sin raises between

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

them, so the sinner, too, on his part, can only begin the new life in love toward God when he in faith has received the grace of God and overcome the slavish fear that excludes such love. But at the same time justification also finds its necessary sequel in this quickening. If the guilt of sin has been removed, then also its punishment must be cancelled. God cannot forgive sin without thereby at the same time saving from death; He cannot declare the sinner to be righteous without thereby equally bestowing upon him that life which belongs to the righteous. And thus, neither can the sinner on his part in faith appropriate to himself God’s grace, without thereby at the same time loving that God in return who first loved him. This new life which God in this way communicates to the justified believer finds its beginnings and its resultant amplification and organic development as a life existing under the conditions of temporal existence. We must therefore also in the quickening of the sinner distinguish between its beginning and its continuance: between the “regeneration” of the sinner and the regenerated sinner’s “renewal.” a. The Regeneration of the Sinner. The necessary and immediate result of justification is quickening of the justified sinner, in the form of the communication of a new life principle. The believer receives a new power of life in an act of creation: as such, a momentary act of saving grace, by which the fruitful seed of a new existence becomes planted in the organism of sinful man controlled by death. In this way man’s organism is renewed in principle, and thus the ideal of human life is once more realized in principle. It is this fundamental quickening of the sinner—this fundamental communication of a new life” that is most particularly designated “regeneration.” This concept of the working of grace as a quickening of one who was dead basically describes a fundamental change in man’s subjective existence: an absolute turning point in his life, by which his earlier development is interrupted, and a new life development is set in motion. Certainly, this cannot be thought of as a re–creation of man’s substantial being. That which is in principle abolished in man’s immediate reality is only his death. The attributes which God Himself has introduced into man’s reality by His creation, He cannot by His regenerating action destroy. He can only liberate, renew and glorify. The natural traits and powers received by the individual in creation are purified by regenerating grace and liberated from the corrupting influence of sin—and thereby also glorified, energized and permeated by the fertilizing power of the new life. The direct, natural gift therefore becomes a gift of

301

God’s grace. On the other hand, however, regeneration can nevertheless neither be thought of as the liberation of an already present life from the inhibiting influence of a hostile power. Regeneration consists in the communication by God to the sinner of a life which he does not have, thereby in principle liberating him from the power of death. In this way, God again places the sinner in the normal life situation which he had forfeited through sin, and to that extent “renews” him, creates in him a “new man” in His image, and thus to this extent making him a “new creation:” a new “man of God.” As a fundamental quickening of the one who is dead, regeneration is more particularly a spiritual rebirth. Just as the sinner’s death first and foremost appears as spiritual death, reigning in the heart, the central point of the organism, so also must his quickening begin with the regeneration of the heart, by the communication of a new, spiritual life. The “new man,” the new life principle, which is communicated to him in regeneration, essentially consists of a new “spirit,” which includes within itself the power to permeate the whole organism with its life. The regenerated believer is essentially a new “spiritual” man. The new spiritual life which thus is the fruit of regeneration, is a personal existence in which spiritual death is abolished in principle in the form of its antithesis. That is, it is a state in which man is freed in principle not only from sin, but also from the state of spiritual blindness: the inner lack of peace and joy in which the death-bringing power of sin reveals itself in the areas of understanding and the emotions. Thus, the regenerated life is first and foremost a life in love toward God. In this love a new moral impulse has been planted in the heart, directing the will proceeding from the heart in accordance with God’s holy will. There is a heartfelt desire and longing to obey and serve Him, in which the power is given for a life of good works. Such willing obedience appears as a “new obedience,” in opposition, not only to the old disobedience of natural man, but equally also to the old obedience forced upon him by slavish fear. The holy Law of God itself is written upon man’s heart, His holy will has become man’s will, and thus also has man’s will become a holy and as such truly free will, expressed in a righteous life. The regenerated believer as such is freed from the slavery of sin, purified from the contamination of sin, yes, dead to sin, to the extent that he essentially cannot sin. The regeneration of the sinner is from this point of view in principle his sanctification. But at the same time it also includes as an equally essential factor a new spiritual enlightenment. Its essential fruit in the area of

302

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

intellectual life is the fundamental abolition of natural man’s spiritual blindness and ignorance with the advent of a new understanding of the truth that in its extent, clarity and certainty enables the regenerated believer to prove all things and judge all things. And in addition to this, there is a third essential factor in the regenerated believer’s new spiritual life, in a blessed feeling of inner harmony and a direct experience of inner well-being. Natural man’s lack of peace and joy is in principle abolished as peace, joy and boldness enters his heart. From this point of view it can be said that the believer in regeneration in principle becomes blessed. Regeneration as a communication of such spiritual life, like justification, finds its source in the grace of God through Christ. The new life is a gift of God’s grace. Regeneration is a work of God’s saving grace, in which the sinner plays a passive role. Essentially, that life which was forfeited through sin and again communicated to the sinner in regeneration, is God’s own eternal life. Just as the sinner’s spiritual death is the result of his exclusion from the source of life in fellowship with God, therefore, so can the one dead in sin only be quickened as God once more takes him into a life fellowship with Him, gives him of the fullness of His own life, and thus makes him His “child” in the subjective sense of the word. And just as this life is a spiritual life, so also is its communication first and foremost a work of the Spirit of God, depending on God’s gift of His Spirit to the sinner. . . . The new life finds its essential basis and prerequisite in the sinner’s life fellowship with Christ and in Him with God. As such, it is a “mystical union” between God and man, which comes into being as God not only gives man His gifts through Christ in the Spirit that both share, but Himself essentially and personally takes up residence in the heart of the regenerated believer. From this, the organic central point of the personality, God permeates man with the power of eternal life and transforms him into likeness with Himself. 429. NIKOLAI F.S. GRUNDTVIG: CHRISTIAN FAITH AS BAPTISMAL CONFESSION (1855) Grundtvig was one of the foremost theologians in the nineteenth-century Church of Denmark, and still especially remembered for his hymns. A proponent of the “Folk Church” model of Christianity, he located the essence of the faith in the baptismal creeds of Christianity. From The Selected Writings of N.F.S. Grundtvig Grundtvig.

trans. by Johannes Knudsen. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), 64–73.

Fig. 10.2. Nikolai F. S. Grundtvig (1843) by artist Christian Albrecht Jensen (1792–1870)

It is a Christian insight, which will shed light on the matter even though it does not completely clarify it, that we must and shall sum up the signs of Christian life in “Confession, Proclamation, and Praise” in the language of the people. I have strongly felt the absence of this when I searched for the Christian life in myself and in the congregation, and when I had to defend the Lord Jesus Christ against the dishonoring accusation that he had permitted his life to die in the church or had been unable, with the exception of a brief apostolic period, to bring it out of its swaddling clothes or to nurture it to youthful flowering or adult maturity. . . . We must discover the Christian expressions of the life of faith in the three ways: in the confession of faith at baptism, in the Christian hope as we have it in the Lord’s Prayer at baptism as well as at Communion, and in the love expressed in Christ’s word of submission to his faithful or his declaration of love to his bride, the church, in Communion. Only then can we, in our congregational life, show a Christian confession, proclamation, and praise which are the peculiar and unmistakable signs of the Christian faith, the

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

Christian hope, and the Christian love. Then we can speak clearly and judge thoroughly about their relation to faith, hope, and love. The Christian life in itself will undoubtedly continue to be a profound mystery to us, but the same is true of our total human life, which is separate from that of animals, for no one can make the Christian life known except through comparable spiritual expressions. If someone should object that the Christian signs of life, such as confession, proclamation, and praise, are only words and not action, then we rightly answer that the invisible spirit of man as well as of God can demonstrate its life only through that invisible word which can be heard by the ear and felt in the heart. Every action, by the hand and by all visible things, is vaguely related to the invisible spirit, and we can only glimpse the relationship through a word of enlightenment. Even then we will see darkly in a vague and ambiguous way. The perfect Christian love will seek to express itself in a marvelous generosity and bodily sacrifice, but even the apostolic letter gives testimony that we can give all we own to the poor and we can give our body to be burned and still not have Christian love. It is also evident that many people have done these things without calling themselves Christian or desiring even to be Christians. Even the most dedicated works of love can only be signs of Christian love when they are clearly related to the Christian confession and the Christian song of praise. This is the outward significance of enlightenment about “the Christian signs of life”; the significance inward and upward is even more important for all of us. We seek in vain to probe the mysteries of the Christian life, whether it be the mystery of the call in preaching the gospel (the cry of the Christmas message), or the mystery of nurture in the Supper. But the Christian way of life does become brighter and easier for us when we discover the company in which we can seek and expect the Christian faith, the Christian hope, and the Christian love, so that faith is strengthened, hope expanded, and love increased. By this we are furthermore comforted about the gap between the shape of the Christian life in the congregation of the present day and the shape in which it is described by the apostles, in part in themselves and the first fruits of the congregation, but especially in Jesus Christ with fullness and purity. We are comforted not as bookworms who depend on the perfection of an alien life whose description they devour but as a bright boy is comforted about the distance between himself and his adult brother or his aging father. When we are turned aright in our living con-

303

sideration of the Christian life as a spiritual human life, which is just as real and a lot more human than our physical life, then, like the apostle Paul, we are not anxious about our distance from the goal. Then we see that the Christian life begins with a real conception according to the will of the Spirit, and as the Lord says, with a real birth by water and the Spirit. Then it continues, as did the Lord himself, to grow in age and wisdom and favor with God and man. Then, like Paul, we will strive to forget what is behind us in favor of what is ahead, and by living progress we will reach for the wreath and the crown. When we regard the Christian life, as also the human life, the mind tells us that there is light behind us but darkness ahead. We can understand no more of life than what we have experienced. On the Christian lifeway, however, there is an unusual and even superhuman light. The Lord has said that whosoever follows after him shall never be in darkness, for he is the true light of the world. The lantern that guides us through the darkness is, as the apostle writes, a sure word of prophecy, which is known by the fact that it corresponds to the Rule of Faith and mankind’s sure foundation. It is a necessary consequence of the covenant of baptism that the spiritual life to which we are born in baptism can in no way be demonic. In every way that spiritual life has to be divine. Christianity presupposes very clearly that human life in the image of God can only be reborn and renewed by a wondrous separation from devildom. How much of humanity is devildom and how much a person has to contribute during his lifetime to the release from deviltry and to the growth of divinity is a puzzle for the mind that can be solved only by experience, and it is no wonder that independent efforts to analyze and determine this matter have led to confusion. The more we listen to the description of the scribes of what is called the “order of salvation,” how Scripture calls for us to shed the old man and put on the new, the less we understand the matter. We experience a boundless confusion where it seems as if all of human life must be eradicated as deviltry, or contrariwise as if there was no deviltry, so that man should either direct the new Christian life or stand beside it as an idle observer. When a person is a living Christian, even when he has not come of age, he realizes that none of the alternatives is true. If there were no devil, no Satan, no Father of Lies, no man of darkness, no murdering angel, if he had no power over man, there would be no word of truth in the gospel of Christ, not an iota of truth in the message about the Son of God as the savior of the world from the power of sin,

304

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

darkness, and death. For this power can exist and be active only in an unclean spirit of the world. If, on the other hand, all of human nature had become demonic at the Fall, the Son of God could have become a real human being as little as he could have become a devil. Then the new man could not have been wrought in God’s image through a rebirth and a renewal of the old man but only by a brand new creation entirely independent of the old man. How the very complicated matter of sanctification and salvation can take place in fallen and sinful humanity, corporately as well as individually, is hidden from our eyes. The Son of God became man in all respects; he was like us but without sin. His life as man cannot demonstrate for us now the new man, who grows up, is liberated from sin and Satan by being cleansed from the “defilement of body and spirit” [2 Cor 7:1]. If we are to know this, the spirit of truth as the spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ must reveal it for us. But, inasmuch as we, during the growth of the new man, cannot dispense with the tentative knowledge of the growth of life, the spirit of the Lord will also inform us about this when we pray. For it is written about this same spirit: “He will declare to you the things that are to come” [John 16:13]. When it still does not happen the reason must be that the church’s faith in the Holy Spirit is either so shaky or so vague that he cannot be called upon or distinguished from the spirits of delusion. Inasmuch as we have only recently gained a sure and definite belief in the Holy Spirit as a divine part of the Trinity, and inasmuch as we have thereby discovered the nature of that “confession” of the incarnate Jesus Christ upon which the spirit of truth can and shall be distinguished from the spirit of delusion, we have only now received the revelation of the Spirit concerning the usefulness for the whole congregation that we keep the faith, fight, and win the crown. This happened when we placed our trust in the confession of faith at baptism as a word to us from the mouth of the Lord. . . . 430. SØREN KIERKEGAARD: ATTACK UPON CHRISTENDOM (1855) Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is most known for his biting criticisms of the Church and Christianity of his day, attacking the idea that any people or society could be called Christian. For him, true Christians were rare indeed, and he was not sure that he himself was really a Christian. From: Søren Kierkegaard. Attack Upon Christen-

dom dom. trans. by Walter Lowrie. (New York: Princeton University Press, 1996), 436–47.

Fig. 10.3. Sketch of Søren Kierkegaard (ca. 1840); based on a sketch by Niels Christian Kierkegaard (1806–82)

The Religious Situation In the New Testament the situation is this: the speaker, our Lord Jesus Christ, Himself absolutely expressing opposition, stands in a world which in turn absolutely expresses opposition to Him and to His teaching. When of the individual Christ requires faith, then (and with this we have a sharper definition of what He understands by faith), then by reason of the situation this is not feasible without coming into a relationship with the surrounding world which perhaps involves mortal danger; when Christ says, “Confess me before the world,” “Follow me,” or when lie says, “Come unto me,” etc., etc., then, by reason of the situation which furnishes the more express understanding, the consequences will always be exposure to danger, perhaps to mortal danger. On the other hand, where all are Christians, the situation is this: to call oneself a Christian is the means

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

whereby one secures oneself against all sorts of inconveniences and discomforts, and the means whereby one secures worldly goods, comforts, profit, etc., etc. But we make as if nothing had happened, we declaim about believing (“He who knows best, that is our priest”), about confessing Christ before the world, about following Him, etc., etc.; and orthodoxy flourishes in the land, no heresy, no schism, orthodoxy everywhere, the orthodoxy which consists in playing the game of Christianity. . . . We are what is called a “Christian” nation—but in such a sense that not a single one of us is in the character of the Christianity of the New Testament, any more than I am, who again and again have repeated, and do now repeat, that I am only a poet. The illusion of a Christian nation is due doubtless to the power which number exercises over the imagination. 1 have not the least doubt that every single individual in the nation will be honest enough with God and with himself to say in solitary conversation, “If I must be candid, I do not deny that I am not a Christian in the New Testament sense; if I must be honest, I do not deny that my life cannot be called an effort in the direction of what the New Testament calls Christianity, in the direction of denying myself, renouncing the world, dying from it, etc.; rather the earthly and the temporal become more and more important to me with every year I live.” I have not the least doubt that everyone will, with respect to ten of his acquaintances, let us say, be able to hold fast to the view that they are not Christians in the New Testament sense, and that their lives are not even an effort in the direction of becoming so. The Comfortable—the Concern for an Eternal Blessedness It is these two things—one might almost be tempted to say, what the deuce have these two things to do with one another?—and yet it is these two things that official Christianity, or the State by the aid of official Christianity, has jumbled together, and done it as calmly as when, at a party where the host wants to include everybody, he jumbles many toasts in one. It seems that the reasoning of the State must have been as follows. Among the many various things which man needs on a civilized plane and which the State tries to provide for its citizens as cheaply and comfortably as possible—among these very various things, like public security, water, illumination, roads, bridge-building, etc., etc., there is also—an

305

eternal blessedness in the hereafter, a requirement which the State ought also to satisfy (how generous of it!), and that in as cheap and comfortable a way as possible. Of course it will cost money, for without money one gets nothing in this world, not even a certificate of eternal blessedness in the other world; no, without money one gets nothing in this world. Yet all the same, what the State does, to the great advantage of the individual, is that one gets it from the State at a cheaper price than if the individual were to make some private arrangement, moreover it is more secure, and finally it is comfortable in a degree that only can be provided on a big scale. . . . Far be it from me to speak disparagingly of the comfortable! Let it be applied wherever it can be applied, in relation to everything which is in such a sense a thing that this thing can be possessed irrespective of the way in which it is possessed, so that one can have it either in this way or in the other; for when such is the case, the convenient and comfortable way is undeniably to be preferred. Take water for example: water is a thing which can be procured in the difficult way of fetching it up from the pump, but it can also be procured in the convenient way of high pressure; naturally I prefer the more convenient way. But the eternal is not a thing which can be had regardless of the way in which it is acquired; no, the eternal is not really a thing, but is the way in which it is acquired. The eternal is acquired in one way, and the eternal is different from everything else precisely for the fact that it can be acquired only in one single way; conversely, what can be acquired in only one way is the eternal—it is acquired only in one way, in the difficult way which Christ indicated by the words: “Narrow is the gate and straitened the way that leads unto life, and few are they that find it.” That was bad news! The comfortable—precisely the thing in which our age excels—absolutely cannot be applied with respect to an eternal blessedness. When, for example, the thing you are required to do is to walk, it is no use at all to make the most astonishing inventions in the way of the easiest carriages and to want to convey yourself in these when the task prescribed to you was—walking. And if the eternal is the way in which it is acquired, it doesn’t do any good to want to alter this way, however admirably, in the direction of comfort; for the eternal is acquired only in the difficult way, is not acquired indifferently both in the easy and the difficult way, but is the way in which it is acquired, and this way is the difficult one. . . .

306

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

431. VILHELM BECK: A DEFENSE OF THE AWAKENING MOVEMENT IN DENMARK (1901) The Pietist impulse toward the moral and religious renewal of Christianity in Denmark was formed into a movement known as the “Inner Mission,” whose leader was Danish pastor Vilhelm Beck. Here we defends the movement from charges by critics, mainly followers of Grundtvig. From Memoirs. trans. by C.A. Stub. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965). Some accusations which have been unjustly made against the Inner Mission should be mentioned. The strangest is that by calling ourselves “saints” we isolate ourselves as a special group in contrast to the remainder of the Christian church. It is not strange that the world should utter such nonsense, but that believers do so is incomprehensible. “Saints” is the ancient name of the people of God, a name attested in Scripture and embracing all the forgiving grace of our Savior. During all the spiritually alive periods of church history this name has been used. So it was at the time of the apostles, at the time of the Reformation, and when the work of the Grundtvigians was in full bloom in the middle of the nineteenth century. They also called themselves the “saints,” and those who were faithful to the remnant of spiritual life during the period of rationalism designated themselves by the same name. The substitution of the word “Christians” for this old confessional name has always coincided with times of decline in the life of the church. “Christian” is also the name which the whole mass of unbelieving baptized people has adopted for itself. When the Inner Mission reclaimed the biblical name, it never intended to use it as a special name for itself. The Inner Mission is not the “saints,” but the “saints” carry on the Inner Mission. We have adopted it and use it as the common designation of all those who belong to the living church. If there are some among these who do not wish to be called “saints,” this is their affair. The Inner Mission can do nothing about that. Another accusation against the Inner Mission is that it condemns people and makes them censorious. This is one of those accusations about which people cry out without knowing what they are saying. The truth is that the Inner Mission lets the Word of God pronounce judgment: “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he who does not believe shall be condemned.”

We who know that anyone who speaks in the congregation must do so “as one who utters oracles of God,” drawing a distinct line of division in all our preaching between two kinds of people, believers and unbelievers, saved and lost, in order that each person may decide for himself to which kind he belongs. But we do not point out who is a believer and who is not. We do look upon some persons as believers, and we join them in a holy brotherhood. All believers from the time of the apostles have done this—but we recognize fully that we may be mistaken. . . . Finally, the Inner Mission has been accused of localizing sin in certain external activities, such as dancing and card-playing, and of making abstention from these activities the criterion of faith. Only ignorance of the Inner Mission and of the mind and life of its friends could be the explanation of such an accusation. The Inner Mission knows no other difference between believers and unbelievers than faith and unbelief. Every believer knows, however, that with this difference goes a different life. A person of faith will necessarily gain new friends among God’s children, and friendship with the world becomes impossible. A person of faith necessarily acquires new joys, and old pleasures lose their allure. In most instances such pleasures come to be taken as sad and miserably empty. The unfortunate Grundtvigian assembly halls with their tawdry pleasures are an impressive warning that these things may be a great temptation and stumbling block for believers. Yet the Grundtvigians continue, undismayed, to advocate dancing and all other worldly pleasures. The Inner Mission, on the other hand, maintains that we have something better with which to amuse ourselves. 432. HENRIC SCHARTAU: JESUS ONLY (C. 1800) Schartau is a representative of the older, eighteenth-century Scandinavian piety, one that was located within the congregations of the Church of Sweden, and led by pietistically-inclined pastors. Schartau’s influence was most important in Southern Sweden, through his sermons. From Henric Schartau and the Order of Gr Grace. ace. trans. by S.G. Hagglund. (Rock Island IL: Augustana Book Concern, 1928), 117–26. Jesus only is the basis of the new birth, for it is faith in Him alone that brings regeneration of the heart. Paul expresses this in Ephesians 2.6, saying, “God

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

made us to sit with Christ in the heavenly places.” When a man fixes his attention upon Jesus alone and upon the holiness which He purchased and perfected when He had “His delight in the law of the Lord,” he receives the Spirit which grants full enlightenment in the Word of God. The believer then becomes like the Lord Jesus, being “transformed into the same image.” The light of the glory of Jesus enlightens the soul to see aright and to perceive clearly the heavenly light in the Word of God, when the Sun of Righteousness arises and God takes His dwelling in the soul. God then also grants the believer a new mind, “the mind which was also in Christ Jesus.” His will becomes our will, and we thereupon always desire to be humble like Jesus, meek like Jesus, obedient like Jesus, pure in heart like Jesus, and occasionally we are also able to be thus, for in the new birth we received “a clean heart and a right spirit” and a mind like that “which was also in Christ Jesus.” Third Part: Jesus Only. In sanctification, as its power. It is in sanctification that the power of our Lord Jesus Christ is best shown, for it is Jesus who provides the power to put off the old man and put on the new. If you are to get rid of your wicked thoughts, if you are to quench your evil desires, if you are to succeed in overcoming your old sinful habits, verily, there is no other help for this in heaven or on earth than that provided by Jesus only. He has conquered sin, and “in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us,” for He is “the Lord which sanctifies.” “The sanctification of the spirit” is a sure result of His redemption. If you were unable to resist sin, if you were compelled to fall therein again, then the forgiveness would be useless and the atonement in vain. But His merit is complete and perfect, and He has arranged that the merit imputed to you at once and immediately in justification shall also gradually be wrought in you in sanctification. Jesus has not only stood in your stead as a just man who has had His delight in God’s commandments and whose righteousness is imputed to you as though you had always been just, but He has also brought about that you actually become just and obtain more and more delight in God’s law according to the inner man. The more a person grows in faith in the Lord Jesus, the more he will also increase in good works. You do not, as you may suppose, receive more faith and grace from God by virtue of your watchfulness, meekness, patience, and devotion, but quite the reverse. In the proportion that Jesus becomes great and glorious to you, in the proportion that He

307

becomes indispensable, you will increase in all the virtues that derive their strength from Him. The more faith, which is the origin of love, increases, the more will also love, which is the result of faith, increase. Love for Jesus is the chief motive unto sanctification in a converted soul. It is love for Jesus that makes the believers submissive to Him in trials and sorrow, enabling them to bear His cross when the Lord finds it needful for their sanctification. Paul designates the knowledge of the love of Christ as the most immediate cause leading to one’s being “filled unto all the fullness of God.” In like manner it is love for Jesus that makes the most pleasing sins abominable and the most grievous duties light. It is love for Jesus that enables us to love all men, because He has deigned to make them all objects of His love. It is love for Jesus which opens our heart so that we may have confidence in those who are known to be partakers of that same love of Christ. It is love for Jesus which quenches our anger when we are offended, which kills hatred and enables the believer to love his enemies, since Jesus has loved them too, precisely as He loved us even while we were yet His enemies. Jesus is the most splendid and only perfect pattern to follow in sanctification. Do not ask to become like this one or that one, but pray that you may become like Jesus. Do not attempt to imitate the talents of others, nor their measure of grace, but walk in the footsteps of your Savior. Along that way you shall more and more attain to that whereunto by your election you were ordained, namely, to be “conformed to the image of His Son.” Application Do you, O confident sinner, know whom you are warring against, whom you are scoffing at? It is not the servant who proclaims the message which you contradict, not human beings whom you mock for their spiritual interests, but Jesus only, Jesus, whose words are being spoken to you and whose members they are whom you vituperate. Rest assured that Jesus alone is able to overrule your wickedness and to judge and punish you. How dreadful it will be for you when you lie upon your death bed at the end of the way to realize that the Son’s wrath is upon you! How awful the mere appearance of Jesus when, in the resurrection, you raise your head from the grave! Take heed to what you have heard, O mournful souls, remember that Jesus only is the object of your awakening. Do not therefore seek for more regret nor for an immediate improvement in your course of

308

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

life, but seek for Jesus only. Where, indeed, can you look for salvation except to your Savior? Where can you find salvation except in Him? It is nowhere else to be found. When you have found Him and in Him righteousness and strength, when His righteousness is your support in temptations, when His might is your succor, lo, then you have enough in Him, for you have all in Him. If then it should ever happen that you, like the first disciples, should in spirit see somewhat of His glory and “taste the powers of the age to come,” and if this glory should thereupon disappear, then do not look for Moses or Elias, but be contented with the grace granted to those early disciples of whom we read, “When they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one, save Jesus only.” When the peace of Christ has brought you reinvigoration and His promises have given you assurance of grace, then it shall also be your lot, at the approach of death, when your eyes can no longer see the things of this world, then the vision of your soul shall be opened and endowed with heavenly light to see the great glory, world without end, face to face,—Jesus only. Amen.

thou sayest to me, my own doing, I would no longer weep over it (Rom. 7.20). And how dost thou, false spirit, wish in such a perverted way to make a saint of me, since thou speakest of my having sinned? Why, I have never pretended that I was sinless. My own righteousness before the Law is a thing of the past so that, as regards my pardon, what I am, or do, or have done counts for nothing. The only thing that counts here is what my Lord Christ has done for me, what He still is, and what He does as my Advocate with the Father. We are now in the bridal–chamber, where only the Bridegroom may be with the bride.”

433. C.O. ROSENIUS: THE BELIEVER FREE FROM THE LAW (1857) Influences from English and American Christianity brought new ideas into Sweden in the nineteenth century, especially through Carl Olof Rosenius, a lay leader, and editor of the influential journal Pietisten. In this famous work, Rosenius saw the Christian life as release from the burdens and accusations of the religious law. From The Believer Free From the Law. trans. by Adolf Hult. (Rock Island IL: Augustana Book Concern, 1923), 68–70. How shall I in such severe circumstances escape being made captive under the Law? Aye, now it is a question of being furnished with the proper arms and of being able to “withstand the devil, steadfast in the faith,” and to answer: “If my sin even were still more terrible, my Lord Christ shall not be made a sinner. I will, none the less, render honor to His blood and His truth. I still remember the words of the everlasting Father: ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool’ (Is. 1.18). Even if I for a long time may not feel anything special in my heart, I will, none the less, let His words be divine truth. Get thee hence from me, Satan! Sin shall not condemn me, as long as Christ lives. And if the sin were, as

Fig. 10.4. Carl Olof Rosenius (prior to 1868)

But the Law continues to knock at the door and says: But you ought nevertheless your-self, too, be pious and holy and keep the commandments of God, if you wish to be saved. Answer: It is true that I ought to be holy and keep the commandments of God; but merely because you add the words, “If you wish to be saved,” I will not now listen to you at all. Because my conscience is attacked by a condition for salvation taken from the Law, I wish to be rid of you entirely. For in the question as to my salvation my

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

life does not count at all, simply because it is already settled that I am lost before the Law, but also that I have a perfect righteousness, in the abundant merit of my precious Bride-groom. He has for me fulfilled all which the Law could ever demand. I neither can, nor do I wish to appear before God with any other righteousness. Come at the right moment, when it is a question of my life, with your reminders. Remind me, for example, to be merciful, patient, humble, chaste, for-giving, and so on, when my neighbor needs anything of the like from me. But here, when it is a question of my relation to God, I will not listen to you, for then I have, quite another righteousness, a perfect, yes, divine righteousness. Praised be the Name of my Lord Jesus. In this way a Christian may defend himself and prevail against the suggestions of the devil and the threatenings of the Law, whether for past or present sins, in this way, namely, that when the Law tries to attack the conscience, and to deny my state of grace, I then daringly beat him off, and say: I shall gladly do good works when I am among my fellow men, who need them; but here when my conscience is to stand before God, I will know nothing of that. For here my life and walk do not avail, but only my Lord Christ.—“But if it is here that I am lacking, that I do not do these good works among men as I ought, what then ?” This is certainly to be deplored and here it were well if some improvement took place—by a more watchful walk your conscience would also experience less severe attacks. But if you are to be saved, it is, nevertheless, needful, that you with all your power pierce through the thick cloud of contradictions and, despite all, let Christ count for more than all your poor being. Otherwise you will forever perish. Through faith everything can be remedied; through unbelief there is naught but death and condemnation. Much more ought to have been said on this precious subject, yet we must leave it. We wish only to add that this lofty grace, freedom from the Law, is not at all proclaimed to the hard, presumptuous and unbroken souls who know the art of believing and of being secure all too well, or to those who with a pretty evangelical confession also wish to retain full freedom for the flesh and to live as it pleases them. No, thus says the apostle: “As free, and not using your freedom for a cloak of wickedness, but as bondservants of God” (1 Pet 2.16). As to the flesh, true Christians are, alas! Indeed, weak, so that they, too, can err and fall miserably but there is in them however a God–fearing spirit which cheerfully accepts admonition and seeks improvement. But they, on the

309

other hand, who wish by their advocacy of evangelical freedom to defend a carnal life conformed to the world, have not the Spirit of the Lord. But the apostle Paul admonishes even the believers not to allow the false heart to lead them astray into the misuse of this precious freedom. He says: “For ye, brethren, were called for freedom; only use not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh, but through love be servants one to another” (Gal 5.13). Oh, that all the children of God might in time take to heart also this admonition! It is a common sickness, or perversion, of our minds, that we are bound where we should be free—in the conscience; and altogether too free where we should be bound—in the flesh. Let us watch! Since we have an everlasting freedom from the judgments of the Law, let us fervently love the commandments of the Law so that with cheerful mind we serve our neighbor in love, with words, deeds, and patience. Let us beware lest we grieve the Holy Spirit by sins against His holy commandments. Watch and pray and flee when you flee the temptation approaching. Flee cheerfully and willingly, since God is eternally gracious toward you and opens. His bosom to you. But if you have been so hapless as to fall, know that you have an “Advocate with the Father,” and you shall not perish if you flee to Him and seek restoration, grace and comfort, and a new purpose to watch more earnestly hereafter. Such, then, our whole way will be. The Lord be with us on that way, and protect us both on our right hand and on our left hand! 434. PAUL PETER WALDENSTRÖM: ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT (1872) Successor to Rosenius as editor of Pietisten, Waldenström was a pastor and theologian. His theology, especially this sermon on the Atonement, pushed the boundaries of Lutheran confessional theology, and some of his followers formed the Mission Covenant movement in Sweden as an alternative to the Church of Sweden. From Glenn P. Anderson, ed., Covenant Roots: Sources and Affirmations. trans. Herbert Palmquist. (Chicago: Covenant Press, 1980), 114–31. Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, 1872 11. Here comes now the Kingdom of God in the Gospel with another message, which brings to

310

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

naught all human speculation and renders the wisdom of the wise foolishness, teaching 1) that through our fall no change has entered the heart of God, 2) that because of this it was no severity or anger against man which through the fall rose up in the way of man’s redemption, 3) that the change, which occurred with the fall, was a change in man alone, in that he became sinful and thus fell away from God and from the life which is in him, 4) that for this reason an atonement indeed is needed for man’s salvation, but not an act of atonement which appeases God and presents him as being once again gracious but one which removes man’s sin and makes him once again righteous, and 5) that this atonement is in Jesus Christ. 16. For this reason the Scriptures do not say in a single place that it is God who through the death of Christ has been reconciled. God’s wrath over sin could not be taken away, and God’s relationship to sinful man is described by the Lord Christ thus: “God so loved the world that he gave his Son.” Therefore God’s love is never presented in the Scriptures as the result of the Son’s sacrifice but as the cause and basis of it. It does not say: Because God gave his Son, he could once again love the world. No. Because God loved the world, for this reason he gave his Son. 17. In contrast to this, man needed to be reconciled in order to be saved, that is, his sins had to be removed so that he would not everlastingly and irremediably be overtaken by the wrath of God which abides over sin. And for this purpose would the giving of the Son serve, as John says: “He is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” Therefore we must on the other hand be on guard against the heresy that the giving of the Son was merely an expression of God’s love. Scripture clearly teaches that it was an atoning sacrifice. But note: It was not God who through this sacrifice was to be reconciled, but man, who through the same was to be justified, which was essential if he was to be saved. For it was on his side, in his sin, that the obstacle lay. It was man alone, and not God, who on the day of the fall fell from goodness. It was he who became the enemy of God and departed from him, and not God who became man’s enemy and departed from him. No, when man departed in enmity from God, he loved him to the extent that in Christ he sought him, not in order to remove his own anger but man’s sins. For when he gave his Son, it was not in order that he might find a person on whom he could slake his anger, in order to be able to love the world, but in order to find a person through

whom he could save man, his fallen child, whom he still loved. 18. Otherwise God would become not our savior but the savior of God. Therefore our Lord Jesus in his passion and suffering was not our substitute in order to take away the wrath of God but God’s representative to take away our sins, even though he is our substitute to the extent that it is our sins he bore, for us he suffered and became accursed. In his exaltation he is the representative of the Father for the sake of our justification. As it is written, that God has exalted him in order to give repentance and forgiveness to Israel. When he came in the flesh, he came on God’s behalf as his only begotten Son, sent of him to remove our sins, and when he returned to God, he returned in order that he might on behalf of God as our brother complete the work which he had received from the Father for our salvation. 19. If we take notice of the plain words of Scripture concerning the redemption of Christ, we find that it speaks only of the reconciliation of man. Thus it is written: “God hath reconciled us to himself” (2 Cor 5:18). “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). “And you, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh” (Colossians l:21f.). And in Ephesians 2:16 it is written that Christ has reconciled us to God through the cross. Also in Revelation 5:9 we read that Christ has redeemed us to God, not God to us, no, us, us, you, you—this is the concern of his work. It is we who in the blood of Christ have redemption, that is to say, forgiveness of sins, and not God, who through the blood has been freed from his wrath. It does not say: God vented his wrath on him; not, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the wrath of God; no, but much more: The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. Behold, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world (Isaiah 53, John 1:29). And in Romans 5 it does not say: As through the sin of one, Adam, God hath become angry, so he through the second Adam’s obedience has again become gracious, but rather; “As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” 20. In short, there is not a single place in the New Testament which reverses this relationship so as to say that it is God who has been brought together with us, but everywhere it is we who have been brought together with God through the death of his Son, at a time when we were as yet at enmity with him. In Hebrews 8, where both covenants are considered, it is not said: I shall be appeased by sinners,

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

but rather: “I will be merciful toward their iniquities.” which is immediately explained thus: “And I will remember their sins no more” (vs. 12), which again is what Paul says: “In him we have redemption through his blood; the forgiveness of our trespasses.” 435. PAAVO RUOTSALAINEN: LETTER TO THE PEASANTS (1846) Like Hauge, Ruotsalainen was a peasant and selfeducated lay preacher, whose fiery sermons inspired a great revival among Finnish Christians. Ruotsalainen dictated many letters to people around Finland, both friends and critics; this is an open letter to his followers among the peasants. From The Inward Knowledg Knowledgee of Christ: Letters and Other Writings. trans. by Walter Kukkonen. (Helsinki: Luther-Agricola Society, 1977), 71–74. Dear friends: I come to you, peasant class, with a little question. Why aren’t all that are awakened saved? The chief reason, I think, is that even though awakened they haven’t entered through the narrow gate that stands at the very beginning of the way of life. Now comes the question: Why haven’t they entered through the narrow gate, even though they’ve been awakened? The reason is that this people is a stiff-necked people. It happens to them as happened to the people in Moses’ time who against God’s will began to push toward the land of Canaan without the Lord’s guidance. The peasant class of our day is of a similar mind. Now comes the question: How does it happen among them? It happens this way, that after they’ve been awakened from darkness to light, that is, into an awareness of sin, they’re humble and repentant, as Bunyan writes of them, “When the flames of hell beat around their ears they are repentant.” Question: Why does this happen when they’ve been awakened by God? The chief reason is that when the judgment of the law in their conscience grow weaker they take heed as one should of the righteousness of life which now ought to follow their imagined faith. But when the righteousness of life doesn’t follow according to their enlightened conscience some of the people lapse into slavish fear which begets unbelief. Others who are wiser express sorrow when they are called and admonished but in everyday life are quite reckless and indifferent. Question: Why are they like that? Because they haven’t entered through the narrow gate which, as was said, stands at the beginning of the way of life, about which Bunyan talks and of which Christ himself says, “Many strive to enter by the nar-

311

row door and will not be able” (Luke 13:24). The reason is the one mentioned earlier, that they leave too soon the sorrow of repentance for pious practices, some by their singing, others by their prayers, and in this way they quench the godly fear even though they’re breakers of the baptismal covenant. And in this way they lose the true awareness of sin which God had begun to create in them. Well, doesn’t Finland have awakened ministers today? Can’t these guide them? They can’t guide them at all for they deceive the ministers, coming to them as those who have already done what is required. They demand from the ministers pleasant nourishment for the soul. The awakened minister has a compassionate heart and begins to feed them in their slavish fear with the bread of the gospel, but it doesn’t last long. Why not? Because they haven’t entered on the way of life through the narrow gate. Now comes yet another question: What is that narrow gate of which the Bible speaks so much? Isn’t this the narrow gate, that when the sinner is aware of God’s wrath resting upon him and knows himself to be a breaker of the baptismal covenant, he is willing to stand before the Lord with all the reproaches that fill his conscience, to stand still before the Lord until he is inwardly aware of grace being his? Well, why don’t the awakened ministers tell them this? The reason is that they’re prevented by their philosophy (theology). They themselves know best how difficult it is to humble oneself to walk the way of the cross as life in Christ’s kingdom requires. But my purpose isn’t to talk to philosophers or to the highly educated. They themselves know their way best, whether it’s the right way or the wrong. But now comes yet another question: Can it be that there’s still grace for those who have fallen into the above errors? We answer that according to the Lord’s own promise there is much grace; if they return to the Lord wholeheartedly the Lord himself testifies, “In the day when the greatest sinner returns to the Lord, his transgressions will not be remembered.” The Savior himself has revealed his love through the thief on the cross and the prodigal son as encouragement to all who are afraid. . . . Now, dear friends, I turn to you in great weakness. I too am troubled by all these same temptations about which I warn you, but I haven’t become their slave. I’ve considered the example of the old saints, whom the Lord had to chasten to subdue the flesh, who exercised faith toward God and wrote such precious testimonies as this, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him” Job 13:15. This is their testimony. My hope for you, my friends, is that if you can’t take

312

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

the way of the cross you’d turn openly to the world. Dear friends, I’ve wanted to write these few lines to you not to offend you but to point out to you your natural dullness and your little love for spiritual books which describe the simple way of salvation for us. For example, the books of the sainted Fresenius contain all that a Christian needs to know. And now in conclusion I say, “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you” 1 Peter 5:6, as he has promised. I leave you, dear brethren, in the care of the Lord who has awakened you.

persecution of Christians ceased, the voices of those crying out weakened, and finally the cries ceased to be heard at all. If someone dared to raise his voice in popedom, as did Waldo, Wycliffe, and Huss, such a voice was immediately stilled by fire and sword. For the devil cannot bear to have someone crying in the wilderness. He is not offended by the world crying out his name in the wilderness; but if someone dares cry out the name of Jesus, then the devil becomes furiously enraged.

436. LARS LEVI LAESTADIUS: THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS (1852) Laestadius was a Lutheran pastor in the far northern region of Sweden, who was also a powerful preacher and revivalist. His influence spread most strongly into neighboring Finland, where his followers came to be known as Apostolic (or Laestadian) Lutherans. From The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness: A Periodical Published in the Years 1852–1854. (N.p.: The Old Apostolic Lutheran Church in America, 1988), 118–20. John was properly the first one who cried in the wilderness. A few voices had indeed cried out before him, but their voices were either too low to be heard in the abyss, or people were then even more hard of hearing than they were at the time when John cried out. The prophets did indeed cry out with a loud voice, but the people of their time did not hear them. Our Lord and Savior’s own voice was higher and more powerful than all other voices which have cried out before and after Him, but His voice was not heard by any people other than those who were near Him. They who were far away did not hear that heavenly voice, because they were deaf. He Himself in many places lamented the deafness of those of His time, of which the prophet says: “With hearing ears they shall hear, but not understand.” After the Savior’s death and ascension into heaven, the apostles began to cry out, and only then did the ears of some open, so that their voice was heard farther than the voice of any other man who has cried before or after them. But this hearing turned again to deafness when the persecutions ceased. The apostles’ voice was heard in the abyss, but the devil and his followers could not bear this voice. The devil had to bring about terrible persecutions against both those who cried out and those who heard the cries. Starting with the time that

Fig. 10.5. Lars Levi Laestadius (ca. 1839)

Finally, Luther began to cry out in the wilderness, and his voice was heard at quite a distance, and broadly. But they, who should have cried out after Luther’s death, were troubled with hoarseness, so that the crying out in the wilderness ceased. For Spener’s cry was not heard far, whether because he had a defect in his windpipe, or because people became ever more deaf and dull of hearing, so that they could not hear one word of the voice of the crier. Now in our days mankind is more deaf than ever before, and we cannot hope that our cry can be heard farther than the portals of hell. And may God allow, that it could be heard at the portal to heaven. If one cries out in the wilderness in calm weather, he receives an answer from the mountains and hills if the weather is hot and heavy. But these mountains and these hills do not answer to all the syllables of the

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

crying voice. For the crier hears only the final syllables of his own words, which the mountains and hills repeat. This echo is not a reply to that which was spoken, but is only a reflected voice, which the mountains and hills cast from them. That is, the mountains and hills do not accept the words of the crying voice, but cast them away from themselves. This characteristic––that mountains and hills cast a voice away from them––was possessed by them already at the time of John the Baptist. And they still have the same characteristic––those mountains which were to be made low, as the prophet Isaiah says in the epistle text for Midsummer Day. Therefore we cannot expect that the mountains and hills would accept the words of the voice of the crier. But the air is stifling and heavy both in the church and the state. The mountains and hills themselves are oppressed by the mass of spoiled air. They are about to choke from Satan’s smell and stench, which rises up from the abyss. Therefore they cast back the voice in multiple syllables. They repeat the syllables, often repeating the voice of one crying, and saying: “He has a devil, he has a devil!” In this way did the mountains and hills answer to the voice of the crier at the time of the Baptist, at the time of the Savior and apostles, at Luther’s time, at Spener’s time: “He has a devil, he has a devil!” And so do they reply even yet: “He has a devil!” Otherwise, everyone who is of his father the devil usually becomes angry when someone dares to say that their father is the devil. He may not be called devil or Satan, but rather the angel of light and Lucifer. Then, too, there is an old saying, that “the crow calls his own name.” When now the Jews asked of the voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Who are thou? Art thou the Christ or Elias or one of the prophets?” he answered, “No.” If the Jews asked: “What sayest thou of thyself?” he replied, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness,” etc. But the Jews’ final opinion of the voice of one crying in the wilderness will be that he has a devil, he is either a fantasyer or a Jesuit, but he is no proper spiritual teacher. This is the inner conviction of all leading Jews. But if someone should ask them if John’s baptism was of God or of man, they would reply: “We do not know.” Although the mountains and hills cast off from themselves the voice of the crier and answer in the same tone as the crier, it has nevertheless been observed that the crier’s voice makes a strange impression in the living nature in the forest. In the wild wilderness where the crier cries, the voice at

313

first sounds strange and disagreeable in the ears of the dwellers of the wilderness. . . . And should the crier not receive any reply from any man in the wild wilderness, he will at least receive a reply from the mountains, which echo with the same tone with which the crier cries. That is, if the crier cries: ye generation of vipers! The mountains answer: generation of vipers? If the crier cries: who hath warned you, the mountains answer: warned you? If he says: to flee from the wrath to come, the mountains answer: wrath to come? If the crier says: the axe is now laid unto the root of the trees, the mountains answer: root of the trees? If the crier says: every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire, the mountains answer: cast into the fire? Although all these replies end with a question mark, let it not be believed that the mountains fear the fire; but sooner will creatures which flutter, laugh, and shriek around the crier––sooner will they perhaps be able to fear the fire, if they come so close to it that they burn their noses and paws. A fly does indeed like to buzz around a fire, because it can be surmised that it loves light. But some flies are so impudent that they are not satisfied with merely buzzing around a fire, but fly straight into the flame. But there the fly burns its wings. It falls upon the table. There it then lies on its back, and shrieks and kicks. 437. NINETEENTH-CENTURY SCANDINAVIAN HYMNODY Hymns and hymn singing have always been a central part of Lutheranism in Scandinavia, and this tradition was powerfully renewed in the nineteenth century. Women and men wrote hymns to accompany the revival movements in the churches. Carolina Sandell Berg (1832–1903) “Children of the Heavenly Father” (From Luther Lutheran an Bo Book ok of Worship orship, 1978. trans. Ernest W. Olson) Children of the Heav’nly Father safely in his bosom gather; Nestling bird nor star in heaven such a refugee e’er was given. God his own doth tend and nourish, in his holy courts they flourish. From all evil things he spares them, in his mighty arms

314

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM he bares them.

Neither life nor death shall ever from the Lord his children sever; Unto them his grace he showeth, and their sorrows all he knoweth. Though he giveth or he taketh, God his children ne’er forsaketh; His the loving purpose solely to preserve them pure and holy.

Day by day, I know you will provide me strength to serve and wisdom to obey; I will seek your loving will to guide me o’er the paths I struggle day by day. I will fear not evil of the morrow, I will trust in your enduring grace. Savior help me bear life’s pain and sorrow till in glory I behold your face. Oh, what joy to know that you are near me when my burdens grow too great to bear; Oh, what joy to know that you will hear me when I come, O Lord, to you in prayer. Day by day, no matter what betide me, you will hold me ever in your hand. Savior with your presence here to guide me, I will reach at least the Promised Land.

Carl O. Rosenius (1816–1868) “With God as Our Friend” (From Luther Lutheran an Bo Book ok of Worship orship, 1978. Hymnal translation) With God as our friend, with his Spirit and Word, All sharing together the feast of the Lord, We face with assurance the dawn of each day And follow the Shepherd; and follow the Shepherd, Whose voice we have heard and whose will we obey. In perilous days, filled with storms and with fright, A band marches on through thick gloom toward the light. Not many, nor mighty, disowned by the world, They follow their leader; they follow their leader, In confident faith, with their banners unfurled.

Fig. 10.6. Carolina Sandell Berg

O Shepherd, abide with us, care for us still, And lead us and guide us and teach us your will, Until in your heavenly fold we shall sing Our thanks and our praises; our thanks and our praises, To God and the Lamb, our Redeemer and king.

Carolina Sandell Berg (1832–1903) “Day by Day” (From Ev Evang angelical elical Luther Lutheran an Worship orship, 2006. trans. Robert Leaf) Day by day, your mercies, Lord, attend me, bringing comfort to my anxious soul. Day by day, the blessings, Lord, you send me draw me nearer to my heav’nly goal. Love divine, beyond all mortal measure, brings to naught the burdens of my quest; Savior lead me to the home I treasure, where at last I’ll find eternal rest.

Nikolai F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872) “O Day Full of Grace” (From Luther Lutheran an Bo Book ok of Worship orship, 1978. trans. Gerald Thorson) O day full of grace which we behold, now gently to view ascending, Thou over the earth thy reign unfold, good cheer to all mortals lending, That children of light of every clime may prove that the night is ending. .

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT How blest was that gracious morning hour, when God in our flesh was given; Then flushed the dawn with light and power, that spread through the darkened heaven; Then rose o’er the world that sun divine, which gloom from our hearts has driven. Yea, were every tree endowed with speech, and every leaflet singing, They never with praise his worth could reach, though earth with their praises were ringing, Who fully could praise the light of life, who light to our souls is bringing. As birds in the morning sing God’s praise, His fatherly love we cherish, For giving to us this day of grace, for life that shall never perish, His church he has kept these thousand years, and hungering souls did nourish. We journey into our fatherland, where day is not frail or fleeting, We vision a mansion, fair and grand, where joyously friends are meeting, This life we shall share eternally, its dawn we are always greeting.

Fig. 10.7. Ole Hallesby (1949)

438. OLE HALLESBY: THE CHALLENGE OF THE CROSS TO MODERN CHRISTIANITY (1929) Ole Hallesby was Norwegian theologian and teacher who was fiercely opposed to the modern liberal theology that was moving into the Norwegian universities in the early twentieth century. He and others founded the Menighetsfakultet (Congregational Faculty) in 1908 to train pastors. He wrote dozens of

315

very popular books, and many of them were translated into English. From Ole Hallesby, Relig Religious ious or Christian? trans. Clarence J. Carlsen. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1939), 108–14. The apologists bow very deeply and in all seriousness before modern man and speak about in this manner: Our Lord was, to begin with, a little unfortunate with regard to Christianity. But you must be kind enough not to take this up in the wrong way. Both Jesus and Paul were mistaken, and that in many important points, when they preached the gospel. We know very well that you moderns cannot accept this antiquated form of religion. We bring you tidings of great joy. After the Christian church’s 1900 years of uncritical faith in this antiquated gospel, our Lord has in these latter days been fortunate enough to find some modern theologians who have discovered to a dot how many mistakes Jesus and Paul made in their preaching of the gospel. We can now guarantee you that our Lord will not be subject to such mishaps again. We are giving you the true and the real Christianity. This each of you can determine for yourself, as far as that goes, for we have entered into an agreement with our Lord that there is to be nothing in Christianity that modern man cannot accept as the truth, his own inner self being the judge! One might be tempted to ask: why keep all this work going? Why do they not get through with it? When it has been proved as thoroughly and completely as the last generation of theologians has proved it, that the cross is not a necessity, why are they not through with the cross? Why do they continue unceasingly to fight against the cross? Well, it is really not so strange. Because the cross of Christ is a reality; and it is not only real as other reality is real, as Caesar’s death or the battle of Actium. Nay, the cross is the world’s most real reality. By that we mean that the cross, in the first place, is the center of all reality, the center about which all other reality moves. That is why men cannot get through with the cross. Whether they desire to do so or not, whether they love or they hate the cross, they must grapple with it. . . . But time marched on. Rationalism gained entrance in modernized garb, as liberal theology, and began to teach heaven and earth that the cross was unnecessary. But behold, a practically unknown pastor in Switzerland, Karl Barth, restores the cross to its proper place again, and smashes liberal theology into so many pieces that scarcely any one will be able to gather them up again.

316

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Notice what is happening in Norway. What does it mean that prospective students for the ministry come to the Independent Theological Seminary? It has been said that two-thirds of all the theological students in Norway are studying at that institution. It is the cross exercising its drawing power. Or let us think of the recent student conferences for the northern countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland). At these meetings we have no athletic contests of any kind and no entertainment. Our program is this: the old Gospel of the cross in all its fulness, preached unto spiritual awakening, conversion, and new life in service for God at home and abroad. Do such meetings attract young people? And: do they attract academic young people? Come and see! We have had such conferences every summer, and they attract up to four hundred participants! How explain this? It is the cross which is again manifesting its quiet but mighty power in the lives of these young people. Verily, the cross is the heart of Christianity. And as the heart cannot be cut out of the body without bringing on death, so the cross cannot be cut out of the Christian life without resultant spiritual death. . . . All have taken offense at the cross save those who have paused in the light of heaven and have permitted themselves to be convinced of their sins. When they in the light of the Word of God saw the reality of sin, they were no longer frightened by the reality of the cross. They did not understand the cross; it was and remained a mystery. But they understood the Crucified One; never had it been as easy to believe the forgiveness of sins as when they took their stand beneath the cross and saw their Savior give His life freely, as a ransom for many. The Bible does not say a great deal by way of explaining the cross. And what it does say does not tend to solve the mystery of the cross; it shows both Jews and Gentiles that the cross is not only in harmony with God’s previous revelation, but that it is the fulfilment and completion thereof (Romans 3:21–26). It can, however, scarcely be said that it is this Biblical explanation of the cross which gives the helpless sinner consolation and peace. It is not the explanation of the cross but the cross as a fact which is so decisive in its importance. For man cannot be comforted and helped by anything else or less than by entering into fellowship with God and living in His presence.

439. GUSTAF AULÉN: ON THE NATURE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH (1947) Aulén was a twentieth-century Swedish theologian and bishop whose theological writings were very influential in Sweden, and many were translated into English. Best known for his book on the atonement, Christus Victor, this selection is from his handbook on Christian theology. From Gustaf Aulén, The Faith of the Christian Church. 4th edition. trans. Eric Wahlstrom. (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1948), 105–14.

Fig. 10.8. Gustaf Aulén (ca. 1940)

The Certainty of Faith 1. The certainty of faith is a certainty about that revelation of God whereby faith lives. The problem of the certainty of faith can be dealt with by theology only in so far as it analyzes and defines the nature of this certainty. 2. Certainty of faith does not possess a demonstrable character. The idea that it can be based on rational proofs is contrary to the nature of both science and faith. 3. Neither does the certainty of faith possess a pragmatic character. It cannot be certified by citing the significance of faith for other areas of life, or by showing that faith satisfies a human “need.” A pragmatism of this kind is contrary to the theocentric character of faith and is apt to destroy rather than to establish certainty. 4. Nor is the certainty of faith experiential in the sense that the certainty of the God-relationship

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

should be based on an inference drawn from past “experiences” and events. The individual experiences do not undergird faith, it is rather faith that undergirds and makes possible these experiences. 5. In the analysis of the nature of certainty of faith it must be noted that from one point of view faith is audacious; but, on the other hand, it must be emphasized that its audacious yes is an inescapable necessity, the subjugation of man by the revelation of God through which he “is led away from himself.” In this sense the testimonium spiritus sancti internum determines the nature of this certainty. . . . The Nature of Christian Certainty The examination of the various attempts to prove and substantiate faith which has been made in the previous paragraphs may appear as a process of undressing, until faith stands naked and in want of all protective covering. In reality it is self-evident that faith cannot in the last analysis rely on any such line of argumentation. Faith is communion with God. When faith is true to its own nature, it is clear that no certainty of faith can arise and continue except as an inner conviction of being overwhelmed by God, or as an encounter with something which validates itself as a “revelation” of God. All other argumentation is merely a substitute. If this foundation is wanting, all other supports are in vain; if it is there, all other supports are superfluous. The foundation of faith is the divine revelation; and the certainty of faith is characterized by an inner conviction that this revelation really is a divine revelation, or, in other words, by that which faith calls—“the testimony of the Holy Spirit” testimonium spiritus sancti internum. Christian faith has from the beginning again and again pointed to this testimony of the Spirit. The decisive element is, according to Paul, that “the Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit” (Rom 8:16), because “the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God; that we might know the things that were freely given to us of God” (1 Cor 2:11 ff.). In a similar way the Johannine writings speak at length of that testimony which “the Spirit of truth” gives (cf. 1 John 4:13; 5:10). “Consequently,” says Luther, “God must tell you in your heart: this is God’s word.” It is true that sometimes in the history of Christian thought this testimony has been coordinated with other foundations of certainty by reference to a multitude of reasons supporting the divine authority of the Scriptures, but this cannot be justi-

317

fied. The proof of which we are here speaking cannot be either replaced or complemented by attempts to verify the divine revelation in any other way. The nature of Christian certainty can be defined only by delineating those features of faith which are relevant and important in this connection. We have already called attention to the twofold aspects of faith. On the one hand it is a daring decision, and on the other hand it is man’s subjection by God. Faith, as decision, as a daring and audacious yes, stands guard against all attempts to make certainty of faith secure by means of external proofs. The decision in question lies beyond all such argumentation. The revelation of God cannot be certified by any rational arguments. It is, as stated before, a revelation in secret, a revelation which appears in the guise of history. The revealed God is also the hidden God. This is true of everything that is called a revelation of God, and consequently also of the revelation in Christ. In him, too, the revelation of God appears in a humble form and in the guise of history. This character of the revelation cannot be reasoned away by constructing a humanly idealized Christ. This would lead only to a fatal confusion between the divine and “the highest human.” There is always something of audacity and bold discovery when faith perceives in the guise of history the direct voice of God. But the interpretation of the nature of faith could not be more thoroughly perverted than if, on the basis of what has now been said, it is concluded that faith’s yes to the voice of God should have a subjective and arbitrary character. This is completely contrary to the testimony of faith about itself. We must listen very carefully to this testimony if we are to be able to understand and define the nature of Christian certainty. It is not within the realm of possibility to suggest that man should place the alleged voice of God before his own bar of judgment and decide whether or not it is a real voice of God. This voice meets man rather with an authority which he cannot escape and from which there is no appeal. It overwhelms and subdues him with an inner compulsion which he cannot escape. That which is decisive for faith is that man is vanquished and, in Luther’s words, snatched out from himself. In this inner, inescapable compulsion the certainty of faith is hidden. This is testimonium spiritus sancti internum.

318

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

440. ANDERS NYGREN: THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT (1932) Along with Aulén, Anders Nygren is another well-known Swedish theologian of what is sometimes known as the “Lundensian School.” As seen previously with Waldenström, the nature of the atonement has been a perennial question in Swedish theology. From Anders Nygren, “The Atonement as the Work of God,” The Essence of Christianity: Two Essays. trans. Philip S. Watson. (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1973), 83–123.

Fig. 10.9. Anders Nygren (ca. 1950)

Atonement and Fellowship with God The meaning of religion is fellowship with God. All real, living religion aims ultimately at a life together of God and man. This elementary fact must be the starting–point for our discussion of the problem of atonement. . . .

God’s Love Makes Atonement Necessary We have seen above how difficult it can be, and commonly is, to combine atonement with God’s love. Either we start with God’s love as an established fact, and then find all thought of atonement superfluous; or else we start with atonement as an established fact, but imagine we then have to make room for it by postulating along with God’s love something else which explains the need for it, such as God’s holiness or certain eternal and immutable laws which prevent God’s love from having free course without the intervention of atonement. However opposed to one another these two conceptions may seem to be, they nevertheless have this in common, that neither is able to bring atonement and God’s love into real, inner connection with one another. The reason is in both cases the same, namely that the meaning both of God’s love and man’s sin is superficially understood. God’s love is conceived as if it were nothing more than sentimental love, and man’s sin is interpreted moralistically, as if it were simply a matter of particular moral defects and errors. By this double superficiality the fact is concealed that it is just God’s love and man’s sin that are the irreconcilable opposites. As far as God’s love is concerned, it is no doubt true that the sinner awakens God’s inner compassion. But it is quite disastrous if this fact is used to explain away or blur the absolute contradiction between God and sin, that is, be-tween divine love and sin. Anyone who imagines that God’s holiness stands in irreconcilable opposition to man’s sin, but that God’s love could more easily come to terms with it, simply does not know what God’s love is. Nor do we show that we know what sin is, if we use soft phrases about poor unhappy sinners. There may, of course, be some measure of truth even in those terms, but they refer to sin only as it appears on a rather superficial, moralistic level. They make it look as if at heart the sinner wanted nothing more than to live in fellowship with God, but that certain moral faults lie as an obstacle between him and God. Forgiveness is accordingly conceived to mean that God overlooks these defects and mistakes, and does not let them constitute any hindrance to fellowship with himself. But this is not a true picture of sin. Sin is fundamentally rebellion against God. Sin means that man, who was created by God for fellowship with God and his fellowmen, has turned away from God, thrust Him out of His place and usurped it for himself. Sin is in its essence selfishness. This is a truth often expressed, but its meaning is less often truly grasped. When people speak of sin, they generally understand it in

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

a moralistic sense, with reference to particular moral misdemeanors, or else in the very general and abstract sense of a universal sinfulness, which is little else but another name for human finitude and imperfection. But in neither of these ways do we arrive at the Christian conception of sin. For the Christian faith it is an established fact that ‘God is love,’ and that it is God’s will that love shall rule the world. But if we take a realistic view of human life, we cannot help seeing that what prevails there is not love but the very opposite of love. Self-assertion, not love, is the universal law. Men stand as individuals or groups ranged against one another. Everything is directed, not towards giving in love, but towards getting in selfishness. Into this world that is closed against Him, indifferent to Him, God wills to bring His love. Here above all it becomes clear that it is precisely God’s love that makes it impossible for forgiveness to be the superficial, easy-going and self-evident thing commonly called by that name, and that forgiveness can only exist in inseparable connection with a real atonement. The sin that has to be forgiven is not simply a matter of a few moral misdemeanors standing in the way of God’s loving purposes; therefore forgiveness cannot simply mean that God magnanimously overlooks these faults and pursues His purpose of love without regard to them. The sin consists precisely in the fact that man selfishly shuts himself up against God’s love, showing no interest in it, and in so far as he seeks God at all, he seeks Him for selfish ends, so that—as Luther puts it—’even in God he seeks only his own.’ Now what—in this situation—can forgiveness mean? Is it not a word simply without any meaning? When sin is given a moralistic interpretation, it is certainly not difficult to understand what forgiveness means. It means simply that God overlooks man’s transgressions of His commandments, and grants him His fellowship in spite of them. But when sin means that man is unwilling for fellowship with God, what sense is there in talking of forgiveness? Can it mean that God overlooks even this sin, so that He does not even ask whether man is willing to accept His love or not? It would surely be a strange kind of love that desired to give of its riches to the one whom it loved, and yet did not care whether he accepted or rejected them? Love is a will to fellowship. If it were indifferent to the response of the loved one—his willingness or unwillingness to enter into fellowship—then it would no longer be love. Love cannot, without ceasing to be love, fail to demand a real atonement. The breach which makes fellowship impossible must

319

be filled up. And how else can this be done than by selfish humanity ceasing to be selfish and laying itself open to divine love? This seems to be the only possibility. Selfishness must be sacrificed in order that love may prevail. If that happened, fellowship with God would be possible on the basis of holiness. But that is not what happens. Selfishness is by no means prepared to submit to love without more ado, and to renounce and sacrifice itself. It is thoroughly unrealistic to talk about the power of love as if the mere existence of love were enough to make sin and selfishness give way. Instead, love must take upon itself the burden which selfishness has caused but refuses to bear. In this way love becomes what Luther calls eine verlorene Liebe, lost love, in the strictest sense of the term. 441. REGIN PRENTER: FAITH IN GOD IN THE MODERN WORLD (1964) A leading twentieth-century Danish theologian, Prenter was a Lutheran pastor and professor. Here he picks up on another perennial Scandinavian question, the nature of faith, and locates it within the discussions of the Church of Denmark, especially around the ideas of Grundtvig. From Regin Prenter, The Church’s Faith: A Primer of Christian Beliefs Beliefs, trans. Theodor I. Jensen. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968), x–xxxii. Is It Possible to Give a Clear account of the Church’s Faith? If we are to speak about Christianity at all, we must assume that the faith on which Christianity is based is always the same so long as Christianity exists. If the Christian faith no longer exists, then Christianity, too, has ceased to exist. But if the Christian faith is always the same so long as Christianity exists it follows that one can also say what it contains; otherwise no one could know whether it still exists or has long since died. And if we are to speak of a Christian church as distinguished from a non-Christian religion there must be a Christian faith which is the bond of unity between the members of this church. Otherwise we would be unable to determine—in the same way that we can concerning other religions—who really belongs to the Christian church. . . . Though common in our day, the view—that no one can establish what true Christianity is but that

320

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

each one on his own responsibility must be content to assert what Christianity means to him personally—is self-contradictory. . . . The Basis of Christian Doctrine: The Confession When we said before that it is possible to speak definitely and clearly about the content of the Christian faith, it is because the Christian church has always plainly stated its beliefs through its confession. Without confession no church can exist. “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved” (Rom. 10:9-10). Therefore we say that the church’s confession is the basis of Christian doctrine. When we explain what the church believes we should not try, on our own responsibility and risk, to present and promote our own private version of Christianity. Instead, we should listen to what the Christian congregation itself, assembled for worship, audibly and clearly declares concerning its faith. This is the basis on which we must stand if we are to present Christian doctrine to others. “Sound teaching” (2 Tim. 4:3) is the explanation of the church’s own publicly confessed faith; “different doctrine” (1 Tim. 1:3) or false doctrine (heresy) results when people turn away from the congregation’s faith to “vain discussion” (1 Tim. 1:6). Christian doctrine concerns itself with “sound” not “different” doctrine. What is the church’s confession? We cannot answer this question without anticipating something of what will be discussed later, namely, the question about what the church is. The church is the people of God which he rules through his Son, Jesus Christ, who through the Holy Spirit is invisibly present when this people is assembled in worship around his word and sacraments. The confession is the church’s paean of praise to the Triune God, to the Father, creator of all things; to the Son, Jesus Christ, crucified and risen for us; and to the Holy Spirit in whom the invisible and eternal love of the Father and the Son is brought closer to us than we are to ourselves. There is no Christian church which whenever it is assembled does not give praise to the Triune God, the God of the Bible, who is its living and present Lord and King. And since it is through Jesus Christ that the invisible Father and Spirit come to us visibly, as a man among men, it follows that the confession can

be condensed into praise of Jesus alone as Lord. This was often done in the earliest church. . . . In the church’s worship service this confession or praise is brought to the Triune God. Such praise takes various forms. At the baptismal font it takes the form of that confession which is called the Apostles’ Creed and which Luther explained in his Small Catechism. In its present version this creed did not originate at the time of the Apostles but goes back only to the period between 450 and 750 A.D. In a somewhat shorter form, the so-called Old Roman Symbol, it can be traced back to the second century. Nevertheless, when it is called the Apostles’ Creed the designation is correct not because it actually dates back to the days of the Apostles, but because of its content. The content of the Apostles’ Creed is, as anyone can determine by a careful reading of the New Testament, the confession of Jesus as Lord, the confession which, as we noted before, Paul declared to be the church’s confession of the saving faith. Every time the Christian church opens the door for a new person at the baptismal font, it asks him in the words of this ancient creed whether he will say No to God’s adversary, the devil, in order to join the church in its homage to the Triune God. If he will not say No, he is not admitted. N. F. S. Grundtvig, the Danish churchman (d. 1872), was therefore right in his assertion that the Christian church states its beliefs nowhere so clearly as at baptism; for there it asks the person wishing admission whether he will say Yes to the baptismal covenant, that is, to the three articles of the faith. And Grundtvig was also right in his contention that this confession is not mere human words but man’s assent to God’s own word. It is God himself who through his mighty deeds speaks the word which gives our faith its content and this content its truth. The faith is not our own dreams. 442. PASTORAL LETTER OF THE NORWEGIAN BISHOPS (1941) With the Nazi invasion of Norway in 1940, the leaders of the Church of Norway were forced into a difficult position, between resistance to the Nazis and the Quisling government, and the need to continue the Church’s ministry. This letter from the Norwegian bishops lays out their position. From Bjarne Höye and Trygve M. Ager, The Fight of the Norweg orwegian ian Church Against Nazism azism. (New York: MacMillan Company, 1943), 153–78.

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

Pastoral Letter of February, 1941 To Our Congregations from the Bishops of the Church of Norway We gratefully acknowledge the fact that the Church and all Christian societies and organizations, generally speaking, have been able to carry on their spiritual work up to the present. But signs of a growing unrest and anxiety are nevertheless becoming more and more evident. Can the Church sit quietly on the sidelines while the Commandments of God are being set aside and while many other events are taking place which dissolve law and order? The Church is an organization whose great calling is to spread the Gospel and unite all believers in a way of life in accordance with the will of God. Outwardly the Church is a worldly organization, heavy with human shortcomings and suffering from the fact that we, who are the instruments of the Church, are sinful. Even so, our Lord has called such men to be His servants from the very days of the Apostles, and He has promised them the mercy and the power by which He Himself leads His children. The Christian congregations have their roots in a living spiritual communion founded by Jesus Christ, who is their Lord and Savior. The Church, therefore, belongs to God and must fulfill its mission freely and fearlessly, because God’s word and God’s will are above all else in this world. The mission of the Church is identified with the very life of the people and is charged with complete responsibility for spreading His words of salvation based on the law of God. The bishops of the Church of Norway, guided by their consciences and spurred on by the lack of clarity which surrounds them, see it as their clear duty to appeal to the authorities which today govern the life of the Church and the State. . . . [The bishops refer further to a written memorandum delivered to the acting Head (of the Department of Church and Education) during a personal conference on January 29, 1941] “In our second Article of Faith, all Christians acknowledge Jesus Christ as their sovereign Lord. The importance of this solemn declaration exceeds everything else within our Church. The governmental, the political and chief administrative functions do not concern us per se. We are involved only when such functions touch our allegiance to Christ. Luther said: ‘The secular regime has laws, which do not extend beyond life and property and all concrete

321

things in the world. God will not grant to anyone but Himself the right to govern souls.’ “The Acts of God comprise justice, truth and compassion, as conceived by the Church within the structure of the State. The framework of a national community is no concern of the Church. But when it comes to the divine commandments, which are fundamental for all community life, then the Church is duty bound to take a stand. It is useless to wave the Church aside by stating that it is meddling in politics. Luther said in plain words: ‘The Church does not become involved in worldly matters when it beseeches the authorities to be obedient to the highest authority, which is God.’ “When the authorities permit acts of violence and injustice, and exert pressure on our souls, then the Church becomes the defender of the people’s conscience. “One single human soul is worth more than the entire world. “The bishops of the Church have therefore placed on the table of the acting Head certain facts and official communiques concerning the governmental administration, which, during the last few months, in the view of the Church, are against the law of God. They give the impression that revolutionary conditions are abroad in our land, and that we are not living under the rules of foreign occupation whereby all laws shall be enforced as far as is compatible with the occupation forces. “The Church is not the State, and the State is not the Church. In worldly matters the State may endeavor to use force against the Church, but the Church is a spiritual and sovereign entity built on the word of God and on its unity of belief. Despite all its human shortcomings the Church has been given divine authority to spread His law and Gospel among all peoples. The Church can therefore never be silenced. Whenever God’s commandments are deposed by sin the Church stands unshaken and cannot be directed by any authority of the State. “From this rock of faith we beseech the authorities to strike out all that is contrary to God’s Holy Writ on justice, truth and freedom of conscience, and to build only on the foundation of the divine laws of life. “We also beseech our people to avoid acts of force and injustice. In an internal struggle all individuals and groups must be guided by this moral law. He who promotes hatred or encourages evil will be judged by God. The Holy Bible says: ‘Do not repay evil with evil, but overcome evil with good.’ “Above all of us stands the One who is Lord of

322

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

our souls. In our congregations we now perceive a ferment of conscience and we feel it our duty to let the authorities hear clear and loud the voice of the Church.” (Signed) EIVIND BERGGRAV, J. STOREN, J. MARONI, ANDREAS FLEISCHER, HENRIK HILLE, G. SKAGESTAD, WOLLERT KROHN–HANSEN

Fig. 10.10. Kaj Munk (ca. 1940)

443. KAI MUNK: CHRIST AND DENMARK (1944) Danish pastor Kai Munk was driven underground because of his fiery preaching against the Nazi occupation of Denmark. His Four Sermons were circulated in manuscript form, and smuggled out to England. Munk was arrested by the Nazis and executed in 1944. From Kai Munk, Four Sermons Sermons. trans John M. Jensen. (Blair NE: Lutheran Publication House, 1944), 25–32. Christ and Denmark “Jesus . . . who compels me” It is New Year’s Day—not for the Church but for the world. The Church has its own New Year, the first Sunday in Advent. Then we sing “Welcome Again, New Year of Grace, O Be Welcome Today.” The first of January is no church holiday. It may well be called a holiday in a worldly sense. Our thoughts go from the church out to the world about

us, to our native land. A new year comes to Denmark today. How has the old year been? What will the new year bring? We ask today in the church: What did we get from Christ during the past year for which we should give Him thanks? And what will He ask of us in the year before us? Many Christians will say: We thank God that we were kept out of the war the past year. — Certainly, I too love my home, my house, my bodily well-being, my wife and children. I too would almost despair to see my home in ruin, and my children lying about maimed in the midst of dust and debris. Yet there are two things which I, God help me, would even less like to see: truth betrayed and my country without honor. I cannot join in thanking God that we have been kept out of war. In the first place we have not been kept out of war. Our country has suffered occupation. What that may come to mean in terms of blood and fire, in bombing attacks and invasion, no one knows. And, secondly, you can’t thank God that He helped you cheat in a horse trade. God demanded that we fight. We failed to obey His command. We failed to carry out our own decision. You must not mock God by thanking Him that the devil takes care of his own. Do I exaggerate? No, he who fails God puts himself in the devil’s hands. We are not heeding our call and destiny. Denmark is under the wrath of God. That’s why we are so well off. We have shirked our duty. We let others bleed for our guilt and for our cause. We have sold our souls to the evil spirit of compromise and written the contract in the blood of others. That’s how we come to be so lucky. The pen burns my hand like a hot iron as I write these words. But I must speak out—because I am a Christian man, because I occupy a pulpit, because the gospel for today mentions the name Jesus. He it is who compels me. Where is our people’s struggle for the faith we proclaim? Where is its contribution toward victory for the ideals we cherish?. . . What have we Danes to cling to? Our historic past? That is of no value unless it lives in us today. Our free constitution? That is of value only to a people highly resolved to respect it, and who demand that it be respected. Our king? He is no longer young, and illness and accident have been hard on him. Yet he is our rallying symbol, and he has our wholehearted devotion. But he is only one; and who are the men about him? . . . And we love our country when she prospers and

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

laughs, and tells the world tales that are true; but we love her most when she lies prostrate in shame because—because we failed. Oh, mother, forgive us! Millenniums lie before us. Shall our children and their children think of this period—and of us—in such a way that we must blush in our graves? No. Therefore we pray: Give us Christianity, give us courage and faith to rise out of despondency and fickleness to will only that which is right, no matter what the cost. Betrayal of ideals is alone enough to ruin land and people. May we have courage to again become loyal to that in which we believe— though the prisons be filled to the point of bursting. Those who have willingly let their necks be shaven in honor of the Philistines will have to pull the grinders in Gaza till their hair grows out again. Lead us, thou cross in our flag, lead us into that Nordic struggle where shackled Norway and bleeding Finland fight against an idea which is directly opposed to all our ideas. Lead old Denmark forth to its new spirit. Not by the grace of others, or their promises, shall Dannebrog [Danish flag] again become a free banner. For freedom only God can give; and He gives it only to those who accept its responsibilities. Lead us, cross in our flag, forward toward unity with other flags of the cross. With honor and liberty regained, the old Denmark in the young North—that vision looms before us this New Year’s Day. We who have the vision will give ourselves to its realization. We promise we will. May God hear our vow and add His Amen! 444. ARTHUR VÖÖBUS: THE SOVIET COMMUNISTS IN ESTONIA (1950) The pact between Germany and Russia in 1940 gave the Soviets an excuse to conquer the Baltic States, including Estonia. Arthur Vööbus was a theological professor who fled the Soviet occupation of his country, and wrote about the abuses suffered by the Estonian church and people. From Arthur Vööbus, Communism’s Challeng Challengee to Christianity Christianity. (Maywood IL: Seminary Bookstore, Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary, 1950), 15–28. The Soviets in Estonian Territory, 1940–1941 . . . Through shifts in the politics of the great powers, the Baltic nations were abandoned. In 1940–1941 the Russians occupied our country along with the other Baltic states. . .

323

The Communists came with loudly advertised promises to start a new era of culture. But immediately there began the destruction of every spiritual and cultural institution. The new rulers issued a series of decrees and orders, all of them having the same aim: to curtail the rights of the Church and of religion, put obstacles in its way, and drive it out of the nation’s life. The first victim was the 308 year-old Theological Faculty at the University of Tartu (Dorpat). It was liquidated at one stroke and all theological degrees were annulled. A decree was issued prohibiting Christian organizations, youth associations, Bible camps and other gatherings of a religious character. Then every kind of religious education in all schools was abolished and morning prayers and all other kinds of religious worship in schools prohibited. “Confirmation classes are to be stopped as well as Sunday schools and church choirs of children and all other devices of God’s servants for obscuring the minds of children at houses of prayer and at Biblelessons in houses—” wrote the “Kommunist,” the official organ of the Communist party, on the 4th of September, 1940. It became a crime to teach Christ to the children and to young people, a crime punishable under the Criminal Code of the Soviet Union. At the same time hatred and wild fanaticism was suddenly let loose upon religion and church. The newspapers and agitators began a reign of mockery and wrath upon the Christian religion and church. Religious and theological literature, bulletins and other publications of the congregations were forbidden by an order from the office of the Chief for Interior Security. Theological and religious literature in the institutes, libraries, book shops and publishing houses was confiscated and destroyed. In the University Library alone about 70,000 volumes were destroyed. The volumes were hacked into pieces with an axe. At the same time the new rulers started financial trickery and various repressions. All congregations and religious communities lost, at a stroke, their churches and their property, without any compensation. (Our church was not a state–church.) Not only houses, farm lands and other real estate destined to maintain ministers and other officers of the church, but also all ecclesiastical old-age homes, hospitals, children’s homes, schools and funds, bonds and banking accounts were expropriated. The rent for the use of these “nationalized” objects was very high. The rent which clergymen and other servants of the church had to pay for a dwelling was seven to ten times higher than for others. The same principle was

324

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

applied to electric current, which was fourteen times more expensive for the churches than for the ordinary citizen. There was a systematic program designed to embitter the church’s servants’ life, forcing them repeatedly to change their lodgings. This persecution of the servants of the church by means of economic pressure was extended to their children. They and their children were scoffed at; in their places of work they were put to the most degrading tasks. By means of economic pressure and vexation the new rulers intended to ruin parishes and to make the life of the clergymen and other officers so hard that they would be forced to resign their work. The official spokesmen repeatedly declared that clergymen must resign service of the church and become “honest members of the Soviet State.” Above all, the Russian Secret Police kept an eye on the leaders and members of the congregations, and interrogations made it dangerous to be active member of the church. The agents of the Secret Police watched preachers in the churches and other places, their sermons and statements were taken down in shorthand. Many clergymen and other prominent Christians were summoned to interrogations, mostly at night. These unhappy victims were put under severe pressure to work as agents for Communist rule and to betray opinions and feelings of the members of their congregation. This pressure was accompanied by threats against their lives and the safety of their families. Horrible conflicts of consciences were inevitable; I know of those who in this desperate situation tried to give evasive and harmless data. Then the members of their families disappeared. When they still refused to capitulate—they were seen no more. The Russians arrested, deported, and murdered ministers, deans, bishops, as well as other prominent leaders and members of congregations. Gruesome is the story of the martyrdom of our church within this one year. Twenty-nine prominent leaders of the congregations, among them two deans and thousands of believers, were murdered in Estonia by Communists. Many of them were tortured horribly. Many times greater, however, is the number of prominent leaders of the church who were brutally dragged from their families to be deported and killed in unknown places. One hundred sixty-three prominent leaders of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church and ten thousands of its faithful members were arrested, deported and the great majority killed in Russia. Among them was Kristian Kaama, the

vice-president of the Consistory, the highest office of our church, and 20 deans and pastors. . . When the Communists retreated before the attack of the German Army and before our underground movement and revolt, and our people began to search the prisons and the official and private houses of Communists, thousands of new terrible facts came to light. Then we saw the revolting torture chambers with their horrible instruments. We saw mass graves under Communists’ official and private houses, where hideously mutilated men and women had been buried, their hands tied behind their backs, with signs that they had been tortured, with burned hands and feet and other signs of savagery. The examination revealed that many had been buried alive. Horrible torture was inflicted on the Estonians detained in Kuressaare Castle; and on the island of Osmussaare only two Estonians were left alive before it was evacuated by the Russians. In one alone of the many mass graves (in Tartu) 192 horribly mutilated corpses were found, among them Dean Axel Vooremaa and several Christian friends whom I personally knew. It was hardly a year that this monstrous insanity raged in our country and carried into effect its—as Professor of Christian Theology Karl Barth thinks—“constructive idea,” and left everywhere a mutilated community. 445. EIVIND BERGGRAV: ON THE MODERN STATE AND GOD (1945) Berggrav was the Bishop of Oslo during the Nazi occupation, and was imprisoned for his resistance. After the war he was an important Lutheran leader in World Lutheranism. In this book he reflects on important ethical and moral questions about the modern State. Eivind Berggrav, Man and State State, trans. George Aus. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1951, 3–12. The Demon of Politics To imagine that we can ever achieve an ideal state is to dream of the impossible. The question which really faces us is not whether the ideal state is achievable, but whether the state is going to be a power which seeks to dominate the entire life of its citizens (perchance under the guise of democratic forms) or an instrument through which citizens may work together for the common weal. If all that the present situation calls for is the choice between the state as usurper and the state as a

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

medium of co-operation, between the state as demon and the state as friend, then it is not a very difficult one to face! The experiences of the diabolical years through which we have recently come leave no room for doubt as to what our stand will be on this question.

325

of such tactics is the creation of a sovereign power which is independent of both God and man, of both moral law and conscience. It initiates its own legislation and is its own supreme court. As Hobbes later wrote, “The state is God, a mortal god to be sure, yet, as long as it exists, it is its own god. At the feet of this deity the citizens are to sacrifice all.” About the year 1920 Max Weber once said, “Between the demon of politics and the God of love there is an inner tension which can break out into horrible conflict at a moment’s notice.” We have lived to witness the fulfillment of this prophecy! 446. BO GIERTZ: ON THE CATHOLICISM OF THE CHURCH (1939)

Fig. 10.11. Eivind Berggrav

Our predicament, however, is not as simple as that. If all we do about our experience of the state since 1940 is to regard it as an unpleasant episode, a revelation of the nature of totalitarianism (which we thoroughly despise and reject) and let it go at that, we have committed a fatal error. The development of the state which gave rise to the dictatorships has roots that are four hundred years old. As a matter of fact at the time of the recent crisis this development had grown to such an extent that it was at the point of engulfing every nation, including the democracies. Everywhere the state has been in the process of becoming a power which usurps the life of the individual. . . The acquisition and maintenance of power constitute the chief end of politics. There is no such thing as “sin” in politics—only weakness or misfortune. That leader does transgress, however, who fails to act contrary to morality and the divine will when the needs of the state demand it. The result of the use

Giertz was selected as a bishop in the Church of Sweden at a young age, and by means of his writings and not his service to academic theology. A staunch conservative in a time of great change, Giertz sought to recall the Church of Sweden to its historical and catholic tradition. From Bo Giertz, Christ’s Church: Her Biblical Roots, Her Dr Dramatic amatic History, Her Saving Pr Presence, esence, Her Glorious Futur uturee (Swedish: 1939), trans. Hans Andrae. (Eugene OR: Resource Publications, 2010), 86–91. The secularized mentality, which has its roots in the age of Enlightenment and which yielded a strong influence during the 1800’s, was not able to appreciate much of the classic Christian faith as received from the ancient church. Cultural life was characterized by faith in man, technology, natural science, and reforms. If there was still some interest in religion at all, then man again was in the focus. His inner experiences, his feelings and personal convictions took the center stage . . . No wonder that the world has been so dreadfully battered during the past fifty years under the rule of the self-glorifying human reason. This mentality had of course its stronghold outside the church. It often ended up in pronounced hostility toward the church. But with the power of the “Zeitgeist” its influence reached far into the Christian camp. Without realizing it themselves many “protestants” lived with a faith that had very little to do with Luther and his church . . . For contemporary man interested in religion, God must be acceptable to his reason. Previously, the great question was how man would be righteous before God. Now man questioned God Himself. God must meet these or those demands to be acknowledged in our modern times.

326

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Fig. 10.12. Bo Giertz (1950s)

God’s church and His Word were summoned to answer before man’s court. The Bible was degraded, its authority disappeared in the jumble of voices asking the church to adjust to modern thinking. Reservations were made everywhere in the creed. The sacraments were beyond understanding. All too palpably, they indicate the necessity of salvation, proclaiming that God came to earth to save and redeem us lost and condemned beings. One ceased kneeling and making the sign of the cross at worship. The creed was no longer said in unison. The children were no longer baptized at the services, or at church at all. Even the dead in the casket must turn right about face! Previously, he had during his funeral service been facing the altar that is toward the east, toward the risen and coming-again Jesus Christ. Now he was turned toward the mourners so as to have a last glance of his earthly life. This change is symbolic. The funeral service is now perceived in a different way by the people. From having been the pilgrim’s jubilant departure to meet his Lord, awaiting the resurrection day, it has become a dismissal, a

solemn time for mourning, a last farewell to a loved one who has gone away—who knows where? During this crisis in the church, that began already 150 years ago, was wasted much of that for which our reformers had fought and faithfully preserved of the Church’s legacy. . . . The Church does not teach man to go his own way or arrange his life according to his own understanding. No, the Church proclaims, as commanded by God, that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. He and no one else! . . . We could continue point by point and ask ourselves if the situation is better now than in the year 1500. The state of morality in large numbers of our people give us hardly any right to be horrified at the licentiousness in monasteries during the Middle Ages. . . . What we have said here does not give in any way a complete picture of the recent developments in our church. There are many other currents which are both deeper and stronger. The revival movements, the leading theology, and the efforts of renewal within the church, e. g. in the area of works of mercy, have been borne by forces of genuine Christian faith. Even so, with the pressing power of the diffuse “Zeitgeist,” the new-Protestant superficiality has been able to intrude the church and influence much of her everyday life as well our own opinions. In this situation we must rally around totally different banners. Using all the strength of authentic Christian faith that the Church still has within herself, she must offer resistance against that internal breakdown which threatens to destroy her. She must discover anew her true essence and her commission. She must bring forth her half-forgotten treasures. She must proclaim the Word without excuses and reinterpretations. She must again rejoice in her sacraments instead of being somewhat embarrassed by them. She must openly and with infinite gratitude be dedicated to be what God has planted her to be among us: the Swedish branch of Christ’s One Holy and Catholic Church. Everybody has noticed how the wind has changed the last 20 years. The young-church movement emerged with a powerful appeal to the church to bear in mind her mission. It caused a mighty wave of joy and enthusiasm in the church, not at least among the young people. The ecumenical movement, especially through the Ecumenical Meeting in Stockholm 1925, raised a new awareness in Sweden concerning our place in the global Church. And in thousands of Christian homes, both among pastors and parishioners, a new and deeper love grew for our Mother the Church during the spiritual winter, the

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

bleak days of ridicule and indifference. Maybe the day is dawning when the wonderful prophecy we listen to at Epiphany shall become a reality in our parish churches. . . . 447. BRITA STENDAHL: ON THE ORDINATION OF WOMEN IN SWEDEN (1985) The Scandinavian Lutheran churches were some of the first Lutheran bodies to ordain women as pastors, but this process was not always an easy one. Brita Stendahl reflects on the ways in which this change occurred, and the problems that still remained. From Brita Stendahl, The Force of Tradition: A Case Study of Women Priests in Sweden. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 119–24. In many and diverse ways we have encountered the force of tradition. The voices, the issues, the laws, the arguments, the proclamations that have emerged out of our study; all bespeak in one way or another the power and ambiguities of tradition. So much so that a more careful attention to the connotations, uses, and meanings of that very word may well serve toward a conclusion to our study. For the aim was not to dramatize an ecclesiastical conflict in a small country far away. I rather saw in that conflict attitudes of more general significance for women and men far beyond one church and one land, and I saw them writ large, and hence more capable of study. Tradition is not a particularly theological or religious phenomenon, and its force makes itself felt in all areas of human endeavor—politics, culture, science, fashion—and to seek ones roots is “in” these days. But in religion and theology it tends to get higher density and the study and the consciousness of tradition is a central part of the enterprise. Thus it stands to reason that when radical change occurs, much of the world will muddle through, but for many religious people the force of tradition will assert itself as a counterforce. When the change pertains to millennia of patriarchalism, it is not surprising that the church becomes a crucible for tensions less visible but far from absent in society at large. All those on the scene in this case study deal with tradition and witness to its force, whether in various configurations they fight it, defend it, depend on it, define it, debunk it, deride it, affirm it, foster it, see it as a vehicle for change or as a bulwark against change. Whether fought or embraced, whether a

327

force for change or for stability, there it is, as indispensable and inconspicuous as the air we breathe. At this point we need to spend few words on the fact that the tradition of Swedish church and society was patriarchal in structure. In that respect it hardly differs from the vast majority of cultures. If there is any special aspect of the Swedish edition of patriarchalism, it could be that the century-old monopolistic compound between church, state, and culture added force to the tradition. . . . In matters of religion Swedes are traditionalists in many ways. Much has been written and said about Sweden as a secular and nonreligious country. Yet it is a fact that approximately 93% are members of the Church of Sweden. It is easy to show that few of them go to church or claim much interest in the church. It is harder to gauge their degree of attachment to the Christian tradition. When asked about reasons for church membership, one of the highest scores is on the answer: “It is natural for me as a Swede.” Perhaps one should also note that in a country with high taxes, it must mean something that only a very small number of people have availed themselves of the opportunity to avoid paying the taxes that the state levies for membership in the Church of Sweden. As we think about the force of tradition, we must note that by that very force the Swedes consider themselves in the Christian tradition—often unwilling to assess the specifics of their allegiance. In a vague but deep manner they are often convinced that what seems right and just and moral is in continuity with the Christian tradition and should be the concern of the church. They think of the church as the national guardian of the values of society. As people of tradition they are not expecting an adversary relation between church and society. In such a traditional setting it came as a shock to many when the opponents to the ordination of women affirmed the patriarchal tradition for the priesthood as being a constitutive part of the church’s essence and function. Tradition now came to serve as a bulwark against change. The affirmation that the male structure of the priesthood was an abiding and binding part of tradition—while one could admit that other elements of tradition were open to change—was intensified in the Swedish conflict by the joining of forces between High Church groups and Evangelical Biblicists. Hence the more catholic idea of tradition as development was made. . . . But also those who were in favor of the ordination of women could claim tradition with equal right. For the classical Christian tradition has often served

328

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

as a mighty force for freedom and liberation and for unmasking the ways those in power repress and oppress. The vision of how in Christ the distinction between men and women is broken down constitutes the third panel where the first is the abolition of slavery. And as the nineteenth century proved a milestone in the latter case, the twentieth no doubt has done the same in the former. . . . But if the force of the ecumenical, classical, and biblical tradition will shape the future of the Church of Sweden, then it is reasonable to expect many among the women to teach all how ministry can be done naturally by the role of enabling and community building. For the force of tradition has made women the great artisans in those tasks. And once fully equal, they will enjoy bringing those gifts to the community. 448. GUSTAF WINGREN, CHRISTIANITY AND CREATION (1971) A theologian who lived and worked later in the twentieth century, Gustaf Wingren represents new themes in Christian theology and engagement with the world that became important in Scandinavian theology after World War II, including a theological appreciation of Creation. From Gustaf Wingren, The Flight From Cr Creation. eation. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1971), 66–83. If one looks at the development of the Christian church from the period before World War I up to the 1970s, one is struck by the fact that during the 1930s and 40s the church closed in on itself while after a few years of hesitation in mid-century it rapidly opened itself up to the world during the 1960s and 70s. . . . This phenomenon is understandable. The theologically productive country was Germany whose Bekenntniskirche [Confessing Church], to which both Barth and Bultmann belonged, was polemically opposed to National Socialism, which at that time represented “the world.” The term “world” had a negative ring; it was a case of cutting the church off from its surroundings, keeping it and its teaching pure. In the years that followed World War II, the whole situation suddenly changed. The colonial period was over; African and Asian nations began to receive their independence, simultaneously discovering their frail economic situation. Under these conditions, to take on “the world” and jointly shoulder responsibility for secular problems becomes Christ-

ian, demanded by love. The term “world” changes face and becomes something positive. When the church was withdrawn into itself, on its “flight from creation,” it was fairly natural to neglect the first article of faith (this article was directly misused by the racist ideologies of the Third Reich). But today, fear of the first article is an anachronism. “The flight” now places theological reasoning in obvious theoretical difficulties. For the social and political program to which churches all over the world now give their support are often thought out and presented by persons who are not of the Christian faith. The church allies itself only secondarily to worldly manifestos. How then can a program or manifesto be justified theologically by the gospel, by the specific words about Christ which the church alone—not the world—acknowledges? The new practical situation during the 1960s and 70s should also produce a shift in emphasis at the theoretical level. But there are no signs of such a change. This may lead to a very dangerous self-righteousness on the part of the church. We must make the effort to understand theoretically how a person without “the right faith” can accomplish things which benefit his fellow men and which, with respect to the world, are useful . . . The gospel differs from the law in that it speaks primarily to the individual. It doesn’t deal with our own practical contributions to the state of the world. It has something to say to me, an individual, even when I am about to die and cannot reasonably be expected to do anything at all which may be of benefit to others. A church cannot solely resolve itself into “social action” without failing the lonely, the unwanted and the dying—those who don’t even have the strength left to pray or move their lips any longer. Jesus Christ, at any rate, did not fail them. His last conversation with a criminal at the place of execution, Golgotha, brings this out well enough (Luke 23:40–43). This is not to say that the gospel only talks about “heaven” or “paradise” and keeps quiet about life on earth. The gospel, after all, paints a picture of a person, Jesus Christ. We cannot see this picture without seeing community and fellowship. For that person never did anything solely for his own good—others were always included in his actions. He who today, through hearing and accepting the gospel, receives Christ as a gift, also receives life as a gift. The gospel gives life, natural, human life. But we had life previously too, before and irrespective of the gospel, even if it was in a perverted and damaged condition. Ethically, the gospel doesn’t

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

add anything “supernatural” to our ordinary nature. The gospel cleans up; it clarifies and gives a form—but it gives a form to something which we have already lived in, as people. This simple situation is borne out by an experience which each of us can have whether or not we are Christian. When we neglect to do something good our negligence is almost never the result of ignorance of the good. We knew but we didn’t do the good. The gospel doesn’t need to give any new ethical “knowledge.” It is much more important that it gives us the Lord, who sacrificed his own life to offer everyone who believes the gift of daily fellowship with him. But these question-marks to the face of modern theology, question–marks that have been advanced for many years, only increase in importance during the 1970s. For our new responsibility becomes more and more a responsibility to nature. In order to protect man, in particular the weak and the stressed, during the coming years we must begin the great battle against environmental pollution all over the world: the fight against industrial poisoning of water, air and earth; the fight against meaningless rise in production which sacrifices the health of the individual for fairly pointless material gains; the fight against a population explosion which can only be halted by a new, conscious respect for the female body; above all the fight against mass hunger. Not one of these new fields can be mastered unless Christians and non–Christians cooperate by using common-sense arguments; not one of them can be touched unless we direct our attention positively to the natural phenomena around us. Taking on this job while there is a “flight from creation” is inconceivable. In its biblical texts and in its long history, the church has a wealth of thought about God as the Creator. Tragically, these beliefs are neglected, even though the churches’ creed, repeated every Sunday, begins: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth.” 449. TUOMO MANNERMAA, THE NEW FINNISH SCHOOL OF LUTHER RESEARCH (1997) Beginning in the 1970s, Mannermaa and his Finnish colleagues began a series of influential and ground-breaking studies of Luther. In the context of Lutheran-Orthodox theological dialogues, they sought to find a new understanding of Luther through the concept of theosis or divinization, a theme out of Orthodox theology.

329

From Tuomo Mannermaa, “Why Is Luther So Fascinating? Modern Finnish Luther Research,” in Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpr Interpretation etation of Luther Luther. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1998), 1–20.

Fig. 10.13. Tuomo Mannermaa

The external impulse for this new wave of Luther studies in Helsinki came surprisingly from outside the boundaries of Luther research. It came from the ecumenical dialogue between the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Russian Orthodox Church that was initiated by Archbishop Martti Simojoki at the beginning of the seventies. Archbishop Simojoki asked some younger members of the theological faculty at the University of Helsinki to participate in a preparatory group, which had the task of finding a firm point of departure for the LutheranOrthodox dialogue that was just beginning at that time. We decided to seek a methodologically secure common standpoint from which we could in time systematically and safely proceed toward further topics. . . At the very beginning of our studies we came to the conclusion that Luther’s idea of the presence of Christ in faith could form a basis for the LutheranOrthodox dialogue. The indwelling of Christ as grasped in the Lutheran tradition implies a real participation in God, and it corresponds in a special way

330

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

to the Orthodox doctrine of participation in God, namely the doctrine of theosis. This conclusion was not a commonly accepted understanding of how one might find the point of contact that we were seeking. According to Luther, Christ (in both his person and his work) is present in faith and is through this presence identical with the righteousness of faith. Thus, the notion that Christ is present in the Christian occupies a much more central place in the theology of Luther than in the Lutheranism subsequent to him. The idea of a divine life in Christ who is really present in faith lies at the very center of the theology of the Reformer. . . Clearly, the concept of real participation in God is fundamental for Luther’s theology. Luther employs other terms as well to describe this idea of participation, such as “unification with God” or the “transformation of man.” The concept of participation reaches its peak expression in the notion of theosis, or “divinization.” . . . Theosis is based causally on the divinity of God. According to Luther, the divinity of the triune God consists in that “He gives.” And what he gives, ultimately, is himself. The essence of God, then, is identical with the essential divine properties in which he gives of himself, called the “names” of God: Word, justice, truth, wisdom, love, goodness, eternal life, and so forth. The theosis of the believer is initiated when God bestows on the believer God’s essential properties; that is, what God gives of himself to humans is nothing separate from God himself. Before God gives himself to a person in his Word (which is God himself), he performs his “nihilizing work”— he makes the person “empty” and “nothing.” This reductio in nihilum, of course, does not imply a total annihilation of the person. It refers only to the destruction of the individual’s constant effort to make himself god and to justify himself. One must pass through this agony and, ultimately, through the cross in order to achieve a true cognitio sui [knowledge of self.]. Only in this way is one made vacuum and capax Dei [capacity for God]. And this doctrine implies that, according to Luther, the modus of a Christian is always passio: a person is neither inwardly nor outwardly active; one experiences only what God affects in him or her. Luther’s concept of theosis, then, is understood correctly only in connection with his theology of the cross. The participation that is a real part of his theology is hidden under its opposite, the passio through which one is emptied. It is not grasped in rational knowledge but only in faith, and the grasp that faith

has of it in this life is still only the beginning of a much greater participation that awaits in eschatological fulfillment. God gives himself as the Word in the historical birth of Christ and in the spiritual birth of Christ in the faith of the believer. . . Thus arises a radically different concept of the relationship between God and man than had been previously described in the interpretative traditions of the Luther Renaissance and of dialectical theology. Luther’s concept concerns more than the notion of the union of the will of God with that of man (Luther Renaissance). And it also goes beyond the concept of a community of deed or of act in revelation (dialectical theology). Rather, it refers to a community of being of God and man. One should nevertheless take note that thus far nothing has been said concerning how we are precisely to understand and to define this being. And important restrictions govern what we can say about it: we cannot describe it appropriately by means of the concepts of an “effect” ontology, the concepts of a static substantial ontology, or the concepts of other forms of philosophical ontology. For Luther’s understanding of the being of Christ in faith is theological in its nature. That is, his ontology is a theological one, even though he uses philosophical terminology in expressing what he intends to say. . . . The being of God is relational, and as such has the character of esse. This understanding of the being of God is the basis for understanding the being-present-of-Christ in faith. In Christ the inner-trinitarian Word, which is the being of God, becomes incarnate. The presence of Christ’s word and the word about Christ in faith are the presence of God himself. 450. HARALD HEGSTAD: RECENT TRAJECTORIES IN THE CHURCH OF NORWAY (2012) Developments in the Church of Norway in the latter part of the twentieth century show two trajectories, the confessional and the ecumenical, which co–exist within the parties within modern Norwegian Lutheranism. From Harald Hegstad, “The Lutheran and Ecumenical Identity of Church of Norway,” Anne-Louise Eriksson et al, eds, Exploring a Heritag itage: e: Ev Evang angelical elical Luther Lutheran an Churches in the North orth. (Eugene OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012), 305–19.

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

Church of Norway going through major changes According to an agreement between all the political parties in the parliament, church and state relations will be changed from 2012 through amendments to the constitution. This process has led the church to rethink and redefine its identity. Even if the official name of the church is Church of Norway (Den norske kirke), it is often just referred to as “the state church.” After 2012 this nickname will become less fitting and Church of Norway will to a greater extent appear as a church among others, even if its size (79 percent of the population) puts it in a special position. Anyway, the question has been up for discussion: if it is not a privileged relation to the state that constitutes the identity of this church, what is it? Identity without Confessional Consciousness? As part of the state church process the General Synod of Church of Norway in 2004 passed a statement on Church of Norway’s “identity and mission.” The statement covers several aspects of being church in contemporary Norwegian society. A striking aspect of the statement is that very little emphasis is put on the confessional character of Church of Norway as a Lutheran church. When the relation to churches from other traditions is mentioned, focus is on the connections and continuities rather than on differences. The statement underlines that “The Church of Norway is part of the worldwide Christian Church” (§1), and that it “today is part of a broad community of churches in our country” (§2). The Reformation in the sixteenth century is not mentioned at all; the focus is rather the continuity with the medieval Norwegian church: “The Church of Norway is a continuation of the church that was founded by the end of the first millennium” (§2). The only place where the Lutheran character of the church is explicitly mentioned is in the description of the doctrinal basis of the church, but also in this context the focus is on this basis as something that connects to a common faith. The church sees the confessions from the old church as an expression of the common faith it shares with other churches. The distinct Lutheran confessions are genuine expressions of this common faith (§3). At the end of the document the relation to other churches is mentioned again in relation to the role of Church of Norway’s efforts for church unity through

331

participation in ecumenical organizations and bilateral agreements (§ 22). The missing confessional identification of Church of Norway in the document does not mean that the identity assigned to the church is unclear or without profile. Instead, other categories are used in the formulation of the identity, especially through the understanding of Church of Norway as a folk church. This is for instance expressed through the understanding of Church of Norway as a “confessing, missional, serving and open folk church” (§7). Most of what the documents says about the identity and mission of Church of Norway could without difficulties be linked to the Lutheran tradition of the church, but it just does not happen. . . . A main reason for the low awareness in this matter is mainly a reflection of Church of Norway’s majority position in Norwegian society. Even if other churches have been present since the 1840s, Church of Norway has been understood as the main representative of the Christian faith in Norway. When other churches in recent years have become more visible in society, Church of Norway has chosen to stress ecumenical fellowship and openness rather than confessional identity. At the same time this ecumenical profile is an important reason for the recent engagement with its own confessional identity. When approaching other churches with much more distinctive identities, Church of Norway tends to appear rather vague in its profile. In order to engage in ecumenical dialogue, it is necessary to be aware of one’s own confessional identity. . . . In order to understand the present situation and be able to navigate for the future, it is necessary to be aware of the past. Church of Norway has been a Lutheran church for almost five hundred years. Engaging with the confessional identity means finding resources for the future, but also acknowledging the limitations of this tradition—and thus seeking mutual enrichment in relationships with churches from other traditions. What it means for a church to have a Lutheran identity may vary according to the given context. A Lutheran identity is not something abstract, but a concrete identity shaped by various factors. What keeps Lutheran churches together is a common reference to the Reformation and the Lutheran confessions. Apart from that they may be very different. In order to understand the Lutheran identity of Church of Norway it is necessary to understand the historical background. . . . Discussions of the confessional identity of a church often tend to be focused on the past, over how the past should be interpreted and managed in today’s

332

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

situation. An important question has been whether old condemnations and divisions are still valid, or whether they can be overcome. In a changing world confessional identity is increasingly also becoming a question of how to manage present and future challenges. One major challenge that has the potential to change the self–understanding of Church of Norway is immigration. A substantial proportion of the immigrants to Norway from non-Western countries have Christian backgrounds from their home countries. Even if there are some Lutherans among them, from countries like Ethiopia and Eritrea, most of them belong to other denominations. In this situation Church of Norway is challenged to cooperate with immigrant churches (including the Roman Catholic Church) and to integrate immigrants into its own congregations. A question that arises is whether Church of Norway is a church only for Christians with a Lutheran background. Another question is whether the old understanding of Lutheranism as something inherently Norwegian has to be challenged. To be a folk church in this new situation should not be limited to being church for ethnic Norwegians only, but to be a witness of the gospel for persons of different backgrounds. 451. AILA LAUHA, THE CONTEMPORARY CHURCH OF FINLAND (2005) Finland is often put together with the three Scandinavian countries, but in important ways its twentieth-century history has differed substantially from theirs. Nevertheless the Lutheran Church of Finland has undergone many changes similar to the other Churches. From Aila Lauha, “Finnish Christianity since 1940,” in Björn Ryman, et al, eds, Nordic Folk Churches: A Contempor ontemporary ary Church History History. (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2005), 27–40. New Initiatives and Modernization of the Church Since the middle of the 1960s the Lutheran Church of Finland has changed in many significant respects. The liturgical life went through a considerable reform. The new liturgical rite was established in 1968, and in the 1990s several new liturgical reforms, which combined elements from the Lutheran heritage and other church traditions, were introduced to establish liturgical practices appropriate to modern

times and people. A new hymnal was put into use in 1986, and the new Finnish translation of the Bible was introduced in 1992. Church legislation was reformed in 1994. A new catechism interpreting the main contents of Evangelical Lutheran belief for a modern reader was delivered to all Finnish homes in 2000. In debates concerning religion, the focus moved away from socioethical questions toward sexual ethics and interpretations of the Bible. Although the church took a notably cautious and traditional stance on questions concerning same-sex marriage and homosexuality, some conservative groups reacted against the church and created their own pressure groups within it. The most debated question inside the church was women’s ordination. Women have been ordained as priests since 1988, but the practice still creates controversy. The historical-critical interpretation of the Bible created some heated debates. Higher theological education in Finland is offered at universities. There are no separate theological seminaries, although their formation has been brought up at times. The universities of Helsinki and Joensuu. As well as the Swedish–speaking Åbo Akademi in Turku, offer theological education at both undergraduate and graduate levels. The Department of Theology at the University of Joensuu specializes in both Lutheran and Orthodox theologies. At the Beginning of a New Millennium At the beginning of the millennium Finland is an increasingly multicultural society. Immigration from African countries and the Balkans has brought Finland a fairly large and active Muslim population. In 2003 a new law concerning religious freedom was passed, guaranteeing all religious groups a right to practice their faiths and receive religious education in their own faith at schools. Baptism, confirmation, and religious rites at burials have continued to be popular among Finns, and big church weddings have again become fashionable. Nevertheless, only 2 percent of Finns participate frequently in Sunday mass. In smaller cities the attendance is slightly higher. The church has looked for new ways to serve its members. It offers day care, parenting classes, clubs for single people, support groups for recovering alcoholics, and other forms of counseling and social care. The so-called Thomas Masses, named after doubting Thomas, which combine gospel music, new forms of prayer, and a strong sense of community, have reached young and edu-

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

cated members of the church in the bigger towns. Charismatic movements have continued to attract people. The church plays an important role at the time of both private and collective celebrations. It brings a sense of security and continuity to people’s lives. For many people the value of religion becomes evident at times of personal and social crises. During the recession of the 1990s the church looked for new ways to support people during economic difficulties. It organized soup kitchens, offered help with debt consolidation, and spoke strongly for social equality. The church’s strident efforts to offer relief for the unemployed and other people in need clearly strengthened its position as an ideological force within the country. The bishops, especially the long–term and widely respected archbishop John Vikstom (1982–98) and his solid and plainspoken successor Jukka Paarma (elected in 1999), have been frequently seen in the media to address contemporary ethical and social problems. The Lutheran church’s profile and image have gone through profound changes during the last decades of the twentieth century. The church is still a decisively national, Finnish, institution. At the same time, it has taken an active interest in international and ecumenical exchange. The Lutheran Church of Finland is still fairly traditional in its teachings concerning dogmatic aspects of faith, but its understanding concerning sexual ethics and marriage has broadened. As a folk church it shelters many types of religious groups and a wide variety of religious beliefs. The church believes that the celebration of plurality is one of the best ways for it to prosper in the future.

333

are considered necessary to preserve the Church’s essential characteristics and historical identity. The Church is defined in sections 1 through 3 of this Act as an evangelical-Lutheran denomination, built upon a democratic organization, and it must be open to all—a so-called “Folkkyrka”; the Church must also maintain congregations in all parts of Sweden, irrespective of the urbanization of religion. Even though the law declares the Church’s fundamental religious beliefs, the Church itself would be allowed to determine the details of its doctrine and teachings. In fact, the government stated in its writings to the Church Office in 1997 that “[i]t is of great importance that the law does not leave room for detailed regulation by the government of doctrine and other concerns that pertain to the exercise of the faith and other internal matters of the Church of Sweden.” One important point that is not included in the Church of Sweden Act pertains to the King’s Church affiliation requirement. As portrayed earlier in this Comment, the Swedish King has been the head of the Church since the Middle Ages and has had to swear allegiance to God and the Church. The King is under the same obligation today, although it does not appear to be compatible with the current transformation of church-state relations. Nonetheless, to obtain broad support for the reforms, the government chose not to remove this requirement due to the serious rift between the opposing sides of the question. On this issue, the government could have adapted Inger Davidson’s statement that it would rather “cooperate and make possible a move forward rather than trudge in the same footsteps for the next several years.” V. Conclusion

452. THE DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF SWEDEN (1999) A major question for all these Nordic Churches is their relation to the State, especially in their modern secularized societies. The Church of Sweden was officially unlinked from the State in 2000, though like the other Churches it still has some close ties to the Swedish government and other aspects of society. From E. Kenneth Stegeby, “An Analysis of the Impending Disestablishment of the Church of Sweden, 1999,” BYU Law Review 703 (1999). 3. The Church of Sweden Act The government would, through the Church of Sweden Act, provide the guidelines and rules that

After decades of debate and incremental reform, the time has come in Sweden to reform churchstate relations. The Church of Sweden’s status as a state church, instituted in the Fifteenth Century, is no longer strongly supported by either the people or the state. Societal changes during the last fifty years have necessitated a reexamination of the existing relations between the Church and the state. The first modern state-sponsored series of investigations occurred between 1958 and 1968, and the arguments for a separation of the ties between the state and Church were mainly based on freedom of religion. In 1973, Alva Myrdal drafted a proposal based on the decade long investigations; Olof Palme, who was the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, did not submit the proposal to the parliament because of an upcoming election. Meanwhile, the Church commenced

334

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

its own investigations, and the state later became interested in cooperating with the Church’s investigators. However, this attempt at reforming churchstate relations failed in 1979. A majority supported a motion to stop the suggested reforms, mainly because of an apprehension regarding the proposition that the Church should no longer have the right to collect a Church tax from members and nonmembers. Nonetheless, in 1995 the parliament agreed to pass a proposal submitted by the government, which suggested reforms very similar to the recommendations of 1979. The parliament’s and Kyrkomötet’s [General Synod] reversal of position twenty years later may be linked to changes in society and in the attitude of the Church. Whatever the cause, a transformation of the relations between the state and Church will occur by January 1, 2000. This will put the Church of Sweden in a more equal position to all other denominations operating in Sweden. However, one cannot conclude that the Church of Sweden will become one among many churches. There will be a special law governing the Church, and the Church will automatically obtain status as a Registered Denomination, whereas all other denominations must prove they fulfill the requirements for registration. The King will still be the head of the Church and must swear allegiance to its faith, and the King’s children will be under the same requirement. It is also important to note the fact that the Church has, throughout the history of Sweden, been an integral part of both society and the state, and this will not easily be eradicated from the culture, society or the individual Swedish person’s mind. The Church is in many ways the source for modern Swedish society and state, and as Edmund Burke observed: We have real hearts of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms. We fear God; we look up with awe to kings, with affection to parliaments, with duty to magistrates, with reverence to priests, and with respect to nobility. Why? Because when such ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural to be so affected.

It is often as difficult to let go of the past. One need not and should not forget the past; rather, one should use the past as a stepping stone toward something greater, something richer and fuller. In a nation’s development, we may call it social progress. The proposed disestablishment will not achieve a full separation of the church and state, but it is an important and necessary step in the direction of religious freedom in Sweden. History shows that the rise

of the Church of Sweden came about as an evolution, rather than through a revolution. Since the first glimpse of religious freedom sparkled in the Seventeenth Century, many steps have been taken towards severing the ties between the state and church. The proposed disestablishment of the year two thousand will be yet another step in this evolution. 453. SECULARISM IN SCANDINAVIAN CHURCH AND SOCIETY (2013) By most measures, the modern Scandinavian countries are some of the most secular societies in the world, and rates of religious belief and attendance are very low. Yet the Lutheran churches still have an important, if diminishing role in modern Scandinavian life. From Gary G. Yerkey, “The Church of Sweden’s Nonbelievers,” Thursday, January 24, 2013 http://www.livingchurch.org/church–sweden–nonbelievers. Late last year, during the Christmas holidays, a Swedish friend invited me to a dinner party in central Stockholm. It was dark and snowy as I walked to her apartment, past droves of shoppers out collecting their last-minute Christmas gifts, dazzled by the bright decorations filling store windows. My friend’s apartment, too, was bright, with candles lit and a magnificent Christmas tree in the corner decked out for the season. During a lull in our dinner conversation, I asked the dozen or so guests how many belonged to the Church of Sweden, which until 2000 was the state church and is still the largest Lutheran church in the world. All but two people raised their hands. How many of you, I asked, believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God? No one volunteered. So what’s going on here? How is it that dues-paying members of a Christian church do not believe in Jesus Christ? What’s going on is that, like the overwhelming majority of citizens of other Scandinavian countries, most Swedes see the church as a useful and praiseworthy institution. But praising God in church is not something they choose to do. A recent survey by the Church of Sweden found that about two-thirds of the country’s 9.4 million people belong to the church. Yet only 15 percent of church members say they believe in Jesus Christ. An equal percentage of Swedes call themselves atheists. And only about 400,000 of the roughly 6.6 million

LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750–PRESENT

members of the church say they attend services at least once a month. The survey, conducted by Jonas Bromander, chief analyst of the Church of Sweden, also found that membership continues to decline (at an accelerating pace), from about 95 percent of the population 40 years ago to the historically low 68.8 percent today. Church membership in other Scandinavian countries has also fallen. The Church of Norway, for example, has seen its membership decline from 86.6 percent of the population in 2001 to 76.9 percent in 2011. Similarly, in Denmark, membership has dipped from roughly 85 percent to about 80 percent in the same period. And in Finland, the comparable numbers are 85 percent and 77 percent. That the decline has not been even more dramatic is perhaps surprising given the remarkable and sustained secularization of Nordic society in the past few decades. But experts argue that Scandinavians choose to belong to the church even today because it provides a convenient and historically important meeting place, as it were, for family occasions such as weddings and funerals. Ninety percent of all Swedes are still buried with a church service, according to the Church of Sweden. It also serves as a refuge in times of national crisis such as the sinking of the ferry Estonia in 1994, in which 800 people died, most of them Swedes, or the murder of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh in 2003. Bjorn Vikstrom, bishop of the Swedish-speaking Diocese of Porvoo, said recently that, while membership in the Finnish church has fallen, most Finns still choose to baptize their children and bury their loved ones in the church. They also believe that schools should celebrate Christmas and other Christian holidays by reading the Bible and singing psalms, he said. “It seems like Finns today have a love-hate relationship with Christian traditions,” Vikstrom said in a Helsinki Times article in December. “On the one hand, people want to mark their freedom from them. On the other hand, they miss the sense of fellowship and continuity that the traditions help create.” Sven Bjorkborg, a pastor who serves several parishes southwest of Stockholm, says that Swedes, too, support the church because it guards important national values and traditions and does good work, such as helping the poor and the elderly and comforting the lonely. He says he believes in Jesus Christ, which is not a requirement for Church of Sweden clergy. (Affirming women’s ordination to the priesthood is required.) A December poll by the Swedish opinion research organization Sifo found that 83 percent of Swedes

335

believe that Christmas should be about family, compared to a good meal (55%), attending church (12 percent) and celebrating the birth of Jesus (10 percent). Others say that the decline in church membership in Sweden can also be attributed to the scrapping in 1996 of a law making children automatic members at birth, provided that one or more of their parents belonged. Today only children who are baptized into the church become members. Financial support for the Church of Sweden, valued at about 36 billion kronor (about $5.5 billion), comes mainly from a tax paid by all members of the church. The amount of the tax, collected by the state, varies from parish to parish but averages about $250 a year. Anders Thorendal, the church treasurer and its chief investment officer, has said it costs about 19 billion kronor (about $3 billion) a year to run the church. Decisions on how to use the church tax are made at the local level, he said, and a separate “buffer” fund for emergencies of about 5 billion kronor (about $800 million) is managed at the national level. Some analysts have argued that for the church to survive financially, it will have to cut expenditures drastically or increase the church tax, which could be unpopular. H.B. Hammar, former dean of Skara Cathedral, said that of the 3,384 churches in Sweden only 500 or so are used at most once a month. “With fewer and fewer paying members, you have to review your options,” he wrote in the national daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, “and do it before it is too late.” Hammar said that hundreds of churches need immediate renovation, costing billions. They could also be sold to private individuals and used for housing, cafes, offices or light industry. But doing that, he said, would trigger a wave of public protest, which oddly enough would be greater “in our heavily secularized Sweden” than it was in the United Kingdom, where a similar proposal was floated a few decades ago. The former dean argued that in Sweden today the church has become a kind of medical center, providing support in times of crises. But to perform that function “there is no need for church buildings.” Ideally, he said, “blow them up!” Freedom of religion, meanwhile, remains a pillar of the Swedish constitution, and all public schools are required to teach students at least the basic tenets of the world’s major religions. But every year, the government has felt the need

336

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

to remind pastors and public school principals the law requires the separation of church and state. “The law stipulates that Swedish schools are nonconfessional,” the Swedish National Agency for Education, for example, said in an op–ed piece in the daily national newspaper Dagens Nyheter in November, “[which means] that there can’t be any religious elements such as prayer, blessings or declarations of faith in education. Students should not have to be subjected to religious influence in school.” While the Church of Sweden continues to lose members, a religious awakening of sorts has been occurring in the country thanks to the gradual influx of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, or “new Swedes,” over the past few decades. Today, roughly 15 percent of the population is

foreign-born. There are now 92,000 Roman Catholics and 100,000 Eastern Orthodox Christians living in Sweden. The Pew Research Center recently reported that there also about 40,000 Buddhists, 20,000 Hindus, and 10,000 Jews. But it also said that Sweden today has a significant Muslim population: some 430,000. Some analysts have predicted that the Muslim minority in Sweden will increase from about 5 percent today to 10 percent by 2030. As for Bromander, the chief analyst at the Church of Sweden, he has sought to put a positive face on the continuing fall in church membership, saying that times change and so do organizations. “Large numbers of members isn’t a goal in itself,” he said. “The church can still be a relevant arena for a lot of Swedes, and I’m sure it will be so.”

11. Lutheranism as a Worldwide Movement

In the sixteenth century the influence of Lutheranism was mostly confined to the northern regions of Europe. The reform movement had expanded from the various territorial churches of Germany to Scandinavia where it became the official religion of the kingdoms of Denmark-Norway and Sweden-Finland. German settlers in the Baltic region also established Lutheran congregations in Estland, Livland, and Kurland, and later, under Swedish rule, Lutheranism spread more extensively among the indigenous people there who spoke Latvian and Estonian. In other regions of Europe, however, the more influential form of Protestantism tended to be the Reformed tradition, shaped by the Swiss reformers, Calvin and Zwingli. Roman Catholicism became a worldwide movement during the sixteenth century, as a result of the missionaries who accompanied the explorers sent out by Portugal and Spain to establish colonies in South America, Africa and Asia. Lutherans, by contrast, showed little interest at first in worldwide evangelism. They were preoccupied with maintaining theological unity within the evangelical churches and with firming up control of the territories they had already managed to reform. Since Germany and Scandinavia were not early participants in the voyages of discovery, their rulers and citizens were also comparatively less conscious of the rest of the world beyond Europe. There were additional theological reasons for the hesitance of Lutherans to embark on more ambitious evangelistic outreach. During the age of Orthodoxy (see Vol. 1, Ch. 6), the predominant Lutheran stress on divine initiative more than human agency in the process of salvation, led many theologians to con-

clude that they were not responsible for the eternal destiny of people in other parts of the world. They were inclined to think that the Great Commission to bring the gospel to the whole world (Matthew 28:19–20) only applied to the first apostles (e.g. Johann Heinrich Ursinus) or even that this mandate had already been achieved (e.g. Philipp Nicolai). One of the few dissenters from this view was Justinian von Weltz (1621–1668) a wealthy Austrian baron who proposed the formation of a “Jesus Loving Society” to sponsor missionaries. Failing to gain much support, he set out himself, in 1665, to evangelize the local people in the Dutch colony of Suriname. He died there just a few years later, probably as a result of an attack by wild animals. The Pietist reformers who set out to revitalize religious life in the German and Scandinavian churches near the end of the seventeenth century were also the first Lutherans to become passionate about bringing salvation to non-Christians in other parts of the world. August Hermann Francke (1663–1727) trained the first Lutheran missionaries at the University of Halle and collaborated with the King of Denmark to send them to the colony the Danes had established along the southwest coast of India (see Vol. 1, doc. #182). After arriving there in 1706, Bartolomäus Ziegenbalg (1682–1719) and Heinrich Plütschau (1677–1752) learned Portuguese and the Tamil language in order to communicate with the local people (doc. #454). Despite much opposition from both irreligious European colonists and Hindu or Muslim religious leaders, Ziegenbalg was able to baptize thirty-five converts by the end of their first year and erect a church building for their meetings. He went on to set up a free school for children, com-

338

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

pose a grammar and lexicon of the Tamil language and translate both the New Testament and Luther’s Small Catechism. King Frederik IV of Denmark (1671–1730) also sponsored a mission to the Lapps of northern Scandinavia in 1716 and supported the work of a Norwegian pastor, Hans Egede (1686–1758), among the people of Greenland in 1721. The next Danish king, Christian VI (1699–1746), patronized missionary activity by Moravian Pietists in the Danish colonies in the West Indies in 1732. However, the impact of Enlightenment rationalism within the churches limited further expansion of interest in missionary work until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Then, the resurgence of confessional identity and the spread of a religious Awakening in Germany and Scandinavia, led to the formation of a wide variety of foreign mission societies. These included the Basel Missionary Society (1822), the Berlin Missionary Society (1824), the Rhenish Society in Barmen (1828), the Leipzig Society (1836), the North German Missionary Society (1836), the Gossner Society (1836), the Neuendettelsau Society (1841), the Hermannsburg Society (1849) and the Schleswig-Holstein Society (1876). These mission societies mostly functioned without direct support from the official organizational structures of the Lutheran churches. In Scandinavia, similar societies developed in Denmark (1821), Sweden (1835) and Norway (1842). Some of these European organizations sent out pastors to help the scattered Lutheran communities in North American, but once the American churches became more strongly organized they also formed their own missionary societies. These included the ones founded by the General Synod (1835), the Ministerium of Pennsylvania (1836), the General Council (1869) and the Missouri Synod (1894). By the start of the twentieth century, the numerous American denominations were as active as the Europeans on the mission fields—sometimes working cooperatively with them and at other times on their own. Women found mission work to be an especially important outlet for their contributions to the churches. They provided important financial support for foreign missions from home, and many also served as unordained missionaries abroad. The attitudes of Lutheran missionaries have evolved significantly over the past three hundred years. Initially the focus was on evangelistic work. Missionaries worked to convert individuals away from their former systems of belief and practice, which were generally views as inadequate, degrading or oppressive (doc. #454 and 456). Although they

were often critical of the colonial governments under which they needed to work, they were not entirely free from manifestations of a sense of superiority with regard to local cultures. Only in time did they become better at recognizing distinctions between the essential features of the Christian life and the western cultural norms they also brought with them. Appalled by the “sad degradation” in which many people lived, the missionaries also began to devote more attention to improving social conditions as well as changing religious beliefs (doc. #457). By the late nineteenth century, the most successful Lutheran missionaries such as Ludwig Nommensen (1834–1918), who served with the Rhenish Mission Society among the Bataks of Sumatra (Indonesia), had come to appreciate the importance of making adjustments to local cultures. They also began the process of empowering converts to manage more of their own church affairs (doc. #455). During the twentieth century, ecumenical cooperation on the mission fields became more widespread as a result of a series of international missionary conferences that developed ambitious plans for the Christianization of the whole world. More liberal currents of theological thought, however, raised new questions about the absoluteness of Christianity. Inter-religious dialogue and human development work began to play a greater role alongside evangelistic outreach (doc. #458). The gradual demise of the colonial era also saw increasing efforts by the mission churches to become self-propagating, self-governing and self-supporting. Non-western churches only made up 8% of the delegates to the first assembly of the Lutheran World Federation in 1947, but by 1977, when it met for the first time in an African country (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania), the third world delegates made up 40% of the assembly. Bishop Josiah Kibira of Tanzania was elected LWF president and since then there have been LWF presidents from churches in Hungary, Brazil and Palestine. In 2013, the LWF estimated that almost 45% of the Lutherans associated with its 140 member churches were from countries outside of Europe and North America. Some of the problems faced by the non-western churches are specific to their localities, but there are many that are common around the globe (doc. #459). In the early days of Lutheran missions, converts to Christianity often faced persecution from their own people, and some of the autonomous churches still struggle with this problem today (doc. #473, 485, 487, 493, 500). Militant Islamic and Hindu movements have occasionally caused problems in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and some-

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

times the churches struggle with the stigma resulting from the perception that they are “foreign” or too connected to western countries that once perpetrated colonial oppression (doc. #473 and 475). Living in countries with oppressive political regimes and facing perpetual economic hardship exacerbated by globalization, Lutherans in the global south have also become more active in supporting liberation movements (doc. #460–464, 482, 483, 499, 501, 502). In many countries the church’s theologians have formulated “holistic theologies”, which treat human social development as equal in importance to the goal of evangelization (doc. #466, 469, 472, 473, 475). However, they frequently struggle with a lack of resources to meet both the social and spiritual needs of people. Forced to look to more wealthy and stable western churches for financial and administrative assistance, they then sometimes feel troubled by the tension this creates with their efforts to be self–governing and self–determining (doc. #472, 485, 487, 494, 497). The disparity of worldviews has been a continuous challenge to the communication of the Christian message. The global churches have given extensive thought to inculturation or the adjustment of theology and religious practice to meet the needs and interests of local cultures. Today, many encourage greater appreciation of the validity of non-western conceptual structures and ways of living (doc. #465, 466, 470, 485). Some global Lutherans are very loyal to the original Lutheran confessions and patterns of worship that were introduced to them by missionaries, but others question the relevance of some inherited elements and see denominational consciousness as a barrier to effective ministry (doc. #468, 480, 485, 486, 489). There have been significant efforts to overcome fragmentation within the churches, competition among denominations, and misunderstandings between different religions. Although groups such as the Pietists were sometimes quite ecumenical in the past, efforts to promote dialogue and cooperation between different religious groups have greatly increased in recent years (doc. #465, 470, 484, 486). There have still been some concerns, however, about the infiltration of “alien” elements into the Lutheran churches either in the form of eccentric customs from indigenous cultures or theologically-problematic perspectives held by other competing Christian denominations (doc. #471, 475, 495, 496). One of the most fraught areas of cultural adjustment has related to issues of gender and sexuality. Many of the global churches have improved the position of women in their societies

339

and have increased their participation in leadership roles within the churches, including ordination. However, some of the churches, particularly in Africa, have at the same time opposed the changing view of homosexuality that have become more common in Europe and North America (doc. #467, 471, 474, 475, 477, 485, 488). The following regional summary provides more specific information about global churches, with a special focus on the largest ones. AFRICA The greatest expansion of Lutheran Christianity has been in Africa. Today there are Lutheran churches in 23 countries: Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. According to Lutheran World Federation statistics, the African countries with the most Lutherans in 2013 were Ethiopia (6,355,000), Tanzania (5,825,000), Madagascar (3,000,000), Nigeria (2,348,000) and South Africa (643,000). SOUTHERN AFRICA There were Moravian missionaries in South Africa as early as 1737, but missionary efforts by German Lutherans began in 1829. The Rhenish Mission focused on South West Africa (Namibia), while the Berlin Society (1834) and the Norwegian Missionary Society (1843) worked among the Zulus of South Africa. Some of this work was taken over by the American Lutheran Mission in 1927. The Hermannsburg and Berlin Missions were also active in Natal and further north in Transvaal among the Venda and Tswana people after 1853. The black mission churches and white Lutheran settlers of German and Scandinavian descent worshiped separately, and efforts to bring about a closer connection between them was hindered by the implementation of more extensive Apartheid laws after 1948. A Federation of Evangelical Lutheran Churches in Southern Africa (FELCSA) was formed in 1966, but when white Lutherans were reticent to move toward a tighter union, the black churches formed their own Evangelical Lutheran Church of South Africa (ELCSA) in 1975. A number of black Lutheran leaders were active in resistance to segregation, and some were

340

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

arrested and tortured for criticizing the government (doc. #460, 461, 463, 464). The Lutheran World Federation spoke out strongly against Apartheid, and the white Lutheran churches were suspended from the LWF in 1984 for failing to present a clear witness against racial discrimination (doc. #462). They were restored to LWF membership in 1990 and, post–Apartheid, all the churches cooperate more closely as part of the Lutheran Communion in Southern Africa (LUCSA) (doc. #460–466). EAST AFRICA The first Lutheran contact with East Africa began very early with Peter Heyling, a German layman who practiced medicine and preached while spending 18 years (1634–1652) in the royal court of Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Two centuries later, German mission societies began work in Ethiopia and Eritrea in conjunction with the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) and were later joined by Swedish, Danish and American Lutheran missionaries. The Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus became independent in 1959. While strongly committed to evangelism, the EECMY has also long stressed the importance of addressing social problems. This “holistic theology” was first articulated by Gudina Tumsa (1929–1979), who courageously led the church under the communist regime that controlled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1991. He was abducted and killed in 1979 (doc. #472–475). Tanganyika became a German colony in 1885, and German missionary work began there in the 1890s. When World War I and II disrupted German missions in the region, Scandinavians and Americans continued their work. Seven churches formed a federation in 1938 and merged in 1963 into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania. Today it has 24 dioceses, and Makumira Lutheran Theological College, founded in 1954, has become an important institution for the region (doc. #467–471). Lutheranism came to Madagascar primarily through the work of the Norwegian Mission Society (1866) and American Lutherans of Norwegian descent (1892). The indigenous religion of Madagascar focuses on ancestral spirits and has elaborate rituals to maintain fellowship with the departed. One branch of the Lutheran church, called the Fifohazana, struggles against the mixing of ancestor worship with Christian belief and conducts exorcisms to free people from possession by demons or other spirits. An Awakening movement has existed since the

1890s, and some of its members, called “shepherds,” live together in base communities or camps, called tobys, which are dedicated to a ministry of healing (doc. #476–479). WEST AFRICA Lutheran contact with West Africa began in 1828 when four missionaries of the Basel Society arrived on what was then called the Gold Coast (now Ghana). The first missionary activity by American Lutherans in Africa began in Liberia in 1860 (doc, #261). The Danish Sudan Mission started evangelization in Nigeria in 1913, and this work was later continued by Danish Americans. The Missouri Synod and the Synodical Conference began their own work in southeast Nigeria in 1936. The difficulty of sustaining missionary work during World War II helped make the churches more independent. The Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria named its first indigenous president in 1960. THE MIDDLE EAST “The Holy Land” has always been a place of special interest for Christians, but mission work among Jews and Arabs did not begin until a joint Anglican and Prussian Lutheran bishopric was established there in 1841. German deaconesses organized a hospital, a school and an orphanage in the 1850s, and the German emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II traveled to Jerusalem to dedicate the Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem in 1898. The Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land is very small, largely as a result of emigration caused by the unremitting ArabIsraeli conflict. Because of the dominating presence of Judaism and Islam and the existence of many other Christian denominations in the region, the ELCJHL has been very interested in promoting ecumenical relations in addition to addressing issues of peace and justice. (doc. #481–484). ASIA There are Lutheran churches in 18 Asian countries: Australia, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand. The largest are in Indonesia (5,812,000), India (3,539,000) and Papua New Guinea (1,049,000).

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

341

INDIA

PAPUA NEW GUINEA

The earliest Lutheran missionaries were sent to the southeast coast of India. The Leipzig Mission continued that work in Tranquebar, assisted by Swedish Lutherans. Several other Tamil churches were established by other mission societies. An American missionary, J.C.F. Heyer (1793–1873) began work among Telugu speakers in 1842, and the Gossner Society initiated outreach to tribal groups in north India in 1867. Given the cultural diversity of India and the separate formation of so many Lutheran groups by different missionary organizations, it has been difficult for Indian Lutherans to move towards greater unity. While other Protestant denominations have come together as the Church of South India (1947) and the Church of North India (1970), Lutherans have maintained a separate confessional existence in eleven different churches. Since 1926, however, they have cooperated through a Federation of Evangelical Lutheran Churches of India (FELCI) (doc. #485–488).

At the time Lutheran missions began in New Guinea in 1886, this vast island inhabited by many isolated tribes speaking more than 800 languages, was divided into Dutch, German and British colonial territories. The eastern half of the island became the independent country of Papua New Guinea in 1975. Several church groups formed by German (Neuendettelsau and Rhenish Societies), American (ALC) and Australian missionaries united in 1956, the first indigenous bishop was elected in 1973, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea became fully autonomous in 1977. The cultural and linguistic complexity of PNG has presented perpetual challenges for the ELCPNG, as has also the proliferation of competing Christian sects and millennial movements called “Cargo Cults.” As contact with foreigners increased, many Papua New Guineans wanted a share of the material abundance the visitors possessed and were attracted to charismatic individuals who promised access to these goods through the performance of magical rites directed towards local deities or ancestral spirits. This phenomenon has begun to diminish but has not yet entirely disappeared (doc. #492–498).

INDONESIA The Lutherans of Indonesia are largely concentrated among the Batak people of the highlands of Sumatra. The Rhenish Mission sent Ludwig Nommensen to start work among them in 1861, and by the time of his death in 1918 the church had grown to almost 200,000 members. The Protestant Christian Batak Church (Huria Kristen Batak Protesten), the largest of several Batak churches, became self-governing in 1940 and created its own supplemental creed in 1951, to address some issues of belief and practice that were particular to its local setting (doc. #489). The church split into factions in 1992 as a result of a dispute over who should be elected to the office of Ephorus (“bishop”). An army commander and the government stepped in to resolve the conflict, and one candidate then took the issue to a civil court. Underling the division were disagreements about how to relate to the “New Order” politics of Indonesia’s leader, Suharto, and how much practice of certain Batak customs (adat) should be allowed among church members. The unity of the church was finally reestablished in 1998, but reconciliation has been an on–going process (doc. #489–491).

LATIN AMERICA The churches in South and Central America developed initially from the settlement of European Lutherans and later from missionary outreach. Today there are Lutheran churches in 18 countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela. By far, the largest church is the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil, with over 717,000 members. Traders established short-lived Lutheran colonies in Venezuela (1528) and Brazil (1532), but the first permanent settlements were in the Danish West Indies (1666) and the Dutch colonies of Suriname (1741) and Guiana (1743). Large scale German immigration to Brazil began in 1824 and to the other countries of the far south in the middle of the nineteenth century. There was some early missionary activity among slaves and the Arawak people of Guiana as far back as the eighteenth century, but for the most part, evangelization of the local populations became extensive only after the Spanish-American War of 1898.

342

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Because the Lutheran settlers in Latin America were a minority, both ethnically and religiously, they tended to keep to themselves and retain their ties to European churches. However, in recent times, when the Liberation Theology movement spread among Catholics throughout the continent, Lutherans also became more integrated into local social life and more outspoken against political oppression and economic inequality. For example, Medardo Gómez was an important advocate for human rights during the civil war which devastated El Salvador after a coup in 1979. He was held captive by a death squad briefly in 1983, and some other Lutheran church workers were tortured and killed. Gómez became the first bishop of the Lutheran Church of El Salvador in 1986 and was a central figure in the peace process which began in 1989 (doc. #499). Walter Altmann, Vitor Westhelle, and some other Brazilian Lutheran theologians have done important work in showing how the theology of Martin Luther can be related to the Liberation Theology movement. Altmann has emphasized that Luther’s doctrine of justification should not lead to ethical disinterest or political passivity. He has argued for a communitarian rather than an individualistic focus in religious life and has also reflected on ways the church can effectively respond to various situations where social oppression is prevalent. Latin American Liberation Theology is a primary example of a new perspective from the developing world that has influenced Christian communities internationally, including Europe and North America (doc. #500–502). MISSIONARY ATTITUDES AND ACTIVITIES 454. BARTHOLOMÄUS ZIEGENBALG: THIRTY–FOUR CONFERENCES (1707) Accounts of the first Lutheran missionaries to India were circulating in English within a few years of their arrival. These document are a translation of Ziegenbalg’s own report of his early conversations with the Indian people. The first one gives a sense of how he presented the Christian message to the common people. The second one reveals his evaluation of Indian philosophy. From Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, Thirty–f Thirty–four our Conf onfer erences ences between the Danish Missionaries and the Malabarian Br Bramans, amans, trans. Mr. Philipps (London: H. Clements, 1719), 37–40, 147–53.

Fig. 11.1. First page of a Tamil Bible (New Testament) printed in Tranquebar/Tharangambadi by Ziegenbalg. The Tranqebar press was established in 1712

Fourth Conference: Of the Misery the Malabarians Labor Under On the sixth of October 1707, as I walked out into the neighborhood where a great multitude of heathens flocked about me, I sat me down on the grass, as they also did all around me. Then I began to address my discourse to them in words to this effect: “I heartily sympathize with you in the miseries you labor under, relating both to your souls and bodies. As to your outward condition, your miseries are too visible, for you lead the lives of slaves, and therefore without doubt very uncomfortable; for I see you are forced to undertake tedious journeys to fetch your rice and undergo a thousand other hardships, which you are obliged to bear with patient and submission to the will of your hard-hearted taskmasters. “But alas, what is all this drudgery of yours if compared to the noblest part of yourselves, your souls? You wander about like sheep that have no shepherd, for your Brahmins [Hindu priestly caste] don’t concern themselves with your everlasting welfare; and though you have among you stately magnificent pagods [temples], yet you never hear a word of comfort or spiritual instruction in those places, but are permitted to walk in the ways of your own blind

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

hearts and follow your sinful inclinations without control from either priest or prophet. And as for yourselves, you mind only to support your bodies with food and clothing as if they were immortal beings, and you disregard your precious souls, as if they were subject daily to corruption. Yes, you live in the profoundest ignorance of him that created you, and of him that redeemed you, and though you must confess that there is a God in whom you move, live, and have your being, both as to soul and body, yet you do not worship him as God, but give that adoration, due to him alone, who created the world and breathed into your nostrils the breath of life, to insignificant images of wood and stone, the works of your own hands, and lead lives of contention, hatred and strife, practicing the abominable art of witchcraft, consulting wizards and enchanters who present to see within the veil of future contingencies and to foretell things to come. You yourselves, convinced in conscience, can bear testimony to the truth of all that I have said.” Whereupon one from among the multitude answered me and said: “Sir, all that you say in relation to us is very true, but I think we are not to be blamed upon this account but rather God himself who places us in these miserable circumstances whence we can’t extricate ourselves without his permission; and it has not pleased his wisdom hitherto to make us more happy.” I answered: “God certainly is no way accessory to criminal proceedings, for he created the first man holy, just and good, from whom you borrow your original. But, the devil, in combination with man’s free will, ushered in sin and disobedience into the world, which has entailed temporal and eternal miseries upon all his children. But, God being gracious and merciful, was not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to the knowledge of the truth, and, to that end, has given us his word, wherein we are taught how God created man at first without sin, according to his own image, and how that man falling from the state wherein he was created, by sinning against God, rendered himself obnoxious to eternal miseries, till his infinite wisdom contrived ways and means to save mankind by sending his son Jesus Christ in the world, clothed with humanity, to the end he might be a fit high priest to offer up himself a sacrifice acceptable to God for the sins of all mankind. Therefore you can’t say that God has any hand in making you miserable. Your destruction and misery come of yourselves. Therefore, without any delay, repent, and turn to the Lord your God. . . .”

343

Thirteenth Conference: Of Philosophy and Idolatry—Conversation with a Malabarian Philosopher On the twenty-second of May, 1708, I received a visit from a Malabarian philosopher. . . . He said: “I and others of my profession do not believe a plurality of Gods, worshipped in our pagods; neither do we frequent these places to offer sacrifices or to perform tedious ceremonies enjoined upon the vulgar people, but we reverently adore the Supreme Being, who created all things.” “If you are convinced,” said I, “of the falsity of your idolatrous worship, why don’t you endeavor to instruct the ignorant in these great truths and encourage them to forsake idolatry and worship the one, only true, God?” He answered: “We live in a world where very few men can serve God without the intervention of figures and images; for we can hardly think of anything but as ‘tis represented under some corporeal idea. And besides, if it were not for polytheism and images, how could the Brahmins and other ecclesiastics find so comfortable a living as now they enjoy?” ... I told him all idol-worship is an abomination of the Lord; for he is a Spirit and is to be worshipped in Spirit and in Truth, and their worship is acceptable to the devil only, the first author and inventor of idolatrous worship. “I wish,” said the philosopher, “with all my heart that all the world would adore the one, only supreme God and destroy all graven images and worship him, as you have well expressed it, in Spirit and in Truth.” “But want means and assistance does your philosophy afford to perform this inward and spiritual worship,” said I? “We have,” said he, “three great means to assist us in our inward worship of God: fasting, solitariness and watching. For by the continual exercising of ourselves in these three duties, our minds ascend above the visible world and are made fit to worship God inwardly or, as you say, in Spirit and in Truth.” “There three rules,” said I, “well observed are very good, but without repentance from dead works and a lively faith in Jesus Christ all rules and precepts will be of little use to you for the due performance of his internal and spiritual worship, so acceptable and well-pleasing to God. And therefore in order to worship him as you ought, you must be instructed in the doctrine of the gospel, which is the only book that teaches fully and clearly the means of salvation

344

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

and reconciliation with god. If you would be happy, study this excellent volume, and throw away all your other books of learned vanities.” He asked me if I could show him that excellent book, which I called the gospel. . . . Thereupon, I showed him Luther’s Catechism, with twenty-six sermons preached by me upon the articles of the Christian faith in our Jerusalem Church at Tranquebar, and finding him mightily delighted in the reading of them, I bid him take them with him and read them diligently, not forgetting to instruct his poor neighbors in the doctrine of salvation. This he promised to do and withdrew.

(1834–1918), Pioneer Missionary to the Bataks of Sumatr Sumatraa (Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellen, 1996), 306, 324. The second quote is translated by Lehmann from Johannes Warneck. D. Ludwig I. Nommensen, Ein Lebenbild, 4th ed. (Wuppertal–Barmen: Verlag des Missionshauses, 1934), 121. Lecture on Pastoral Care at a Conference in Sibolga 1876 It is also not possible to set up any other than general rules with regard to the care of the souls of others, for the differences of character, their attitude of heart, temperament, education, style of life and environment in each case will demand a different treatment with different persons. Therefore one should look thoroughly into every individual case and not make a judgment too quickly so that one does not treat a person in the wrong way. It is of course difficult, but whoever remains loyal to the Lord and pays attention to the Holy Spirit, lives in the word of God and lets oneself be formed by the light that radiates from it, will in every case be given the right word in order to be able to apply it . . . . If one adheres strictly to God’s word, the Lord will also stand by it. He deals with us according to our faith. . . . Letter to the Rhenish Mission Society School in Barmen 1915

Fig. 11.2. Ludwig Ingwer Nommensen (date unknown)

455. LUDWIG INGWER NOMMENSEN: THE BATAK CHURCH IN INDONESIA (1876) Nommensen was sent by the Rhenish Missionary Society to Sumatra in 1862 and worked among the Batak people until his death in 1918. He has been described as “one of the most successful missionaries ever to preach the gospel” (John Woodbridge. Ambassadors for Christ. (Chicago: Moody Press, 1994), 146. From quotes found in Martin Lehmann, A Biogr graphical aphical Study of Ingwer Ludwig Nommensen

Some missionaries do everything themselves and so the helpers learn nothing. They should give more guidance, they ought to be more forgers of weapons and sharpen the tools rather than wanting to do everything themselves. It is true that they can do it better than their helpers, but the helpers do not get practical experience and then they also do not gain influence and prestige among the people. Teachers do not have to be eternally controlled by leading strings; one must let them make attempts to walk by themselves and stand beside them and watch and take hold if they take false steps. This business of observing others is troublesome and makes a person nervous, and so he says to himself: I can do it twice as fast in that time. This is true, but thereby he makes himself necessary instead of making himself unnecessary. If one wants to work through teachers and evangelists, one must keep one’s hand on them as on a plow. If one takes the hand off and lets go of the plow, it falls down. . . .

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

456. PRESTON LAURY: SURVEY OF THE MISSION FIELD: INDIA (1905) This book was written by a pastor in the Ministerium of Pennsylvania in conjunction with the bicentenary of the first sending of Lutheran missionaries to India. From A History of Luther Lutheran an Missions Missions. (Reading, PA: Pilger Publishing House, 1905), 101–10. . . . India is a world in itself. The mass of her people is arranged in layers one above the other, rather than in social groups. The prejudice of race, the exclusiveness of trades, the diverse interests, are all under the controlling influence of caste. . . . Though originally distinct from religion, it is now upheld on the basis of religion, frequently taking the place of religion itself. ... The masses of India are degraded on account of their many vices. Among these intemperance and the opium habit hold the first rank. . . . Closely following the extent of the opium and drinking habits is that of gambling. The passion for it is so strong that the laws for its suppression have been unable to check it. Then comes the gross immorality. The obscene is sanctioned in literature and conversation. It forms an important part in the religious festival. Until recently, the greatest religious fervor could be traced to the lustful practices in connection with it. . . . Suicide is very common. Through this means the victim seeks release from domestic cruelty. The unfortunate lot of the widows and the hopeless life of women in general, until they are reborn as men, are motives for such actions. . . . As we consider the condition of woman, we only begin to realize the import of the heathen religion. In parts of India, she is looked upon as a nuisance and a burden. She is made to serve for convenience sake. ..... She is compelled to become the wife of the man who bids for her, and she dare not interpose if her husband chooses to have one or a half a dozen more wives. Add to this the ignorance of the laws of health and the remedies for disease; the absolute power of the witch doctor over his victims; the neglect of the poor; the exposure of the sick to hasten death; the loathsome habits; the filthiness of the people in general; the oppressive taxes; the deceptions practiced in business affairs; the poor industrial equipment; the prevalent superstition; the scandalous lives of the religious leaders; the disregard for all religion; then you have only a faint ideas of the desperate needs of India. ...

345

All [India’s] religions have had a fair trial and all, except Christianity, have proved inadequate. Buddhism has no God; where God is ignored, God’s ideal of man is lacking. Hinduism has many gods, but they have all turned out bad. In its degrading worship, vice is crowned and virtue dethroned. Where Islam reigns, peace is displaced by cruelty, and refined womanhood cannot exist. Jainism makes better provision for an animal and an insect than for a man. The bloody and licentious rites of the nature religions overlook the nobler and higher in man. . . . Christianity, Evangelical Christianity, is the only religion that can change the heart and through it, life and society. We conclude that Christianity is the only hope of the heathen. . . . 457. ELSIE SINGMASTER: THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AFRICA (1917) This book was published during the 400th anniversary of the Reformation by the Woman’s Missionary Society in the US, which involved the General Synod, the General Council and the United Synod of the South. From The Story of Luther Lutheran an Missions Missions. (Columbia, SC: Cooperative Literature Committee— Women’s Missionary Societies—Lutheran Church, 1917), 117, 119, 156. A student of Africa and the Africans has seen in the shape of the continent the figure of a woman with a huge burden on her back, looking toward America. If it is true that “the index of civilization of every nation is not their religion, their manner of life, their prosperity, but the respect paid to women,” then we need seek no further for proof of the sad degradation of the Dark Continent. Bought and sold, rented or given away, living in polygamy or worse conditions, “she is the prey of the strong, her virtue is held of no account, she has no innocent childhood, motherhood is desecrated, and when she wraps vileness about her as her habitual garment, it is encouraged.” . . . The great missionary command, “Go ye into all the world and preach my Gospel to every creature” is a sufficient direction for the Christian world in its relations with Africa: but reinforcing it there is, or there should be, our enormous obligation to this most benighted country. Africa is the most helpless continent, the most degraded, and alas, that it should be so, the most fearfully abused. . . . Lutheranism has made a beginning in African mission work. Still, however, she is not yet aroused. As in India, so in Africa, German missions and mis-

346

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

sionaries have suffered cruelly in the present war. May the true spirit of Christ so influence his Church henceforth that missionary and not military warfare may fill the pages of history. 458. ROLF SYRDAL: THE RELATION OF CHURCH TO MISSION (1967) Rolf Syrdal served as a missionary in China and became a mission executive for the American Lutheran Church. From To the End of the Earth: Mission Concept in Principle and Pr Practice actice. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1967), 137–40. . . . The twentieth century has been a time for reexamination of missions. Criticisms of missionary work has come from outside the church and from within; from sympathetic supporters and from individuals who have not seen the importance of the enterprise and have approached it in a spirit of hostility; from those who sought to increase its effectiveness and from those who would minimize its importance, seed to discredit it, and have it discontinued. Criticism has also come from missionaries and students of missions, for there is no group of workers in the kingdom of God so ready to be examined and to accept constructive criticism as those in charge of missions, both on the field and at home base. This spirit of self-examination has led to great international missionary conferences which have produced many volumes on the theory and practice of mission. The first of the great missionary conferences was held in Edinburgh in 1910. At that time the missionary expansion into new lands, new areas, and new activities was phenomenal. The dominance of Western powers was felt within the world in its colonial control and general influence. As a result other nations were open to Western influence. . . . The people who met in Edinburgh were ready for missionary advance. There was a spirit of optimism, a looking forward to the time when all the world would know Christ. . . . This conference was a stocktaking by the missionary sending bodies and a comparison of notes by missionaries. . . . The second great international missionary conference was held in Jerusalem in 1928. This conference met in times that were quite different from 1919. The First World War had been fought. With a new spirit of independent and aspiration in every nation of the world, there was also a new sense of man’s need for self-expression, and consequently of self-determination on the part of the younger churches. The

church had emerged. . . . More than one-fifth of the delegates to this assembly were from the “younger churches.”. . . . The question of the validity of the missionary message was raised. Were not all religions equally valid? Could not the writings of Buddhism and Hinduism serve as “Old Testaments” of the churches located in countries where those religions prevailed? Was there not a gradual growth from the one religion to the other? The conclusion drawn was that Christ is the way of salvation. There was not, however, a clear-cut agreement by all as to whether Christianity was sui generis or simply unique in some special way. . . . Mission Problems of Our Age . . . Several lessons had been learned through the colonial period of the nineteenth century and the dissolution of colonies of the twentieth century that helped to serve as a guide in establishing new mission policies. (1) The Christian mission must not be identified with a political power, nor become known as an agent of such power. (2) The message of mission must be geared to the understanding, the needs, and the sympathies of the people. (3) An indigenous church must be established as early as possible. This had been the aim throughout the nineteenth century, but with varied results. . . . Perhaps the most difficult problem of our generation is the question of the relationship of the Christian mission to non-Christian religions. This is not a new problem, but it has become more pressing in the past few decades. There are several reasons for this. ..... The equality of men of recently liberated countries with men of former colonial powers in foreign relations and in international enclaves leads to selfexamination and critical evaluation of other countries. ..... Questions as to the uniqueness of Christianity have been raised by critical schools of theology which have dissected the content of the Christian message and have classified some of it with the myths of primitive religions. This is an age of restlessness, of change, of seeking new foundations and testing the old. It has led to the question of relationships, sometimes spoken of as the confrontation of religions, the dialog of Christianity with other religions, or the conversation between religions. . . . In the name of “conversation” between religions there has been an increasing tendency to find “Christian-like” aspects in other religions. . . . There is value in a real or hypothetical meeting of the religions of the world for conversation in clearing up

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

false impressions of each other, to establish a climate of mutual understanding and respect, and to examine the possibility of united action in areas of human need and suffering. We must, however, realize the difficulty and limitations of such confrontations when they go beyond the area of the external and peripheral aspects of religion. . . . It has been discovered that the day of missions is not over. Some elements in our concepts of the mission of the church are unchanged, but many of the basic concepts are found in new relationships and new emphases. The new age has confronted the church anew with the concept of mission in its elemental evangelical forms and has sought new means of communication in the modern world. . . . 459. JAMES SCHERER. TOWARD A NEW ERA OF MISSION: QUESTIONS AND DIRECTIONS OF THE FUTURE (1987) The author served as a missionary in China and Japan and then taught mission theology at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. This selection presents the concluding theses from a much longer chapter. From Gospel, Church, and Kingdom: Compar omparative ative Studies in World Mission Theology (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1987), 233–44 . What are the crucial issues of mission theology that need further dialog and understanding as we look forward to doing mission in the new era? Who is Jesus Christ? Thesis: Mission theology should seek to develop a more adequate, balanced, and unified picture of Jesus Christ which is historically normative (i.e. in conformity with Scripture and creeds) but also relevant missiologically and applicable in cross-cultural situations. . . . What kind of church is the bearer of gospel witness? Thesis: . . . Adaptability for mission should be one test for church structures at all levels. Apart from the mandate to preach the gospel to the whole creation and administer the sacraments, all structures may be regarded as provisional and subject to change or renewal in the light of the church’s calling. . . .

347

What kind of unity in Christ is necessary? Thesis: As all churches are under obligation to continue the pursuit of Christian unity and to find ways of manifesting unity in Jesus Christ before the world, they should seek opportunities for common study, fellowship in the gospel as conscience allows, and partnership in Christian witness before the world. . . . Is the Church’s preferential option for the poor binding? Thesis: All churches and mission organizations need to take this option with the utmost seriousness, consider its implications, and seek to recruit persons who possess the charism of being able to work with and alongside the poor. What further work needs to be done on gospel and culture? Thesis: While the matter of cultural adaptation or inculturation is now happily a virtual nonissue, further research is necessary to clarify how the understanding of the gospel is affected by receptor cultures, not merely in the linguistic transmission of the gospel message but in the actual understanding of the gospel and is appropriate within a given culture. . . . What about dialog between Christian faith and other faiths? Thesis: Dialog as an attitude, spirit, and style of approach to persons of other faiths is to be unconditionally affirmed as valid, but the goal of dialog and its underlying theological presuppositions, particularly with regard to the salvific power or validity of other faiths, must be closely examined and clarified on the basis of Scripture and tradition. . . . What equipping is needed for mission and evangelism? Thesis: The equipping of missionaries and of all baptized Christians for participation in mission must become much more practice-based to be effective, and such elements as cross-bearing, discipleship training, changes in life-style, and actual practice in sharing one’s faith must be central to all such equipping. . . .

348

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

What motivation is needed for mission and evangelism? Thesis: Studies should be made, on an ecumenical basis, of missionary motivation in the new age of missions, clearly separating the motive for mission today from Western colonialism, cultural imperialism, and other false motives, but expressing the continuing validity of the Great Commission. What is the authority of the Bible for mission? Thesis: In the reflection on the basis, goal, and means of carrying out the mission of God, the Scriptures are to be regard primarily as foundational, i.e., as the source and norm for understanding the salvation history which testifies to God’s saving action for the world in Christ, but the Scriptures also must be seen as providing valuable illustrations and paradigms for mission today. . . . What is mission today? Thesis: “Mission” should normally be used in the sense of the total activity of the church in preaching, teaching, healing, nurturing Christian communities, and witnessing to the kingdom, including advocacy of justice and service to humanity, while “evangelism” will be reserved for the specific task of awakening or reawakening faith in Jesus Christ where it no longer exists or has already ceased to exist. Evangelism is a decisive part of Christian mission, but is not identical with it. . . . NAMIBIA AND SOUTH AFRICA 460. OPEN LETTER OF THE LUTHERAN CHURCHES TO THE SOUTH AFRICAN PRIME MINISTER (JUNE 30, 1971) This appeal was written after the International Court of Justice ruled on June 21, 1971 that South Africa should terminate its mandate over the territories of South West Africa (future Namibia), withdraw its administration, and allow a plebiscite under UN supervision to determine the political future of the country. From G. L. Buys, and S. W Nambala. History of the Church in Namibia amibia. (Windhoek: Gamsberg Macmillan, 2003), 414. After the decision of the World Court at The Hague was make known on 21st June 1971, several

leaders and officials of our Lutheran Churches were individually approached by representatives of the authorities with a view of making known their views. This indicates to us that the public institutions are interested in hearing the opinions of the Churches in this connection. Therefore we would like to make use of the opportunity of informing your Honor of the opinion of the Church Boards of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in SWA and the Evangelical Lutheran Ovambo-Kavango Church which represents the indigenous population of South West Africa. We believe that South Africa in its attempts to develop South West Africa has failed to take cognizance of human rights as declared by UNO in the year 1948 with respect to the non-white population. Allow us to put forward the following examples in this connection: 1. The government maintains that by the race policy it implements in our country, it promotes and preserves the life and freedom of the population. But in fact the non-white population is continuously being slighted and intimidated in their daily lives. Our people are not free, and by the way they are treated they do not feel safe. In this regard, we wish to refer to section 3 of human rights. 2. We cannot do otherwise than regard South West Africa, with all its racial groups, as a unit. By the Group Areas Legislation, the people are denied the right of free movement and accommodation within the borders of the country. This cannot be reconciled with section 113 of human rights. 3. People are not free to express or publish their thoughts or opinions openly. Many experience humiliating espionage and intimidation which has as its goal that a public and accepted opinion must be expressed, but not one held at heart and of which they are convinced. How can section 18 and 19 of the human rights be realized under such circumstances? 4. The implementation of the policy of the government makes it impossible for the political parties of the indigenous people to work together in a really responsible and democratic manner to build the future of the whole of South West Africa. We believe that it is important in this connection that the use of voting rights should also be allows to the non-white population (sections 20 and 21 of the human rights.) 5. Through the application of job reservation the right to a free choice of profession is hindered and this causes low remuneration and high unemployment. There can be no doubt that the contract system breaks up a healthy life—because the prohibition

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

of a person from living where he works, hinders the cohabitation of families. This conflicts with sections 23 and 25 of the human rights. The Church Boards’ urgent wish is that in terms of the declaration of the World Court and in cooperation with the UNO, of which South Africa is a member, your government will seek a peaceful solution to the problems of our land and will see to it that human rights be put into operation and that South West Africa may become a self-sufficient and independent state. With high esteem, Bishop Dr. L Auala Chairman of the Church Board Ovambo-Kavango Church and Moderator Pastor P Gowaseb Chairman of the Church Board Evangelical Lutheran Church in SWA (Rhenish Mission Church) 461. SAM NUJOMA: STRUGGLING FOR INDEPENDENCE IN NAMIBIA (1995) The author, a baptized Lutheran, led SWAPO, which campaigned for Namibian independence, and established PLAN, the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia. When Namibia achieved independence in 1990, he served as the country’s first president for three terms. This presentation was made to the LWF Council meeting in Windhoek, Namibia in July 1995. From A Communion of Hope—LWF Documentation 36 (Geneva: LWF, 1995), 12–15. It is a great pleasure for me to have been invited to attend this historic meeting. This meeting is especially important for our church community because, as I am informed, this is the first time the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) ever held its Council meeting in Africa. . . . The LWF, through its sister churches, gave valuable assistance to the people of Namibia during the struggle for freedom and independence. They also continued to render assistance to Namibia during our country’s transition to independence and thereafter. ..... The Government of the Republic of Namibia has since independence maintained an amicable and healthy relationship with the churches. The government regards the churches in Namibia as partners in the development and upliftment of our people in the social and economic spheres. . . .

349

The role played by the LWF in Namibia through its member churches is quite enormous. The LWF availed substantial amounts of funds which facilitated the establishment and management of various institutions and projects. . . . Churches have been innovators and forerunners in society, establishing institutions which have become integral parts of Namibian society, some of which are now under the jurisdiction of the government. However, the developmental work of the churches in society never ends. In this regard, churches which work closer to communities should attend with more dedication to the material and spiritual needs of the people. Namibia has many problems which cannot be solved by government alone. Hence, the government, churches, nongovernmental organizations as well as individuals must join hands and combine resources to find solutions. . . . We should all bear in mind that Namibia, as well as the rest of the globe, needs reconciliation. Our churches in Namibia and the rest of the world need reconciliation. It is my hope that the churches will reconcile their differences and show the way, to humankind and nations of the world, towards unity and love for their brethren. . . . 462. LUTHERAN WORLD FEDERATION: STATEMENT ON SOUTHERN AFRICA: CONFESSIONAL INTEGRITY (1977) This statement was instigated by Bishop Manas Buthelezi at the 1977 assembly of the LWF in Dar es Salaam, Tranzania. From Arne Sovik, ed., In Christ—A New Community. The Pr Proceedings oceedings of the Sixth Assembl ssemblyy of the Luther Lutheran an World Feder ederation ation (Geneva: LWF, 1977), 179–80. The Lutheran Churches are confessional Churches. Their unity and mutual recognition are based upon the acknowledgement of the Word of God and therefore of the fundamental Lutheran confessional writings, particularly the Augsburg Confession, as normative. Confessional subscription is more than a formal acknowledgment of doctrine. Churches which have signed the confessions of the Church thereby commit themselves to show through their daily witness and service that the Gospel has empowered them to live as the people of God. They also commit themselves to accept in their worship and at the table of the Lord the brothers and sisters who belong to other

350

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Churches that accept the same confessions. Confessional subscription should lead to concrete manifestations in unity in worship and in working together at the common task of the Church. Under normal circumstances Christians may have different opinions in political questions. However, political and social systems may become so perverted and oppressive that it is consistent with the confession to reject them and to work for changes. We especially appeal to our white member Churches in Southern Africa to recognize that the situation in Southern Africa constitutes a status confessionis. This means that, on the basis of faith and in order to manifest the unity of the Church, Churches would publicly and unequivocally reject the existing apartheid system.

463. MANAS BUTHELEZI: CHURCH UNITY AND HUMAN DIVISIONS OF RACISM (MAY 1981) The author was a bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in South Africa from 1977 to 1997. From International Review of Mission 73, no. 292 (Oct 1984): 419–26.

LUTHERAN WORLD FEDERATION: STATEMENT ON SOUTHERN AFRICA—CONFESSIONAL INTEGRITY (1984) From Carl Mau and Frances Maher, eds., “In Christ—Hope for the World,” in The Pr Proceedings oceedings of the Seventh Assembl ssemblyy in Budapest, Hung ungary ary (Geneva: LWF, 1984), 179–80. The Seventh Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation, having studied and heard extensive reports regarding the situation in Southern Africa: 1. Reaffirms the resolution of the Sixth Assembly (Dar es Salaam 1977) on Southern Africa: Confessional Integrity 2. Strongly and urgently appeals to its white member churches in Southern Africa, namely the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa (Cape Church) and the German Evangelical Lutheran Church in South West Africa (Namibia) to publicly and unequivocally reject the system of apartheid (separate development) and to end the division of the church on racial grounds. 3. Regretfully concluding that no satisfactory fulfillment of this goal has as yet been achieved, finds that those churches have in fact withdrawn from the confessional community that forms the basis of membership in the Lutheran World Federation. Therefore, the Assembly is constrained to suspend the membership of the above churches, intending that such action serve as a help for those churches to come to clear witness against the policy of apartheid (separate development) and to move to visible unity of the Lutheran churches in Southern Africa. . . .

Fig. 11.3. Bishop Manas Buthelezi

. . . Race is a gift of God. When it is elevated to the level of the ultimate, when it becomes a decisive factor in the manifestation and the direction of public morality, when it sets the boundaries for the circle of those who qualify to be my neighbors, and when it prescribes what constitutes a congregation in worship, it becomes a god that competes with the Father of Jesus Christ. Racism is a cult of the god of race. In fact, it has entered the Christian church by the backdoor and masquerades behind the banner of Christianity with all its cultic, theological and confessional symbols. Racism does not need to have its own temples and shrines in order to retain its integrity as a cult. It can use cathedrals and churches as instruments of camouflage, historical creeds and confessions as dead shells for disguising its living creed. In this way, the god of racism is more subtle, more seductive and more ingenious than the golden calf of Aaron, which was easily recognized by Moses for what it was. Racism has only one characteristic that gives it away and makes it detectable: it is its capacity to disrupt the unity of the church. Where there is racism the unity of the church disappears. Racism therefore is an anti-church cult. It is a heresy in the basic sense of the word. It has to be confessionally pronounced as one of the anti–church movements of the twentieth century. . . .

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

Racism is worse than the classical heresies. It divides the church while it seems to leave intact the recognized confessional and cultic symbols of the authentic church. Thus on the surface its confessional position seems to be unassailable. It is skillful in that it relegates its points of detection to the sphere of adiaphora, of non-theological or non-confessional factors. . . . One outward characteristic of the cult of racism is that fear plays a very vital role. Fear of the neighbor rather than faith in God is a governing factor in human relations. Fear stems from human alienation from God. In other words human beings fear because they have distanced themselves from God out of whom flows all authentic security and peace of mind. To fear is to feel threatened by the object whose proximity conjures up the experience of fear. Even the sublimated fear of God that is part and parcel of the worship of God is a reflection of the sinful background of a human being in front of the holy God, who is the ultimate object of fear. . . . Let us move to the concrete manifestations of fear in the cult of racism. a) Fear of the neighbor: In South Africa apartheid or separate development is a way of life based on the fear of the neighbor. . . . Experience tells us that it is impossible to abolish our neighbors or wish them away, short of physically killing. This means that the social solution of creating distance between us and the neighbor does not help. . . . b) Fear of sharing with the neighbor God’s gifts: All we have comes as a gift of God. . . . Fear of the neighbor is very often accompanied by the feeling that he threatens not only our existence but also that which materially sustains that existence. . . . When we talk of sharing the country’s wealth, people begin to fear, as if security can only be maintained through the distance between rich and poor. c) Fear of sharing God’s delegated power over the earth: The political expression of the fear of the neighbor can be seen in attempts to accumulate the resources of power in order to neutralize the threat to that power from those who do not belong to the racial in–group. Again even here the principle of the security of distance is invoked as a solution. Homelands are a case in point. . . . All this goes to show that the cult of racism in the church has social, economic and political ramifications. Racial disunity within the church will only encourage instead of heal the divisions in the environment of the church. Once the church has dethroned the god of race within its own ranks, it

351

will be in a stronger position to be the healer of society. . . . Some people have made the point, somewhat cynically, that the church is so bound up with the oppressive structures from which the oppressed need to be liberated that it is incapable of liberating itself. The case in point is racism in the church. A church that has a vested interest in the status quo cannot be expected to be capable of changing the status quo. Far from trying to change it, it will try to maintain it. There are, of course, voices of people who are skeptical and cynical about the church. It would not do us harm, however, to listen to them carefully, even though we may not agree with them. Is it possible that God may liberate the church of South Africa through the liberation movements that are not operating in his name? We should be humble enough to allow Isaiah 45 [Persian king Cyrus as God’s anointed] to teach us a lesson in modesty. Racism is so entrenched in the church that I sometimes think that long after the present government policy of apartheid has been outlawed in South Africa there will still be pockets of racism in the church. The church will be the last bastion of racism in a liberated South Africa. . . . These are painful thoughts for any lover of the church to allow to pass through one’s mind. Let us pray that we may be such willing instruments of God that it will be unnecessary for God to raise a Cyrus in order to accomplish his goals, even on the question of the unity of the church. 464. TSHENUWANI SIMON FARISANI: DIARY FROM A SOUTH AFRICAN PRISON (1987) The author, a Venda from northeast South Africa, was Dean of ELCSA. He was arrested four times between 1977 and 1986 by the South African police. He testified about his torture before the Truth & Reconciliation Commission and later served as Speaker for the Limpopo Provincial Legislature. From Simon Farisani: Diary fr from om a South African Prison Prison. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 46–47, 50, 87. The First Arrest . . . As the hunt for dangerous documents went on, I took my Bible and started to read: “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob

352

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

their sins. . . . Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loosen the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? . . .” I had hardly gone through half this fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah when the Afrikaner sergeant cast a menacing glance at me, then at the page, and after reading the first few verses he exploded. “This is the hell that we shall not stand. Always reading the wrong verses of the Bible. Stop this kak [Afrikaans for human excrement]. After all, you don’t even understand the Bible. No Lutheran does. All Communists, Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, English press! The Christian Institute, Black People’s Convention [BPC], the South African Students Organization [SASO], the South African Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches. Your Lutheran World Federation! All ugly organizations promoting murder and rape of children and women under the cloak of human rights—wolves in sheep’s clothing. The United Nations. Double standards. This government, my government, comes from God. Why don’t you read Romans 30? (In fact he meant Romans 13.) Only one church—and I am very proud that I belong to it—preaches the true gospel in South Africa. Give this damn Bible to me!” . . . Torture in Prison Two bullies marched in, a completely new lot. The one walked behind me and landed a deafening hot punch on my right ear. Simultaneously the other removed the chair from under me, shoved me to the ground and kicked the table over me. Another kick, this time to my groin, followed by another, three ..... five . . . innumerable. A hundred pages of statement lay scattered all over the floor. I was forced to stand up, but halfway, a blow to my face left me tumbling backwards. One bully put his boot on my neck while the other places his boot on my genitals. I was allowed to stand, and then forced to carry the “liberation stick,” with weights attached to both ends. Carrying this stick with hands raised, I was forced to jump into the air without rest, singing loudly, “Amandla, Awethu! Power to the people! Power to Azania!” I seated like a force and groaned like a hungry pig. Totally exhausted, I let the stick fall on the floor and collapsed. Heaving like a heavyweight boxer in the fifteenth round, I managed to utter a few words, syllable by syllable: “I . . . am . . . tired . . . I ..... am . . . dying.”. . . Occasionally the white giant would pretend to

be very friendly, saying, “Stop your nonsense, you youngsters. This man is a pastor. You need not be rough with him. He will cooperate.” Then he would command me to sit on the floor. “Do you have any confessions to make?” When my answer did not satisfy him, he would jump in fury. “You kaffirs are stupid. An adult kaffir does not even have the brains of a five-year-old white child. Yet you say you do not want Bantu education. . . .” I wrote and wrote. . . . And wrote. “You continue to write all this rubbish, and you will see what will happen to you. You and Steve Biko have corrupted the youth of this country. You preach that apartheid is the policy of the devil and that those who practice this policy are agents of the devil. We want to tell you once and for all, if we must choose between sharing power with nonwhites or obliterating them, we shall choose the latter. If you do not like apartheid, you’d better pack your bags and be off to Tanzania to live with your communist brothers.”. . . . Up till now the god of Pretoria had the upper hand. He dictated my food, my bedding, my sleep, my sitting and standing, my exercise, my cleanliness, my company, my day and night. My very existence was a matter of his grace. My heavenly Father was for all intents and purposes dead—unhearing, unseeing, uncaring, unconcerned, unloving, unlike his being. ..... That night I had a vision. I was caught in a great storm. Dust and stones overwhelmed me. A mighty force carried me into the air. I could see the storm far beneath me, and also police who tried in vain to hit me with stones. Their stones either fell short of the target or were deflected by the force of the strong wind. . . . [After a third vision:] In answer to my further prayers the Lord said to me, “You are not alone in opposing apartheid. . . .” Now God had turned everything into victory. Where my cleverness and personal courage had crumbled, God raised up divine wisdom and endurance. Whereas I had been a spiritual, emotional, and physical wreck, God had resurrected me to a new life and a new hope. . . .” We all say no to apartheid. The black community says no to apartheid. Many white people in South Africa say no to apartheid. The Organization of African Unity says no to apartheid. The UN says no to apartheid. Almighty God says no to the god of Pretoria. In the name of the voiceless, the dead, the living, and the unborn, the confused, the tempted, and the misled, I join the world chorus: No to apartheid. . . .

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

465. SIMON MAIMELA: SIGNS OF SALVIFIC ACTIVITY IN AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGIONS (1988) The author was the first black lecturer appointed to the faculty of theology at the University of South Africa. He served as the first black vice principal of UNISA from 1994 until 2002. His post-graduate degrees were from Luther Seminary and Harvard. From “A Lutheran Theological Response to Religious Pluralism,” in Relig Religious ious Plur Pluralism alism and Luther Lutheran an Theology, ed. J. Paul Rajashekar LWF Report 23/24 (Geneva: LWF, 1988), 159–77. 3. The salvific role of African traditional religion . . . For a Christian, who understands sin as unbelief in or revolt against God and salvation in terms of Christ’s death on the cross in order to redeem humankind from the curse of sin, it is not easy to understand and conceptualize what salvation means in other religious traditions that look at reality from a totally different perspective. In studying African traditional religions, one is immediately struck by the fact that they have different ways of expressing what is understood to be wrong with human beings and their earthly condition (sin in biblical terms) and how that situation or problem can be solved. And because they differ in their portrayal of the human problem, they are bound to differ in spelling out the way to correct what is perceived to be problematic (sin). We therefore cannot try to understand what sin and salvation are in African traditional religions from a purely Christian perspective, that is from an understanding of salvation as an individualistic unburdening of personal sin through what happened to Jesus Christ on the cross. Rather, through listening to the stories and experiences of the practitioners of those religions, one should try to examine how African traditional religions understand sin or human problems and how salvation is construed in their terms. For in the African world there are areas of life that are problematic, oppressive, and therefore sinful and from which most Africans seek salvation or relief. 3.1 The problematic (sinful) situations in the African world Harry Sawyerr has classified the emotional and spiritual problematic areas (sins) experienced by the traditional African as follows:

353

First, the oppressions and anxieties that originate from day-to-day problems of life, such as hunger, poverty, high infant mortality, droughts, floods, lack of employment. Second, the traditional African is a victim of anxieties born out of the fear of evil spirits and malicious persons, especially witches and sorcerers. Accordingly, most Africans express an intense revulsion about all forms of diabolical evil, seeing that they manipulate the vital forces of nature for destructive purpose, point all human relationships, and threaten the corporate nature of society. . . . Third, the traditional African is conscious of the evil and injustice that might be directed toward the ancestors, thereby undermining their rank. This would occur when a young person makes an important decision without taking the ancestors’ interests into account, or when someone fails to take care of elderly family members and provokes the anger of the founders of the extended family or clan. Fourth, the traditional African often feels threatened by a possible loss of the vital power that subsists in the Supreme Being, in supernatural spirits, and in the human being. Appropriate means must therefore be found to maintain this vital power, and every member of society is taught to avoid all activities that might lead to personal defilement and uncleanliness and result in misfortune for the community. . . . 3.2 Signs of salvific activity in African traditional religions . . . To traditional Africans the existence of rituals that enhance the well-being of individuals and the community means that their traditional religions have provided and continue to provide relevant and effective salvation for their ancestors and for themselves. That African traditional religions are still able to meet real needs by procuring salvation from concrete problems is illustrated by the fact that the greatest attraction of the independent churches is their invitation to Africans to bring their worldly fears and anxieties to the church leadership. . . . The reluctance of Africans to break their ties with traditional religions lies in the fact that they are wedded to an African worldview in which salvation is understood in terms of relief and help in times of trouble in this life. . . . In other words, in the traditional religions we have to deal with a radically different understanding of human problems (sins) and how salvation (relief from them) can be obtained. Since the salvation offered through traditional reli-

354

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

gions speaks to the heart of the African in a way nothing else does, any religious understanding of salvation that is preoccupied with the salvation of the soul from hell and eternal damnation, as the Christian faith often is, will be inadequate to meet the needs of the African world, especially if that salvation does not also hold the promise of happiness and prosperity here and now. . . . Therefore, to conclude that there is no salvation in the African traditional religions simply because the focus is not on individual sin and anxiety about personal salvation is to attempt to prescribe what salvation should be rather than to listen to what Africans say on this. . . . I am aware that my contention that African traditional religions must be accepted and respected as the normal divinely–given means for the salvation of Africans will be a bitter pill for Christians to swallow: It threatens long-held beliefs about the “absoluteness” of Christianity. . . . Since God is revealed through these religions and is active in them to save African humanity, we can at least admit that these traditional religions contain valid and useful elements, even if we do not accept that everything in these religions is good and should be embraced by us. . . . Lutheranism has consistently affirmed that the church as an institution does not yet possess all the heavenly truths. While it has affirmed that the proper and true knowledge of God is to be received only in Jesus Christ, Lutheranism has been sensitive to God’s mystery, which transcends human mental–linguistic pictures of the divine reality. Acknowledging this divine mystery, Lutheranism distinguishes between Deus absconditus (hidden God) and Deus revelatus (revealed God.) For Christians, it is in the revealed God, Jesus Christ, that the hidden God is made known as the God of love. But since human knowledge about God is mediated through some imperfect religious community, it would be wrong to confuse Christianity’s imperfect knowledge of God with God’s absolute self-knowledge. . . . Christians do not have all the answers in their pockets; they can learn some (though not necessarily all) truths about God’s creative and redemptive dynamics from the diversity of religious traditions, and this can challenge them to engage in a greater search for the truth. . . .

466. KLAUS NÜRNBERGER: A MODERN BIBLICALLY-BASED SOTERIOLOGY AND THE HIV/AIDS CRISIS (2003) Born to a German family in Namibia, Nürnberger taught until retirement at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. These excerpts get at the central points of a much longer essay. Nürnberger said “I accepted the invitation to prepare such a paper reluctantly and only after all attempts to find a black African speaker had failed. I am unmistakably a Westerner and cannot hide that fact. But I am also a third generation Southern African and I have invested my entire career in the attempt to come to terms with the problems of our sub-continent. . . .” From “God’s Mission in Practice: The Struggle for Liberation, Dignity and Justice in African Societies” in International Review of Missions XCII, no. 367 (2003): 498–518. . . . It is to the extent that the word of God constitutes a redemptive response to human need through human involvement that it captures the imagination of sub-Saharan Africa. To the extent that the word of God fails to do so, sub-Saharan Africa is tempted to turn away in search of other sources of redemption. Christianity, though still growing in numbers, is in danger of ending up on the scrap yard of European imports, alongside colonial administration, development projects, structural adjustment programs, empty Coca Cola cans and postmodernism. If the word of God is God’s response to human need through human agency we have to begin with an analysis of the specific constellation of needs in every new and concrete situation. There are tangible or immanent needs (physical, psychological, communal, social, economic, political, ecological) and there are spiritual or transcendent needs (the need for meaning, acceptability and authority). . . . Sub-Saharan Africa’s needs are multi–dimensional, vast and deep-rooted. Therefore, the response of the word of God must follow multiple leads, assume bold proportions and go to the roots. All I can offer is a general overview of the constellation of needs which we are confronted with when we think of God’s mission on the African continent. The main thrust of the paper is, however, the development of a soteriology which would make a difference to the calamities found on the African continent. . . . [A brief summary of the section in which the author analyzes various factors that the church needs to take into consideration when it tries to define its mission in the socio-political sphere:]

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

The asymmetrical interaction between traditionalism and modernity: the colonial impact A. The Clash of Worldviews: Traditionally there was a hierarchical structure of extended families, clans and tribes. In this system each person had his/ her place, status and role. Nobody was excluded; nobody was autonomous. In contrast, modernity is driven by a quest for emancipation. Individuals are entitled to see for themselves (empiricism), think for themselves (rationalism), utilizing whatever means they can find (utilitarianism), to pursue their own interests (liberalism) and enjoy their lives to the full (hedonism). . . . Africa is torn between its values and its competitiveness on the global stage. . . . B. Politics old and new: In a dynamistic culture, where the forces of reality could ostensibly be channeled either to the benefit of the community in the form of rituals or to the detriment of the community through sorcery, deviant behavior was considered to be highly dangerous. . . . In contrast, the individualistic, achievement-based and competitive spirit of modernity produced an equally deep–seated inferiority syndrome. One could never be certain of one’s place in society. Because the newcomers had demonstrated their superior power in military, technological and organization terms, traditionalists tended to transfer their loyalty to the new authorities. The colonial masters, in turn, reveled in this acknowledgement of their superior status. . . . A new kind of feudalism emerged where a self–styled colonial aristocracy presided over the native population of loyal serfs. . . .] C. Colonialism and the African economy: Western enterprises established plantations, mines and factories in the colonies. However, these were extensions of the center system. . . . When post-colonial governments nationalized such enterprises, they quickly deteriorated. . . .] D. Mission in action or a new theological approach? . . . . I do not want to diminish or denigrate the brave and sacrificial efforts made by countless Christians. . . . However, on the whole, we can hardly be satisfied with the church’s performance. By and large, Western Christianity brought a severely truncated gospel to Africa. The pietistic tradition placed a heavy emphasis on individual sin, understood as transgression of God’s law, and its eternal consequences. . . . The sole function of Christ was to die on behalf of the sinner. The body, the community, the society, politics, economic concerns and the natural world hardly figured at all. . . . . On the whole, the horizons of Christian congregations are pitifully narrow. Messages of God’s open

355

future, of emancipation, of equal dignity, of empowerment, of joyful initiative, of communal, societal and ecological responsibility are rare. The overall atmosphere is one of subservience and the acceptance of one’s fate. . . . A Comprehensive Soteriology . . . To make an impact, we must regain the allembracing horizons of the biblical witness and translate them into modern frames of references. A modern, biblically-based soteriology would begin from the following assumptions: (a) According to the biblical witness, God is motivated by a vision of the comprehensive wellbeing of the whole human being and all human beings within the context of the comprehensive wellbeing of their entire social and natural environments; (b) From this, it follows that any deficiency in wellbeing in any dimension of reality is the immediate target of God’s concern, and thus is also the concern of the people of God; (c) Spiritual needs—meaning, acceptance and authority—emerge from immanent needs, whether physical, psychological, cultural, philosophical, communal, social, economic, political, or ecological; (d) God’s redemptive action is mediated through human action and earthly events. . . . HIV/AIDS: A Case Study The HIV/AIDS pandemic is rapidly evolving into the greatest catastrophe the African continent has ever faced. . . . Combined with the general breakdown of sexual discipline and family cohesion, this development is drifting society towards chaos. The strict social controls of African traditional societies are disintegrating. . . . Apart from the immense family and community needs created by HIV/AIDS, it also has a substantial impact on national economics....... In part, the problem can be attributed to ignorance and indifference. Young people are frighteningly unaware of the danger that faces them. The culture of promiscuity again reflects the impact of modernity on traditional Africa. It is important to make this point. In traditional cultures, extra-marital sex was not tolerated. . . . Traditionalism lays heavy taboos on the discussion of sexual matters. A thick veil of silence, secrecy and denial prevents the disease from being recognized and tackled head-on by the society. . . . Modern permissiveness again combines with traditionalist gender roles. The place of women in

356

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

a patriarchal system does not grant them a say in sexual matters. . . . The fact that twice as many young women are infected with HIV as young men is directly linked to the traditional subordination of women to men. . . . The role of the church and the way forward So far, the church has not played a significant role in addressing the problem. . . . Clearly something radical needs to happen. . . . The fog of secrecy must be lifted. . . . The danger of promiscuity must again become part of the public agenda. . . . To reflect on the meaning and purpose of sex must again become fashionable. . . . For all this to happen, theologians must do their homework. With this, we return to the beginning of this essay. We must develop a theology of HIV/AIDs as a matter of urgency . . . highlighting the relevance of the following aspects of the Lutheran tradition for the fight against the pandemic: 1. Faith is not a naïve abandonment of human responsibility, but a tenacious struggle with God against God. . . . Faith is a tenacious struggle with God against God, Luther said, in which the human struggle against sin and evil goes down to its roots. Such a defiant and courageous attitude is indispensable if the fatalism and paralysis that surrounds the problem is to be overcome. 2. According to Luther, the “law of God” is not an arbitrary set of rules imposed by a heavenly dictator who crushes any disobedience with the threat of eternal condemnation. Rather, it is the formulation of the prerequisites for healthy communal survival and prosperity, based on the observation and reason of mature human beings. ... 3. Lutherans formulate the gospel as God’s justification of sinners by grace, accepted in faith, rather than by works. This abstract dogma can be translated into social terms as God’s unconditional, suffering, redeeming acceptance of the unacceptable into his fellowship, the church. . . . 4. Transformation is not a demand to be fulfilled but a “fruit of the gospel.” While God’s acceptance has no conditions, it does have consequences. God loves the sinner, but God hates sin. . . . The community of those who are being accepted by God, in spite of the fact that they are unacceptable, will accept each other and work at

overcoming whatever is unacceptable. . . . 5. Public responsibility must be exercised at three levels: (a) Church leaders must engage in the prophetic ministry. . . . (b) The Christian congregation must become a redemptive community and thus a witness to its social environment; (c) All members must become active witnesses to the redeeming concern of God in their secular professions and daily decision making. . . . TANZANIA 467. JUDES KAMALA BUKAMBU: THE PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN AND YOUTH IN THE TOTAL WITNESS AND SERVICE OF THE CHURCH (1977) This is part of a report presented to a Lutheran World Federation study of the Identity of the Church. The author is a Lutheran woman from the North West diocese of Tanzania. From The Identity of the Church and its Service to the Whole Human Being Being.. Volume 1 (Geneva: LWF Department of Studies, 1977), 326–42. At the coming of Christianity, the native people had their own culture and traditions related to their everyday life. In those traditions women were slighted, they were treated disrespectfully and were, to an extent, left behind. . . . The women had no rights in clan-property inheritance. . . . If there were no male children in the family, the father considered himself childless. This contributed to the frequency of polygamous marriages. . . . In leadership, women were forgotten and were not given a chance to express themselves or give advice. They were considered unwise and not as clever as men. Leadership was therefore in the hands of men alone although there were capable women who could have taken up some of the positions of leadership. There were many taboos for the women. There were many things they were not allowed to do, things that they could have done. They were not allowed to east some foods, although they did all the cooking....... Polygamy lowered the position of the women further. Many men married to “get” children: or increase the number of workers on their farms. Therefore the value of women lay in their usefulness

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

as tools, also as a sign of prestige, richness and greatness of the men. . . . Also, in the community the women were considered to have little faith and to be feeble human beings. The dowry paid for the wives also made the women serve so that they labored in a manner similar to bought slaves. . . . Differences appear only in the eyes of people because of structural differences among them. But the functions of these different structures collaborate for the safety and service of all in the community. It is not that a certain sex or age group is brighter or has more rights than the other. We, as Christians, should lead in spreading this word about equality and ensuring its practice. BUT–– When Christianity came to Bukoba and Kragwe, it came to a people who had their own traditions and habits relating to their everyday life. . . . Christianity was laid side by side with traditions. . . . Although the church disliked some of the traditional practices because they were against Christian principles (which usually defend the rights of all), it could not change or do away with all traditional practices. They were afraid to create unnecessary opposition to the spread of Christianity. The Church had to move slowly. It did, however, intervene and do away with some of our traditions —e.g. native songs and dances were forbidden within the church. . . . On the other hand, the new Christians were satisfied with things as they were traditionally. There was no real big fight. Had there been such a fight, Christianity could have uprooted traditional beliefs and could have clearly pointed out those traditional practices that were anti–Christian. Although this was done, it was not efficiently or sufficiently done. It could not be done efficiently or sufficiently because the missionaries did not really understand the traditions of the people. . . . As regards the woman, we have seen the kind of problems she faces in trying to raise her status. . . . What she needs is education and a lot of orientation in various matters. . . . In addition to that, she needs to learn to think and speak as a person and not as a woman. This will help her deal with the life of struggling for human rights. . . . Till now the place of woman in the community is still low. More is said than is done about raising her place. Who will take up any responsibility when there are only very few women now who are getting higher education? . . . Changes are therefore needed in different fields in order to enable the church to react in the right direction:

357

Culture: Traditionally, we have seen that women had many prohibitions, most of which were quite unfair. These prohibitions don’t fit into this current society. . . . Bride Price: Traditionally, this was stressed. . . . This meant that some people had to sell most of their possessions in order to get the wife they wanted. ..... What should be done then? Bride price should be abolished and instead the families concerned should give each other what they feel as a token of thanks. It should not be a must, and neither should this be a hindrance for a happy marriage. . . . Marriage: The system of women “moving” to their husband’s homes should stop. Instead, all should move and start their own homes. Or else, if this can’t be done, men ought to realize that having women in “their” home doesn’t make them masters and owners of both homes and wives. . . . God created men and women in order that they should help each other in everything. The Bible is the best teacher as far as equality is concerned. . . . Church Leadership: The Church should help and encourage youths and women towards leadership. It should prepare them for different tasks. . . . concerning female pastors, more than half of the research participants find no reason why women should not be pastors. Some women would prefer women pastors because they would feel free to express themselves to them. . . . Individual People: Women should stop feeling inferior to men. They should stop regarding themselves as a weaker sex. They should take a stand for themselves as human beings. They should believe in themselves. They should know that they are worthy as individuals and not only as some people’s wives. ..... 468. JOSIAH KIBIRA: HAS LUTHER REACHED AFRICA: THE TESTIMONY OF A CONFUSED LUTHERAN The Tanzanian author finished his theological studies in Germany and became the first African to be elected bishop of the Evangelical Church of Buhaya in 1964. At the time he wrote this, he was president of the Lutheran World Federation; a position he held from 1977 to 1984. From Africa Theolog Theological ical Journal 12, no. 1 (1983): 6–15. This article . . . is meant as an expression of joy on the 500th anniversary celebration of [Dr. Martin Luther’s] birth as viewed from Tanzania in Africa. . . .

358

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Here the Lutheran heritage has become firmly rooted and accepted. It is no exaggeration to say that the Lutheran Church plays a very appreciated and significant role in our nation. But instead of telling my readers what good Lutherans we are, I have chosen to ask some difficult and perhaps self-critical questions in order to show that the way to become true Lutherans for us has not been a very simple one. . . .

Fig. 11.4. Josiah Kibira at the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Uppsala, Sweden, 1968

I write this because of the many queer situations we have had to go through and still have to face. Let us start with some very personal illustrations. (1) During the celebrations commemorating the Augsburg Confession I was confronted with the following questions by a reporter at Augsburg: “You are an African, a Tanzanian, I mean you are not a German.” Anyhow he meant: “What have you to do with the celebration of Luther and his fellow reformers? Would it not have been better to stay home, develop your own African religions which in my opinion would make your countrymen more stable in life as they used to live before colonialism took over Africa?”

There is no space here to elaborate on all that followed as I tried to convince him why I am a Lutheran. But one thing which I felt to be central was to say that we do not worship Luther but we find the interpretation of the Gospel as it was done by the Reformers is in accordance with the New Testament. . . . [The additional anecdotes have not been included in this excerpt.] I would have liked to give the whole confusing story of the background of our mixed history which led us to become Lutherans, but I will only give a very short outline. The first missionary pioneers of our area [Bahaya: North Western Region] were Germans from Bethel bei Bielefeld, headed by Dr. Ernst Johannsen. They arrived here in 1910. This group was not Lutheran but United (Lutheran and Reformed). . . . But some Bahaya, headed by the present writer’s father had already from late 1895 been in contact with Uganda Christians and missionaries. After three of them had embraced the “evangelical faith” they brought the message over to Buhaya and started classes of “readers” before Johannsen’s arrival in 1907. . . . This was the beginning. The years followed should be marked by so much of denominational changes and conflict. Sometimes in a very humiliating way the young church was abandoned by one mission society and given over to another. Disagreement between missionary leaders of different nationalities, interruptions of two world wars and all their repercussions even in this remote part of the world, but mainly the handing over of the Buhaya church between Anglican, Lutheran and Methodist missionaries crippled the development. The only real stabilizing factor was the emergence of a very strong and self–confident indigenous local leadership. . . . The big question here is of course: How “Lutheran” was the Christian coming out of all these changes? How confused was he in his faith? It is not easy to answer that question. But the indigenous church that was to come out first did not include the word “Lutheran” in its name. It was rightly and very consciously called The Evangelical Church of Buhaya until 1963 when the name Lutheran was appended for all and the six churches founded by Lutheran/United agencies merged for all into one church in Tanganyika. . . . During the thirties our church had begun flourishing partly due to a continuous fast growing work by the Bethel Mission. And just before the Second World War started, God’s Spirit began afresh to sweep over East Africa. The so-called “East African Revival” began among the Anglicans in Rwanda. . . .

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

From 1930 and onwards in other parts of East Africa but from 1939 in the North Western Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT/ NWD) the “repentance” revival has been spreading over our region unbroken and within the church up to this day. Some of us (for me it was in 1947) repented and asked forgiveness of our wives/husbands for the first time. Things were turned upside down. Those who knew a bit of Luther were skeptical, lest this lead into heresy. . . . Anyway, the spirit, having free will to blow when and where it chooses, went on and by now, the revival movement became a power or fire within the Church, the Lutheran (?) Church, which we no longer think we can exist without. . . . But the serious theological questions remain as a healthy tension that subject all to the cross for cleansing, breaking our hard-neckedness, sending us back to reread Scripture and take God more seriously in our time. ..... Here I want to say something about the role of the missionary in helping the confused Bahaya Christians to become Lutheran. My intention here is not to pass judgment but to ask a humble question because this is such a problem for us. Why did not the Lutheran missionaries who gradually came to be influential and worked here, speak up more clearly against any tendencies that were weakening the true power of the Gospel until the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania as a whole and the NWD in particular found itself caught up in the contradiction of teaching the Lutheran Catechism, etc., while practicing somewhat like Pentecostals in daily life and in hymns and church discipline? . . . This testimony of a confused Lutheran from a Lutheran church in Africa has revealed that it was as if there were no real representatives in the mission who advocated the confessions of Lutheranism as such. Sometimes the foreign missionaries were not real Lutherans themselves. . . . I certainly also see that this varied influence form different countries and denominations upon our church also has brought many blessings to us. We have not been dominated so much by the culture and church traditions of one particular mission society and therefore our own leadership and culture got a stronger place at an early stage. This also has led to a certain ecumenical awareness among us. . . . So, even for that matter, we are Lutherans because we are “saved” by faith alone, by grace alone and by Scripture alone. This motivated Luther to oppose the Pope as we read in the 95 theses. In our eagerness to reach out for our ecumenical sisters and brothers,

359

care must be taken that we do not compromise the truth in the Gospel as it was discovered by the Lutheran Reformers. . . . We are Lutherans when we adhere to the same world-wide tenets of Scripture as they are interpreted in the three creeds, namely, the Apostolic, the Nicene and the Athanasian—while we zealously base our theological understanding and research on the unaltered Confession Augustana. This is the method we use even when we do theology in and confess Christ in an African context. . . . Yes, despite the confusion and conflicts (which seem to be chronic among the members of the Lutheran community) we probably are regarded as accepted Lutherans in the World Family of so many different Lutheran churches when our church was honored to supply the present president of the LWF! 469. THE BAGAMOYO STATEMENT ON THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCH (MARCH 1994) This document was prepared at the Tanzanian bishop’s Summit on Economic and Political Democracy. Bagamoyo is an old colonial town on the coast north of Dar es Salaam. From LWF Documentation 47 (Geneva: LWF, 2001), 125–26. The bishops should remind the believers and the whole church leadership that, because the church is part of society, it has to be directly involved in education for democracy from parish to national level. However, direct involvement alone is not enough. The church has to be vocal, condemn the evil, and rebuke the society so that it does not plunge into destruction brought about by fracas, theft, robbery, murder, drunkenness, etc. Further, we recommend that, apart from praying and reconciling our society, the church should be involved in conscientization, directing and advising society, the government, political parties and individuals on the execution and implementation of human rights. In view of the fact that we heads of the church lead Christians from various political parties, our ordained leadership—bishops, pastors and their spouses should not seek membership to any political party. . . . However, in order to ensure that the church is clean, we the bishops state that, all the ELCT leaders should be conversant with the constitutions of all political parties, and also, the church should know through person-to-person all Christian government

360

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

leaders who are members of our churches in order to counsel them not to be party to corruption in the government. Moreover, we have seen the need for the church to find ways of discouraging businesses that destroy the ethics of society, such as video shows and films, the use of condoms and dresses not accepted by our society. By doing that we shall have proclaimed the mission of the church. We the bishops are aware of the importance of education in the development of humans. The church should therefore develop new and effective strategies of teaching Christian education in schools. The church should also educate society about the environment.

Fig. 11.5. Pastors from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania (ELCT) prepare for the procession preceding the worship service to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the church

470. JUDITH BANGSUND: MUSIC CULTURE AND THE TANZANIAN CHURCH (2007) The author is an American Lutheran pastor who teaches music and liturgy at Makumira University College in Arusha, Tanzania. From The Song of the People: Hymnody and Liturgy of the Ev Evang angelical elical Luther Lutheran an Church in Tanzania (Usa River, Tanzania: The Research Institute of Makumira University College, 2007), 79–93. Awakening and Liturgy In the ELCT [Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania] today there are two forms of worship: “awakening” (namsho), sometimes called “fellowship,” and liturgy. Through Awakening “Pentecostal” elements have come into the ELCT: speaking in tongues, healing, spontaneous preaching and singing, and “prophesy.” However, the basic worship

pattern of the ELCT is the “liturgical” form which is found in the hymnal. Its elements include the confession of sin and absolution, the Agnus Dei and so on. These two patters of worship co-exist in the ELCT, but the relationship is somewhat uneasy. Awakening is spontaneous. Liturgy is fixed. How can the two be reconciled? Where does one find “real” worship? . . . The fixed order of service and the inclusion of some historic parts of worship has enabled the community of God to worship in a corporate way. That is, although the congregation is made up of individuals, they sing, pray, confess, and testify to their faith in a communal way. . . . Although more or less fixed, the liturgy shouldn’t be a rigid structure. It can expand and contract according to the needs of the day. It is—should be—always reforming within which there is corporate freedom. . . . Awakening, on the other hand, has a different aim. Essentially, awakening aims at conversion. As its name implies, awakening seeks to shake up the sleeper, to sharpen the groggy mind, to soften the hardened heart. Services that aim towards conversion have many of the elements of an evangelistic rally. The intended audience of the liturgy is the faithful; the intended audience of awakening is the unconverted. Awakening looks for the unchurched, those who are not used to the ways of liturgy. Thus we find “seeker” services, or informal services that not only ignore liturgical forms and vestments but actively reject them. . . . The current forms of awakening come from America: the evangelistic rally of the 19th century and the Pentecostal movements of the 20th century. These forms provide the basis of a typical awakening service: singing, a reading from the Bible that aims towards conversion, an altar call and prayer. . . . Although liturgy and awakening have the same parent (Word and Spirit), there has been much sibling rivalry between the two. Liturgy has tended to be suspicious of her more entertaining sister; awakening has tended to spurn her more predictable sister. These mutually critical attitudes have led to tensions in the church, misunderstandings and even mutual rejection. . . . Awakening has criticized liturgy as being too boring, too repetitive, too passive. It has challenged liturgy as being hypocritical, a religion of the lips and not of the heart. . . . On the other hand, liturgy criticizes awakening as being too theatrical, too demonstrative, pointing to the self. . . . Liturgy further points out that even the new forms of awakening will soon become old, wondering if there will be any

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

continuity at all if awakening continually follows the current trend. . . . Awakening emphasizes human experience as the measure of worship, rather than Word and Sacrament. If the service led to warm feelings, even a state of ecstasy, then it is considered to be “real” worship. But the question of whether the Word was preached and the Sacrament administered according to the Gospel doesn’t arise. . . . Rather than trying to find fault, perhaps a more constructive way is to recognize the differences between the two, and to acknowledge the weaknesses and strengths in each. . . . Awakening clips the wings of liturgy’s flight towards beauty, for beauty’s sake. It keeps asking the question, “How shall the sinner be saved?” . . . The spark of Awakening needs the fan of liturgy to keep the fire going. Faith, once awakened through Word and Spirit, needs to be nurtured so that it can grow by that same Word and Spirit. . . . 471. GODSON MAANGA: THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN TANZANIA 1963–2013 The author is a pastor who works at Stefano Moshi Memorial University College, a constituent college of Tumaini University Makumira. From Luther Lutheran an Quarterl Quarterlyy 28, no. 2 (Summer, 2014): 179–93. . . . Statistically, in 2013 when the ELCT was celebrating its 50th anniversary, there were about six million members (in 1963 there were 380,000 members), making it the third largest church in the Lutheran community, after the Church of Sweden, and the (Ethiopian) Lutheran Church Mekane Yesus. . . . The ELCT began with only seven units but now has twenty-two dioceses, all led by indigenous bishops. . . . Three main reasons made the Lutheran Churches unite: preaching the gospel as one Lutheran team, getting representation before the government, and fighting for religious rights as one unit. . . . Even prior to establishing the ELCT, members of the Lutheran church saw the necessity for all Christians to live and work in unity—unity in faith, in theological teachings, in education and medical are, and in basic Lutheran writings. . . . From June 1963 to date, the ELCT has experienced tremendous changes in terms of growth and mission. From a small church dependent on aid from mission societies, the world has witnessed the ELCT

361

expanding and becoming more self-reliant, although, in view of the present economic conditions, there is still a long way ahead to be completely self-supporting and self-governing. Among other things, the strength of this particular church is attributed to commendable mission work done by lay Christians (males and females) in all areas covered by the ELCT. . . . The ELCT is active in providing social services because it recognizes that religion goes hand in hand with diakonia (service) and development. . . . In the theological arena the ELCT started Lwandai Theological School (in 1947) which in 1954 was transferred to Makumira and named Makumira Theological College, a theological institution which has had a big impact on the society, education theological students from inside and outside Tanzania. It was this particular college which in 1997 gave birth to Tumaini University (owned and run by the ELCT) with six constituent colleges. . . . The ELCT participates fully and happily in diaconia and kerygma (preaching). The traditional task of deacons is caring for needy persons as well as distributing alms or humanitarian donations. From the very beginning, such work has become part and parcel of all missionary activities of the ELCT and this very important work continues in all dioceses of the ELCT, through parishes and institutions. . . . Although a religious body, the ELCT involves itself in demanding human rights, advocating or fighting for genuine democracy as well as fair distribution and sharing of the national resources. . . . One of the achievements of the ELCT was the decision to ordain women. After a tough debate, the decision to ordain women was finally made in 1990. The first woman theologians were ordained in 1991; by 2013 the ELCT had more than fifty women pastors. The number is growing fast and in the next fifty years, if the current trend of ordaining women continues, the current figure of female pastors in the ELCT might be more than doubled. . . . In 1994, as a way of addressing the problem of corruption which prevailed in the nation, the ELCT issues the Bagamoyo Statement (Tamko la Bagamoyo). The church took its stand on economic and political changes in the country, opposing material and monetary aid embedded in conditions, violation of the constitution, illegal trade, misuse of public funds and robbing citizens of their land to sell it to foreigners....... Another challenge for the ELCT came about when some partner churches in Europe and America sanctioned same-sex relationships. The 2010

362

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Dodoma Statement (Tamko la Dodoma) says categorically that it “strongly opposes using incorrectly or distorting Holy Scriptures to justify same-sex marriages,” because these marriages are indeed contrary to the teachings and principles of the Word of God. The ELCT Bishops believed that circumstances like the ones which prompted the Dodoma Statement stem from misinterpreting the Bible to fit or justify human whims. . . . In terms of socio-cultural and religio-political challenges, the ELCT has a long way to go. Some people may wonder why the ELCT, a holy institution with here-after objectives, involves itself in secular affairs which had led to statements like the ones made at Bagamoyo and Dodoma. It should be remembered that the ELCT is not treading on a secular ground but rather operating within the framework of useful social laws and guidelines. . . . For the future, in summary, the ELCT faces several needs or challenges. First, internal conflicts threaten the overall stability of the ELCT. . . . The second challenge is the spirit of tribalism and nepotism witnessed in some units of the ELCT. . . . A third challenge facing the ELCT is the increasing tendency among some ELCT members to drift into other denominations—something which depicts doctrinal instability and lack of effective teaching. . . . A fourth need for immediate action concerns the growing rate of unemployment and poverty, to a certain degree caused by the dwindling quality of education. . . . The unhealthy Muslim-Christian relationship is the fifth challenge which the ELCT should deal with. Sincere Christian-Muslim dialogues are needed across the country, on the local level, to prevent the situation from becoming worse. . . . Most importantly, the ELCT should work to be self–reliant in terms of finance and personnel. . . . The ELCT should be self-supporting so that it can maintain a good image, nationally and internationally. Without being self-reliant, the ELCT cannot be self–governing and self-propagating, essential qualities expected of any stable church. ETHIOPIA 472. GUDINA TUMSA: SERVING THE WHOLE MAN: A RESPONSIBLE CHURCH MINISTRY (1974) Gudina Tumsa was general secretary of the Ethiopian Evangelical Lutheran Church from 1966

to 1979. He was abducted by the Marxist regime of Mengistu Haile Miriam in July 1979 and subsequently killed. He was a pioneer of “holistic ministry” in Ethiopia. In this letter he expresses frustration about the difficulties of establishing an integrated ministry. From Pr Proclamation oclamation and Human Development: Documentation fr from om a Luther Lutheran an World Feder ederation ation Consultation, Nair airobi, obi, Kenya (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1974), 11–17.

Fig. 11.6. Gudina Tumsa

The EECMY [Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus] found itself in a situation where its conscience and Christian conviction called for maximum engagement in social development activities and where, at the same time, it was faced with both responsibility for a massive spiritual nurture of its rapidly growing membership and unusual opportunities for evangelistic outreach in unevangelized areas of the country. Considering its responsibility in this situation and trying to work out a strategy for its ministry, the church realized that its hands were tied. It was not in a position to set its own priorities, and, at the same time, to engage in development activities for which funds were available from abroad and which it was convinced were part of its total ministry at this particular time. Although available, the funds were

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

fenced in by criteria set by the donor agencies and were earmarked for specific activities. . . . The church concluded that the time had come when this whole issue should be discussed on the international level. . . . We appreciate the efforts made by the Lutheran World Federation to facilitate an open and frank exchange of views on the issues involved. . . . Against this background and within the framework of the main topic of this consultation, the EECMY would like to comment briefly on these two issues: “A More Responsible Church Ministry” and “A More Flexible International Aid–Relationship.” A More Responsible Church Ministry We deliberately use the expression “more responsible” because we feel that, on the one hand, the churches in Africa have so far not sufficiently taken upon themselves the task of seriously reviewing their ministry in light of their cultural, social and political setting. It is urgent that a fresh initiative for such a review be taken by the churches themselves. On the other hand, as long as the ministry of a given church is governed to a greater or lesser degree by earmarked funds or by aid-criteria arbitrarily determining what should and should not be done, that church is handicapped. We need to establish aid-relationships which allow planning and implementation of a fully responsible ministry in a given situation....... We have to ask ourselves the question: What is a responsible ministry of the Christian church in today’s world and in a given cultural, social and political situation? Where and to what extent should the church involved itself and employ its resources? ..... We believe that the gospel itself when faithfully proclaimed and faithfully lived gives the necessary guidelines for a responsible church ministry. A true theological definition of a responsible church must always grow out of an “action situation,” or, to go even one step further, true biblical and evangelical theology must always allow for a contextual interpretation of the gospel and the action strategy of the church and priorities must be decided upon in faithfulness to this interpretation. . . . The other important question to be taken up here is that of the objectives of a responsible church ministry. We would like to mention three basic objectives which in our opinion constitute the biblical mandate given to the church by its Lord. These objectives are inseparable, but emphasis on each of them will have to be changed in according with the

363

contextual interpretation of the gospel. Any attempt to separate the three objectives will immediately have implications for the quality of the total ministry of the church. The church is first of all commissioned to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to all nations (Matt. 28:19–20). . . . There is always something wrong when the missionary dimension of the church is reduced to groups and societies organized within or outside the church to carry on a responsibility which belongs to the church at large. We are thankful to God for what the missionary societies have done in Africa but we are also concerned that a church which resulted from their work should have inherited a concept of mission which makes it different from the church. This has been further reinforced by the artificial division between mission and development aid. . . . Another objective is the healing of brokenness and making man whole. The church has a healing ministry to carry out which is more than medical care for the physically ill. It has to do with the restoration of man to liberty and wholeness. . . . The healing of the brokenness in human life can therefore never be accomplished without the gospel message of forgiveness which has in itself the power to liberate man from the most dehumanizing power in his own life and in his relationship with other men and God. This aspect of a responsible church ministry has been largely overlooked in inter–church aid programmes. ... The third objective of a responsible church ministry must be to engage in the betterment of human existence wherever needed. This includes any lawful activity, from being a prophetic voice in condemning injustice and oppression to involvement in social and community development. . . . A More Flexible Aid-Relationship . . . In the process of integrating the administrative structures of foreign missions into the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, we have over the past few years experienced two things which we should like to mention as introductory remains in this section of our presentation. . . . The first is the neo–paternalism in aid-relationships reflected both in established criteria and in administrative procedures. The other is the distribution of resources within the world Christian community. Paternalism in its traditional forms is a phenomenon of the past, but it tends to linger on in new

364

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

forms which are both directly hampering the work and humiliating for the recipient. . . . The other issue has to do with distribution of resources. . . . We believe that the economy of the Christian community should be seen in a global perspective and that the aim should be to arrange for a more fair distribution of resources. Here the church should even lead the way towards this goal. . . . We should therefore like to advocate completely new criteria for distribution of resources based not only on a balance within the ministry of a given church (the original concern of the EECMY), but also on a balance in the global distribution of spiritual care, with the aim of greater justice in serving the total man and a more responsible church ministry in today’s world. 473. SOLOMON ENDASHAW YADESSA: THE CHURCH IN ETHIOPIA (2001) The author, an Ethiopian, wrote a dissertation about holistic theology for his Ph.D. from Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne, Indiana. From Between Vision and Reality: Luther Lutheran an Churches in Transition. Lutheran World Federation Documentation 47, ed. Wolfgang Grieve. (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation Department for Theology, 2001), 110–12. How Others View the EECMY . . . Society holds various, in some cases, controversial views of the EECMY. In societies where the majority are Ethiopian Orthodox, it is viewed as a foreigner, not rooted in the country, as a heretic and anti-Mary church. Orthodox priests preach about it in such a way as to stop their believers from joining the EECMY. Some people say that Orthodox communities view the EECMY as a politically oriented church that sides with the non-Amhara ethnic groups. The poor and needy see it as an organization that has an answer to their problems. People in immediate need, such as refugees and displaced people, come to the church office for solutions. The church’s relief and development activities during certain periods has led the community to view it as a rich, holy, and kind mother, whose wealth would alleviate their problems. Generally, the church is viewed as being concerned for the well-being of society and is therefore accepted by many. It is for this main reason that nonbelievers and other denominations including Mus-

lims willingly contributed considerably to the fundraising campaigns for the construction of synod offices and congregation’s buildings in some western and southern areas of the country. Someone said, “the society views her more than what she is.” In general, society regards the EECMY as a strong and promising church but there are some misconceptions about the strength of the church. Generally speaking the government has mistrusted the EECMY. The Haile Salassie regime (1930–1974) viewed it as a challenge and threat that awakened the people. The Derg regime viewed it as a foe of its Communist ideology with ties to anti-Communist countries. (At no time did the church ally itself with the existing government but tried to remain neutral in order to accomplish its ministry. Its neutrality has cost it a lot.) Members regard the church as a place where they worship the Lord, serve the needy ones around them, and have fellowship with brothers and sisters across cultural and geographical boundaries. They see it as a church that takes up the mandate of evangelization to Ethiopia and beyond. Therefore, in most of the areas, evangelistic outreach is carried out by volunteers. The members’ perception of the practice of the church is more or less in line with its official self-understanding. For many, membership in the EECMY gives them a strong feeling of communion with communities of the same belief in other parts of the world, whether in Africa or Europe or the Americas. What Tensions It Experiences . . . Regarding the different ecclesiologies in the church and region, I personally perceive two opposing understandings of the church and its ministry. While there are some individuals who accept the EECMY’s policy that the church should serve the spiritual and physical needs of the human being, there are other groups that do not understand this, claiming that the primary mission of the church should be evangelism only. . . . The church is in a dilemma in areas of practical involvement. It cannot withdraw from reality. As a church it believes that it should play a prophetic role, but the questions as to how to play it, and to what extent, have not got an answer. . . .

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

365

474. EECMY REJECTION OF SAME SEX

475. EBISE AYANA: LUTHERANISM IN

MARRIAGE (MAY 2010)

ETHIOPIA: IDENTITY AND CHALLENGES (2015)

After the Churchwide Assembly of the ELCA voted in 2009 to allow individual congregations to ordain same-sex partnered clergy and to recognize same-sex partnerships, the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus issued this statement. The Dodoma Statement of the Lutheran Church of Tanzania took a similar stance. From text quoted in an article by Zerai Kiros for Eriwongel Gospel Radio of Ethiopia http:// www.eriwongel.com/tig/index.php?option= com_content&view=article&id=720:eecmy–reaffirms–rejection–to–same–sex–marriage–&catid= 29&Itemid=107 Accessed November 2, 2016. The EECMY believes that God clearly defined that proper sexual relationship is only that [that] is practiced between a man and his wife (woman) who become one flesh, Genesis 2:24. The EECMY affirms that homosexual or same sex marriage does not have convincing ground neither in the Old nor in the New Testaments. It is a disastrous sin that was a cause for the wiping out of the tribe of Benjamin from its land, Judges: 19 i.e. incidence in Gibeah. The decision of same sex marriage is against God’s order given to man and woman to produce offspring through proper holy marriage, Genesis: 1:28; 9.7. Thus, only a male-female sexual relationship can produce and create the type of family that God envisages with the father, mother and children. All other forms of sexual relationships are abnormal, unnatural and sin. We strongly affirm our decision taken in Lund, Sweden in 2007 that “marriage is holy ordained by God and is a relationship between a man and a women.” Therefore, the majority of African member churches says “NO” to homosexual and regards it sinful. Further to this affirmation of our position on this matter, we are extremely disturbed and deeply regret of the recent development taking place in some member churches of the Communion who have taken unilateral decision on same sex marriages, disregarding the strong sentiments expressed by other members of the communion. This unilateral action has negatively impacted our life together as a communion, something which could have been avoided. We pray for the spirit of discernment and for the grace of God to abound as we seek to resolve these issues.

The author has lectured in theology at the Mekane Yesus Seminary in Addis Ababa and is a member of the Lutheran Women’s Theological Network of the LWF. From African Theolog Theological ical Journal 35, no. 1 (2015): 22–33.

Fig. 11.7. Ebise Ayana at the LWF global consultation on theological education and formation in Wittenberg, Germany 2012

Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Sub–Saharan Africa after Nigeria. Ethiopia is ethnically and linguistically very diverse. . . . The population of Ethiopia is about 83 million. . . . Ethiopia has been a home to three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The majority of the people are deeply religious. Religion in many ways is the most important ingredient in the lives of Ethiopians. ... The Establishment of the EECMY as a National Church At the beginning of their mission work, the Protestant missions who worked in Ethiopia from the 19th century did not plan to establish a new church besides the Orthodox Church that existed in

366

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

the country from the early time, however, the governmental system of that time forced them to change their policy of planting a new church. The growth in membership, the formation of a stronger fellowship and the setting up of administrative structures in and around the mission stations led the representatives of the various mission organizations and the indigenous evangelical members to think of forming “one confessional church.” To this effect, some basic principles were drafted in 1954 by the Lutheran committee and circulated to all concerned. . . . The draft of the principles for the constitution and by–laws were presented to the founding Assembly that was gathered at Addis Ababa Mekane Yesus congregation from April 13–15, 1958. . . . The missionaries in Ethiopia agreed to establish a national church that would be called “Lutheran.” This did not happen because the indigenous leaders and ministers did not agree on it. As a result, the Lutheran mission committee that was gathered in December 1957 approved the name, “Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus” and created a constitution for the church. . . . Therefore, EECMY was established on January 21, 1959 as a national church to correct the deviation from the true belief and teaching revealed in the bible and to proclaim the Gospel to many millions of Ethiopian people in the language they understand. It has 20,000 members at that time. . . . Today, the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY) is the largest Lutheran Church body in Africa. . . . The Challenges of Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus As the church is experiencing an exploding numerical growth in the last few decades, she is also facing several challenges from different aspects. Challenges to a Holistic Ministry Approach of the Church While the church is carrying out this mission with serving the whole person that includes the spiritual and the physical aspects, the state wanted the total separation of the two. Religious Fundamentalism Ethiopia is a pluralistic society with different religions and ethnic groups. Pluralism may sometimes result in problems in which there is no tolerance among people of different religious and ethnic

groups. The consequent will be a conflict that may result in torture, suffering and finally—death. Due to some misunderstandings and false witnesses, Christians suffer a lot at the hands of Muslims in Ethiopia, especially the Muslim fundamentalists who are causing a great turmoil and chaos in the life of many Christians. . . . Influence from Other Denominations Most members from other churches reject and ignore the believers from our church regarding them as “followers of the religion of the foreigners.” The other churches try to “steal sheep” from the EECMY or try to attract members. This is very common since the 1960s due to the spiritual revival that has happened in the country. Adherents of the Church (EECMY) are Attracted to Other Churches Some EECMY believers are attracted to other denominations because of a spiritual movement seen in those churches. In fact, the EECMY accepted the charismatic renewal in the church and made decisions regarding it in its executive meeting two times in the past years to practice spiritual gifts according to the biblical teaching. Yet, disorder in worship as the result of spiritual practices is observed in the church. . . . Poverty Prosperity gospel teaching is seen as immediate solutions for poverty. Traditional Practices Traditional practice that is contrary to the biblical teaching, e.g. female genital mutilation. Some Christians are still practicing it. Therefore in order to protect the believers, EECMY’s theological institutions in the country integrated the issue of female circumcision into theological education so that its practice is fully eradicated by teaching and giving a deep theological reflection on it. Marriage and Divorce Marriage is a holy institution established by God. But it is being attacked and challenged by many ide-

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

ologies, perspectives and understanding which are very contrary to the biblical teaching about marriage. ... Unemployment Unemployment is a serious problem. There is uncertain and fear regarding unemployment. . . .

367

tinued as a diviner of some ability. Thus he petitioned the spirits to prosper his crops; thus he gained considerable money in calling forth the good and preventing evil for those who sought his aid against sickness, storms, crop failures, pestilence, and such. He sold charms made from wood, horn, or metal. He was kept very busy at deaths and funerals, especially in coaxing the spirit of the deceased to the cemetery lest it remain in the house to haunt the living.

Urbanization Urbanization is a challenge facing the church these days. It is a process by which people migrate from rural to urban areas and challenge the way they make a living. The church started to form new mission strategies, called “Urban Mission Network,” as a necessary structure in the EECMY outreach ministries. ..... Moreover, the church believes and teaches that marriage is instituted by God between a man and a woman. It is holy and respectful. The church is very strong and confident enough to say “no” to the teachings and ideologies that try to shake the biblical truth about marriage. . . . MADAGASCAR 476. THE CONVERSION OF RAINISOALAMBO (1894) This account was written by Andrew Burgess, 1897–1993, who served as a missionary in Madagascar from 1926 to 1931 and later became professor of missions and world Christianity at Luther Seminary in Minnesota, 1948–1968. From Andrew Burgess. Zanahary in South Madagascar (Minneapolis: The Board of Foreign Missions—Augsburg, 1935), 130–33. Hans Nielsen Hauge made Christianity a living reality in the hearts of the people of Norway. Rainisoalambo was a Hans Nielsen Hauge to his people in that the Lord used him to bring Christianity to the hearts of the Betsileo [tribe] of the Norwegian Mission, and later to large parts of the island. . . . As a young man Rainisoalambo served in the army of the local Malagasy king; he learned the art of divination and witchcraft; he practiced “law,” according to the heathen custom, and was much sought as a “lawyer” in the native palavers. When Rainisoalambo grew older, he withdrew from the army and worked his fields in Ambalavato, near Soatanana. But he con-

Fig. 11.8. Leaders of Christian revival in Madagascar (ca. 1898); Rainisoalambo is wearing a hat

A teacher came to the town. Roainisoalambo learned to read; he learned the way of the Lord. He was baptized, but his heart was unchanged. He had hoped to become the teacher of his village and receive a salary from the mission. When he found that there would be no money to gain, Rainisoalambo lost all interest. He returned to his charms, idols, and divination chart. A period of troubles and trials befell the village. There was no rain. The crops failed. A terrible malaria epidemic swept over the country. Large numbers died. Rainisoalambo worked his arts. He labored in desperation to save his friends and family, to save himself. But in vain. His customers sought other witch doctors. He became ill, very ill. His fields were neglected; his relatives were also in trouble, and failed to help him. His friends left him. Then he began to reflect upon the God of the Christians. He prayed for help, and then for a time he became better, but soon was worse than before. His cattle died, he had no more food, his disease increased. He began to despair. One evening he said to the Lord: “What is thy purpose, O God, to have me suffer like this? May it not soon be enough?” That night he dreamed that he saw a figure of light which told him: “Cast away all your charms and idols.” When Rainisoalambo awakened, he was certain that it was the Christians’ God who had spoken to

368

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

him. He picked up all his charms, idols, and divination charts, and quickly and with superhuman strength he threw them over the hillside. He had never before felt so happy as he did that day. His sickness disappeared, strength and vigor returned gradually. . . . Thus Rainisoalambo began as a Christian [in 1894]. If he but could help his relatives! He read and reread the Word of God, studied and meditated and prayed. He spoke to each one; he prayed to God for them, individually. His prayers were heard. One by one his family and his friends destroyed their charms and idols. Rainisoalambo placed his hands on them and prayed, and they were healed, spiritually and physically. . . . 477. RAVELONJANAHARY THE HEALER (1932) From Andrew Burgess. Zanahary in South Madagascar (Minneapolis: The Board of Foreign Missions—Augsburg Publishing House, 1935), 237. . . . The Lord is now raising up powerful witnesses for himself in the old and the new districts. They are the prophets of the new tribe. Ravelonjanahary lives in a village of only twentyfive huts, called Ifanda of Betsileo. She is about sixty years old, with somewhat furrowed brow, and her hair is graying at the temples. She is short of stature and unassuming. Her face shows a strong character and her keen eyes seem to penetrate into the very depths of peoples’ hearts. Her blessed labors have continued for over twenty years. She had little publicity in the early days. Now, however, the masses are seeking her from every corner of the island for healing, both physical and spiritual. There have been upwards of five hundred waiting to speak with her, and only thirty to forty can be received in one day. They come walking or driving, and many are being carried. They await their turn. She has been given the power of healing. The spiritual healing always precedes the physical. Her patients are strangers to her, but see seems to know their conditions and needs. “The Lord can do nothing for you until you have arranged your family affairs,” or “that you are bound by heathen customs.” She prays several times with the individual. Blind have received their sight, and the lame walk. The healing of the body is not always successful, although such miracles take place every day. The spiritual blessings are always great. Many Christian workers visit her and they return to their own local com-

munities and labor with deeper understanding of the Gospel and a stronger desire to further the Lord’s cause. . . . 478. SPIRIT-POSSESSION AND EXORCISM IN THE LUTHERAN CHURCH OF MADAGASCAR (2013) Comments made in an interview in 2006 with a Lutheran pastor, seminary professor and exorcist. The Fifohazana revival movement mentioned in the text began in 1895 with Dada Rainisoalambo, whose conversion is described above. From Robert Bennett. I am not Afr fraid: aid: Demon Possession and Spiritual Warf arfar are—T e—True rue Acc Accounts ounts fr from om the Luther Lutheran an Church of Madag Madagascar ascar (St. Louis: Concordia, 2013), 36, 44, 47. Joseph Randrianasolo: There are many kinds of spirits of the dead, but they can be categorized into two classes: the bad ones and the good ones. Among the bad ones, we can enumerate angatra (ghosts), the vazimba (former inhabitants of the land), the lolo and matoatosa (ghosts) and the fanahy ratsy (bad spirits). The angatra, lolo, and fanahy ratsy are spirits that harm those who trespass their territories, which may be deep ponds, waterfalls, thick bushes and so on. Sometimes these locations are situated around existing or former tombs. Usually, any harmful happenings outside of one’s house, which are hard to explain, are attributed to the angatra and lolo. On the contrary, the matoatosa haunt houses, cars, and other things that the dead had used during their lifetimes. The vazimba are related to the tombs of former inhabitants of the land. They carry the reputation of being mean and ill-intentioned. Unlike the lolo, angatra, matoatosa and vazimba are worshiped by some people. . . . If a person is demon-possessed and hears the Word of Jesus, many times the demons throw him on the ground, convulse him, or put him in an unconscious state. Sometimes, he screams. The mpiandry (shepherds-trained laity) surround him and cast out the demons until he is freed. Then they lay hands on him. Afterwards, that demon-possessed person usually gets counseling and teaching of the faith in Jesus Christ. . . . Conversion happens before and after health recovery. Many of the healed demon-possessed persons have become mpiandry. . . . Exorcism, therefore, puts the mpiandry and the Fifohazana [the revival movement] at the forefront of the daily battle against Satan and his kingdom. Satan

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

is like a lion roaring around us as Peter said, ready to bite and kill. Jesus has come to conquer him, to destroy his kingdom and to establish the Kingdom of God that is no more at hand, but is right here now in his person. . . . Forgiveness of sin, liberation from the devil and his kingdom, healing from incomprehensible diseases and escaping from death are no more mere paroles and empty words just to comfort someone in difficult times and posture. They become historically real and in the flesh in the life of the person through exorcism. These fleshly historical happenings boost and propel evangelism in an incredible way toward the heavens and give joy to the angels. In that definition, exorcism is one more exemplification of how the Lutheran Confessions present Jesus Christ. That is the dynamism in the strength of the growth of the Malagasy Lutheran Church. 479. A CONVERSION ACCOUNT FROM MADAGASCAR (2006) Tromba are foreign royal ancestral spirits. They are generally thought to be helpful and people hope to gain power by being possessed by them. From Robert Bennett. I am not Afr fraid: aid: Demon Possession and Spiritual Warf arfar are—T e—True rue Acc Accounts ounts fr from om the Luther Lutheran an Church of Madag Madagascar ascar (St. Louis: Concordia, 2013), 80–81. I was very violent and could not show mercy to anyone. The angabe (great ghost) controlled me and made me do many terrible things. Everyone was afraid of me and all the spirits of the razana (ancestral spirits) who dwelt within me. Few were those who could compete with me. I could heal everyone, and I hated the Lutheran Church. . . . Before my conversion, I was in great difficulty because I had to choose only the food the tromba (ancestral spirit) would allow. I could not eat pork, duck, chicken, shrimp, and greens. Even the time to come and go from our home was chosen by the tromba. I was very thin because my life was terrible. The worship of the razana brought much suffering to our life because we always depended upon them for everything. We had to make vows and bring sacrifices to satisfy them. The most difficult was the keeping of the taboos. When I came to the Lutheran Church, I found happiness because Jesus Christ liberated me from the taboos. Now my life is good because I no longer have fear in our life.

369

LIBERIA 480. ROLAND PAYNE: THE HISTORY OF MY LIFE IN RELATION TO MARTIN LUTHER (1983) The author, 1923–1994, was leader of the Liberian Lutheran Church from 1963 until 1984. From Africa Theolog Theological ical Journal 12, no. 1 (1983): 39–47. My home town is located in the northern part of Liberia in the Kpelle Chiefdom in Lofa Country in Liberia. I was born in the town of Gbwodee situated on the banks of the Via River on November 19, 1923. I was born as “Jigi” after my great-grandfather, Lakpanga Jigi. I was told that a man named Benjamin Payne was a friend of my father. He was a guest of my father when I was born and the Payne name that I carry today was attributed to him. . . . I was not born of Christian parents as Martin Luther was. The religion of my parents was the traditional African religion. This religion is centered around the spirits of our dead ancestors. In all communal events—ceremonies, feasts, sacrifices, prayers—these departed ones were included, and their presence was really felt. . . . There is a sense in which our personalities are bound up with the personalities of all those who have been close to us, even after they have passed away from the physical world; they continue to be real and alive to us. At other times the spirits might visit the household, or the community to bring misfortunes as punishments for misdeeds by some members. At such times, special sacrifices were called for to propitiate the spirits and to rid the family or community of the calamity. Otherwise, if men lived harmoniously, not forgetting the spirits, they were not bothered by them, although of course there were some malicious ones who kept troubling people. . . . I was told that when an ancestor dies, he is passed into a deity, he goes on protecting his own family and he receives suit and services from them as of old; the dead Chief still watches over his own tribe, still holds his authority by helping friends and harming enemies, still rewards the right and sharply punishes the wrong. The spirits of the dead ancestors were very powerful, and that is why Africans have, even today, twofold attitudes towards the departed—that of reverence and fear. That was the religion that was part of me before I was sent to the Lutheran Mission School by my father. . . .

370

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

I was not persecuted by my tribe, clan or even by my relatives when I embraced Christianity. Many African Christians have been persecuted by their own people. My being a Christian was a real blessing for me and my people. They respected my stand when I refused to participate with them during the annual ancestral feast which was one a great event for me. Through Christian service I have been a father to my people as my father had predicted at the time of my birth. The joy of being a Christian cannot be expressed in words; it must be lived. Living that joyous life in the midst of a chaotic world that is bent on its own annihilation makes Christianity unique as a revelation of faith, hope and love. . . . I graduated from high school as head of my class of twenty-two students. With the aid of some friends, the Lutheran Church offered me a scholarship to attain Midland Lutheran College in Fremont, Nebraska. I graduated from college with honors in 1951. I studied Medical Technology and Radiology as I wanted to become a medical doctor. . . . In 1956 I returned home to marry my high school fiancée and also to work in our hospital located in Zorzor where I began schooling in the late 1920s. At the end of four years in medical work, I soon discovered that medicine was not my calling. I was interested more in theology than in medicine. I applied to the Executive Committee of the Lutheran Church in Liberia to study theology abroad. My request was granted. In July, 1960 my wife and I went by boat to New York, from there to Waterloo Lutheran University in Ontario, Canada to study theology. After three years of hard study, I received my Master’s Degree in Theology in May, 1963. In July, 1963 I returned home and to my great surprise I was elected as head of my church. . . . It was the doctrine of the great Reformer [Martin Luther] which enabled me to emerge from the traditional religion of my ancestors to embrace Christianity at an early age. Luther was the chief builder of the Protestant way, with his conviction on the authority of Scripture and justification (or salvation) by faith, not by works. . . . For me, Luther was the unique preceptor. He belonged to the long line of God-inspired teachers and leaders who from the days of the patriarchs onward had successfully preserved and renewed the Church. . . . As we celebrate the 500th year of the birth of this man of genius, let us be inspired by his life and work to go and do likewise.

THE MIDDLE EAST 481. MUNIB YOUNAN: THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN JORDAN AND THE HOLY LAND: ADAPTING TO A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT WHILE DRAWING STRENGTH FROM DEEP CHRISTIAN ROOTS (2011) The author has been the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land since 1998 and was elected President of the LWF in 2010. From The Luther Lutheran an F Forum orum (Winter 2011): 15–21. Often, one of the first questions asked when I give presentations is, “When did you convert to Christianity?” People are likely to assume that one whose mother tongue is Arabic is Muslim or that one who hails from Jerusalem is Jewish. But in Israel-Palestine, the cradle of the three great monotheistic faiths, Arabic-speaking Christians have existed since the church was born on the first Pentecost (Acts 2:11). The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL) has deep roots going back to those early days described in the Acts of the Apostles. Perhaps that is why the ELCJHL may be the longest acronym for any Lutheran group. Although be officially became a church only in 1959, we have a long and rich history. Our church members were deliberate in 2005 when calling their body The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land. Each component emphasizes a critical aspect of this church’s story. As Church we relish our continuity with the early church of the Acts of the Apostles. . . . Throughout the centuries, the Jerusalem Church grew to include the Greek Orthodox, Latin Catholic, Syriac, Armenian, Coptic and Ethiopian. By 1852, the political arrangement known as the Status Quo appeared to fix responsibilities and territorial allotments for the Ottoman Empire for years to come. At almost the same time—in the mid-nineteenth century the fruits of the Protestant Reformation began to reach the Holy Land. While the Ottoman Empire was beginning to crumble, new interest in the region came from Europe. . . . The British consulate was established in Jerusalem in 1838, followed by France, Russia, Prussia and the United States. Along with the consulates came missionaries—thus the description of our church as Evangelical Lutheran.

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

Fig. 11.9. Bishop Dr. Munib A. Younan, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land

This missionary effort from the start was ecumenical in nature. Not wishing to compete with each other, Lutherans concentrated their efforts from Jerusalem to the south, Anglicans from Jerusalem to the north, and Presbyterians in Lebanon. A joint bishopric was established in Jerusalem in 1841. . . . The Evangelical Lutheran church was given a prominent visible presence in gifts from these early missionaries. The Lutheran Church of the Redeemer with its 45.5 meter tower just a stone’s through from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was dedicated by Kaiser Wilhelm on Reformation Day, 1898. Twelve years later the Augusta Victoria compound was established on the Mount of Olives. Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem is also a reminder of that missionary era. . . . So this is indeed an Evangelical Lutheran Church. The descriptive in Jordan marks a major change that took place in 1948, the year Israelis refer to as their year of Independence and Arabs as al-Nakba, the catastrophe. The church was now located entirely within the Kingdom of Jordan. . . . The city of Jerusalem was now divided, with Redeemer congre-

371

gation located in East Jerusalem. We were severed from earlier Lutheran presence in the territory that became Israel. . . . The ELCJ was a refuge church. It is estimated that one-third of the Christian population from before the war became refuges, leaving homes in Ramle, Jaffa, Lydda, and West Jerusalem for the West Bank. . . . With large numbers of Christian refugees fleeing to Ramallah, the church also took up the challenge of starting the Lutheran Church of Hope in 1954. . . . This period following 1948 marked the transition from mission field to independent church—a phenomenon paralleled in Africa and the church of the South. However, it is important to note that the Palestinian church was not just following a popular trend. It was a necessary development out of the political situation with the German church recovering from its losses in World War II and Palestine divided by war and partition. Evangelical Lutherans in Palestine stepped up to the challenge and in 1959 established the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan (ELCJ). . . . Our acceptance of membership in the LWF in 1974 was conditional on the presence of independent Arab leadership and on the publication of the Augsburg Confession in the Arabic language. I was entrusted with the translation of the latter. In 1979 Bishop Daoud Haddad was elected the first Palestinian bishop. He was succeeded in 1986 by Bishop Naim Nassar, who served until 1998 when I was chosen as bishop of the ELCJ. . . . In 2005, the church changed its name to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land. The longer name better reflected the changing political realities. . . . The most pressing issue facing the Palestinian church today is Christian emigration with Christians now numbering less than 1.7 percent of the population, a vast decrease from ten percent prior to the events of 1948. . . . The ELCJHL is also a member of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC), is active in and a candidate for membership in the World Council of Churches, is a signatory to numerous mutual recognition agreements; and enjoys relationships with many churches—Lutheran and others—around the world. . . . We are church with deep roots going back to the first Christians in the Acts of the Apostles. We are Evangelical Lutheran, confessing the unique Lutheran understanding of God’s grace, showing faith active in love in our diaconal ministry, focusing heavily on education. We are in Jordan because of political circumstances of the mid-twentieth century, not

372

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

despairing, but living in hope and developing strong Palestinian leadership to emerge as a vibrant, independent church. We are in the Holy Land, a place sacred to three religions and therefore our faith calls us to dialogue and cooperation in a unique ecumenical and interfaith witness. We speak for nonviolent approaches to peace with justice and see ourselves as an integral part of the global church, receiving accompaniment from afar and sending out our undying witness to the whole world. Our strength is in our vital witness and creative diakonia. 482. MUNIB YOUNAN: WHAT DOES THE LORD REQUIRE OF US? A VISION OF PEACE THROUGH JUSTICE (2012) From The Ecumenical Review Review, June 2011. Reprinted in Munib Younan, Our Shar Shared ed Witness: A Voice for Justice and Rec Reconciliation onciliation (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2012). “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8) When I think of the concept of a just peace, my thoughts always turn to these beautiful words from the prophet Micah. They are so short and concise, but they say so much to our current situation in Israel-Palestine, just as they did some 2,600 years ago when the prophet walked these same hills, when he longed in his heart for a true and enduring peace, and when he courageously stood up among the people and spoke out a word from the Lord which would reach the hearts of the people, and especially those rulers who often acted from self-interest rather than what was good for all, let alone what the Lord required. . . . It has been estimated that in the twentieth century no less than fifty different peace proposals were offered to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They all failed. There has been no easy peace. The reason? They all failed to begin with the principle of justice. A case in point is found in the Oslo Peace Accords of the 1990s. This approach began with confidencebuilding measures, opportunities for the two parties to meet together around less controversial issues and development relationships. The difficult issues were put off to a later date. These final issues were what we might call justice issues, and while relationship building was taking place, injustices continued day after day and undercut any benefits from these relationship building meetings and the small steps that seemed to be taking place. . . .

Do Justice . . . The principle of justice begins with the assumption that all people are created equal and that both parties in negotiations must teach each other equally. The difficulty is that this has not been the case. . . . For Palestinians and Israelis this equity is based on a number of factors: First, both sides can affirm a belief that the same God has created Jews, Muslims and Christians, Palestinians and Israelis, that all are endowed with the image of God, and that love for God is transferred into love for neighbor as oneself. Second, this same creator God has provided the last with all its resources as a gift for the benefit of all these people. It is not to be squandered, nor is it to be used as a source of domination of one group over the other. Third, both peoples have a long and rich heritage with roots in the land. To argue over who was in the land first or who had the longest claim or whose claim is more legitimate by differing theological standards is to deny the importance of the first principle and it is counterproductive. Fourth, both Israelis and Palestinians have the right of self-determination because of who they are, not because of events occurring in Europe or any other part of the world, and not because any third party has granted it. It is a basic human right. Fifth, Palestinian and Israeli census figures put the two groups roughly on an equal footing. With nearly five million Israelis and five million Palestinians, the two sides have equal needs in being able to fulfill a reasonable livelihood. ..... On the basis of this principle of equity, the already articulated declarations of international law, including the Geneva Conventions and the resolutions of the United Nations, serve as the obvious foundation for just solutions. Some may ask: Is there absolute justice? I would answer: No, but there is rational justice in this world that aims at creating security, justice, freedom, coexistence, and acceptance of the other. For me, this means consistent support for the following: 1. A two-state solution. . . . . A division of land for the existence of the two states is an absolute necessity. United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338 should be the basis for this part of the solution. . . . 2. An end to Israeli settlements. All settlements should be discontinued. Israel should be encouraged to resettle these residents within Israeli borders and to provide compensation for them. Settlers who might remain by mutual consent should be dealt with under Palestinian law with full rights and responsibilities. 3. A political solution for refugees. . . . . What

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

373

does such a settlement entail? I would suggest that the issue be divided into two important components. First, there must be recognition of the injustice created in 1948. Second, a just and reasonable political settlement must follow. 4. A shared Jerusalem. The heads of the churches in Jerusalem, in their 2006 statement, speak to the concept and necessity of a shared Jerusalem for all—Christians, Muslims, Jews, Israelis, and Palestinians as two peoples and three religions. Because of the complexities of this arrangement, Jerusalem should be given a special status that is guaranteed by the international community. 5. Regional cooperation. . . . . The security of Israel is dependent on freedom and justice for Palestine. And freedom and justice for Palestine is dependent on the security of Israel. This is a symbiotic relationship and a key formula for justice in the Middle East. I also believe that the Palestinians must see God in the Israelis, and the Israelis must see God in the Palestinians. Thus, we recognize the humanity of the other, and thus we will mutually recognize in each other the human, religious, civil, political and national rights. Only then, will Palestine and Israel become a promised land of milk and honey for both Israelis and Palestinians alike.

that mainline Christians speak out forcefully when extremist Christians threaten to burn copies of the Qur’an. . . . It is equally critical that Christians speak out against all forms of hate speech towards Judaism or the Jewish people and the practice of any form of anti-Semitism. . . .

Love Kindness

The author is the Arab Lutheran pastor of Christmas Church in Bethlehem and the founder of the Dar al–Kalima School. From I am a Palestinian Christian Christian, trans. by Ruth Gritsch (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 59–64. Palestinian Christians suffering daily under the occupation can neither keep silent about Israel’s actions nor rise above them theologically. Indeed, their context forces them to face new theological challenges instead. Christians in Palestine had a particular way of interpreting the Bible until the middle of the last century. All the churches interpreted Holy Scripture allegorically or typologically. They saw a deeper meaning, one that applied to Christ, in the texts of the Old Testament. The events and figures sketched in the Old Testament were images and foreshadowings pointing beyond themselves towards the future and the real. They were handed down to us for the sake of that future and that reality. That way of interpreting the Bible started to change after the end of the last century. The Bible became a political text at the moment the Zionist movement promised itself the land of Palestine. The Old Testament promises became problematic for the Palestinians the moment the Jews promulgated their

. . . While justice is something human are obligated to do, Micah calls us to have a passion to go beyond what is expected. The English translations here commonly translate chesed as “kindness.” Luther chose the word Gnade, the same term to be used in the New Testament for Xaris, grace. In other contexts, “mercy” seems the appropriate term. Kindness seems to imply politeness or civility. More is expected by Micah. This phrase denotes acts of compassion which are undeserved and beyond the expectation of right. . . . In the Middle East, it seems that religion has often been the problem. At least it is a powerful undercurrent that affects the political issues that have been problematical. I would propose that religion can just as easily be the solution. We can begin very simply with two principles: love of God and love of neighbor. . . . When mainline Christians, Muslims and Jews—and especially their leaders—remain silent and timid about these core values, they allow themselves to be held hostage by the extremists, and they, in a sense, contribute to the problem. Thus, it is critical

Walk Humbly with Your God . . . How does one walk humbly with God? The first point is that one must be ready to confess wrongs that have been done, to seek forgiveness and reconciliation. . . . Here religious leaders must take the first step, then national days of prayer and repentance must follow. In this way, statesmen may also learn that through confession of sin of the past new doors are opened for living life abundantly in peace. Repentance and forgiveness are at the core of one walking humbly. . . . This is not an easy task. But it is what the Lord requires of us: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God. 483. MITRI RAHEB: PALESTINIAN CHRISTIANS AND THE BIBLE (1995)

374

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

settlement of Palestine as their return to the land of their forefathers. Palestinians were confronted with a new challenge the moment the state created in 1948 was named Israel. . . .

Fig. 11.10. Mitri Raheb, founder and president of Dar al-Kalima University College

How then could Palestinian Christians read their Bible? If they read it allegorically, it did not have much to say to them. If they read it politically, its meaning was frightening. In this light, some aspects of scriptural interpretation are important to the Israeli–Palestinian context and are of significance to both an intra-Christian Western-Palestinian dialogue and a Jewish-Christian one. 1. The Bible is God’s Word in human words. The writings of the Old and New Testaments are the records and written accounts of various experiences human beings have had with the one God. They are nothing but testimonies of faith. . . . The Old Testament is a record of Israel’s history with God. The New Testament is the witness of the disciples to the God who appeared in Jesus Christ. Neither testament is a reproduction of facts meant to preserve

these experiences; instead, they aim to allow others—everyone, if possible—to share these experiences and identify with them. . . . God’s promise to Abraham, like a prospectus, is at the very beginning of this story: “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:3) We Palestinians are not excluded from this promise. Rather, we are drawn into it and invited to identify ourselves with the God of Israel. . . . 2. Holy Scripture did not fall from heaven and is not timeless. . . . Every writing in the Bible originated in a specific context and relates to a context that must always be taken into consideration. . . . We must ask ourselves with every text, “When was this text written? By whom, for whom, for what purpose, why, was it written? How was it used and where does it belong?” Socio–historical investigations should be included in responding to these historical-critical questions. . . . All theologians need to be warned that there is a great danger when their theology is unaware of its relation to its context, and they imagine they can disseminate eternal verities without a context. . . . One and the same theology can produce contradictory effects. It could mean either salvation or damnation, liberation or enslavement, justice or injustice, peace or war. That is why one must pay attention to the social, economic, and political implications, the motives and interests that play a role in every exegesis. 3. The Bible is always contemporary. It is a living thing and cannot be put up in a jar. . . . One can interpret Scripture correctly in any given context only when one’s conscience is illumined by faith and one’s reason is permeated by love. 4. The Bible is a great whole. The Old Testament and the New Testament form a unity. For us Christians, the Old Testament without the New Testament is not enough. But the New Testament without the Old Testament will either be misunderstood or not understood at all. . . . This unity is grounded in God’s very self, for the God of Israel is the Father of Jesus Christ. It is the one and the same God. In both the Old Testament and the New Testament this God is a God of justice. 5. Holy Scripture is the book about a minority. The Old Testament is the faith experience of a Jewish minority in a non-Jewish world; the New Testament is the faith testimony of small Christian communities in a pagan Roman world. Persecution is a part of the experience of minorities. Thus the Bible is also a book about persecuted people, written by persecuted people. . . .

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

375

The Bible, the book of the persecuted, has the crucified Lord as its centerpiece. Only from this center—and with the aid of this hermeneutical key—can the Bible be understood and interpreted correctly. 6. Law and Gospel are the hermeneutical keys to interpreting the Bible. Law and Gospel are the two sides of the one righteous God. The God of the Bible is simultaneously the God demanding justice and the God promising it. . . . The principle of Law and Gospel can readily be applied to the problem of Palestine. On the one hand, we have to pay attention to the balance of power. What is often overlooked is that demands are most often made of Palestinians, even though they are the weak ones, whereas mighty Israel is seldom criticized. More often than not, people even justify Israel’s behavior. On the other hand, themes like “election” or “promise of the land” must not be considered law or the possession of either side; they must always be seen as promise and gift. Just as God sides with those who stand with empty hands, so do Christians have to be in solidarity with those who are powerless, poor, and oppressed. This is the way in which Martin Luther’s teaching on Law and Gospel attains socio-political significance. . . .

for extremist behavior. But each religion has its own respective work to do. . . . This is the great challenge: “Respect for plurality and diversity is put to the test in a special way in worldviews and beliefs that hold—each independently and in its own respective traditions—that they know the Truth itself. The credibility of religious convictions is put to the text in their desire for peace. Justification by faith—the basis of Lutheran identity—helps us to work with other religions. It takes up the following important questions. How do we evaluate Luther’s comments on Judaism and Islam in the modern world? Is it really possible to build a healthy theology that leads to peace and justice among all God’s children—regardless of religion, race, or ethnicity—on the foundation of Martin Luther’s medieval theology that actually dehumanized others? . . . I begin with a discussion of Luther’s understanding of Judaism and Islam in his own writings, and then provide my own evaluation of Luther’s theology of religions for today, followed by a proposal for a dialogue for life among global religions.

484. MUNIB YOUNAN: BEYOND

Martin Luther’s attitude towards Jews changed throughout his life. Until 1536, he expressed concern for their situation and was enthusiastic at the prospect of converting them to Christianity. After 1537, he demonized them and urged their harsh treatment, even persecution. . . . Luther contextualized his disagreements with his opponents in terms of a cosmic struggle between God and Satan. When he attacked Jews, Catholics, Turks, or “fanatics,” he was not attacking mere humans. Rather, he was attacking Satan, the spirit of the false church motivating these opponents. . . . Luther’s hatred for the Jews is a sad and dishonorable part of his legacy, and it is not a fringe issue. It lay at the center of his concept of religion. He saw in the Jews a continuing depravity he did not see in Catholics.

LUTHER—PROPHETIC INTERFAITH DIALOGUE FOR LIFE (2009) From The Global Luther: A Theolog Theologian ian for Modern Times imes, ed. Christine Helmer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 49–64. . . . The future of global Lutheranism depends on our ability to speak God’s liberating gospel so that it is relevant for today’s human condition. It lies in our ability to look theologically at our modern world, interpreting the human condition and the questions of the times, then listing to and giving fresh voice to God’s saving activity in the midst of brokenness. Justification today must go beyond the preoccupation with the freed, forgiven individual. Justification must bring God’s healing liberation to communities of different faiths that are trying to live in peace and yet are trapped in oppression, injustice, and fear. . . . Justification must be less preoccupied with eternal salvation and more attuned to the gospel’s message to set free and restore right relations in this world. . . . The Holy Scriptures have been abused by many to justify violence and oppression, especially in the Middle East conflict. Each religion is good at pointing the finger at the other and blaming the other

Luther and Judaism

Contemporary Lutheran Church Responses to Luther on Judaism The Lutheran Church around the world has acknowledge its responsibility for the Holocaust in a spirit of repentance. A number of important documents have been issued by the Lutheran churches. .....

376

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

In September 2004, our church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL), initiated a statement that condemns antiSemitism. I stated that, ‘as a Palestinian Christian living under Israeli occupation, our church is concerned about the reemergence of anti-Semitism around the world, particularly in Europe. There can be no justification for anti–Semitism. . . .” The statement was unanimously accepted by the Council of the LWF. ..... Luther and Islam Luther and Islam, like Luther and Judaism, must be contextualized in the middle ages and not appropriated as a guideline for the future. Luther lived during a time when fear of Islam was dominant. The Turks had extended their military power into Europe and were at Vienna’s doorstep in 1529. . . . Luther, like others, read this event through apocalyptic lenses. As early as 1518, Luther identified the Islamic faith (inseparable from “the Turks”) as the “scourge of God.” He believed that Muslims were God’s punishment upon a sinful Christendom, which had, among manifold other sins, tolerated the papal abomination. The Turks would function as a German schoolmaster who must correct and teach the German people to repent of their sins and to fear God. . . . Luther expressed admiration for the Turks’ way of life and then ridiculed the religious customs of his own day. . . . Martin Luther thought the religion and customs of “Muhammadism” should be published and publicized. . . . Nevertheless, Luther’s views did not originate in the context of open dialogue. His intention was to equip Christians against the teachings of Islam that he though contradicted the Christian doctrines of salvation and justification. . . . Contemporary Lutheran Church Responses to Luther on Islam Luther was remarkable for his time in that he advocated the importance of understanding Islam and the Qur’an. He taught that it is only by understanding Islamic faith on its own terms that Christians could effectively witness to their faith. He thereby set an historic example. As Luther taught, we must try to understand the other, and the other’s religion. Going beyond Luther, we must apologize and make it our responsibility to rehumanize where our religions have dehu-

manized. We should apologize to one another for the harm we have caused one another. . . . Especially in a time of growing Islamophobia, we must not read every doctrine of other religions from the correctness of our own doctrines. Although our church father Luther brought us the freshness of the gospel, today’s Lutherans can learn from Palestinian Christianity on how to live in dialogue with Muslims. . . . Luther, the Doctrine of Creation, and a Prophetic Interfaith Dialogue . . . The central tenet of Lutheranism has shifted from an individualistic understanding of justification to the reconciliation of people with each other in community and a life of justice, peace, compassion, and healing. The important question now is: What will it take to bring healing and wholeness? . . . We who live in the world of religion must also restore what we have destroyed. We must commit ourselves to rehumanize together where our religions have dehumanized. We must work together to forge a prophetic dialogue for life that urgently confronts the very real human rights violations of our day and we must dare to work together to forge common values of peace with justice, compassion, and reconciliation. This call arises from Luther’s theology of creation. . . . The doctrine of creation is expressed in the worth and human rights of every human being. Lutheran theology emphasizes both creation and redemption. For centuries, we emphasized the theology of redemption more than the theology of creation. This overemphasis on “justification by faith” got Luther into trouble with Jews and Muslims. We are to correct this imbalance and take the theology of creation very seriously in living with other faiths. The intention of Genesis 1:27 is that we are all—male and female, Jews, Muslims, Christians and others—created in God’s own image. This means that we share equal humanity. . . . We as Lutherans must never give up our theological conviction that human actions in this world cannot bring us salvation. Nevertheless, we could stress more that we have been placed on this earth together with all humans precisely to be stewards of the earth and of each other. . . . While we may have different motivations to engage in a dialogue for life, Christians can participate actively with people of other religions to serve the world as part of the common human vocation. . . .

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

If Luther was a man of his time, we are to be people of our times, envisioning anew “what conveys Christ” (was Christum treibet) in this day and age. If justification by faith drives us to understand that the essence of religion is the love of God and thus the love of neighbor, then justification by faith helps us see that religion is no longer part of the problem. Religion becomes part of the solution in this theology of love. . . . INDIA 485. DEENABANDHU MANCHALA: THE CHURCH AND THE BROKENNESS OF INDIAN SOCIETY (2001) The author is a Lutheran pastor who has served since 2000 as a program executive at the World Council of Churches in Geneva. From “Envisioning the Church as Community: Some Challenges from the Indian Perspective” in Between Vision and Reality: Luther Lutheran an Churches in Transition ansition. ed. by Wolfgang Greive. LWF Documentation 47. (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 2001), 45–50. . . . Present realities challenge the Indian churches not only in terms of what they can do, but also to examine what it means to be church in a context of brokenness. It may be helpful to focus on those features that characterize the brokenness of Indian society as points of engagement as we reflect on the form and function of the church. Social Realities Fragmentation: Traditions, cultures, languages, castes, classes, occupations, and various other social identities characterize the social diversity of India. They have held the diverse communities together, yet now they seem to have become divisive factors. Ethnic, linguistic, and religious conflicts have increased all over the country. Today, social relationships are guided by fear of the other. The dominant groups are asserting themselves as never before, imposing their own versions of the state, community, development, norms and values. . . . Polarization: As elsewhere in the world, economic globalization has begun to unleash its destructive potential on the millions of poor in India. With a population of over a billion divided in terms of castes, religions, languages and regions, the implications are

377

disastrous for the poor, the majority of whom are Dalits, backward caste communities, and tribals. . . . Violence and Conflicts: Armed conflicts, bombings, massacres, communal clashes, caste atrocities, gang rapes, and violations of human rights are increasing. With the collapse of democratic institutions and the criminalization of politics, violence seems to have become a viable way for getting things done and for seeking redress for grievances. . . . Degeneration of Values: Individualism and consumerism are posing new threats and challenges. The market sets rules for social behavior; all patterns of relationships seem to be coming under its influence. The political and economic activities in the country continue to be guided by caste loyalties and dynamics. Corruption, abuse of power, nepotism and lack of fairness in public life have become rampant. The pervasive culture of silence is an important feature of this process of degeneration. The State of the Church in this Context of Brokenness How does the church see itself in this situation? Or, to what extent have the contextual realities influenced the lives of the Indian churches? A look at the reality of the Indian church is necessary at this point. Institutionalism: Most Indian churches are institutionalized and managed by a few, in most cases, from the socially and economically privileged sectors of society. Institutionalism gives priority to maintaining discipline, hierarchies, and bureaucracy over the basic purposes for which the institution was established. Spontaneity and creativity are subject to official approval. Mission is institutionalized and carried out with specialists and trained personnel. The laity is relegated to being mere consumers of church services. . . . Denominationalism: The Indian church is as diverse as India itself, with numerous denominations, sects, and parachurch organizations often competing with one another. In each village and town, Christians are known by several denominational identities, some of which carry with them caste identities. With less than half a million members, the Lutheran presence in India is known through 10 ecclesiastical identities, each with its own liturgical and structural distinctness. In the context of community, which is driven by caste ethics, denominational presence is hardly an alternative. Denominational churches are primarily concerned with loyalty and obedience to

378

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

tradition and authority and preference is given to denomination over mission. . . . Exclusivism: The Indian churches exist as religious communities among many other such communities in India. Given to notions of self-righteousness, these churches maintain a detached and “holier than thou” attitude toward the world and people of other faiths. Politics and social issues are considered outside the realm of faith and people contribute to evangelism and expansionist activities but not justice and development oriented movements and activities. Narrow views of sin and salvation dominate their notions of Christian spirituality. . . . Marginalization: The church is composed predominantly of rural, poor, non-literate Dalits and tribals, and its services are attended mostly by women. Yet the leadership remains in the hands of few urban, educated, middle-class men. In the life of the church there is no place for the concerns of the majority. There is blatant discrimination and marginalization on the grounds of sex, caste, and status. ..... Towards Reclaiming the Church as Community Reclaiming the Dalit identity: Existential authenticity depends on the consciousness and assertion of one’s own identity. Despite the efforts of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in India (UELCI) the leadership of the Lutheran churches in India has not yet recognized the Dalit and tribal identity of the churches as a theological resource for formulating relevant responses in faith. . . . These communities represent the marginalized sectors of Indian society and their experience eloquently exposes its unjust bases. They exemplify the brokenness of Indian society and by entering into their experience and reclaiming their identity, the church has an opportunity to deal with the brokenness within and outside. The church as an alternative community: . . . . The Indian church needs to reinvent itself to become an alternative community, one that is inclusive, participatory, and sensitive to the issues and practices of justice and equality. In fact, the church started as a community and remained one until the necessity of having to accommodate the vested interests of the dominant became an important preoccupation. . . . It has become commonplace to reflect on what the church can do for society. What seldom takes place is a discussion on the inner life of the churches, and attempts to deal with the rampant corruption, nepotism, mismanagement of resources, properties and institutions, the suppression of dissent, and the ways

of dealing with the use and abuse of power within. Greater control and equality of opportunity must be ensured. . . . Unity at the level of people: . . . Since the church is a community only at the local level the church needs to rediscover “the local.” In their own communities, the poor are struggling for their right to exist as human beings, for justice and equal opportunities joining hands with others who make similar experiences. This is a threat for the minority, institutionalized, foreign–funds–dependent, caste– and class–conscious church and its leadership. But as a community called to witness to the hope of the coming reign of God, to participate in these struggles in concrete historical situations is the only way of being faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Non–institutional forms of communion: . . . In the name of communion, institutional interests of consensus and discipline should not stifle creativity and difference of opinion. In other words, these expressions of “community” and “communion” must be guarded against the possibility of being used as instruments of oppression. In a contest as divided as India, denominational ecclesial presence and activity are hardly an alternative. Therefore, the communion that we seek must be grounded in our affirmation of faith in the God of life. To that extent, seeking communion with those from other ecclesiastical backgrounds, other living faiths and secular organizations must be encouraged. . . . 486. J. PAUL RAJASHEKAR: LUTHERANISM IN ASIA—ISSUES, CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES (2008) The author is a professor at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. From Luther Lutheranism anism in Asia and the India Subc Subcontinent ontinent in The Futur uturee of Luther Lutheranism anism in a Global Context ontext, ed. Arland Jacobson and James Aageson (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2008), 49–60. Ecumenism The early Pietist beginnings of Protestant missions . . . were ecumenical in nature. Cooperative relationships between European mission societies, as well as among missionaries, were a necessity in dealing with common issues and challenges in Asia. However, the territorial nature of European churches did not encourage the development of an ecumenical church

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

in Asia. It was inevitable that in an era of voluntarism, various mission societies and churches in Europe and North America engaged in missionary activities in Asia and Africa, often competing with one another and thus giving birth to different denominational churches. Christian witness in Asia therefore became a fractured witness. However, the impulse to overcome this problem also led to the development of the modern ecumenical movement. In this regard, Asian churches and Asian Christian leaders made significant contributions in shaping the ecumenical movement.

Fig. 11.11. J. Paul Rajashekar, Luther D. Reed Professor of Systematic Theology, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia

Already in 1926, the Federation of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (FELCI) was founded to promote cooperation among Lutheran churches/missions in India. The formation of the Church of South India (CSI) in 1947 was a significant breakthrough in ecumenism. It brought together Anglicans, British Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians into the CSI. A similar development led to the formation of the Church of North India (CNI). There was great anticipation that Lutherans and Baptists would soon join the CSI. The theological dialogues between Lutherans and the CSI that took place between 1948–1595 reached theological agreement on all doctrines that have historically divided main-

379

line Protestants. There was even a plan to establish a Church of Christ in India, uniting the CSI, CSN, and the FELCI. The proposed union, however, is yet to become a reality because of what is euphemistically referred to as “non–theological issues.” Dependence on economic support from Western churches, mission societies, denominational relief and service agencies, and the politics of the Christian World Communions (such as the Lutheran World Federation) have contributed to the continuation and reinforcement of denominational identities and loyalties in Asia. Today, there are twelve Lutheran churches in India that retain their individual ecclesiastical autonomy and relationship to their founding churches or mission societies in Europe and North America. They also maintain a cooperative relationship with one another under the umbrella of the United Evangelical Lutheran Churches in India. It seems fair to observe that the old ecumenical vision and impetus for structural union among churches has, by and large, faded away or may become passé in India. Issues of caste identity, litigations over church properties, conflicts over election of church leaders, nepotism, and the like, not only have stifled Christian witness, but also frequently paralyzed the established denominational churches in India. Irrespective of denominational affiliation, churches in India are going through a period of crisis of leadership, and the credibility of the church has been severely compromised. Some form of “conciliar ecumenism” and practical cooperation in and through regional or national councils of churches is perhaps the best way forward for a united witness in India and Asia. . . . Religious Plurality Despite a long history of Christian presence in Asia, Christianity has had a greater success in converting people from “tribal” religious backgrounds than those belonging to established Asia religions. Right from the outset, Christianity had to contend with the rich intellectual, philosophical, and textbased religious traditions of Asia that were older than Christianity itself. . . . How one relates with local cultures, traditions and practices often has caused divisions among Christians. . . . What religious beliefs and cultural practices are acceptable in light of the gospel and what must be rejected has always been a thorny issue in the history of Christian missions. . . . The issue of Christian relations with other faiths today is the single most important issue confronting the church in pluralistic societies. Theologies and

380

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

practices that originated in culturally and religiously circumscribed contexts of Europe seem ill prepared to respond to the claims and counterclaims of today’s resurgent religions of the world. European prejudices against Judaism and Islam were transferred to other faiths in missionary encounters in Asia and elsewhere. Christian claims of superiority over other faiths inevitably made adherents of these faiths objects of mission and evangelization. At best, Asian faiths were viewed as preparatio evangelica—they served a useful function in that they prepared adherents to receive the true gospel. The European Lutheran attitude to Asia religions is best illustrated in a response to Ziegenbalg’s work on Genealogy of the Malabarian Gods, which was an attempt to show what Hindus believed. Professor [August] Hermann Francke of Halle wrote to Ziegenbalg with a stern rebuke, “Missionaries were sent out to extirpate heathenism, and not to spread heathenistic nonsense in Europe.” There were a few Lutheran missionaries in Asia who were interested in understanding the depth and riches of Asian religions in their encounter, albeit for reasons of converting Asians. . . . In a post-colonial environment of Asia, claims of Christian superiority over other faiths elicit hostility toward Christians. In India, resurgent nationalist and fanatical Hindu movements have succeeded in enacting legislation in some states, ironically titled as the “Freedom of Religion” act, to prohibit conversion of any kind, let alone to Christianity, as a public offence. Right-wing extremists or Hindu nationalists have seized on Christian evangelistic activities and conversions as a rallying point for political purposes and to undermine Christian faith. There have been occasional violence and persecution of Christians and organized attempts by Hindu nationalists to “re-convert” Christians back to Hinduism. . . . The fact that Asian religions and cultures are very much intertwined makes it more difficult for Asian Christians to respond to the challenge of other faiths than for Christians elsewhere. Missionary indoctrination may have made them reject or vilify the religious and spiritual heritage of their native cultures. To reject the beliefs, values, and claims of Asian religions (the faith of one’s forefathers and foremothers) makes Asian Christians strangers to their own culture and context. On the other hand, Asian Christians have been directly or indirectly nurtured by the religious values of their native cultures and religions and therefore their expression of faith is ambivalent. It is easy for Western missionaries to denounce beliefs of Asian religions, such as veneration of ancestors or filial piety, but for Asian Christians such a rejection is

nearly impossible, living as they are in the midst of non–Christian neighbors. . . . Lutheran Identity It may be clear from the foregoing that in the context of religious plurality and the many “Christianities” in Asia, the question of denominational or theological identity is not always clear nor is it crucial. In the West, Protestants and Roman Catholics are considered under the common label of Christianity. In some parts of Asia (in China and Indonesia), they are considered as two distinct religions! Denominational affiliations do not necessarily imply particular theological commitments or convictions. It is not inaccurate to say that Lutheranism in Asia represents primarily a historical identity or a denominational label rather that a distinctive theological profile. There is little evidence to suggest that the Lutheran confessional theology has made a significant impact on Lutheran thinking in Asia. The burning cultural and theological issues that Asian Christians face are neither addressed in Luther’s Catechism nor in the Lutheran Confessions. . . . With the sole exception of the Batak (HKBP) Church in Indonesia, which wrote its own “Confessions” in relation to its cultural and ethical values (adat) in 1951, Asian Lutherans pretty much have been content to “translate” European Lutheran tradition to the Asian milieu. The European theological and cultural assumptions of the tradition have seldom been critically examined and appropriated by Asian Lutherans. . . . As a result, Lutheran identity in Asia appears to be superficial, a thin veneer based on historical or missionary loyalties rather than out of theological convictions. . . . The future of Lutheranism in Asia is very much dependent on its ability to articulate a confessional theology that is culturally and contextually relevant in the diverse contexts of Asia. . . . 487. SONGRAM BASUMATARY: “TRIBAL” CHRISTIANS IN INDIA (2012) The author is head of the Theology and Ethics department at Gurukul Lutheran Theological College in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India and a member of the Northern Evangelical Lutheran Church. From “Scheduled Tribes: Stories of Lutherans in North India,” in Abundant Harvest—Stories of Asian Luther Lutherans ans, ed. Edmund Yee & Paul

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

Rajashekar (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2012), 49–66. . . . The Lutheran mission entered North India among indigenous people groups popularly known by an umbrella term, “Tribal.” In the social and political history of India, these groups of people are identified with various derogatory terms. . . . The term “tribal,” however, does not describe the identity of the people as much as it connotes them as “primitive, barbaric, uncivilized, backward, uneducated,” and even “untouchable.” Actually the “tribals” were people with their own religion, rich and colorful culture, democratic politics, communitarian society, and egalitarian economy. However, in due course, they suffered internal colonization of their traditions and cultures. . . . Religiously, they were assimilated into Sanskritic Hindu religion and culture, socially ostracized, culturally segregated, politically marginalized and economically exploited by the oppressive dominant people and exploitative jamindars (landlords), money lenders and byaparias (business people.). . . . This, briefly, is the context in which the Lutheran mission sowed the seed of the gospel. The early Lutheran missionaries had no choice but to find ways to help the people. They found education and health care services to be the convincing means and therefore made the establishment of schools and hospitals their top priority. . . . Indeed, the “tribals” discovered that the Christian mission brought about a “sense of liberation from many factors operative in those days, including the exploitation and oppression they endured under the landlords and kings.” In the religious and cultural realms too, they found Christian mission a help. They began to have a better understanding of realities through the knowledge wrought by education. Perceptions about their own religion and culture began to change. . . . They began to discover gospel values similar to their cultural traits. . . . Nevertheless, Christian missions in general too share the blame of destroying the cultures and disintegrating the already disintegrated people and their society by dividing them through denominational affiliations. At times, many of the missionaries showed too much colonizing spirit and an indifferent attitude toward people of indigenous cultures. . . . “Tribal” Christians paid a price for their deliberate choice of accepting Christianity. In fact, they had to face double discrimination. As “tribals,” they were discriminated against by the dominant communities; and as “tribal Christians,” they faced discrimination within their own communities due to the strong influence of dominant Hindu communities. . . .

381

The North Indian Lutheran Christians have been enduring such situations since missionary times and continue to endure in order to make the church grow. It is encouraging to note that the Lutheran Church in North India (LCNI) is by the “tribals,” of the “tribals,” and for the “tribals.” It is taking root into the heartlands of “tribals.” The life and witness of Lutherans in North India can be categorized into four areas: self-governing, self-propagating, self-supporting, and self-theologizing. . . . Self-Governing The concept and practice of self-governance is not a post–missionary phenomenon in the LCNI. It has been there since the beginning of mission work because leadership in the village congregations was completely entrusted to the local people. . . . Therefore, when the indigenous leaders had opportunity of governance after receiving autonomy from missionaries, some of them excelled very well in leadership. . . . Among them, Munshi Methuselah Tudu was one of the first innovate and visionary indigenous leaders who served the Northern Evangelical Lutheran Church (NELC) for almost three decades (1958–1987). . . . Tudu was elected as the first Indian general superintendent in the NELC in 1958. When the church resolved to follow the episcopacy system in 1984, he was consecrated as bishop along with three other bishops and was installed as moderator to head the synod consisting of five dioceses. . . . Self-Propagating Actually, indigenous Christians and their faith—and not missionaries—were the catalysts in LCNI’s expansion. They were ordinary converts, zealous for Christ and enthusiastic in sharing the love of God. . . . Secondly, in order to actualize the gospel of Jesus Christ in the totality of people’s lives, LNCI took on the responsibility of social work next to the proclamation of gospel. . . . Thirdly, recognizing and giving value to traditions and cultures of indigenous people was a plus point for Lutheran missions. However, we must note that not all the traditions and cultural elements were encouraged. Use of some elements like drumming and dancing in the worship and religious functions were even banned until recent years. . . . For instance, in Gossner Lutheran churches [the fourth largest Lutheran church in India], it was only Nirmal

382

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Minz, bishop of the church, who boldly encouraged the use of mander (a tribal drum made from skin and clay), singing bhajans (traditional songs led by a leader followed by congregations line by line) and dance. . . . Self-Supporting . . . It is often perceived and alleged that the hope for relief from economic struggles made the poor “tribals” receptive to the gospel. In general, it may be so, but the Lutherans in North India were not mere “Rice Christians” or “Rice Lutherans.” Rather, they saved their rice to make the Lutheran church selfsupporting enough to carry out different ministries. For instance, when GELC faced financial difficulties after being given autonomy in 1919, a woman named Kripa Surin introduced a practice of mutti dan (handful of rice offering) in order to give financial support to the church. This practice is even prevalent today. In every home, one person’s share of uncooked rice is kept in a jar and the elderly woman of the family brings the collected amount of rice to church as an offering during worship. . . . Self-Theologizing . . . Looking at the identity of “tribal” people in India, Nirmal Minz broke new ground in theologizing “tribal” worldviews, traditions and cultures for their liberation. It is encouraging to know that following in his footsteps, there are now quite a number of budding theologians. . . . Women in the Lutheran Church in North India The roles and contributions of women in the life and ministry of LCNI cannot be left unrecognized. It is encouraging to note that women head many of the institutions run by the church and the majority of teachers in the educational institutions are also women. . . . They contributed to the growth of LCNI as leaders, administrators, teachers, nurses, catechists, evangelists and ordained pastors. Today, there are more than 20 ordained women pastors. . . . Challenges and Opportunities Though the Lutheran churches in North India are considered to be self-governing, self-propagating, self-supporting, and self-theologizing, there are a

number of challenges ahead that are yet to be addressed. First of all, one of the key challenges is how to stand confessionally Lutheran and at the same time liberally ecumenical. . . . Second, besides this ecclesiological challenge, an issue that needs to be addressed with utmost seriousness is the rampant socio-economic challenge complicated by fundamentalist religious trends, political unrest and internal tensions among the ethnic groups. . . . Third, involvement and participation in the politics and political struggles is still considered something worldly and unspiritual. Though church leaders seem very good at politics within the church, they are apolitical in the wider society. . . . Finally, tension between gospel and culture is still a great theological challenge yet to overcome. Though the revitalization of traditional worldviews, concepts and spiritual values is spasmodically addressed in the emerging tribal theologies, there are still reservations and fear in interpreting the gospel contextually and practicing it in the life and ministry of the church. ..... 488. PETER VETHANAYAGAMONY: LUTHERANS IN SOUTH INDIA (2012) The author is a professor of church history at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. From “Diversity, Poetry, and Songs: Stories of Lutherans in South India,” in Abundant Harvest—Stories of Asian Luther Lutherans ans, ed. Edmund Yee & Paul Rajashekar (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2012), 29–48. Lutheranism in South India has the distinctive honor of being the oldest Lutheran communion in Asia and anywhere outside the Western world. Its beginning can be traced to 1706 in Tranquebar, Tamil Nadu (TN). This 300-year-old vibrant Christian community primarily includes four linguistic groups—Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam—spread throughout the four South Indian states and beyond. Today, South Indian Lutheranism is 1.25 million believers strong. It is organized into six autonomous church bodies, which as a whole are members of the United Evangelical Church in India (UELCI). Formed in 1926, the UELCI became known after 1974 as the Federation of Evangelical Lutheran Churches in India (FELCI). . . . One of the first indigenous Lutheran leaders, who converted in 1709 after three years of serious enquiry

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

and research, was Kanapadi Wathiyar. He was an erudite Tamil poet and son of the Tamil teacher of German missionary Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1683–1719). Kanapadi Wathiyar took the Christian name Christian Friedrich on his baptism and was employed as a school teacher. Though he faced stiff opposition before and after his baptism, he embraced Lutheranism anyway. . . . Women leaders were not totally absent in early Lutheranism in South India. Quite a few served as prayer leaders and teachers, and at least one of them was a catechist. The prayer leaders, most of them widows of the former church workers, focused their ministries among women. They were identical to the Bible women of the late 19th century. Among the Lutheran women of the 18th century, the leadership of Clarinda (1746–1793) stands out. Though she was a woman, a widow, and later mistress of an English colonial official, she played a historic role in founding the church in the Tirunelveli region. Kokhila, to cite her original name, was a Maratha Brahmin who married at a young age a wealthy member of the Tanjore royal family. She was probably introduced to the Christian faith by Henry Lyttleton, a British army officer, who had rescued her from her deceased husband’s funeral pyre, probably with the good intention of marrying her. Clarinda wanted to be baptized, but since she was cohabiting with Lyttleton, [missionary C.F.] Schwartz in Tanjore denied her requests repeatedly. Later, she moved to Palayamkottai when Lyttleton was transferred there. She began to bear witness to her newfound faith with great success among many people there. Finally, when Lyttleton died— bequeathing all his wealth to Clarinda—Schwartz baptized her when he visited Palayamkottai in 1778. Despite gender prejudice of the time, Clarinda boldly assumed leadership of a new congregation she had organized. . . . Clarinda was also responsible for the well-known Tirunelveli conversion en masse to Christianity. . . . Male church leaders, both Indian and Western, appreciated her passion for evangelism and generosity to less fortunate and marginalized people. But they feared that her unconventional former life might hurt the cause of Christianity, so they discouraged her ardent efforts to evangelize far and wide. Yet Clarinda rose above the constraints the patriarchy imposed, to become a stellar witness to the transforming power of the gospel. . . . In 1841 Christianity was introduced in Andhra Pradesh (AP) by John Frederick Heyer (1793–1873), the pioneering North American Lutheran missionary. Eventually Lutheranism in AP was organized

383

into two different denominations, Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church (AELC) and the South Andhra Lutheran Church. By the middle of the 20th century, the AELC was the largest Lutheran community in South India. . . . Ministry for women by women began to flourish toward the end of the 19th century in AP. Since women were believed to be the custodians of religion and culture, they were regarded as paramount obstacles to the progress of Christianity if they were not converted. But it was believed that reaching them would hasten the evangelization of India. Though momentum for the work grew after the arrival of single women missionaries in the 1880s, pioneering efforts in AP were made in 1878 by Mary A. Barr Uhl who worked in the zenanas [segregated dwelling places of high caste women]. . . . In 1883, physician Anna Kugler began a successful ministry, with the able assistance of several Telugu Bible women who were crucial mediators, bridging the culture of the missionaries with those of Indian homes and public spheres. For instance, Lucy who worked with Kugler was of Sudra pedigree. Not only did Lucy have access to high caste homes, but she was also able to help women missionaries to gain access to zenana women. But for her, Kugler could not have ministered among the high caste women. Kugler herself acknowledged this, naming a number of Bible women in her report. Most of all, their new profession as Bible women provided them the opportunity to negotiate their career. They did not abandon their responsibilities as mothers and wives; during the day they went out to serve as teachers, evangelists and counselors. In other words, without ignoring or neglecting their maternal or marital commitments, the Bible women whether married or widowed showed extraordinary commitment and dedication to their career without concerns for propriety. The courage to break the norms of their old culture came with their adaptation to the new religion. Christianity gave them an identity that did not exist before, which helped them redefine their roles as well as the society they were shaping anew. Several new developments during the post-colonial era showed the world that South Indian Lutheranism had come of age, weathering various challenges it had faced over the years. As Western missionaries had to leave and financial aid from Western countries sharply declined, Indian churches were forced to become self–reliant both in terms of finance and leadership. Despite limited resources, new forms of ministry emerged, using local resources

384

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

and personnel. Other milestones included the ordination of women starting in 1991 and the consecration of a woman—Katakshamma Paul Raj—to the office of bishop in 1996. . . . Challenges and Opportunities Religious plurality, poverty, the caste system and the presence of diverse Christian traditions is the environment in which Lutherans in South India are living out their faith. This multicultural context, further complicated by widespread poverty and injustice, provides the agenda for their Christian life, theologizing and ministry. As a minority community in Indian society as well as among the Christian minority in India, Lutheran churches are challenged to carefully navigate their lives and design their ministries to bear witness to the good news. . . . INDONESIA 489. CONFESSION OF FAITH OF THE HURIA KRISTEN BATAK PROTESTAN (1951) These excerpts from the longer confession highlight some of the distinctive features that were added to the traditional topics to address the cultural context in Indonesia. From Conc oncordia ordia Theolog Theological ical Monthl Monthlyy 30, no. 2 (Feb 1959): 92–102. Preamble 1. This Confession of Faith of the H. K. B. P. is the continuation of the confessions (creeds) already existing, namely, the three confessions of faith (creeds) which were already known to our Christian forefathers and are called: 1. The Apostles’ Creed 2. The Nicene Creed 3. The Athanasian Creed Article 1—God We believe and confess: There is a God—eternal, almighty, unchangeable, omniscient, inscrutable, righteous, gracious, allbountiful. The earth and all that is on it, is His; He is true, all holy, full of love. In adopting this doctrine we reject the custom of calling God grandfather (Ompung), and the idea that God is a gracious God only, as well as the idea that blessing may be expected from the spirits of our

ancestors. We also give up striving for a good time, and reject all those who listen to fortunetellers and read their fate in the lines of their hands. In adopting this doctrine we also reject the heresy of considering God’s power to be greater than His holiness and love. Article 3—The Special Acts of the Triune God We believe and confess: A. God the Father is the Maker, the Provider, and the Lord of all things visible and invisible. According to this doctrine we reject any fatalism (Takdir and the like). B. God the Son, who was incarnate, born of the Virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy Spirit, who is called Jesus. Two natures are found in Him, namely, God and man at the same time in one person, which cannot be separated. Jesus Christ was very God, and at the same time He is very man. He has suffered under the judgment of Pontius Pilate, was crucified on the cross in order to deliver us from sin, from death, and from the rule of the devil. He is the abundance of all expiatory sacrifices to God because of all man’s sin. He descended into hell after being buried; the third day He rose again, He ascended into heaven, sitting on the right hand of God the Father, who is glorious forever. He is our intercessor in heaven and Lord of all, until He will come again to judge the quick and the dead. (Matt 28:18; Eph 1:20–22; Eph 1:7; John 3:16; Phil 2:9–11) According to this doctrine we reject the Roman Catholic doctrines, such as 1. the doctrine teaching that Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus, or, as they call her, the Glorified, may intercede for us with God; 2. the doctrine teaching that any pastor (priest) may sacrifice Christ in the Mass; 3. the false doctrine that the Roman pope is the Vicar of Christ on earth. (Matt 23:8–10) 4. we reject the human conception teaching that the Lord Jesus is comparable to the prophets of the world. 5. God the Holy Spirit has called the church and has taught it and preserved it in true faith and holiness in the Gospel, to the honor of God. (Rom 8:14; 1 Cor 3:16) According to this doctrine we reject the doctrine teaching that the Holy Spirit can descend upon

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

385

somebody through his own preparations, beyond the Gospel. Furthermore we reject the doctrine teaching that the Holy Spirit can descend only in times of ecstasy and speaking in tongues. We also reject the doctrine teaching that all medicines are unnecessary because physical illnesses may be properly cured only by prayer to the Holy Spirit, as well as the false prophecies made in the name of the Holy Spirit, and the dissolute life of people who say that they are established in the name of the Holy Spirit. All these false doctrines we reject because they are a misuse of the name of the Holy Spirit.

We believe and confess: Good works are the fruits of faith. Whosoever hopes to gain righteousness, life, comfort, or glory b) doing good works is mistaken. The Lord Jesus Christ alone can grant remission of sins and can bring man back to God. We have to follow the Ten Commandments. However, we live only by faith, not by doing good works. The Holy Spirit moves man to do good works (if not urged by the Spirit, good works will become sin). (John 5:15,16; Eph 2:8; Rom 5:1)

Article 7—Redemption from Sin

Article 16—The Funeral

We believe and confess: No man gains redemption from sin by means of good works, or through his own power. Only the grace of God through the redemption of Jesus Christ brings us salvation. The only way to gain salvation is by faith and the working of the Holy Spirit, by which the believer receives remission of sin which is won by Jesus Christ through His death. Such faith is also taken by God for true righteousness. (John 3:16; 2 Cor 8:9; Acts 4:12)

We believe and confess: Men are destined to die, but after that there will be the Judgment (Heb 9:21). Then they rest from their work (Rev 14:13). Jesus Christ is the Lord of the quick and the dead. So when conducting a funeral, we think of the end of our lives, for the strengthening of our hope for the communion of the believers with God. This we do in order that we may be strengthened in our struggles in this life. (Rev 7:9–17) According to this doctrine we reject: The heathenish concept that the souls of the dead have influence on the living; as well as the false doctrine teaching that the soul of a dead person remains in the grave with the body. We also reject the Roman Catholic doctrine teaching that there is a purgatory which the dead must experience in order to purify their souls and to win eternal life; furthermore, that one may conduct; a Mass of prayers for the dead, in order that they may be saved sooner from the purgatory. We also reject the praying to the souls of the saints and the hope that the power or the holiness of the dead may enter into their graves, their shrouds, or any things, or even into their bones and may be passed on in this way (relics).

12—The Secular Government We confess: That the authority who has power is ordained by God. That means an authority who opposes the evil and does right in order to bring peace and certainty to the believers, as it is written in Romans 13 and 1 Timothy 2:2. Nevertheless one should also remember what is written in Acts 5:29: “We ought to obey God rather than men.” According to this doctrine we confess: We ought to pray for the authority, that it may do right, and the church shall also raise its voice toward the authority. According to this doctrine we also reject the idea that the church should become a state church, for the state is a state, and the church is a church. (Matt 22:21b) Whenever it is necessary before the judge, a Christian is permitted to take an oath for truthfulness. The same may be done at the time of induction into an office or a responsibility.

Article 15—Faith and Good Works

490. F. P. SIHOMBING AND J. R. HUTAURUK: INDONESIA—CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES (2012) From “Church in the Archipelago: Stories of Lutherans in Indonesia,” trans. by Robinson Radjagukguk. Abundant Harvest: Stories of Asian Luther Lutherans, ans, ed. Edmond Yee & J. Paul Rajashekar

386

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

(Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2012), 95–112. The HKBP and the early splintered denominations were dominated by missionaries. Their power began to diminish when the Indonesian Lutherans asserted themselves beginning in the 1920s, culminating with Dutch imprisonment of [German] missionaries during WWII. Thus, the HKBP became independent in 1940, with the election of Kasianus Sirait (1897–1969) as the first ephorus (bishop). . . . During the presidency of Mohammed Suharto (1967–1998), the government emphasized “New Order” politics, which meant politics backed by a strong military force. Within HKBP, divided opinions about the New Order led to internal strife and then a split into two factions. . . . The conflicts were not resolved until after Jubil Raplan Hutauruk was elected ephorus in 1998. . . . The traditional Batak culture was patriarchal which placed the women in a lower status than men. The structure of the church also reflected the patriarchism of the society. . . . The church struggled for 30 years with the issue of ordaining women. Finally the first ordination took place in 1986. Noortje Lumbantoruan became the first woman ordained in the HKBP. . . . Theological education was part of the life of the church in the Batak land since the period of the Rhenish Mission Society in the 1860s. . . . In the early days, prospective theological educators were sent abroad to Germany, the United States, Sweden, India and Holland for further studies. But since the 1960s some indigenous theologians have developed programs at the HKBP theological seminary in Pematangsiantar to train theological leaders for the church. . . . Lutheran churches in Indonesia are facing enormous religio-social challenges today, such as violent religious fundamentalism, poverty, and opposition to progress. Religious fundamentalism is a major challenge and has been for a long time. For the last 30 years many fundamental activists have misused their religion to justify their violent actions against the adherents of other religions, small ethnic groups and minority people in Indonesia. People are disturbed and frightened. Many are worried about their safety as citizens of Indonesia. Christian churches have been burned, destroyed and even forced to close their doors. . . . Besides religious violence, poverty is another critical issue facing the society and the churches. This is especially true for the people living in villages; some of them are quite remote. Poverty is a real threat to Indonesia’s future

and a crucial issue for the churches. . . . The reality is that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening and deepening in both the cities and in the villages. Poverty makes many Indonesians pessimistic and hopeless for their future. This makes them easily influenced or convinced by activists of religious fundamental movements. Without basic economic progress, the challenges in this vast country will persist. Yet anti-globalization and anti-American influences are strong in Indonesia, as well as sentiments against tolerating different religions. As a result, many churches including Lutheran ones have to deal with multiple barriers in getting official government permission to build churches despite the fact that the Indonesian constitution guarantees religious freedom. Given this complexity, Lutheran churches have not been outspoken against corruption in the government and those who misuse their positions to enrich their own groups or personal lives. Lutheran churches have also not been strong participants in nation building or working for justice and dignity in Indonesia at large. But they are taking steps to address the overwhelming issues of their context by working with people of other traditions and speaking prophetically through the Communion of Churches in Indonesia. . . . 491. BINSAR PAKPAHAN: SHARING A COMMON STORY FOR AN INDONESIAN CONTEXT (2008) The author has served as a pastor and as a lecturer at Jakarta Theological Seminary. From Journal of Ref Reformed ormed Theology 2 (2008): 63–74. . . . My personal motivation for writing this article is the problem that has caused so much pain and trauma in the church where the author belongs—the Huria Kristen Batak Protestan (HKBP) or the Batak Protestant Christian Church. HKBP was founded by the Reinische Missionsgesellschaft on October 7th, 1861. . . . The story related here began when there was a crisis happening in the HKBP Great Synod in 1992 when the church had to choose their new Ephorus (the leader of the HKBP as a whole). There was no final decision during this Great Synod until the very end of their assembly. Afterwards, the military took over the assembly and appointed a new transitional Ephorus to be in charge of the HKBP to organize a new Great Synod. This caused division within the church between those who followed the

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

new leader that had been appointed by the government, and the people who thought that this government involvement was outrageous and were still loyal to the old Ephorus.

Fig. 11.12. Binsar J. Pakpahan (2016)

Protests of sorts were raised against this decision, both from international and national churches. However, the government insisted that they were in no position to interfere in internal problems within the church. . . . With the government’s recognition, the new Ephorus claimed the church’s assets, which resulted in direct and indirect confrontation within the congregations. Some of the congregations split. ..... The crisis caused many divisions within the church as a whole and in local congregations. However, this conflict has come to an end through the 1998 Joint Great Synod in Pematangsiantar, North Sumatra. ..... Actually, the six-year conflict has resulted in huge damage within the church. Both ministers and lay people were injured and even killed during the conflict. Many churches have been divided and, even after the conflict, refused to go back to the old congregation and preferred to establish their own church—within the denomination. Many of the church’s assets were gone. Many members of the church moved to another denomination and never came back, even after the so-called reconciliation. ..... This raises questions. Have people really reconciled—especially since “there are still some congregations which have not yet been in full harmony? Has forgiveness taken place? How does the church deal with it? What will happen if the church refuses to talk about it? How important is it for the church to remember and deal with the conflict thoroughly?

387

In some sense, the church’s decision not to talk about the past trauma seems to be common sense because there is nothing positive to be gained from passing on the story. It is too painful to tell through the generations. The retelling and remembrance of the painful past could rise up hidden anger for the hearers as well as the people who experienced the conflict. There is also the danger that remembrance can be a form of vengeance. . . . However, the story might be too important to be silenced. The conflict has stayed deep in the heart of the congregations. Would it not be better to talk and share the stories of both conflicting sides with the spirit of reconciliation instead of forgetting it? How should we deal with deep and collective wounds? . . . In the connection of trauma and forgiveness, to forget is actually to not forgive, and to forgive is to not forget. If you totally forget that someone once hurt you, you cannot forgive him or her. . . . Often, though, forgetting is not permanent. The memory is not eradicated, and it can be resurrected. In order to forgive, you have to first remember. . . . Remembering to forgive could be a way towards a real forgiveness. This demands that both sides lay their cards on the table, are willing to listen to others, and share their stories. This is not easy for the perpetrator or the victim. Nevertheless, it might be an important moment in the track of forgiveness and reconciliation. An act of remembrance is important towards a real forgiveness and reconciliation. . . . Despite the fact that since 1998 a new era has begun, a lot of things remain as they were (i.e. strong military influence, corruption, limited transparency, and a confusing justice system). This is why accessing the past is considered a difficult task in Indonesia. . . . We should have expected that a new era of democratization would open up a whole new investigation of the nation’s history, while what really happened was exactly the opposite. . . . Remembrance is a way towards real forgiveness and reconciliation even though it is not a road that is easily traveled. This is where theology and the church could help as one of the ways towards real forgiveness and reconciliation, especially in the conflict within the church. . . .

388

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

PAPUA NEW GUINEA 492. SILA KAMUNGSANGA—THE FIRST BAPTIZED LUTHERAN (1899) From Gernot Fugmann, ed. The Birth of an Indig Indigenous enous Church: Letters, Reports and Documents of Luther Lutheran an Christians in Papua New Guinea (Goroka, PNG: The Melanesian Institute, 1986), 1–2. Kaboing and I sat regularly together with Missionary [Georg] Pfalzer. Of course this did not go unnoticed. When it had become known, the leading men of our village began reproaching us. They sharply reprimanded us for having ventured to go our own ways. This was something unheard of. They persecuted us, they laughed at us and ridiculed us. But we remained steadfast and always kept saying only this: “We will continue.” We wrote down what Pfalzer taught us in class. After five months we were ready. The day of our baptism came near. A week earlier Pfalzer had sent invitations to all the Jabem villages. But most of them refused to participate, some with the spiteful remark: “Why should we go, only to see those two deluded boys? If you Whites want to baptize those youngsters, just go ahead. Probably their dark skin will become white and you will find them accommodating servants.” . . . Before we were baptized we renounced all forms of sorcery and all other heathen customs. At the same time we gave witness to our turning towards the living God by confessing the Christian faith. Then we stepped forward to the baptismal font and we were baptized with our new names. I had chosen the name of Sila for myself and Kaboing called himself Tobia. ..... On the following Tuesday the missionaries met us again. After having admonished us impressively, they discharged us to go back to our villages. Missionary Pfalzer handed a church bell to each of us. Tobia built a small church in Bubalon and suspended the bell on it. I did the same in my village. . . . 493. AKIKEPE: EVANGELISTIC WORK AMONG THE KOMBA AND SELEPET PEOPLE (1922) Akikepe was an evangelist from Ulap in northeast PNG who was later ordained. He was one of a very few native missionaries who wrote a memoir of their work.

From Gernot Fugmann, ed., The Birth of an Indig Indigenous enous Church: Letters, Reports and Documents of Luther Lutheran an Christians in Papua New Guinea Guinea. (Goroka PNG: The Melanesian Institute, 1986), 24. In 1922 the mother congregation at Heldsbach began evangelistic work at Selepet. Their missionary, Rev. [Leonhard] Flierl came along with the workers. They also came overland as we did, and not along the coast. . . . About a year later a report reached us that all the evangelists at Selepet had been killed by the people. I immediately left for Selepet, along with three young men who know the Selepet language, and we hurried to the station. When we arrived in the area we found that fighting was still going on. When the people saw us, they disappeared into the bush. We went to where the evangelists used to live and saw no activity whatsoever. . . . After several minutes I called each evangelist by name, saying, “Brother, are you alive or have you all been killed? Are you able to answer me or not?” We, of course, were thrilled when Botingnuka and his wife heard our voices and broke down the door and came out. . . . Early in the morning, just after we arose, I asked Botingnuka to go with me to the village and to talk to the men there. The village is named Domut, and it was not far from the evangelists’ station. The warriors, along with their leaders, were all together in one building there, preparing for a fight. . . . The chief, a man named Hero, was with them, and they were talking about burning the evangelists’ houses. While the two of us were walking to Domut, I wondered how I would approach the men. At first I thought of speaking quietly with them, but I finally decided that I would show my anger and scold them. . . . I took out a fence post, about two and a half inches thick and carried it with me to the cult house. ... All the men shook with fear, and some of them wanted to run away. Their chief, Hero, cried out, saying, “The father of the spirits has come, and he wants to destroy us all!” Then I said, “We didn’t come here to fight. We have come to bring you the peace which only God can give to men. You have to come so that we can sit down together, and so we can tell you how you can have this peace, too.” Later I explained carefully all about the Christian life as against the practices and fears of the heathen life. I told them, “In the past our fathers, too, lived in constant fear of sorcery. They were fearless fighters, but when they heard the good news which God

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

sent, they gave up their fighting and their sorcery. Today we live in peace and harmony with God and with men. That is why we evangelists have come to you—to bring this good news to you. I want you to throw away your tools of sorcery and war weapons right now, and call the evangelists back here to teach you the Word of God.” The chief, Hero, and all the people then and there decided to throw away all the things they used for war and for sorcery and to burn them. They gathered all their spears and arrows into one heap, and flung their articles of sorcery into another, and burned them all. They then dug a hole and threw the ashes into the hole. I broke off a tanget plant and planted it at the site to help remind them of what they did that day. After that event the people were friendly and cooperative. The evangelists returned and conducted classes leading to baptism. The Selepet people, however, were not like the Komba people. Work in the Selepet area was very slow because the people continued to resist the Gospel. Only after many years did the light of God’s Word become clear to them. Today there are many Christians in that area and we thank and praise God for this. 494. MIKAELE: LETTER TO THE MISSION BOARDS (1932) Mikaele was one of the first ordained indigenous pastors in PNG. In 1943, during World War II, he died in a Japanese bombing raid. From Gernot Fugmann, ed. The Birth of an Indig Indigenous enous Church: Letters, Reports and Documents of Luther Lutheran an Christians in Papua New Guinea. (Goroka PNG: The Melanesian Institute, 1986), 244. . . . What suddenly is the matter with you that the mission work does not progress anymore? We cannot understand and likewise you cannot know how it affects us here. Now please listen to us: You sent your missions out here to us. You told us again and again: “You tribes must unite to one people, stick together and work together. Do as we the white people do. Some of us are from America, and some from Australian and some from Germany. We all come here into your land to spread God’s Word.” This talk hit us very heard and we strove to unite and work together. And whilst we are about to enjoy the realization of such lofty ideals, strange rumors reach us. On the one hand the Americans want to work on their own and on the other hand the Germans want to work on their own. We are thun-

389

der–struck and we ask ourselves: how does that rhyme? On the one hand we are admonished: work together; on the other hand they separate. Yet it was explained to us, yet we failed to understand. . . . We black people want to change your plan and petition you regarding Missionary Pietz. He was among us for many years. He knows the languages, he knows his people and people likewise know him. And he worked harmoniously with them. See, we would beseech you to let this man remain among us always. We black people at present are in great need of missionaries and for this reason we beg you, give us a hearing in the matter so that the gospel (Miti) may spread to the upper reaches of the Markham River, where very many people dwell. . . . Surely you do not think we black people look upon our missionaries who have brought us the gospel as aliens? Never! We regard each other as brethren, shoots of one tree. For this reason we beg you, when you again discuss this transfer of this or that missionary or sit in Council to appoint who is to work here or there as you have now done, please also notify us black people and also ask our opinion. . . . 495. BAMATENGNUKA: A FAREWELL TO ANCESTRAL SPIRITS (1960) From Gernot Fugmann, ed., The Birth of an Indig Indigenous enous Church: Letters, Reports and Documents of Luther Lutheran an Christians in Papua New Guinea (Goroka, PNG: The Melanesian Institute, 1986), 137. At the time when the Word of God took possession of the hearts of the people in the Alkena area of New Guinea Highlands, the people came to the evangelists who lived among them and asked: “Friends, listen! We would like to accept God’s Word. But before that we would like to say farewell to our old spirits. Indeed we would like to combine ancestral veneration with worship of God, but this is not possible anymore.” The evangelists did not disagree but said: “This is entirely your matter. If you value God’s Word then do it.” Then the preparations began. First the pigs that were to be slaughtered were led to the large site and the following prayer was said: “O you fathers, you have made all the fruits of the fields to grow and you have given us pigs and chickens. You have given us descendants and neighborhood, power and health. We thank you.” Then the pigs were slaughtered. After that they brought the skulls of the fathers and the grandfathers and blessed the pigs for the last time. One could hear no noise. The silence lasted for ten minutes. During this time

390

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

some individual men went away with pieces of meat and brought them to the spirit places. There they laid them on a heap and said farewell to the ancestral spirits with the following words: “O you fathers. . . . Today is the last time that we make a feast for you. Now the great God and his Word has come to us and he forbids such offerings. In future we will not converse with you nor cultivate an understanding with you, because God has called us and said: ‘Come to me in future!’ We want to follow this call. Therefore eat now and then go away to your place.” With these words the men left the spirit places and went back to the other people. After three days—this is now long the farewell celebrations lasted—the people came to the evangelists and applied for baptismal instructions. 496. A STATEMENT OF FAITH TO CORRECT FALSE IDEAS ABOUT CARGO (1966) From Gernot Fugmann, ed., The Birth of an Indig Indigenous enous Church: Letters, Reports and Documents of Luther Lutheran an Christians in Papua New Guinea (Goroka, PNG: The Melanesian Institute, 1986), 234. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ and I believe in his whole Word. I therefore confess that: 1) God created all the things that are in this world, and they are here to serve my physical needs. 2) God says that I must apply myself diligently to the work he had given me to do, and earn my daily bread with sweat and toil. 3) Therefore, I must place my trust in God, I work and I pray, and I thank God for his blessing. 4) There is no way in which a man can obtain manufactured articles, money, or other material goods from cemeteries, mountains, lakes, or holes in the ground. 5) Therefore, I must not pray (to the dead) in cemeteries. I must not speculate about different ways of obtaining quivering. I must not prepare a place in the bush to pray (for cargo). I must not pursue cargo through dreams and in many other ways. These things are nothing but illusions and deceptions of Satan. 6) If I see people doing these things, or if I hear people talking in this way, I will not believe them. I will reject what they say and do. They are ignorant and misguided. 7) Sometimes a person says: I have heard the voice of an angel; or he says that the message came to him in the wind and he heart it when he was praying; or he says that in a dream he received a prophetic mes-

sage or that he communicated with a spirit. This is a trick of Satan himself. 8) Therefore, I will not listen to anyone who tries to promote cargo activity. Instead, I will expose him (or it) before the congregation and oppose all such foolish ideas. I am a member of the church of God and now I want to stand fast, on the Word of God and fight against the lies of Satan. May Christ the Lord help us and give me his strength to defeat foolish ideas about how to get cargo. Amen. 497. W. SAPOM, H. NOIBANO, H. PALSO: TWO PEOPLE, TWO WAYS? (1970) From Gernot Fugmann, ed., The Birth of an Indig Indigenous enous Church: Letters, Reports and Documents of Luther Lutheran an Christians in Papua New Guinea (Goroka, PNG: The Melanesian Institute, 1986), 258. There are several things that puzzle us, so we would like to discuss them with you. . . . About our customs: . . . We New Guineans were the first ones on this island. We are already living here when you white people came. . . . We have learned to like some of the things that you like, but even there we are criticized. We see that you white people are excited when you get things. When your Christmas boxes, for example, arrive, we see you are very happy to receive those things. But if we want to acquire things of this earth we are criticized and told that we should not be so anxious to obtain things. Some of our people try to get things according to our way of thinking in cargo cults, and then you really make fun of them. In Luke 18:18-23 Jesus told a rich leader to sell everything and help the poor. We don’t think that Jesus was speaking only about the things. We think that Jesus wanted him to give also his heart to his neighbor, so that both would be happy. . . . We Papuans and New Guineans have waited many centuries for the Gospel to come to us. We have it now and many of us are free and happy. The Gospel has done away with many of our fears of war and sorcery. But what are we still like the servants of the white people?

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

498. BISHOP SIR ZUREWE ZURENUO—THE FIRST NATIONAL BISHOP (1973) The Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea—LCONG—became autonomous in 1976. Zurenuoc was the first elected indigenous bishop of the church. From Gernot Fugmann, ed., The Birth of an Indig Indigenous enous Church: Letters, Reports and Documents of Luther Lutheran an Christians in Papua New Guinea (Goroka, PNG: The Melanesian Institute, 1986), 43–49. In 1938 I finished school and became a teacher. As I was a young lad I was placed near an old teacher, Desiang. Together with him I was to learn my work. Desiang helped me to learn a lot about congregational work and about worship in the church. . . . In 1961 the Lutheran Mission and ELCONG sent me to Germany. I was to talk about the mission work in New Guinea so that the congregations of Germany could hear about our problems and help us with offerings. . . . Then when I was in Germany, travelling a lot to inform the people, we once came home in the middle of the night to sleep. Early in the morning I heard a voice as if in a dream. It was as though a man sat behind my head while I was sleeping and spoke to me saying: “After you come back to New Guinea in time I will give you an important task.” When I heard this I got up quickly and woke up Emasangke, my companion, telling him these words so that he should hear them. He helped me and we prayed together and then went back to sleep. On the morning after I received a letter from Mr. Gernot Fugmann written from Lae to Germany. Mr. Fugmann wrote that Dr.[John] Kuder had the following plans: When you return from Germany you will in time start an important office of all ELCONG in Lae. . . . In 1972 Bishop Dr. Kuder gave notice that he would resign and called for nominations for the succeeding bishop. I was then nominated for the work of the bishop. At the synod in 1973 I was installed in St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Lae. Between 1973 and 1976, the work of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of New Guineas had not yet been entirely handed over to the New Guinea leaders. . . . During this time we made plans to transfer the various committees under the Lutheran Mission organizations to become committees, boards or departments of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. . . . In 1976 I wanted the church to adopt some aims, which it could follow. This was done in the Declaration of Autonomy, which stressed four specific

391

objectives. We declared that the church must follow these in the years between 1976 and 1982. The four aims were: To proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ (SelfPropagating) To guide the work of our own church (Self-Governing) To look for and after our own money (Self-Supporting) To train and strengthen our own workers (SelfDetermining) EL SALVADOR 499. MEDARDO GÓMEZ: THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF THE LUTHERAN BISHOP (1989) The author became the first bishop of the Lutheran church in El Salvador in 1986. He was a close friend of murdered Catholic bishop Oscar Romero and a central figure in the peace process that ended twelve years of civil war in that country. From Fir iree Against Fir ire, e, trans. by Mary Solberg (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1990), 45, 51. The early 1980s were years of horrendous crimes. The war began to intensify; the struggle of those groups that had taken up arms widened, underwritten by greater military strength. The army and security forces of El Salvador’s government responded. Desperately seeking their enemies, the government confused them with anyone who spoke up for justice, peace, and well-being. As the war mentality intensified so did injustice and the fire of death. Terrorist groups on the right also emerged; they blindly justified political assassinations by saying they were fighting against communism. My own situation indicates this repression: I was kidnapped by one of these death squads, which accused me of being a subversive and threatened to murder me. But God did not allow that to happen. God saved me and converted me into a servant, prepared to testify to his love by proclaiming God’s salvation, which through life, Word, and works declares the love of God. I want to help orient our church with this commitment by issuing a clear call: “Those who love their life for [Jesus’] sake will find it (Matthew 16:25). In the face of misinterpretations, we now know that these are the risks we run as Christians even when the truth speaks for itself.

392

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Fig. 11.13. Bishop Medardo Gómez

This experience has made it crystal clear that “the Church cannot coexist with political interests determined by any particular group, for to do so would be to corrupt the essence of the nature of the Christian. It would be to submit faith and love to schemes elaborated coldly, schemes that mutilate the creativity and the spontaneity of Christian truth and practice.” It is with this thinking that we have developed our ministry. Since its inception it has created an extraordinary phenomenon within our entire community: the Salvadoran Lutheran church has become news in every corner of El Salvador. Those who suffer began to identify themselves with our church. We have carried our ministry in the name of God. But along with spiritual growth, our pastoral and social activities have called forth the powerful opposition of evil. Church families are taken prisoner, become refugees, and go into exile. Courageous members of our communities have been murdered. People like Rev. David Fernández,

a martyr of our church, have sacrificed their lives struggling with the fire of the gospel. David was kidnapped and murdered by members of El Salvador’s armed forces. His body was pulled from a ditch near the city of San Miguel on November 21, 1984. . . . During these times biblical history is our teacher. The life and the experience of our people is also a source of biblical and theological reflection. Much of the Bible, especially the Gospels, can only be understood through the experience of suffering. Those moments from which Christianity emerged are relived in the experience of suffering. In El Salvador, the best source for Christian reflection is historical reality. . . . There are modern tyrannical powers that set themselves against the liberation of the people of God. There are various Caesars that want to be adored, to be recognized as God. Today, as in the days of the first Christians, there are centurions, Pharisees, jail keepers, Pilates, and executioners, who remain ready to oppress those who cry out for justice, respect, and a life of dignity. To be pastors or believers in these conditions means to be accused of being political, subversive, communist. It means to orient the people, to be spiritual guides, social workers, and friendly counselors. It also means being prophetic, pointing out individual and social sin, and helping the people interpret the signs of God. Proclaiming the good news to the poor here means to be ready to be martyred, martyred in the sense of being a witness with one’s work and life. To be a servant of God is to give testimony to life. ..... BRAZIL 500. ERVINO SCHMIDT: LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN THE BRAZILIAN THEOLOGICAL CONTEXT (1989) This Lutheran pastor has also served as executive secretary of the National Council of Christian Churches of Brazil. From Luther Lutherans ans in Br Brazil: azil: History, Theology, Perspectives (São Leopoldo, Brazil: Post–Graduate Studies Institute, 1989), 55–66. The Contribution of Lutheran Theology The heart of Lutheran theology is justification by grace through faith. The rediscovery that God jus-

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

tifies people by grace launched the 16th century Reformation. . . . The temptation of understanding justification as the peace of the individual conscience has been present throughout the history of the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB). Here we find one of the reasons for the poor political-social involvement of Lutherans in the past. Yet by this we do not mean to diminish the situation of marginalization in which the immigrants lived as a further reason for the scarce involvement in political questions. Another factor that strongly marked the Protestants (and this applies to the non-Lutherans too) was the difficult religious situation. Within a Catholic country, Protestants were regarded as the enemies of the faith. The Empire guaranteed freedom to the non-Catholics in the Constitution, but religious freedom was limited by a statement like this: “The Roman Catholic Apostolic religion will continue to be the religion of the Empire.” “All other religions” will be permitted to hold their “domestic or private” worship in houses built for that purpose, but without in any way in the shape of a church. This article remained in force until Brazil became a republic and there were conflicts because of it. Some congregations got into trouble because they built their places of worship in the shape of a church. Besides all this, Protestants faced difficulties in becoming Brazilian citizens. Much suffering was also caused by the fact that their marriages were not considered legally valid. As a consequence, their children were not considered legitimate children. We can also mention educational marginalization. The school system was in a state of abandonment in the areas where the German immigrants settled. For this reason they created their own schools, and, of course, these community schools were influenced by the culture the immigrants brought with them. In this way integration into Brazilian culture, in fact, was not facilitated. All these circumstances made it so that the immigrants did not feel like true citizens of this country. It is understandable that in such a situation of marginalization they stressed the preservation of their ethnic identity and lived in a certain isolation. The discriminatory treatment suffered by Protestants on the part of the state has contributed to the aversion to political questions that is so disseminated among them. . . . However, the narrow understanding of justification by faith as a cause of the aversion to political questions should be stressed again. When the mean-

393

ing of “by grace alone” is distorted, when the experience of grace as the foundation of all of life remains abstract or limited to the individual, then grace becomes something cheap. The programmatic words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer have not lost their relevance also for our context: “Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today centers around precious grace.” The experience of grace leads to discipleship. It has a social and political dimension. It frees us from ourselves, leads us to obedience and sends us to our unprivileged brothers and sisters. It is in this way that our eyes are opened to see our true individual and collective situation. . . . In the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil there is a growing involvement, on the basis of the central message of the Reformation, in the struggle against injustice and a participation in the transformation of evil social structures. After World War II education for the church’s ministry was started within our own church. This meant a step towards an indigenous theological reflection. In the sixties, theological students began to demand greater participation in the definition of the country’s destiny. . . . Justification by faith in its connection with the cross of Christ frees us for a transforming praxis. By not being moralist nor legalist, Lutheran theology is free, even for a radical criticism of the capitalist system. It can have the courage to question the system as such. All this occurs within the perspective of the God who descends, empties and reveals Godself in a weakness. We do not need to develop a moral justification for a system that produces poor and oppressed people. Gratuitously justified, we are led to participate in the liberation struggles for a more just society. ... 501. WALTER ALTMANN: JUSTIFICATION AS LIBERATION (1990) The author has served as a professor of systematic theology, president of the ECLB in Brazil and as a member of the Council of the LWF. From “Conversion, Liberation and Justification,” in Luther and Liber Liberation: ation: A Latin American Perspective erspective, trans. by Mary Solberg (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 37–39.

394

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Fig. 11.14. Walter Altmann (2015)

In response to the suspicion that Luther’s doctrine of justification could lead to ethical disinterest or paralysis, several points are worth emphasizing. First, in shifting his attention from the subjective to the objective dimension of justification, Luther placed the justified person in the larger context of the salvific history of God in Christ. This is Christology’s significance for justification. The story of Jesus, poor and rejected but still in our favor, immediately broadens the forms of Christ’s works beyond the merely individualistic. Second, the liberation represented by Luther’s discovery, or rediscovery, of justification by grace through faith had a historical dimension as well. The response Luther found in his own personal problem was also liberating for a whole generation. His discovery undermined an ecclesiastical system that was imposing on the people multiple burdens of conscience and financial tribute, of which the sale of indulgences was only one. Insofar as Luther was also voicing the complaints of the German nation against internal and external ecclesiastical exploitation, his discovery helped fortify national secular political power against “foreign” domination by Rome. Third, the notion that justification would carry

with it an ethical passivity simply does not correspond to what we can verify in Luther’s life and teaching. For Luther, passivity occurred exclusively in the relationship with God. When Luther was freed, he was freed from “doing all he could.” Justification by faith is never all there is. It immediately reveals the importance of commitment to one’s neighbors and to their needs. Luther’s treatise on The Freedom of a Christian (1520) deals with precisely these two phrases of what is essentially a single melody: (1) the believer’s marvelous freedom in relation to God in faith and (2) the radical commitment to the neighbor in love. Many of his other writings, among them the Treatise on Good Works and other treatises related to social, economic and political issues, deal with the inescapable ethical commitment of the Christian. It is precisely the Christian’s freedom before God, Luther insists, that permits ethical concerns to be focused on the neighbor’s needs instead of being a cover for one’s own benefit. . . . We can hardly accuse Luther himself of being passive. He did act in error—for example, in the matter of the peasants—but it would be difficult to describe Luther at any moment in his life as tranquil, passive or indifferent. Sometimes, in fact, he was too precipitate. Perhaps he should have had to think a little more before acting and speaking. Part of the problem is rooted in the distinction Luther makes between the political and social task—a task that, although necessary, is provisional and terrestrial—and justification, in which he emphasizes the action of God. In Luther’s time, the distinction between these two realms opened very broad possibilities for activity in the political terrain. Perhaps this helps us understand, although it does not justify, Luther’s position in relation to the peasants. Luther feared that a terrestrial proposal would be legitimated religiously. Therefore, he rejected the attempt of the peasants to use the Bible to legitimate their political and social demands. He was afraid that the hard-won victory over religious control of political power would be reversed, and that with this the gospel, distorted into law, would be lost. . . . Today, our emphasis must be different. It is important that life under grace, a life of compassion, not be understood as an individualistic life, a mere inner peace, but rather a communitary, collective life that takes concrete form in our societies. The experiences of the Christian base communities, in sharing their life, are concrete manifestations of an ecclesial realization in which mercy becomes palpable through solidarity, through living and struggling together. It goes beyond the dimension of self-satisfaction. We

LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT

should perhaps be more cautious in relation to the emphasis on passivity, which could be misleading, and see that the realm of God must become visible by means of signs that are made visible by those who follow Jesus Christ. 502. WALTER ALTMANN: THE CHURCH AND POLITICS IN LATIN AMERICA (1990) From “Interpreting the ‘Two Kingdoms’” in Luther and Liber Liberation: ation: A Latin American Perspective tive, trans. by Mary Solberg (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 80–83. The dualistic vision of the so-called doctrine of the “two kingdoms” separating the gospel and politics, church and state, cannot rightfully be ascribed to Luther. To be sure, he does distinguish their competencies and, in so doing, contributes to undoing the sovereignty of the church authorities over the political realm. The impact of Luther’s contribution here was and still is profound. However, the situation of modern states is different from that in which the church claimed sovereignty over the political system, and more analogous to the situation described by Luther in his explanation to Psalm 82. Luther’s admonitions about obedience to the secular authorities are of less immediate interest to us, whereas his call for criticism of and resistance to injustice and oppression gains relevance. ... Christians are never called to adapt to current political, social, and economic structures, whether they are the dualist variants of separation of church and state or models of coordination and alliance. The faith of Christians permits only a dialectical posture of distinction and critical participation, informed by the concrete circumstances of the current historic moment and guided by reasoned political practice. In some cases, critical-constructive participation is legitimate, as when we have truly democratic and participatory political structures. Yet, these structures are less common that usually assumed. Many demo-

395

cratic countries, according to the constitution and the laws, are nevertheless heavily dominated by economic forces, increasingly of transnational dimension. Would a constructive participation, even if critical, be the most adequate relation? In the other extreme, we have seen cases in which the prevailing system is irremediably corrupted by injustice, oppression, and violence, without any realistic possibilities of fundamental change in sight. Here, a critical-passive resistance may be more appropriate, or it may be the only option left. Thus, for example, black slaves throughout the Americas have frequently resorted to forms of critical–passive resistance for centuries. This should not be misunderstood as a form of uncritical adaptation. Rather, through various practices—of their religious traditions—would allow them to preserve their ultimately free identity. Thus, they preserve their critical consciousness and the potentiality to struggle for freedom at a future time when new historic conditions would make it objectively feasible. Finally, when spaces for a direct, transforming participation begin to open or have begun to be achieved—for example, when military dictatorships have to give way to civilian governments, as has happened in many Latin American countries in recent years—the politically conscious Christian chooses to engage in critical-active transformation. Two conditions call for this type of action: (1) the recognition of a fundamentally unjust system, characterized by social oppression; and (2) the existence of concrete possibilities of action, given by the historical process and the immediate circumstances. Presently, both these conditions exist in most Latin American countries. Supporting the organizations of the people, participating in them, and working toward the transformation of the established, oppressive system, is the political praxis, or action, that the will of God demands from Christians and their churches in most of Latin America today.

12. Lutherans, Ecumenism, and Inter-Religious Dialogue

Historically, Lutherans have lived in areas where they came into contact with other Christians, or to a lesser extent, with believers from other religious traditions. In some more religiously homogenous regions, such as Lutheran Scandinavia, this contact was rather minimal, while in Lutheran areas of Germany the degree of contact varied. Still other Lutherans lived as minorities among Reformed Protestants, Roman Catholics, and in Eastern Europe among Orthodox Christians. Contacts between Lutherans and Jews varied by location, while some Eastern European Lutherans lived in areas that contained Muslims. Through the first three-hundred years of Lutheranism, these contacts generally ranged from benign indifference to full-out hostility and even warfare, on both sides. The sixteenth and seventeenth century were a time of Lutheran self-differentiation, as they attempted to defend themselves theologically and territorially against those who differed from them religiously. Lutherans (as well as most other groups) defined themselves in relation to the differences they had with other Christians and those of other religions. In such times of inter-Christian and inter-religious hostilities, there was very little space for dialogue and processes to examine commonalities between differing groups. Things began to change somewhat in eighteenthcentury Lutheranism, as a result of movements such as Pietism and the Enlightenment, and with the beginnings of the missionary expansion of European Lutheranism. Pietism de-emphasized the doctrinal definitions that had been previously developed as identity markers, for a greater emphasis on the Bible and on personal, subjective faith. The Bible and faith in Christ as Savior were key elements, and could be

seen in many across other versions of Christianity, even in those who differed on one theological element or another. There were limits to this, of course, but there was a new willingness to seek commonalities with other believers, rather than differences. The aftermath of the seventeenth-century wars of religion, especially the Thirty Years War in Germany, left Christians exhausted in many ways, and open (perhaps) to an irenic stance toward other Christians. Building on this, the intellectual revolution of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment began to change the way that many people looked at their own religious tradition in particular, and other religious groups in general. Since Enlightenment thought emphasized the universal revelation of a Creator God to be found in nature, and accessible to all persons (with a common morality derived from natural law), the conclusion was drawn that all religions sprang from a common root. Thus the differences between various religious traditions (within Christianity and even outside of it) were a result of human or historical particularities, and not a matter of absolute truth-claims. One might speak, as Friedrich Schleiermacher did in his Speeches of gradations of truth between religious groups, but that these were only on a scale of their fidelity to a common religious truth. (See doc. #331). The Enlightenment stressed as the main duty of all religious groups to inculcate in their believers a common ethical morality, usually some religious version of the Golden Rule. Conflict over doctrinal and structural differences between Christians was seen as irrational. These ideas were reinforced by the trend toward religious Rationalism that became influential among

398

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

some European Lutherans in the later eighteenth century. These intellectual and ideological trends were generally conceptual, and did not, however, have a great deal of influence on the practical arrangements between Lutherans and those of other religious groups. The nineteenth century saw a series of profound social, cultural, and technological changes that dramatically changed the way people in Europe and North America lived their lives (including their religious lives), and continued to erode the older boundaries between different religious groups. The emigration of European Lutherans, primarily to North America but also to other parts of the world, threw the migrating Lutherans into some very different religious cultures than those in their European homelands. The surge of the missionary movements to areas of the Global South meant that Lutheran missionaries would come into contact with significant non-Christian cultures, and they would have to make sense of them. European and North American Lutherans often learned of these religious cultures by means of the missionaries, especially through mission publications and personal visits. For some on the mission fields the theological and structural differences that seemed so important in Europe became less important than the enormity of the basic missiological tasks that confronted them. (See doc. #458). In Europe and North America, the old religious establishments (real and imaginary) began to break down, especially as the mobility of people and religious ideas led to an increasing religious pluralism. Even the old European Lutheran State Churches were forced into change, and had to relinquish their absolute power over the peoples of their regions. In all these ways, and in many other ways, Lutherans were forced into contact with other Christians and those of other religious traditions, and they had to begin to deal with them not just an as abstract entity, but as real religious people. This certainly did not mean that they had to accept these others and their religious ideas, but surely they could no longer view them from a comfortable distance. The challenges of modernity to Christianity pushed some to conclude that Christians had to find some sort of a way to work together to find solutions to problems common to all. There were initial efforts in inter-Christian cooperation beginning in the nineteenth century. The Evangelical Alliance in the Anglo–American world (1846) and the Evangelische Bund in Germany (1887: see doc. #260) were initially Protestant efforts, though these movements often had a strong tinge of opposition to Roman Catholicism. There were

many ways in which the Protestants in the West worked cooperatively in developing mission work in the south, and in the early twentieth century the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference (1910) began wholescale cooperation between Protestants, an event that is often seen as the beginning of the modern ecumenical movement. Regional efforts, such as the Federal Council of Churches (1908) in the United States, also began cooperative and ecumenical work, though Lutheran participation in these efforts was tentative and limited, at least at the beginning. As an initial step toward ecumenical work, world Lutherans had to come together with each other, which was in and of itself often a difficult task. In the United States many (not all) of the separate Lutheran denominations organized the National Lutheran Council in 1918 to cooperate on external matters, and soon began internal negotiations on greater cooperation and even consolidation. In 1923, Lutherans from around the world came together in Eisenach, Germany, to form the Lutheran World Convention (LWC). Though this group had to deal with inter-Lutheran tensions and the traumas of the First World War, it began cooperative efforts, and in 1936 issued a pioneering Lutheran statement on Ecumenism (doc. #504). There were pioneering ecumenical discussions between the Lutheran Church of Sweden and the Church of England in the 1920s, resulting in closer relations between the two churches (doc. #503). In the same period of time, and also in the aftermath of the First World War, European and North American Protestants were working toward greater cooperation through a pair of ecumenical movements. The Faith and Order movement held important meetings in Lausanne (1927) and Oxford (1937), focusing on ways to bring about the reunion of the Christian churches. Parallel to this was the Life and Work movement whose initial meeting in Stockholm (1925) was organized by the Swedish Lutheran Archbishop, Nathan Söderblom. These two movements were interrupted by the Second World War (1939–45), but resumed after the war when they were fused together into the World Council of Churches, founded in 1948. Lutherans played a pivotal role in helping to organize the World Council of Churches, especially through their proposal that its representation should be by means of confessional families, and not regional representation (doc. #505). Although Lutheran efforts toward closer cooperation among themselves were set back by the Second World War and residual hard feelings, Lutherans managed to resume cooperative efforts in 1947 with

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

the formation of the Lutheran World Federation. American Lutherans also assisted with the formation of the National Council of Churches in 1950, though not all Lutheran groups (most notably the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) joined this new organization. The institutional growth of the Ecumenical movement after the Second World War was generally limited to the Protestant and Orthodox churches, and the Roman Catholic Church has not been a formal member of these organizations. However, a major shift in the Roman Catholic Church came about through the decisions of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), especially a new openness of the Roman Catholic Church towards ecumenism and relations with Protestant and Orthodox churches. Lutherans were keen observers of the events of the Second Vatican Council, welcoming this new openness while suggesting that these were just initial steps (doc. #506). After 1965, Lutherans and Roman Catholics began a long-running series of local ecumenical dialogues, both in Europe and North America, which have resulted in numerous statements, generally clarifying (and in some cases resolving) doctrinal differences between the two groups (doc. #511). By the 1990s the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation had negotiated a common statement on a key theological issue, the Joint Decree on the Doctrine of Justification (1999), which clarified the differences remaining between the two groups on this central doctrine (doc. #517). Though this document was hailed by some as a breakthrough, others disputed whether the document had really made much progress (doc. #518). That the agreement was made by the Lutheran World Federation, and not particular Lutheran churches, was also an object of contention. Lutherans and Roman Catholics have also cooperated in many areas, including in the United States a common statement of guidelines for celebrating the five-hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in 2017 (doc. #519). Lutherans have also participated in numerous dialogues with other Protestants, and with the Orthodox churches. Lutherans and Reformed Protestants have worked on numerous regional discussions over theological differences, especially the nature of the Lord’s Supper, Christology, and Predestination. An early breakthrough was the Leuenberg Agreement (1973), negotiated by the Lutheran World Federation and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (doc. #507), which in turn led to fellowship between Protestant Churches in Europe, and the Formula of

399

Agreement (1997) which established fellowship between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and American Reformed denominations (doc. #510). Lutheran–Anglican/Episcopal dialogues have also proceeded since the 1960s, but discussions here have been complicated by questions of church structure, ministry, and the episcopate, which are central to Anglican/Episcopal self-understanding. Some Lutheran churches maintained the episcopal structure since the Reformation (without requiring it), while others have historically not had it (doc. #509). Ecumenical agreements such as the Porvoo Common Statement (1992) between the Scandinavian Lutherans and the Anglican Churches in Great Britain and Ireland, and Called to Common Mission (1999) between the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have been controversial because of Anglican/Episcopal insistence on the Lutheran adoption of the practice of ordaining pastors by a bishop consecrated in the historic episcopate (doc. #423). Some American Lutherans strongly opposed CCM, and broke away to form the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (2001) (doc. #516). There have been a number of additional bilateral dialogues between Lutherans and other Christian groups. Lutheran–Methodist dialogues have produced ecumenical agreements and full communion status between Lutherans and Methodists in Scandinavia, Germany, and the United States. There have been a number of dialogues between Lutherans on the one hand and Baptist and American Evangelical churches on the other, which have clarified differences and issues without coming to any agreement on the major issue between them, the nature and practice of Baptism (doc. #508). A similar situation defined Lutheran–Adventist discussions. Lutherans and Mennonites have had long discussions on key issues between them, and about Lutheran doctrinal condemnations and persecutions of the Anabaptists from the sixteenth century. In 2010 the Lutheran World Federation issued an apology for those persecutions, which was accepted by the Mennonite World Conference. Lutherans and Pentecostal Christians have had occasional dialogues since the 1970s, but these were accelerated after 2004, and a series of discussions have been ongoing since then. An interesting element of these discussions have been the presence of charismatic movements and believers inside the Lutheran churches, especially in North America and Africa. Lutherans and Orthodox Christians have held a series of regional and international discussions, led especially by Lutherans in Eastern

400

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Europe, but while progress has been made in these dialogues, there remains quite a gap between the two groups. Some Lutherans, especially from Finland, have explored Orthodox theological concepts to open a new way to interpret the theology of Martin Luther (doc. #515). Not all Lutheran groups have been eager to embrace dialogue with other Lutherans, let alone other Christian groups. Some Lutherans worry that the various bilateral dialogues have compromised traditional and foundational Lutheran theological positions, or chafe under ecumenical agreements that necessitate changes in Lutheran positions on the church and ministry. Conservative Lutherans, such as those in the International Lutheran Council, led by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, have usually held to the position that Christian fellowship can only be entered into when complete theological agreement has first been reached between the various parties; anything outside of this is “unionism” or “syncretism” (doc. #512). Unfortunately, such total agreement on doctrinal issues is rare, even among Lutherans, let alone between Lutheran and other Christians. While dialogues between Lutherans and other Christians in the twentieth century has led to some progress, and to agreements among various Christian groups, this is perhaps the easier of the tasks facing them. As Christianity has become a global religion, with now two-thirds of all Christians living in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Christianity is faced with defining its relations with other world religions, especially Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the religions of China and Japan (doc. #514). Christians have long encountered Judaism in Europe and North America, but the events of the twentieth century, especially the Holocaust, have demanded that past relations must be changed or repudiated. But this work of inter-religious dialogue is very difficult, as it can call into question the very nature of central Christian truth claims. The existence of rival systems of theological truth is a challenge, and one that divides Christians themselves, as well as them from the adherents of other world religions. The intellectual moves of the Enlightenment and nineteenth-century Rationalism, which imagined greater commonality among the different Christian groups, also opened the door to the possibility of revelation and truth claims for other religious groups outside of Christianity. But with the exception of Judaism, with which Western Christians were well acquainted, these considerations were usually only speculative, and did not result from a close encounter

with the other world religions. It was through the missionary movement, beginning in the nineteenth century, that European and North American Lutherans came into direct contact with these other groups. In the missionary context, these encounters were initially generally negative; the other religions were problems or competitors to be overcome. Lutherans and other Christians held strongly to the uniqueness of the Christian truth claims, and that the Good News of Jesus Christ was the sole pathway to truth and salvation (See docs. #454, 456, 457). Yet these encounters stirred questions both of truth and of method, and participants began to ask whether there might be at least a part of theological truth in other religions, truth that might be used to convince others of the ultimate truth of Christianity. Already at the start of the twentieth century some liberal Lutherans were radically challenging traditional views about the superiority of Christianity over all other religions. Ernst Troeltsch, who was both a theologian and a sociologist, argued in 1923 that religion was so culturally determined and cultures were so diverse that no one religion could claim to express ultimate truth. In his radically relativist viewpoint, Christianity was closely tied to the development of western culture and other religions had equal claims to validity for the cultures from which they had emerged. (doc. #520; See also chapter 6). In his 1933 Gifford Lectures, Swedish theologian Nathan Söderblom took the issue in a different direction, re-examining the idea the God’s revelation might well be continuing, especially through the work of the Holy Spirit. Other religions may well be expressions of that continuing revelation (doc. #521). Further into the twentieth century, other theologians have pushed the question of other religions in different directions. Theodore Ludwig suggested that religious dialogues with other faith were useful not only for clarifying and settling issues between them, but that Christians’ understandings of their own faith might well be strengthened and deepened (doc. #522). Simon Maimela looked at the question from an African perspective, concluding that God might well be at work in and through the traditional religions of Africa (doc. #465). German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg took yet another direction to the question, through the idea that Christ’s salvific actions go beyond the boundaries of Christianity, and that God’s salvation in Christ is universal (doc. #523). To these ideas, American Lutheran theologian Carl Braaten provided a cautionary note, suggesting that the popular idea that all religions are the same and equal paths to God is simply not true, factually

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

or theologically. He allowed that God’s revelation might be seen in other religions, but the saving power of the Gospel good news of Jesus Christ is particular to Christianity alone (doc. #524). Lutherans and other Christians continue to wrestle with these and other issues, especially in an age of global community. Beyond the theological and ideological questions, Lutherans have needed conversations with those of other religions to overcome distrust and stereotypes, to put old animosities to rest, and to enable each other to live at peace in a world that is religiously fractured and conflicted. After the Holocaust of the Second World War, Christians (and especially Lutherans) had to take a hard look at their relation to Judaism, and the history of anti-Judaism that has long been a part of religious life in the West. For Lutherans this has meant coming to terms with their complicity with the horrors of the Holocaust, and trying to imagine new paths for Lutheran–Jewish dialogues and relationships. Numerous Lutheran groups have issued statements on the issue, especially concerning some of Martin Luther’s later anti-Jewish writings, which they have publicly repudiated (doc. #524). There have been other Lutheran dialogues with Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims, the latter of which has been extremely important, especially considering the vigorous growth of both Christians and Muslims in contemporary Africa (doc. #526). Lutherans in the Global South have expressed an urgent need to deal with those of other religions in their society, and the migration of non-Christians into Europe and North America has raised similar questions in those areas. Inter-religious dialogues will continue to be an important part of the mission of Lutherans in the twenty-first century. ECUMENICAL DIALOGUES AND AGREEMENTS 503. ANGLICANS AND THE CHURCH OF SWEDEN (1922) One of the first ecumenical understandings came through contacts between the Anglican Church and the Lutheran Church of Sweden, beginning in the early twentieth century. Their histories and polities paralleled one another, though the Lutherans did not see their church structure as necessary to the essence of the church, at least in the way that the Anglicans did.

401

From “The Reply of the Bishops of the Church of Sweden to the Conference on Bishops in the Anglican Communion, April 1922,” in G.K.A. Bell, ed., Documents on Christian Unity, 1920 1920–1930 –1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930), 185–95. The question of the terms of communion between two Churches has not been the object of general discussions and resolutions among us to the same extent as among you, for reasons which will appear from the following pages. But from the practice which has been followed hitherto in this matter by our Church, these two principles might be drawn: (1) To individual members of foreign communions who have desired more occasionally to take part in Holy Communion in our Church for the strengthening of their inner life, this right has been conceded as a duty of charity. A refusal of this right in such cases, in casu necessitatis, will hardly have occurred in our Church. (2) A concession of this right in genere to the members of a certain communion, on the other hand, presupposes that an essential agreement, proved by the confessional documents of the communion in question, exists as regards the spirit and the main points of Christian faith. In the case of those communions which, like our own, have accepted the Confessio Augustana, the concession of such general intercommunion has been considered as quite natural, while in other cases the matter has been thought to demand a particular inquiry. But that the direct acceptance of the Confessio Augustana has not been considered in all cases as the necessary condition for the concession of intercommunion is shown also by the fact, which has a particular interest in this case, that already once before, from the seventeenth century, intercommunion of this kind has existed in North America between our Church and yours. Two centuries later, during some years after 1866, Swedish emigrants to the United States were recommended to the Protestant Episcopal Church in such places where there was no access to a Swedish Evangelic Lutheran community. Thus, in the question of intercommunion our Church has not attached decisive weight either to the doctrine of the ministry in general or to what is usually called the Apostolic Succession of Bishops and the questions thereby implied. The deeper reason for this is derived from our fundamental conceptions, and has been explained several times during the preparatory investigations, and particularly during the negotiations in Upsala in September 1909, by the representatives of the Swedish Church. For the explanation of this position, which we think that we

402

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ought also now to emphasize, we refer to the points with regard to the doctrine of the Swedish Church on the ministry that were on that occasion laid before the Committee appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1909, and form part of the report issued in 1911 by this Committee. From these points we quote: 3. No particular organization of the Church and of its ministry is instituted iure divino, not even the order and discipline and state of things recorded in the New Testament, because the Holy Scriptures, the norma normans of the faith of the Church, are not law, but vindicate for the New Covenant the great principle of Christian freedom, unweariedly asserted by St. Paul against every form of legal religion, and applied with fresh strength and clearness by Luther, but instituted by our Saviour Himself, as, for instance, when, in taking farewell of His disciples, He did not regulate their future work by a priori rules and institutions, but directed them to the guidance of the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost. 4. The object of any organization and of the whole ministry being included in the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments—according to the fifth article of the Augustana, God has instituted ministerium docendi evangelii et porrigendi sacramenta—our Church cannot recognize any essential difference, de iure divino, of aim and authority between the two or three Orders into which the ministry of grace may have been divided, iure humano, for the benefit and convenience of the Church. 5. The value of every organization of the ministerium ecclesiasticum, and of the Church in general, is only to be judged by its fitness and ability to become a pure vessel for the supernatural contents, and a perfect channel for the way of Divine Revelation unto mankind. 6. That doctrine in no wise makes our Church indifferent to the organization and the forms of ministry which the cravings and experiences of the Christian community have produced under the guidance of the Spirit in the course of history. We do not only regard the peculiar forms and traditions of our Church with the reverence due to a venerable legacy from the past, but we realize in them a blessing from the God of history accorded to us. From the conception of our Church regarding the ministry which has been declared here again, it follows that for us decisive importance must be attached, not to any questions of a more formal char-

acter, but to the question whether and how far the two communities agree in these ideas as to the content of that message of salvation, founded on the divine revelation, which has been committed to both of them. The differences which no doubt can be found here must be neither overrated nor underrated. The difference as to the emphasis laid on the doctrine of the ministry, which has appeared above, might point to a certain discrepancy even in matters that have a more central position according to our valuation. Another point which presents itself to the mind when the question of intercommunion is raised, is the difference which, according to the confessions of both Churches, exists in their conception of the Lord’s Supper itself. The judgement of the extent of this difference is made more difficult by the fact, which has appeared also during the preparatory negotiations, that evidently within the Anglican Church itself different doctrines are held on these two questions. Yet, and without any wish to belittle the difference that exists between the two Churches, we do not hesitate to pronounce as our opinion that during the course of the preparatory negotiations, and so far as we have gradually got to know more about the Anglican Church, our impression of that unity which binds the two Churches together in what is deepest and most central, has become predominant. In the Church and the congregation of Christ, as in every living body, real concord is not characterized by uniformity, but by unity in diversity. A detailed definition of those matters in which this concord appears cannot be attempted here. But yet we do not feel justified in pretermitting briefly to call attention to two points, which are to us more decisive than all others, with regard to the purity of the Christian doctrine—viz., the recognition of Scripture as norma normans both with regard to life and doctrine, and the building of our salvation on God’s grace alone received by faith. 504. LUTHERAN WORLD CONVENTION ON ECUMENISM (1936) After World War One, world Lutherans gathered in a series of conventions to discuss common issues, and a continuing committee kept the work going between meetings. This committee produced the following statement on Ecumenism, a very early Lutheran comment on this aspect of Christian faith and life. From The Executive Committee of the

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

Lutheran World Convention, 1936, “Lutherans and Ecumenical Movements,” in Luther Lutheran an World Almanac and Encyclopedia Encyclopedia, 1934–37 (New York: National Lutheran Council, 1937), 36–38. Amid the many claims upon Lutheran Churches to participate in general ecumenical movements or to relate themselves to special Christian groups, it may be useful to point out the ecumenical character of Lutheranism itself. Even apart from the large number and the geographical distribution of its adherents the very genius of Lutheranism is essentially ecumenical. It has always been so. The heart of Lutheranism comes from the heart of the Bible and has its home in the heart of human personality. Based upon prophetic and apostolic Scriptures and growing out of the elemental human experience of personal faith, the Lutheran interpretation of the Gospel is not bound to incidentals, such as polity or liturgy or type of piety. With the God-Man as its center and the universal priesthood of believers as its radius it covers the whole range of the human family and can never be the exclusive possession of any particular race, nation or temperament. Because Lutherans hold that the only marks of the true Church are the Word and the Sacraments, they believe that there has been a true Christian Church through all time and that ‘one holy Church will continue forever’ (Augsburg Confession, Art. VII.). Because they lay no emphasis upon such local and temporal forms as organization, human traditions, rites and ceremonies, but teach that in ‘the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of Sacraments’ (A. C. VII), they are ready to recognize true Christians under whatever name or organization they may be found. The universal appeal of the Lutheran interpretation of the Gospel, the elemental quality of the Lutheran understanding of faith, and the catholic breadth of the Lutheran doctrine of the Church, impart to Lutheranism an ecumenical quality that must be remembered in these days of emphasis upon externals. In the truest sense Lutheranism is itself an ecumenical movement. B. The Need for Lutheran Solidarity 1. This fundamentally ecumenical character of Lutheranism should receive more concrete expression than has yet been done. This concrete expression is not a matter of principle but only of expediency in view of the present religious situation in the world. The times seem to demand that the Inner unity

403

already existing among the Lutherans of the world be cultivated and mobilized in Lutheran world solidarity. 2. The purpose of this outward expression of Lutheran fellowship is not ostentation, not the display of size or so-called achievements. Nor is it a political purpose, because Lutherans expressly renounce all secular motives and repudiate all intention of invading the proper sphere of the State. It is not in obeisance to an idealistic inter-nationalism. Nor is it to form a super-Church, for that might hamper the individual Churches in their work. The purpose in seeking to develop Lutheran solidarity is to help meet the difficulties that confront our Churches just now in common with all Christendom, to unite our forces in support of our Lutheran brethren who even now are suffering for their faith, and to secure cooperation of Lutherans everywhere in entering the new doors and traversing the new paths that God has recently opened to the progress of the evangelical spirit. The purpose is to help one another in preserving and sharing with all nations the treasures we possess in the Gospel of our Lord whom we know to be the Redeemer of the world from sin. 3. This purpose is to be achieved: “(a) by prosecuting vigorously all the objectives of the Lutheran World Convention as expressed in the resolutions adopted by its general gatherings, (b) by cultivating a Lutheran consciousness in individual Lutherans and in Lutheran Church Bodies, (c) By furthering Lutheran unity within the several lands where Lutheran forces are not at present united, (d) by forming a practical entente or alliance among all of the Lutheran Church Bodies in the world, and (e) by harmonious voice and united action with reference to present-day ecumenical movements and general cooperative organization among Christians, approving what appears to Lutherans to be evangelical in those movements and organizations and repudiating what appears to us to be un-evangelical. 4. In thus expressing the world solidarity of Lutheranism it will be constantly incumbent upon the Lutheran Churches of the world to bear unequivocal witness to the truth of the Gospel as they understand it. This will involve several relationships of these Churches: (a) their relation to their common Lutheran heritage in the Word or God, (b) their relation to one another as Lutheran Churches, and

404

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

(c) their relation to Christian Churches claiming ecumenical character in themselves and to other Churches in those movements and organizations that aim at the solution of present-day problems of larger scope. 505. LUTHERANS AND THE FORMATION OF THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES (1946) Lutherans from Europe and North America were important to the formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948. One of their important contributions was to push for a particular structuring of the new group along confessional rather that national or regional lines. From A.R. Wentz, “Brief on Confessional Representation, Submitted to Provisional Committee, February 1946,” in Christendom 11, no. 3 (Summer, 1946): 360–62. To the Provisional Committee of the World Council of Churches: A Petition Concerning Confessional Representation. Permit me to present to this Committee the petition of a group of Churches with which I am associated in the work of the Lutheran World Convention. It is a petition asking this Committee to propose to the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches an amendment to the provisional constitution. The desired amendment refers to the allocation of seats in the Assembly (Constitution V, l) and the allocation of seats in the Central Committee (V, 2). The Churches uniting in this petition sire the Lutheran Churches in America which have already accepted the invitation to become members of the World Council; namely, the United Lutheran Church in America and the Augustana Synod, together with those which are ready to accept the invitation; namely, the American Lutheran Church, the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Free Church, the Norwegian Lutheran Church, the Suomi Synod, and the United Evangelical Lutheran Church. The constitutional convention at Utrecht did not fix finally the manner of allocating seats in the Assembly and in the Central Committee of the World Council, but specifically stated that the allocations set down are “provisional.” This suggests that change in the manner of allocation may become desirable in the light of further experience and information. Under this warrant your petitioners respect-

fully request a change in the manner of allocation, so far as it applies to your petitioners. It will be observed that in the “provisional” allocation, both of seats in the Assembly and of those in the Central Committee, three different principles have been employed. One is the principle of representation by Churches, as in the case of “the Orthodox Churches throughout the world.” Another is the principle of representation by territorial regions, as in the case of nearly all the other Churches. And the third is representation “designated by the World Confessional organizations,” as in the case of “minority Churches which in the judgment of the Central Committee are not granted adequate representation” by either of the other two methods. Your petitioners simply ask for an extension of the first of these principles, namely, representation by Churches, so that it may apply to Lutheran Churches throughout the world which may desire to employ it. We believe that if this petition is granted, it will eliminate the necessity for the third principle, that concerning minority Churches, so far as Lutheran Churches are concerned. In order to define our position let me say: (1) We do not ask that any World Confessional organization of Lutherans become a member of the World Council or be represented by the World Council; (2) We do not ask for disproportionate representation of Lutherans from any country or in any category; and (3) We do not insist that other Churches or Confessional groups must be represented in this way. (4) We merely ask that the first of the three principles of representation be extended so as to apply to the Lutheran Churches which choose to use it . . . One important function of the World Council will always be to mobilize the witness of the Church of Christ for concrete prophetic action, both in general and in particular cases. The Lutheran Churches uniting in this petition are strongly convinced that they can bear their witness with more effect and can contribute to ecumenical prophetic action with more force if they are permitted to do this in unison within the World Council than if they act separately and apart from the World Council. This witness to the Christian truth as they see it, whether in an occasional message or in a continuing testimony, the Lutheran Churches of the world can best achieve through harmony of voice among themselves; and their cooperation in common Christian action they can best accomplish through a solidarity of official representatives chosen directly by themselves.

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

Moreover, it is our conviction that the World Council itself will move more quickly and more certainly toward a united testimony before the world if the Churches themselves associated in confessional groups are permitted to speak frankly with one another in friendly comparison of views,—far more quickly and more certainly than if Christians speak with one another as national or geographical groups. The way to a united Christian testimony before the world of today would be rendered even more difficult by sectionalism than by sectarianism. We realize that certain benefits to the Christian cause are to be gained by the exchange of experiences and ideas not only across confessional boundaries but also across national and regional boundaries; but we are convinced that this exchange can be achieved more effectively within “world confessional organizations” (Constitution) than through international gatherings representing the various political or territorial divisions of the world. Through this principle of confessional representation in the Assembly and the Central Committee it seems certain that if this petition is granted at least six additional Lutheran Churches in America will at once accept the invitation to join the World Council and help bear a united Christian testimony. In these ways the suggested amendment will help the World Council to do what it proposes to do. We are persuaded that this extension of the principle of confessional representation can be made and that it can be achieved without upsetting the geographical balance within the World Council or its parts and without inequity to any of the other interests of the World Council. We have carefully considered the practical difficulties that on first thought might seem to stand in the way of granting this petition, and we are prepared to consider them in further detail with any subcommittee that might be appointed for the purpose. 506. LUTHERAN COMMENTS ON THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL (1965) The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) was an important meeting of the Roman Catholic Church, and especially important in opening up that church to possible ecumenical relationships. Lutherans were keen observers of the deliberations and results, although they could also point out the important differences that remained between them and the Roman Catholics. From Edmund Schlink, “The Decree on Ecu-

405

menism,” in George A. Lindbeck, ed.,., Dialog Dialogue ue on the Way: Pr Protestants otestants Report fr from om Rome on the Vatican Council. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1965), 208–16.

Fig. 12.1. Grand procession of the Council Fathers at St. Peter’s Basilica at Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962

Possibilities and Limitations of Ecumenism The goal of Roman ecumenism was determined by decisions, both dogmatic and canonical, which had been made before the convocation of the Second Vatican Council. These dogmas are not subject to correction. Neither are the stipulations of the canon law insofar as they are considered divine law. . . In spite of these factors we cannot overlook the fact that the Constitution on the Church . . . has been accepted by the council and has been promulgated by the pope . . . Therefore the Constitutio de Ecclesia is indeed very important for the future development of ecumenism. This is true all the more because the Roman Church, as well as all other churches, has never defined a clear doctrine of the church. We could ask the question: “What possibilities does this constitution offer for an understanding and for the application of the ecumenical program? Does it indicate a step forward or a step back for the ecumenical movement which has now finally begun to take hold of the Roman Church and has been recognized by her?” . . . Even in this brief discussion we must not overlook the fact that this constitution marks a considerable progress over against the Schema de Ecclesia which had been prepared for the First Vatican Council but was not acted on by it, except for its doctrine on the primacy of the pope. This progress can be seen especially in the statements concerning the history of salvation and the Trinity which are the basis for the statements concerning the church, and in the

406

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

purposeful introduction of a number of concepts and images under which the church is here described, concepts taken from the New Testament, such as “the Body of Christ,” the “People of God,” the “Sheep-fold of God,” the “Vineyard of God,” the “Temple of the Holy Spirit,” the “Bride of Christ,” etc. In this connection it is important that in the final version of the Constitutio de Ecclesia the church is described—in the second chapter—as the People of God, i.e. she is discussed under this concept before the hierarchy of the church which dominates the last chapters of the document. Also in the statements concerning the collegiality of the bishops there is a clear indication that the essence of the church has been understood more clearly in the frame of reference of the New Testament and of the ancient church. We must also emphasize the fact that an attempt was made to bring out the eschatological aspect of the church as a people on the pilgrimage, although in the seventh chapter dealing with eschatology there is greater interest for the present unity of the church on pilgrimage with the church in heaven, for the communion of saints on earth with saints above, than for the perfection which she will not possess until the day of judgment. Yet other facets can be accepted with joy by non-Roman theologians. But at the same time it is only fair to point out that the limitations of this document are manifold. The concept of the church is decidedly a narrow one. To be sure, many a church believes that she is the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church which we confess. But among non-Roman Christians this statement is understood in a quite different way. The identification of an existing church body with the one and holy church does not have to be interpreted in an exclusive way as is done in Roman Catholicism. It is possible that a certain church should confess her identity with the one holy church and at the same time accept other churches as parts of this same one holy church. But the Constitution on the Church, promulgated by the Second Vatican Council, understands this identity with the one holy church quite exclusively as being vested in the Roman Church ..... [and] “outside of this communion” of the Roman Church there are found merely “elements of holiness and truth” which “as a gift given to the church by Christ press toward catholic unity.” There is no statement that the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church exists outside of the Church of Rome. . . It is clear that these strong objections by the fathers are responsible for the fact that the final draft of the Decree on Ecumenism emphasizes again and again

that the unity, the fullness and all the riches of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church are found only in the Roman Church, of which the successor of Peter is the head. “Only through the Catholic Church of Christ which is the all-embracing means of salvation can one obtain the fulness of the means of salvation” (3). But even taking into account these statements, the Decree on Ecumenism is still more open toward the outside world than the Constitution on the Church. It has, however, been adjusted to resemble more the constitution than did its first draft. ..... When the final draft of the Decree on Ecumenism was submitted, it did not merely mention nonRoman Christians, but the churches and communions to which they belong and in which the spirit of Christ is working “as a means of grace.” “These separated churches and communities are in spite of the shortcomings we have mentioned not without importance and significance in the Mystery of Salvation.” The suggestion by Cardinal Koenig had been accepted and in most places these non-Roman churches were referred to as “churches and ecclesial communities.” It is not quite clear why some are called “churches” and others are called “ecclesial communities.” This distinction is not based on their self-evaluation, but on the ecclesiological presuppositions of Roman theology. They are not on the same level with Rome, but receive the title honoris causa or by way of analogy. The failure to define these concepts more clearly is not necessarily a shortcoming of the decree. The designation “churches and ecclesial communities” has opened up new dimensions for the entire ecumenical dialogue for which definite concepts are lacking in all churches, not only in the Roman Church. As a result of the discussions in the council hall it should be clear to everyone that Rome has finally recognized that the non-Roman churches have a greater ecclesiological importance than was attributed to them in traditional Roman theology. This intention of Rome should be recognized by the other churches. Therefore we may say that the Decree on Ecumenism opens the doors wider toward the non-Roman chinches than the Constitution on the Church. 507. THE LEUENBERG AGREEMENT (1973) The Lutheran and Reformed churches in Europe negotiated this agreement in 1973, which brought into fellowship these two Protestant traditions, reaching some consensus on questions that had long

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

divided them, including the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, Christology, and Predestination. From William G. Rusch and Daniel Martensen, eds, The Leuenberg Agr greement eement and Luther Lutheran–Ref an–Reformed ormed Relationships (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing, 1989), 139–54. 1. In assenting to this Agreement, the Lutheran and Reformed churches, the united churches which grew out of them and the related pre-Reformation churches, the Waldensian Church and the Church of the Czech Brethren, affirm, on the basis of their doctrinal discussions, a common understanding of the Gospel as elaborated below. This enables them to declare and to realize church fellowship. Thankful that they have been led closer together, they confess at the same time that the struggle for truth and unity in the Church has also been, and remains, marked by guilt and suffering. 4. With hindsight, it is easier today to discern what was common in the witness of the churches of the Reformation in spite of all the differences between them: their starting point was a new experience of liberation and assurance in the power of the Gospel. In taking a stand for the truth as they recognized it, the Reformers found themselves in common opposition to the church traditions of that time. They were at one therefore in confessing that the life and doctrine of the Church are to be measured by the original and pure testimony of the Gospel in Scripture. They were at one in testifying to the free and unconditional grace of God in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for all those who believe this promise. They were at one in confessing that the practice and shape of the church are only to be determined by the commission to deliver this testimony to the world, and that the Word of the Lord remains sovereign over every human ordering of the Christian community. In all this, together with the whole of Christendom, they received and confessed anew the faith expressed in the creeds of the early Church, in the Triune God and in the divine-human nature of Jesus Christ. 5. In the course of four centuries, the theological grappling with the questions of modernity, the development of biblical research, the church renewal movements and the rediscovery of an ecumenical perspective have led the churches of the Reformation in similar directions to new ways of thinking and living. Admittedly, these developments have also given rise to new differences which cut across the confessions. But again and again, especially in times of common suffering, there has been an experience of Christian fellowship. All this led the churches, espe-

407

cially since the revival movements, to seek to give contemporary expression to the biblical witness and the Reformation confessions of faith. In this way they have learned to distinguish between the fundamental witness of the Reformation confessions of faith and their historically conditioned thought forms. Because they bear witness to the Gospel as the living Word of God in Jesus Christ, these confessions of faith do not bar the way to continued responsible testimony to the Word; on the contrary they unlock it with a summons to follow it in the freedom of faith. 17. The conflicting views which from the time of the Reformation onwards made church fellowship between the Lutheran and Reformed churches impossible and gave rise to mutual condemnations concerned the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, Christology, and the doctrine of predestination. We take these decisions of the Reformers seriously but we are able today to agree on the following statements on the subject: 1. The Lord’s Supper 18. In the Lord’s Supper, the risen Jesus Christ imparts himself in his body and blood, given up for all, through his word of promise with bread and wine. He thus gives himself unreservedly to all who receive the bread and wine; faith receives the Lord’s Supper for salvation, unfaith for judgement. 19. We cannot separate communion with Jesus Christ in his body and blood from the act of eating and drinking. To be concerned about the manner of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper in abstraction from this act is to run the risk of obscuring the meaning of the Lord’s Supper. 20. Where there is such consensus between churches, the condemnations pronounced by the Reformation confessions of faith are inapplicable to the doctrinal position of these churches. 2. Christology 21. In the true human being Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, and so God’s self, has given himself to lost humanity for our salvation. In the word of promise and in sacrament the Holy Spirit, and so God’s self, makes the crucified and risen Jesus present to us. 22. Believing in this self-offering of God in God’s Son, we perceive, with regard to the historically conditioned nature of traditional thought forms, that our task is to give fresh validity to the insights of the Reformed tradition with its particular concern to

408

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

maintain the unimpaired divinity and humanity of Jesus and to those of the Lutheran tradition with its particular concern to maintain the unity of his person. 23. In these circumstances it is impossible for us to reaffirm the former condemnations today. 3. Predestination 24. In the Gospel we have the promise of the unconditional acceptance of sinners by God. All who trust this promise can know that they are saved and praise God for their election. For this reason we can speak of election only with respect to the call to salvation in Christ. 25. It is the experience of faith that the message of salvation is not accepted by all; yet faith respects the mystery of the action of God. It bears witness at one and the same time to the seriousness of human decision and to the reality of God’s universal purpose of salvation. The witness of the Scriptures to Christ forbids us from supposing that God has uttered an eternal decree, condemning for all time specific individuals or a whole people. 26. When there is such consensus between churches, the condemnations pronounced by the Reformation confessions of faith are inapplicable to the doctrinal position of these churches. 4. Conclusions 27. Wherever these statements are accepted, the condemnations of the Reformation confessions in respect of the Lord’s Supper, christology, and predestination are inapplicable to the doctrinal position. This does not mean that the condemnations pronounced by the Reformers are irrelevant; but they are no longer an obstacle to church fellowship. 28. There remain considerable differences between our churches in forms of worship, types of spirituality, and church order. These differences are often more deeply felt in the congregations than the traditional doctrinal differences. Nevertheless, in fidelity to the New Testament and Reformation criteria for church fellowship, we cannot discern in these differences any factors which should divide the church. IV. The declaration and realization of church fellowship 29. In the sense intended in this Agreement, church fellowship means that, on the basis of the consensus they have reached in their understanding of the gospel, churches with different confessional positions accord each other fellowship in word and

sacrament and strive for the fullest possible cooperation in witness and service to the world. 30. With these statements church fellowship is declared. The divisions which have barred the way to this fellowship since the sixteenth century are removed. The participating churches are convinced that together they participate in the one Church of Jesus Christ and that the Lord frees them for and calls them to common service. 508. LUTHERANS–BAPTIST DIALOGUES (1981) Discussions between Lutherans on the one hand, and Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Reformed on the other, were the natural first step. Lutheran discussions with other Protestants, such as Baptists and Evangelical Protestants have been more difficult, due to the nature of the differences between them, especially on the question of infant versus believers’ baptism. From “Lutheran–Baptist Dialogue: Three Common Statements November 1, 1981,” in Joseph A. Burgess and Jeffrey Gros, FSC, eds., Gr Growing owing Consensus: Church Dialog Dialogues ues in the United States, 1962–1991 (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1995), 102–10. Baptists and Lutherans are evangelical Christians. Together they believe in Jesus Christ as the gracious Savior of the world. Both churches are shaped by the acceptance of Scripture as the basis for Christian doctrine and life. Both also enjoy rootage in the Reformation heritage and seek to be grounded in, live by, and proclaim the Gospel of the saving act of God in Jesus Christ. 1. Common Understandings of Faith.—Lutherans and Baptists alike describe faith as being both divine gift and human response. Faith is made possible only by divine initiative, yet it is realized only through human response. In this human response it is recognized that the act of the human will in believing is itself regarded as a work of God. It is the Father’s drawing the sinner to himself; it is the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. The work of God does not, however, set aside the person’s voluntary faculty and reduce the believer’s participation to a passive, undynamic, and impersonal role. God’s work enables a person to respond actively to the invitation of Christ, setting free, begetting anew (the new birth) and transforming the sinner. Faith is the work of the Spirit of Christ wrought in the heart by the gospel. No one is able

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

to believe without the prior work of God who frees a person from the bondage of sin and enables an unwilling person to do the will of Christ. The concern involved throughout this discussion of the nature of faith is to avoid the implication that the act of believing is made possible by an innate human power. Because our salvation is by the gracious justification of God through faith in Christ, all human boasting is excluded. True righteousness in us is accomplished by God’s righteousness in Jesus Christ and is bestowed freely through faith in Christ. While it is true that as sinners we cannot believe without the work of God’s Spirit which imparts new life, it is equally true that God does not believe for us nor cause us to believe without the exercise of our wills. The divine act of bestowal and human act of believing are in the closest union. Both Lutherans and Baptists wish to avoid a position which sets aside or minimizes either the divine or the human aspects of faith. . . . The essential relationship between faith and baptism is clearly recognized among both Lutherans and Baptists, but this relationship is viewed differently. The fact that baptism embodies the word of God with its promise is interpreted by Lutherans to mean baptism effects what it signifies because it embodies the word of God with its promise. When they say baptism effects salvation, they understand that to say that God effects salvation through his promise in the baptismal context. Therefore, faith can never be made a prior condition of baptism, for faith itself is of grace. It is the work of God and the fruit of God’s promise to human beings, irrespective of the age of the recipients. Hence infants can receive baptism. Baptists also acknowledge baptism as embodying the word of God with its promise, but they emphasize that it also embodies the faith which confesses God in his saving grace. Hence the rite of baptism should not be seen as effecting what it signifies, unless it is seen as symbolizing the divine grace and help which leads to repentance and faith. Baptists, however, gratefully recognize the operation of grace in faith that turns to the Lord, but they see that as exhibited precisely in the baptism of a believer who has responded to grace. . . . Commonality and divergence are both realities among Baptists and Lutherans on the subject of the church and the ministry. Commonality must be joyfully celebrated and accentuated. Divergence must be continually and sympathetically examined and discussed, in the hope that divergences may lead in the direction of convergence and commonality, and in

409

any event not become destructive of fellowship and common witness. 509. LUTHERAN–ANGLICAN DIALOGUES: A REPORT (1983) Another series of long-running ecumenical discussions were held between Lutherans and Anglican Churches (in the United States, the Episcopal Church). As with the discussions between the Anglicans and the Church of Sweden in the 1920s, these talks turned around questions of church, ministry, and sacraments. From “Report of the Working Group Cold Ash, England, 3 December 1983,” Jeffrey Gros, et al, eds., Gr Growth owth in Agr greement eement II: Reports and Agr greed eed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level, 1982–1998 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 6–10. Goal of Anglican–Lutheran Dialogue 23. We look forward to the day when full communion is established between Anglican and Lutheran churches. 24. By full communion we here understand a relationship between two distinct churches or communions. Each maintains its own autonomy and recognizes the catholicity and apostolicity of the other, and each believes the other to hold the essentials of the Christian faith: 26. a) subject to such safeguards as ecclesial discipline may properly require, members of one body may receive the sacraments of the other; b) subject to local invitation, bishops of one church may take part in the consecration of the bishops of the other, thus acknowledging the duty of mutual care and concern; c) subject to church regulation, a bishop, pastor/ priest or deacon of one ecclesial body may exercise liturgical functions in a congregation of the other body if invited to do so and also, when requested, pastoral care of the other’s members; d) it is also a necessary addition and complement that there should be recognized organs of regular consultation and communication, including episcopal collegiality, to express and strengthen the fellowship and enable common witness, life and service. 25. To be in full communion means that churches become interdependent while remaining autonomous. One is not elevated to be the judge of the other nor can it remain insensitive to the other; nei-

410

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ther is each body committed to every secondary feature of the tradition of the other. Thus the corporate strength of the churches is enhanced in love, and an isolated independence is restrained. 26. Full communion carries implications which go beyond sharing the same eucharist. The eucharist is a common meal, and to share in it together has implications for a sharing of life and of common concerns for the mission of the church. To be in full communion implies a community of life, an exchange and a commitment to one another in respect of major decisions on questions of faith, order and morals. It implies, where churches are in the same geographical area, common worship, study, witness, evangelism, and promotion of justice, peace and love. It may lead to a uniting of ecclesial bodies if they are, or come to be, immediately adjacent in the same geographical area. This should not imply the suppressing of ethnic, cultural or ecclesial characteristics or traditions which may in fact be maintained and developed by diverse institutions within one communion. 27. Unity by stages is a concept that is gaining wide recognition, though not great clarity of definition. It implies that the end cannot be seen from the beginning, and that unity must be pursued in terms of movement and process. It does imply that we know the direction in which we wish to move, and that we take definite steps to break down the barriers which at present stand in the way of visible unity. 28. Lutherans and Anglicans concur that agreement in the faith is a proper pre-requisite for unity: it is a stage on the way to its achievement. The agreed statements of dialogues carry the authority only of their members until they receive the approval of the appropriate juridical authorities of the churches. This approval should itself reflect a general consensus within the churches which must not only involve dialogue but also common prayer and practical collaboration. 29. An agreed statement is thus a crucial vehicle of consensus and provides grounds for decision-making about a changed relationship between churches: its “reception” by the churches is therefore a decisive stage on the way towards unity. The statements provide a basis for mutual recognition of churches and members and thus allow some degree of eucharistic communion. 30. Under certain conditions, individual or groups are admitted to holy communion in one another’s churches before full communion has been achieved. One way to describe this initial stage is “limited eucharistic sharing”. A specific example of this stage

is the “interim sharing of the eucharist” that has been achieved in North America. In other Lutheran and Anglican churches those responsible should discuss and could adopt the same agreement or an adaptation. In so doing, they would accept the goal of full communion, committing themselves to resolve the remaining questions and work together. Some of these questions may only be resolved within the new relationship of limited eucharistic sharing. 31. The goal of full communion may be described as full mutual recognition of catholicity and apostolicity. That is to say, the churches become aware that they share a common identity in all essentials of the Christian faith, recognizing that they are in harmony and expressing their agreement in statements as well as in life. Full agreement in the faith should include proposals for implementation, that is, the implications c agreement on what is to be done. 33. It would be necessary before the goal of full communion to have developed some modus vivendi of worship and work. The tentative beginnings of common prayer, study; witness and evangelism as well as joint projects begun during the stage of interim eucharistic sharing should become the norm when the goal of full communion has been reached and hence must develop greatly before the step to full communion can be take; The experience of the agreement in faith and recognition of ministries must be accompanied by genuine renewal for both Lutherans and Anglicans by which their constituencies can better see, understand and carry out the apostolic ministry in the service of the gospel. 510. LUTHERAN–REFORMED DIALOGUES IN NORTH AMERICA (1984) Another important series of dialogues came between Lutherans and other Protestants in the Reformed (or Calvinist) tradition. These two groups held much in common from the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, but differed over theology and practice, especially their understandings of the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper. From “An Invitation to Action,” in Joseph A. Burgess and Jeffrey Gros, FSC, eds, Gr Growing owing Consensus: Church Dialog Dialogues ues in the United States, 1962–1991 (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1991), 151–54. 1. We are Christians because of the presence of Jesus Christ in our lives. This good news of Jesus Christ is the gospel. It is from the gospel that we understand the Lord’s Supper. The Supper is a unique way in which Christ shares himself with us and in

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

which we share in Christ with one another. Thus the Supper is itself a particular form of the gospel. The same gift is offered in the preached word and in the administered sacrament. 1.1 The gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, who has been given to us because God loves the world and acts to reconcile the world to himself. 1.2 In Christ we are called, corporately and individually, to manifest the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in our lives, witness, and service. It is this gospel which compels us to engage in God’s mission in the world. 1.3 As churches we must see to it that the gospel we proclaim in word and action is indeed the true gospel of the Holy Scriptures and not a distortion or a substitute. This is why both of our communions regard fidelity to the gospel as the fundamental norm for church fellowship. 2. Appreciating what we Reformed and Lutheran Christians already hold in common concerning the Lord’s Supper, we nevertheless affirm that both of our communions need to keep on growing into an ever-deeper realization of the fullness and richness of the eucharistic mystery. 2.1 Both Lutheran and Reformed churches affirm that Christ himself is the host at his table. Both churches affirm that Christ himself is truly present and received in the Supper. Neither communion professes to explain how this is so. 2.2 The Lord’s Supper is inexhaustibly profound and awesome. We concur with the 1982 Lima Faith and Order statement Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, which reminds all Christians that five features belong to the fullness of the Lord’s Supper. The Eucharist is (1) thanksgiving to the Father; (2) anamnesis or memorial of Christ; (3) invocation of the Spirit; (4) communion of the faithful; and (5) meal of the kingdom. 2.3 While none of these features is alien to either of our traditions, both Reformed and Lutheran Christians need continually to grow in our understanding and experience of this joyful communion with Christ and with one another. 3. By his real presence among us in word and sacrament and by the work of his Holy Spirit, Christ creates and nurtures a new community of faith, his holy church. Holy Communion richly nourishes us in our devotion to a life of faithful discipleship and calls us to grow in our understanding of what God intends the entire human family to become. Fed at Christ’s table, we are drawn to care for one another in the fellowship of believers. Fed at Christ’s table, we

411

are called to become more sensitive to the needs of our sisters and brothers in the entire human family. 3.1 As we participate in Holy Communion we receive the benefit of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation through our trust in God’s faithfulness. 3.2 As we participate in Holy Communion with our Lord we experience our oneness in Christ. We become more sensitive to the sufferings of our brothers and sisters in Christ, and we are moved to minister to one another as Christ did. 3.3 As we participate in Holy Communion God commissions us to minister to the entire human family as Christ did. Christ summons us to share our bounty with all those whose physical and spiritual lives are burdened by poverty. He calls us to “ ..... struggle with the oppressed towards that freedom and dignity promised with the coming of the Kingdom” (BEM, Ministry, 1.4). He challenges us to commit ourselves to the cause of justice and peace for all people. 3.4 As we participate in Holy Communion we are committed afresh to the ecumenical task, the effort to realize Christ’s will that all his followers may be one, gathered around one table. 4. We affirm that the Lutheran and Reformed families of churches have a fundamental consensus in the gospel and the sacraments which not only allows but also demands common participation in the Lord’s Supper. 4.1 In the past Christians of the Reformed and Lutheran traditions have been deeply divided by controversy over the understanding of the Lord’s Supper although both have strongly affirmed the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament. Today we cherish a high regard for our ancestors in the faith who stalwartly proclaimed the gospel according to their respective convictions. At the same time, through long and careful discussion, responsible commissions of Lutheran and Reformed representatives have concluded that our two communions do fundamentally agree on the gospel and on the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We reaffirm these agreements, in particular the conclusions reached in Marburg Revisited in America (1966) and the Leuenberg Agreement in Europe (1973). We do not imagine that all differences in eucharistic doctrine between (and within) our two communions have thereby disappeared or become negligible, but we maintain that the remaining differences should be recognized as acceptable diversities within one Christian faith. 4.2 The Christian doctrine of the Lord’s Supper needs to present the clearest and fullest possible witness to the profound meaning of the Supper. We

412

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

maintain that traditional Lutheran and Reformed doctrinal concerns are still valuable to help the wider Christian community appreciate the full significance of our Lord’s Supper. We acknowledge meanwhile that our doctrinal formulations themselves cannot altogether grasp the fullness either of the mystery of Christ’s gift of himself in the Supper or of our experience of communion with him. . . 7. We agree that there are no substantive matters concerning the Lord’s Supper which should divide us. We urge Lutheran and Reformed churches to affirm and encourage the practice of eucharistic fellowship with one another. 511. LUTHERAN–ROMAN CATHOLIC DIALOGUES IN THE UNITED STATES (1991) One result of Vatican II was to encourage local ecumenical dialogues; few were as substantive and long running as the series of dialogues between Lutheran and Roman Catholics from 1965 to 1990, over a series of topic. This is a summary discussion of those discussions and their decisions. From Compilation of the results of Lutheran–Roman Catholic dialogues in the United States by Eric Lund. Since Vatican II there has been an active Lutheran–Catholic dialogue in which teams of theologians in the US discuss the distinctive teachings of their church traditions in order to promote deeper understanding. The following are some of the results of this dialogue: In 1965, the churches issued a document on “The Status of the Nicene Creed as Dogma of the Church” which noted that both Lutherans and Catholics “confess in common the Nicene Faith and therefore hold that the Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, who was made man, suffered, died, and rose again for our salvation is true God.” In 1967, the theologians who represented the churches issued a document on “Baptism for the Remission of Sins” which stated that “the teachings of our respective teachings regarding baptism are in substantial agreement.” In 1967, the dialogue discussed “The Eucharist as Sacrifice.” This was a more difficult issue in light of what Luther said on this topic in his treatise on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church. However, in their joint statement the theologians reported that both church traditions agree that “in the Lord’s Supper Christ is present as the Crucified who died for our sins and who rose again for our justification as

the one-for-all sacrifice for the sins of the world.” Regarding the dispute over whether the church “offers Christ” in the Mass, both traditions now affirm that the sacrifice of the cross is unrepeatable but that “the members of the body of Christ are united through Christ with God and with one another in such a way that they become participants in his worship, his self-offering, his sacrifice to the Father.” The Catholic Church still accepts the validity of private masses celebrated by priests for the sake of other people who may not be present, and particularly for the dead, but the Second Vatican Council declared that “the communal way of celebrating is to be preferred to individual or quasi-private celebrations.” On the issue of how Christ is present in the Eucharist, the theologians also felt that they had come closer together. Traditionally, Lutherans believed that there was a sacrament union of the believer with the body and blood of Christ that did not involve a transformation of the bread and wine, while Catholics talked about the annihilation of the bread and wine after the consecration. Today Catholic theologians are more open to talking about a sacrament change that involves no change in “the chemical, physical or botanical reality of the bread and wine.” Once the Lutheran theologians were convinced that, today, the Catholic notion of “transubstantiation” is not an attempt to explain “how” Christ becomes present, they were more open to the Catholic view, although they still prefer not to use the word “transubstantiation.” In 1970, the dialogue issued another document on “Eucharist and Ministry.” This concerned the status of the clergy and their role in validating the celebration of the sacraments, an issue which Luther addressed in the Appeal to the Christian Nobility and in other documents. The Catholic Church only recognizes as valid ministers those who have been ordained by the laying on of hands by bishops who are in an unbroken line of episcopal succession back to the apostles. (Among Lutherans, only the Swedish clergy can claim this type of apostolic succession.) The theologians could agree that there are various kinds of ministry and that there is a need for a “special ministry” carried out by clergy, although Lutherans still do not call ordination a “sacrament.” The Lutherans agreed that ordinarily the sacraments should be administered by the clergy, and the Catholics have since Vatican II shown greater appreciation for the “ministry” carried out by lay people. In 1974, the dialogue addressed another issue of church leadership in the document entitled “Papal

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

Primacy and the Universal Church.” The theologians from both sides agreed that promotion of unity among believers is a shared value and that a special responsibility for this might be entrusted to one individual minister (like the primacy of jurisdiction which the pope has exercised throughout western church history.) The Catholics clarified the point that the church’s teaching office (function of the pope) “is not above God’s Word.” In 1978, the dialogue published a document on “Teaching Authority and Infallibility in the Church” since a reconsideration of the role of the pope inevitably led to a discussion of the decision by the First Vatican Council in 1870 to declare the doctrine of papal infallibility (that when the pope speaks ex cathedra, as teacher of all Christians, what he defines concerning faith or morals is infallibly true). The Lutheran theologians were more open to the idea of “papal primacy” than to the notion of “papal infallibility.” They were willing to talk about the “indefectibility” of the church, the notion that the Spirit of God will insure that the church perseveres in its proclamation of the truth of the gospel. Since Vatican II, the Catholic tradition has put a renewed emphasis on the importance of the Bible, while the Lutherans have been more willing to acknowledge that tradition has also had a normative function for them—even while they claimed to be guided by “Scripture alone.” The Lutherans were also pleased by Vatican II’s new stress on “collegiality” or the sharing of responsibility for leadership between the pope and other bishops. Further discussion of the “papal infallibility” question was complicated by the fact that the Catholic theologians did not agree among themselves about how this doctrine should be interpreted. In 1985, the dialogue published its first consensus on the doctrine of Justification that led to the 1997 Joint Declaration on Justification. In 1990, the dialogue’s discussion of Mary and the Saints led to Lutheran acknowledgement that Catholic teaching on Mary and the saints as set forth at Vatican II “does not promote idolatrous belief or practice and is not opposed to the Gospel.” The Catholic theologians also stated that the Lutherans would not oblige them to affirm the Marian doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption as a condition for continuing the quest of closer fellowship.

413

512. LUTHERAN CHURCH MISSOURI SYNOD STATEMENT ON ECUMENISM (1991) Not all Lutheran churches have been eager participants in ecumenical ventures, and more conservative groups, such as the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod have insisted on a very detailed level of doctrinal agreement before fellowship is possible. Their aim is to avoid “unionism” or “syncretism,” which is fellowship without doctrinal agreement. From “Inter-Christian Relationships: An Instrument for Study, Commission on Theology and Church Relations of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, February 1991,” at http://www.lcms.org/ctcr/lutherans-and-otherchristians. D. Fidelity to God’s truth involves the avoidance of both unionism and separatism. Throughout our synodical history, the attempt to be faithful to God’s truth has led us to recognize that it is necessary to follow a policy of “separation” from Christians whose doctrine is persistently contrary to Holy Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions. To be sure, the passages of Scripture which command such separation from certain persons, teachings, and practices cannot be applied easily or automatically to many contemporary situations. However, such texts clearly articulate the principle that it is the will of God himself that his people avoid those whose false teachings and/or separatistic, schismatic, and factious activities attack the Gospel and our Christian faith or confession. For this reason, we have believed it necessary to remain apart from a number of other Christian groups or activities, even as we are to admonish those contentious persons among us “who constantly seek to ‘expose’ the error of others, and so incite quarrels and division among us.” By the same token, we have found it necessary to remind ourselves from time to time that the biblical principle of separation is quite different from separatism. The former is an avoidance based on Scriptural reasons, while separatism is an avoidance of other Christians without adequate Scriptural foundation. Separation may be necessary for the sake of God’s truth, but separatism sins against love and divides the church. When practical questions arise in the area of inter-Christian relationships, it is therefore imperative that the Christian community exercise due caution and restraint before invoking the principle of separation. And in every case, such sepa-

414

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ration is not a first approach but a last resort that follows appropriate fraternal admonition. Closely related has been the Synod’s longstanding concern to repudiate what we have called unionism. As an ecclesiastical term, unionism came into use in connection with efforts in Prussia to effect a union of Lutheran and Reformed churches in 1817. That union was to be accomplished by declaring the doctrines which divided the two confessions to be differences in nonessentials. Our synodical founders rejected unionism and its infringement of the Gospel. Because this term and the related term syncretism identified efforts to achieve or reflect union without the removal of doctrinal differences, this terminology was also used by our synodical fathers to condemn similar efforts at union short of full doctrinal agreement. To this day, Article VI of the synodical Constitution makes the “renunciation of unionism and syncretism of every description” one of the conditions for acquiring and holding membership in the Synod. In the course of synodical history, the term unionism was broadened to apply to various forms of worship and work carried out by Christians who were not wholly agreed in doctrine and practice. The 1932 Brief Statement of the Synod states, “We repudiate unionism, that is, church fellowship with the adherents of false doctrine, as disobedience to God’s command, as causing divisions in the Church . . . and as involving the constant danger of losing the Word of God entirely. “From time to time, individuals in the Synod have expanded the meaning of the term to include several types of joint ecclesiastical activity, including joint public prayer with other Christians. What, may we ask, is the precise meaning of the terminology employed in Article VI of the Constitution of the Synod? Article VI states that “renunciation of unionism and syncretism of every description” is one of the conditions for acquiring and holding membership in the Synod. As one specific example of such unionism and syncretism, Article VI identifies “taking part in the services and sacramental rites of heterodox congregations or of congregations of mixed confession.” It is the conviction of the Synod that such actions violate the Biblical truth principle by implying either that doctrinal differences do not exist or that they are unimportant. Deliberate failure to observe this constitutional position breaks our synodical agreement with one another, confuses our common witness, creates discord among us, and is a stumbling block to the Gospel. Some key words in this article should be carefully noted, however. Unionism and syncretism, as

explained above, designate doctrinal indifference and/or compromise in the practice of church fellowship with the adherents of false doctrine. These terms do not refer to every joint Christian activity. Heterodox congregations are those whose doctrinal position is contrary to Holy Scripture, as demonstrated either by their own official statements or by their uncritical identification with and acceptance of such a doctrinal position officially held by the church body to which they belong. Congregations of mixed confession refer to those who officially subscribe to both the Lutheran confessional writings and to non-Lutheran doctrinal statements or positions. Services and sacramental rites refer primarily to the regular and official public and corporate worship services of such congregations. Taking part in such services and rites refers both to the conducting of worship services or portions thereof by pastors and to the official sponsorship or involvement of congregations as such in worship services, as distinguished from the occasional attendance by individuals of the Synod at the services of heterodox denominations (such as weddings or funerals). Membership refers to the status of congregations, pastors, teachers, and deaconesses who have formally signed the Constitution of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Technically, it does not refer to the baptized and communicant members of synodical congregations. In summary, because of the variations in understanding and defining unionism within the Synod, it may be useful to focus on the meaning of the term in its original historical context and its usage in official documents of the Synod. Properly understood, unionism does not describe various forms of joint Christian activity per se. Rather, its essence is church fellowship with the adherents of false doctrine, and it entails doctrinal indifference and/or compromise. As such, the condemnation of unionism has been and remains an important application of the truth principle because it bids us to examine proposed practices and alliances in terms of whether they entail doctrinal indifference, compromise, or the practice of church fellowship without prior agreement in Biblical doctrine. 513. THE PORVOO AGREEMENT (1992) As a result of many years of conversation and interim agreements, Scandinavian Lutheran church and the Anglican Churches of Great Britain and Ireland concluded the Porvoo Agreement in 1992, establishing full communion relations between these churches.

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

From Sven Oppegaard and Gregory Cameron, eds., Anglican–Luther Anglican–Lutheran an Agr greements: eements: Reg Regional ional and International Agr greements, eements, 1972–2002 (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 2004), 145–73. Chapter IV – Episcopacy in the service of the apostolicity of the Church 34. There is a long-standing problem about episcopal ministry and its relation to succession. At the time of the Reformation all our churches ordained bishops (sometimes the term superintendent was used as a synonym for bishop) to the existing sees of the Catholic Church, indicating their intention to continue the life and ministry of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church . . . In the last one hundred years all our churches have felt a growing need to overcome this difficulty and to give common expression to their continuous participation in the life of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. 35. Because of this difficulty we now set out at greater length and understanding of the apostolicity of the whole Church and within that the apostolic ministry, succession in the episcopal office and the historic succession as a sign. All of these are interrelated. 55. By the far-reaching character of our agreement recorded in the previous paragraphs it is apparent that we have reached a new stage in our journey together in faith. We have agreed on the nature and purpose of the church (Chapter II), on its faith and doctrine (Chapter III), specifically on the apostolicity of the whole Church, on the apostolic ministry within it, and on the episcopal office in the service of the Church (Chapter IV). 56. On the basis of this agreement we believe that our churches should confidently acknowledge one another as churches and enter in to a new relationship; that each church as a whole has maintained an authentic apostolic succession of witness and service; that each church has had transmitted to it an apostolic ministry of word and sacrament by prayer and the laying on of hands; that each church has maintained an orderly succession of episcopal ministry within the continuity of its pastoral life, focused in the consecrations of bishops and in the experience and witness of the historic sees. 57. In the light of all this we find that the time has come when all our churches can affirm together the value and use of the sign of the historic episcopal succession. This means that those churches in which the sign has at some time not been used are free to recog-

415

nise the value of the sign and should embrace it without denying their own apostolic continuity. This also means that those churches in which the sign has been used are free to recognise the reality of the episcopal office and should affirm the apostolic continuity of those churches in which the sign of episcopal succession has at some time not been used. A – Joint Declaration 58. We recommend that our churches jointly make the following Declaration: a. we acknowledge: i. one another’s churches as churches belonging to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ and truly participating in the apostolic mission of the whole people of God; ii. that in all our churches the Word of God is authentically preached, and the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist are duly administered; iii. that all our churches share in the common confession of the apostolic faith; iv. that one another’s ordained ministries are given by God as instruments of his grace and as possessing not only the inward call of the Spirit, but also Christ’s commission through his Body, the Church; v. that personal, collegial and communal oversight (episcope) is embodied and exercised in all our churches in a variety of forms, in continuity of apostolic life, mission and ministry; vi. that the episcopal office is valued and maintained in all our churches as a visible sign expressing and serving the Church’s unity and continuity in apostolic life, mission and ministry. b. We commit ourselves: i. to share a common life in mission and service, to pray for and with one another, and to share resources; ii. to welcome one another’s members to receive sacramental and other pastoral ministrations; iii. to regard baptized members of all our churches as members of our own; iv. to welcome diaspora congregations into the life of the indigenous churches, to their mutual enrichment; v. to welcome persons episcopally ordained in any of our churches to the office of bishop, priest or deacon to serve, by invitation and in accordance with any regulations which may from time to time be in force, in that ministry in the receiving church without re-ordination; vi. to invite one another’s bishops normally to par-

416

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ticipate in the laying on of hands at the ordination of bishops as a sign of the unity and continuity of the Church; vii. to work towards a common understanding of diaconal ministry; viii. to establish appropriate forms of collegial and conciliar consultation on significant matters of faith and order, life and work; ix. to encourage consultations of representatives of our churches, and to facilitate learning and exchange of ideas and information in theological and pastoral matters; 514. LUTHERANS AND RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE IN AFRICA (1996) Ecumenical and inter-religious conversations in Africa and Asia take place in a quite different context than those in Europe and North America. Here an African theologian describes the nature of these questions in his context, divided between various groups of Christians, Muslims, and those who practice traditional African religions. From Emmanuel O. Oyelade, “Interfaith Dialogue and the Witness of the Church in the Multifaith Context of Africa,” in Hance A.O. Mwakabana, ed., Relig Religious ious Plur Pluralism alism in Africa: Challeng Challengee and Response (Geneva: Department for Theology & Studies, Lutheran World Federation, 1996), 61–72. Interfaith Dialogue I intend in this discussion to limit myself to Africa south of the Sahara, i.e., Black Africa. This is because it is in this region that the adherents of the three religions—traditionalists, Muslims and Christians—live together and face common plights such as famine, diseases, poverty, war, political and economic struggles. In this region, people of various religious ideologies find themselves together by divine design. . . But what is the nature of the witness of the church within this pluralistic context? For, in the view of the African churches in the region under consideration, to limit dialogue to sociopolitical activities can only be a lesser side of the church’s mission. The bigger aspiration is how to fulfill God’s will through the witness of the church. The churches also see their tasks in enabling people to get reconciled with God and their fellow human beings. Both these aspects require the witness of the church.

In the African church context, witnessing is not a process of confronting the community with a “do or die” choice. Rather, it is an advertisement of what God is doing in the midst of his people and what the church should be doing in honor of their Lord and Master, who, through humility, “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.” The word “witness” is therefore the central task of church mission. In this mission, the church, through the direction of the Holy Spirit and the teachings of the Scriptures, is also commissioned to advertise what God plans to do with his obedient and disobedient servants. As Clinton Bennet rightly said, “Mission, I believe, is sharing God’s love, with individuals, with communities, with institutions, in short with the whole family of humankind and beyond, taking on board the WCC’s call for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation—to the whole created order, to the ‘cosmos’ for which the Christ of John 3:16 died.” Bennet also included in his idea of mission the word “diakonia” or service which includes the many service activities historically associated with Christian mission—in hospitals, schools, development and aid programs. It is, however, sad to note that some of these traditional services of witness through mission, though persistent in some countries, are presently regarded by some nationalists as “adversaries” of the African self-reliance effort; they see these activities as remnants of colonialism. Muslim fundamentalists criticized the “conversion obsession” of the promoters of these establishments. In several countries, the result is the rise of anti-missionary movements forcing governments to “take over” these establishments and limit the admission of foreign missionaries. This notwithstanding, the church is commissioned to witness—a task that must be done! But what is the nature and scope of this witness? I like to use the word “defense” as an advertisement or witness model, in respect of God’s acts in history and the church’s faith commitments. But this defense is an objective demonstration of the church’s involvements in the affairs of the society where it is established. The impetus for this defense is however not “self-interest,” as the task of the lawyer is, it is “self-giving,” because of our love for the people and our gratitude for God’s outpouring of the Holy Spirit who sustains and enriches the church. It is important to remember that the “self-giving” activities of Christian witness are rooted in the fact that the church itself is a witness of the divine intervention in human history. This intervention is demonstrated by the realities of the cross, the Res-

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

urrection, and the Christians’ faith commitment to the commands of their Lord. In addition, the church is also a witness to the activities of the Holy Spirit who is moving all things to the end of God’s will at the “end-time.” This is based on the Christian worldview “that the kingdom of God has already come in Jesus’ life and is busy coming through the work of the Holy Spirit, and will come in its fullness at Christ’s second coming. . . .” Dialogue conferences become immensely useful when the outcome of the deliberations are well publicized to reach everyone, from the top to the grassroots in society, and do not remain in the libraries only. To achieve this, all available media should be employed to advertise the witness and defense of the church. At local level, the church should establish fora for the “in-community” interfaith dialogue. Departments for interfaith dialogue should be established in every country, and in large countries such as Nigeria, in every State. The time has come for the church to increase its labor-promoting institutions which are to train the young people of the interfaith community; these will become the foundation for a new labor culture. Institutions such as trade schools, agricultural schools, administrative and engineering schools, are some of Africa’s greatest needs today. The church must remember that whatever is done in the name of Christ is witnessing. The sacrifice must be made and God must be glorified.

417

during the fifteen years of dialogue at the world level. But it was of course preceded by a number of regional common statements. In 1992, the results of the American Lutheran–Orthodox dialogue from 1983 to 1989 were published. Among the many dialogues of the Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD), the fifth round of conversations with the Romanian Orthodox Church (1988) was fruitful in that it produced the document “Justification and Glorification (Theosis) of the Human Person through Jesus Christ.”

515. LUTHERAN–ORTHODOX DIALOGUES (1998) Lutherans in Finland, the Baltic States, and Eastern Europe have had a special interest in theological discussions with their counterparts in the Orthodox branch of Christianity. Here a Finnish Lutheran scholar reflects on the accomplishments of these discussions. From Risto Saarinen, “Salvation in the Lutheran–Orthodox Dialogue: A Comparative Perspective,” in Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpr Interpretation etation of Luther (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 167–81. At its eighth meeting in Limassol, Cyprus, in August 1995, the Lutheran–Orthodox Joint Commission adopted a common statement called “Understanding of Salvation in the Light of the Ecumenical Councils.” This is the first soteriological statement

Fig. 12.2. Risto Saarinen

Already in the 1970s the Finnish Lutheran Church, however, in its conversations with the Russian Orthodox Church, adopted a number of soteriological statements that compare the Lutheran doctrine of justification with the Orthodox view of deification (theosis). Especially after the English publication of the results of the Finnish–Russian dialogue, other regional conversations have made both explicit and implicit use of them. . . .

418

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

A First Attempt at the World Level: Limassol 1995 Although the regional documents no doubt are a valuable resource, one cannot apply their results without further considerations at the global level. Since the Lutheran delegation is appointed by the Lutheran World Federation, it only includes persons from its member churches. The role of the EKD thus remains somewhat unclear. A greater practical problem, however, is that the Church of Greece is not a partner in any of the regional documents mentioned above. Moreover, the long dialogue between the EKD and the Patriarchate of Constantinople has not been able to produce any common theses on salvation. Since at the global level the Orthodox delegation consists of the members of the Orthodox churches in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch, and since the role of Greek theologians is therefore quite strong, the statements of regional dialogues outside of Greece have only a limited significance. A careful reconsideration of all the central issues is needed. During the first twelve years of its work (1981–1993), the Joint Commission worked mainly with the problem of Scripture and tradition. After that, the Limassol statement is the first attempt at a common expression of soteriology at the global level. The statement first describes extensively the doctrines of the Seven Ecumenical Councils. In doing so it follows the practice of the earlier dialogue results of the Joint Commission, in which it was concluded that the doctrines of these councils are authoritative for both confessions. The second part of the document is titled “Justification and Glorification as Descriptions of Salvation”; in it we find the first attempts toward convergence. Salvation is described in terms of the victory of Christ over sin: “ . . . salvation in both the Old and New Testaments is our liberation from slavery to sin, the devil and death, and our participation in the life of Christ, who destroyed death by death and gives life to those in the tomb. In this context justification (dikaiosis) is liberation from the dominion of the devil and the restoration of our communion with God. Those who are justified are glorified (Rom. 8:30) in the Body of Christ” (para. 6). In the EKD–Romanian dialogue, “glorification” (Verherrlichung) is understood as synonymous with deification. In my view, the same is true in the Limassol Statement, although the identification of the two notions is not entirely unproblematic. The

use of Romans 8:30 establishes a biblical link between justification and glorification; this link enables the dialogue partners to employ both notions together. The document then continues: “By baptism and participation in the other mysteries (sacraments) of the church, the faithful are raised to a new life of righteousness in Christ, together with all the prophets and saints of the Old and New Testaments. God gives them, in the Holy Spirit, the power to pass through purification and illumination of the heart and arrive ‘with all the saints’ (Eph 3:18) at glorification (Matt 17:2; John 17:22; 2 Cor 3:18; 2 Pet 1:4) (para. 6).” The use of the triad purification-illumination-glorification here is new for Lutherans. In view of the regional dialogues, this vocabulary is not the only way to express the Orthodox doctrine, but in the Limassol Statement the Orthodox position is defined (para. 8) in terms of exactly these three notions. “Illumination” is there identified with justification. The biblical verses added to clarify the notion of glorification in paragraph 6 above reflect primarily the Orthodox understanding of the concept. On the one hand they lay out the New Testament roots of the idea of glorification, but on the other hand they are open to different interpretations. As to the Lutheran understanding of this idea, one must keep in mind the regional dialogues in which the Lutherans have been able to affirm the “issue” of deification in spite of terminological problems. This affirmation is here repeated. The Lutheran description of salvation (para. 9), while affirming sola fide and the forensic declaration of righteousness, also employs the notions of participation and the presence of Christ in faith, which in regional dialogues have offered useful convergences: “Justification is a real participation in Christ, true God and true human being. In the church, the believer by faith participates in Christ and all his gifts, and so has a share in the divine life. The presence of Christ in faith genuinely effects the righteousness of Christ in us and leads believers to the sanctification of their lives” (para. 9). While sanctification is admitted, it is in this paragraph considered an aspect and effect of justification rather than a distinct reality. While the Lutheran side is thus offering connections to the language employed at the regional dialogues, the common affirmations remain rather vague. In addition to the above-quoted paragraph 6, both sides only affirm together (para. 10) a general importance of the ecumenical councils that “provide guidelines for the purification and illumination of the heart to glorification in Christ for the salvation and

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

justification of humanity.” This statement is hardly more than an additive list of salvific notions. The last paragraph (11) says that these notions need to be explored further. Salvation in the Lutheran–Orthodox Dialogue Conclusions Compared with the important convergences reached in the regional dialogues, the new document of the Lutheran–Orthodox Joint Commission remains very general. One must keep in mind, however, that during its twenty-five years of dialogue with the Ecumenical Patriarchate (1969–1994), the EKD was never able to draft any common doctrinal statements with Constantinople. The Lutheran World Federation has at least succeeded in doing this. Another positive feature from the Lutheran perspective is that the description of justification (para. 9) is very unambiguous and at the same time compatible with the results of the regional dialogues and with dialogues with other confessions. Perhaps the rationale to be drawn from this short comparison of some recent statements is that much of the most important theological and ecumenical work is done at the regional level. Regional dialogues can take initiatives and develop new approaches to the dividing issues, whereas the dialogue at the world level often does not have the same amount of intellectual and spiritual flexibility. In the case of the Lutheran–Orthodox dialogue on salvation a number of important convergences have been discovered and mutually shared in the regional dialogues. In the course of time they may be elaborated, modified, and received in the global dialogue as well. 516. OPPONENTS TO CALLED TO COMMON MISSION (1999) Not all members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America approved of the Called to Common Mission agreement with the Episcopal Church (see doc. #423). Opposition to CCM centered on the provisions in the documents that mandated changes to the ELCA, especially concerning changes to the office of bishop and the adoption of the Historic Episcopate. From Nancy Koester, “A Conference and A Resolution on Called to Common Ministry,” dialog: A Journal of Theology 38, no. 2 (Spring, 1999): 150–51.

419

“On Feb. 8–9, 1999, a national conference, “Upholding Lutheran Confessions,” was held at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi, Minnesota. The purpose of the conference was to create an alternative proposal to Called to Common Mission. The conference was organized by Roger Eigenfeld, senior pastor of St. Andrew’s. After the conference, Eigenfeld stated, “If our goal is mission, we need to get about that business and not impose the historic episcopate, which denies the validity of our ordained pastoral ministry.” Speakers at the conference included former LCA leader Robert Marshall, former ALC leader David Preus, former bishop Lowell Erdahl, and several ELCA college and seminary faculty. The conference was attended by people from many parts of the U.S., including lay people and clergy, four bishops, and several faculty members of ELCA schools. Small group work sessions allowed for discussion and writing of alternative proposals, which were then further refined by a drafting team and presented to the entire conference. Said pastor Eigenfeld, “Many spoke enthusiastically not only about opposing CCM, but also about working together positively with our Episcopal brothers and sisters.” The conference was a forum for those who want both a strong Lutheran identity and a broader ecumenism than would be possible under CCM. The conference brochure gave the following rationale: “Efforts to include the ‘historic episcopate’ in proposals leading to greater cooperation with the Episcopal Church continue. There are many of us, however, who simply cannot accept this change in the theological stance of the ELCA as appropriate, doctrinally sound, or theologically grounded. Since the days of the Reformation the Lutheran Church has declared, with joy, that the only essentials necessary are that the Word be faithfully proclaimed and that the Sacraments be rightly administered. In an attempt to offer an alternative proposal to synod conventions and, eventually, the ELCA convention in Denver, an invitation is extended to you to join others in creating a new proposal which is faithful to historic Lutheran practice and accomplishes the goal of furthering cooperative mission and ministry with other denominations with whom we share the zeal and fervor to ‘Go and tell the whole world!’ If, out of conscience you agree that neither the Scriptures nor the Lutheran Confessions demand the acceptance of the historic episcopate . . . and . . . if you agree that the ordination vows taken by our Lutheran pastors are already valid and complete without the addition of the historic episcopate or any one-time dispensa-

420

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

tional nod for those already ordained, then we invite you to join us in creating a ‘new’ grassroots proposal that is faithful to Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions.” The two-day conference produced the following resolution, for wide use in synod assemblies leading up to the August 1999 Churchwide Assembly in Denver: Resolution Whereas: We affirm our commitment to the mission and ecumenical mandate given by our Lord that “all may be one” (John 17:12). In affirming such we rejoice in the unity we share with our sisters and brothers of The Episcopal Church USA; and Whereas we Lutherans confess that “It is sufficient for the true unity of the Christian church that the Gospel be preached in conformity with a pure understanding of it and that the sacraments be administered in accordance with the divine Word. It is not necessary for the true unity of the Christian church that ceremonies, instituted by men, should be observed uniformly in all places. It is as Paul says in Eph. 4:4–5, ‘There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism.’” (Augsburg Confession Article 7) Whereas: The document “Called to Common Mission” (Nov. 1998) declares that the ELCA asserts that the historic episcopate is not necessary (CCM 18), it nevertheless requires that we adopt the historic episcopate as a condition for fellowship with the Episcopal Church USA, thereby in reality asserting that it is necessary, therefore be it Resolved that the (congregation, conference, synod) recommend that the 1999 Churchwide Assembly reject the document “Called to Common Mission,” and Be it further resolved that we reaffirm our commitment to continue to work together with our Episcopal neighbors in common faith and mission, gathering at the Lord’s Table and sharing in each other’s ministry which is our practice under the guidelines of the Interim Agreement for Eucharistic Sharing (1982) between our two churches; and Be it further resolved that we acknowledge the ordination of Episcopal clergy, and welcome them to serve in ELCA parishes or pastoral positions, preaching and teaching in a manner that is consistent with the ELCA’s “Confession of Faith” as written in Chapter Two of the Constitution, Bylaws and Continuing Resolutions of the ELCA.

517. JOINT DECLARATION ON THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION (1999) After decades of doctrinal discussion, Lutherans and Roman Catholics turned to one of the most contentious questions that divided them, the doctrine of Justification. This document, negotiated between the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church attempts to clarify these questions and bring the two groups closer in their understanding of this doctrine. From The Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church, Joint Decr Decree ee on the Doctrine of Justification (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 9–39.

Fig. 12.3. The Joint Declaration on the Doctine of Justification, 1999. Two sets of documents were presented for signing at the ceremony. One set is for the LWF and the other is for the Vatican. The first to sign were President Krause, left, and Cardinal Cassidy.

1. The doctrine of justification was of central importance for the Lutheran Reformation of the sixteenth century. It was held to be the “first and chief article” and at the same time the “ruler and judge over all other Christian doctrines.” The doctrine of justification was particularly asserted and defended in its Reformation shape and special valuation over against the Roman Catholic Church and theology of that time, which in turn asserted and defended a doctrine of justification of a different character. From the Reformation perspective, justification was the crux of all the disputes. Doctrinal condemnations were put forward both in the Lutheran Confessions and by the Roman Catholic Church’s Council of Trent. These condemnations are still valid today and thus have a church-dividing effect. 5. The present Joint Declaration has this intention: namely, to show that on the basis of their dialogue

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

the subscribing Lutheran churches and the Roman Catholic Church are now able to articulate a common understanding of our justification by God’s grace through faith in Christ. It does not cover all that either church teaches about justification; it does encompass a consensus on basic truths of the doctrine of justification and shows that the remaining differences in its explication are no longer the occasion for doctrinal condemnations. 14. The Lutheran churches and the Roman Catholic Church have together listened to the good news proclaimed in Holy Scripture. This common listening, together with the theological conversations of recent years, has led to a shared understanding of justification. This encompasses a consensus in the basic truths; the differing explications in particular statements are compatible with it. 15. In faith we together hold the conviction that justification is the work of the triune God. The Father sent his Son into the world to save sinners. The foundation and presupposition of justification is the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ. Justification thus means that Christ himself is our righteousness, in which we share through the Holy Spirit in accord with the will of the Father. Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works. 16. All people are called by God to salvation in Christ. Through Christ alone are we justified, when we receive this salvation in faith. Faith is itself God’s gift through the Holy Spirit who works through word and sacrament in the community of believers and who, at the same time, leads believers into that renewal of life which God will bring to completion in eternal life. 17. We also share the conviction that the message of justification directs us in a special way towards the heart of the New Testament witness to God’s saving action in Christ: it tells us that as sinners our new life is solely due to the forgiving and renewing mercy that God imparts as a gift and we receive in faith, and never can merit in any way. 18. Therefore the doctrine of justification, which takes up this message and explicates it, is more than just one part of Christian doctrine. It stands in an essential relation to all truths of faith, which are to be seen as internally related to each other. It is an indispensable criterion which constantly serves to orient all the teaching and practice of our churches to Christ. When Lutherans emphasize the unique sig-

421

nificance of this criterion, they do not deny the interrelation and significance of all truths of faith. When Catholics see themselves as bound by several criteria, they do not deny the special function of the message of justification. Lutherans and Catholics share the goal of confessing Christ in all things, who alone is to be trusted above all things as the one Mediator (1 Tim 2:5f) through whom God in the Holy Spirit gives himself and pours out his renewing gifts. 4. Explicating the Common Understanding of Justification 4.1 Human Powerlessness and Sin in Relation to Justification 19. We confess together that all persons depend completely on the saving grace of God for their salvation. The freedom they possess in relation to persons and the things of this world is no freedom in relation to salvation, for as sinners they stand under God’s judgment and are incapable of turning by themselves to God to seek deliverance, of meriting their justification before God, or of attaining salvation by their own abilities. Justification takes place solely by God’s grace. Because Catholics and Lutherans confess this together, it is true to say: 20. When Catholics say that persons “cooperate” in preparing for and accepting justification by consenting to God’s justifying action, they see such personal consent as itself an effect of grace, not as an action arising from innate human abilities. 21. According to Lutheran teaching, human beings are incapable of cooperating in their salvation, because as sinners they actively oppose God and his saving action. Lutherans do not deny that a person can reject the working of grace. When they emphasize that a person can only receive (mere passive) justification, they mean thereby to exclude any possibility of contributing to one’s own justification, but do not deny that believers are fully involved personally in their faith, which is effected by God’s Word. 4.3 Justification by Faith and through Grace 25. We confess together that sinners are justified by faith in the saving action of God in Christ. By the action of the Holy Spirit in baptism, they are granted the gift of salvation, which lays the basis for the whole Christian life. They place their trust in God’s gracious promise by justifying faith, which includes hope in God and love for him. Such a faith

422

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

is active in love and thus the Christian cannot and should not remain without works. But whatever in the justified precedes or follows the free gift of faith is neither the basis of justification nor merits it. 26. According to Lutheran understanding, God justifies sinners in faith alone (sola fide). In faith they place their trust wholly in their Creator and Redeemer and thus live in communion with him. God himself effects faith as he brings forth such trust by his creative word. Because God’s act is a new creation, it affects all dimensions of the person and leads to a life in hope and love. In the doctrine of “justification by faith alone,” a distinction but not a separation is made between justification itself and the renewal of one’s way of life that necessarily follows from justification and without which faith does not exist. Thereby the basis is indicated from which the renewal of life proceeds, for it comes forth from the love of God imparted to the person in justification. Justification and renewal are joined in Christ, who is present in faith. 27. The Catholic understanding also sees faith as fundamental in justification. For without faith, no justification can take place. Persons are justified through baptism as hearers of the word and believers in it. The justification of sinners is forgiveness of sins and being made righteous by justifying grace, which makes us children of God. In justification the righteous receive from Christ faith, hope, and love and are thereby taken into communion with him. This new personal relation to God is grounded totally on God’s graciousness and remains constantly dependent on the salvific and creative working of this gracious God, who remains true to himself, so that one can rely upon him. Thus justifying grace never becomes a human possession to which one could appeal over against God. While Catholic teaching emphasizes the renewal of life by justifying grace, this renewal in faith, hope, and love is always dependent on God’s unfathomable grace and contributes nothing to justification about which one could boast before God (Rom 3:27). 4.7 The Good Works of the Justified 37. We confess together that good works—a Christian life lived in faith, hope and love—follow justification and are its fruits. When the justified live in Christ and act in the grace they receive, they bring forth, in biblical terms, good fruit. Since Christians struggle against sin their entire lives, this consequence of justification is also for them an obligation they must fulfill. Thus both Jesus and the apostolic

Scriptures admonish Christians to bring forth the works of love. 38. According to Catholic understanding, good works, made possible by grace and the working of the Holy Spirit, contribute to growth in grace, so that the righteousness that comes from God is preserved and communion with Christ is deepened. When Catholics affirm the “meritorious” character of good works, they wish to say that, according to the biblical witness, a reward in heaven is promised to these works. Their intention is to emphasize the responsibility of persons for their actions, not to contest the character of those works as gifts, or far less to deny that justification always remains the unmerited gift of grace. 39. The concept of a preservation of grace and a growth in grace and faith is also held by Lutherans. They do emphasize that righteousness as acceptance by God and sharing in the righteousness of Christ is always complete. At the same time, they state that there can be growth in its effects in Christian living. When they view the good works of Christians as the fruits and signs of justification and not as one’s own “merits,” they nevertheless also understand eternal life in accord with the New Testament as unmerited “reward” in the sense of the fulfillment of God’s promise to the believer. 518. OPPONENTS TO THE JOINT DECLARATION ON THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION (1999) Not all Lutheran theologians were convinced by the Joint Decree on the Doctrine of Justification. In this response to JDDJ, 165 German Lutheran theologians expressed their view that in fact no consensus had been reached on the issue, and that Lutheran concessions in the document imperiled the core Lutheran teachings on Justification. From “A Critical Response of German Theological Professors to the Joint Decr Decree ee on the Doctrine of Justification Justification,” trans. Oliver Olson. dialog dialog: A Journal of Theology 38, no. 1 (1999): 71–2. Mindful of their responsibility for theology and for the church, the under-signed professors of theology declare: I. Justification of the sinner only by faith, according to Protestant doctrine, establishes what is basic reality for Christian life and the life of the church. The doctrine, structure, and practice of the church are to be determined and judged by the doctrine of justification. Therefore the JDDJ cannot be limited

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

to one component of theology. To the contrary, justification has to do with what is basic, with the whole of theology, with the article about which “nothing ..... can be given up or compromised” (Smalcald Articles II, I), by which the church stands and falls. Consensus on the doctrine of justification, therefore, must (1) make evident that the truth of justification by faith alone has not been abridged, and (2) immediately affect the relationship between the consenting churches, so that they mutually recognize each other as the church of Jesus Christ and mutually recognize each other’s ministerial office of publicly proclaiming justification. II. Because the doctrine of justification has to do with the basis and the whole of Christian truth, we are sending this evaluation of the JDDJ to the synods and leadership of the Lutheran churches of Germany, which are currently debating the JDDJ. The JDDJ claims to establish “a consensus in the basic truths of the doctrine of justification” (#5) between Lutheran churches and the Roman Catholic Church. All remaining differences in this doctrine are to be considered to be variations “of language, theological elaboration, and emphasis” (#40). But the JDDJ presents no such consensus: a. No consensus has been reached concerning the theological insight, decisive for Lutheran churches, that justification by grace alone is rightly proclaimed only when it is made clear that (1) the God who deals with the sinner by grace alone justifies the sinner only through this Word and through sacraments administered according to his Word (Augsburg Confession 7), and (2) the sinner is justified by faith alone. b. No consensus has been reached concerning the theological insight, decisive for Reformation churches, that faith is the assurance of salvation. c. No consensus has been reached concerning the sinful nature of the one justified. d. No consensus has been reached concerning the importance of good works for salvation. e. Only an inadequate consensus has been reached concerning the relationship between law and gospel. f. Completely inadequate is the way the JDDJ uses the Old Testament. Nowhere does the JDDJ bring out how the Reformers held that the gospel of the justification of sinners is also clearly in the Old Testament. Indeed, the JDDJ gives the impression that the opposite is the case. g. No consensus has been reached concerning the function of the doctrine of justification as criterion for the doctrine and life of the church. Even though the JDDJ affirms that “Lutherans emphasize the

423

unique significance of this criterion” (#18) and that “Catholics see themselves as bound by several criteria” (#18), these statements are mutually exclusive. III. If Lutheran churches accept the claim by the JDDJ that it establishes a doctrinal consensus, this could be used as the norm for interpreting the Lutheran confessional writings. In the future the Lutheran Confessions would be interpreted according to a doctrine of grace which, although presenting justification “by grace alone,” does not include the basic Reformation insight that this gracious event takes place precisely and only through faith. Thus the Lutheran Confessions would be interpreted by a presupposition already refuted by the understanding of justification recovered at the Reformation. IV. At the same time communion with German churches that do not belong to the Lutheran World Federation would be jeopardized. The same is true for the Leuenberg fellowship, V. The consensus claimed by the JDDJ has no ecclesiological and practical consequences. Lutheran churches are not recognized as belonging to the church of Jesus Christ (footnote 9). Nor is their public ministry accepted as valid. Nor is there any effect on sacramental sharing. On the one hand, this brings out the significance of the fact that the Roman Catholic Church has other criteria for the life and teaching of the church besides the doctrine of justification (#18). On the other hand, this shows how the JDDJ is a building block in a larger ecumenical plan which is to lead to full recognition of Protestant Christianity by the Roman Catholic Church and full communion with it. According to this plan, after a series of doctrinal agreements Protestant ministers will be integrated into the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Only then will Protestant Christianity be recognized by Roman Catholics and communion fellowship be possible. VI. Protestant churches already welcome their Catholic fellow Christians to the Table of the Lord because the sacrament affirms that we are justified by faith alone. VII. On the basis of the concerns raised above, we urge that in its present form the JDDJ be rejected. If, however, the JDDJ is not rejected completely, at least Lutheran churches have to deny that the JDDJ represents “a consensus in the basic truths of the doctrine of justification.”

424

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

519. ON THE OBSERVANCE OF THE FIVE-HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE REFORMATION (2015) With the activities planned for this anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, some Lutherans and Catholics attempted to lay out the results of fifty years of dialogue, and to establish some guidelines for how this anniversary might be observed in light of these discussions. From Declar Declaration ation on the Way, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2015), 1–7.

Fig. 12.4. Kurt Cardinal Koch (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity), Bishop Dr. Munib Younan (LWF President), Pope Francis, and Rev. Dr. Martin Junge lead the Common Prayer in Lund Cathedral on October 31, 2016.

As Catholics and Lutherans, we have not yet achieved the goal of unity that is God’s gift in Christ and to which St. Basil calls us. Yet we have come a long distance from the disunity, suspicions, and even hostilities that characterized our relationships for generations. This Declaration on the Way (In Via) to unity seeks to make more visible the unity we share by gathering together agreements reached on issues of church, ministry, and eucharist. This Declaration, a distinctive kind of ecumenical text, is “on the way” because it is neither at the beginning nor the end of the journey toward unity. It identifies 32 statements where Lutherans and Catholics have consensus on matters regarding church, ministry, and eucharist, while recognizing also that not all differences on these doctrines have been reconciled at this time. This Declaration on the Way is not the result of another dialogue on these topics nor yet a declaration of full consensus on them. Rather, it harvests the results of 50 years of international and regional dialogues in the belief that now is the time to claim the unity achieved through these agreements, to establish

church practices that reflect this growth into communion, and to commit ourselves anew to taking the next steps forward. The doctrines of church, ministry, and eucharist suggest themselves for this Declaration for two principal reasons. Clearly, our differences concerning these doctrines are among the most significant issues we must address in order for us to grow in our real but imperfect communion. Moreover, the three issues are inseparably intertwined with one another. While there is already substantial agreement concerning the eucharist itself, full eucharistic communion depends also upon the mutual recognition of ministry, which is in turn dependent upon the recognition of each ecclesial community as truly apostolic. Thus, the teaching of both Catholics and Lutherans that recognizes imperfect communion between them supports a partial but real recognition of ministry. This Declaration demonstrates that cumulatively the global and regional Lutheran–Catholic dialogues have made significant progress in resolving our differences on these three core doctrines. Therefore, drawing upon the results of these dialogues, this Declaration commends 32 agreements on church, ministry, and eucharist for ecclesial recognition, and supplies supporting documentation for these agreements from ecumenical dialogues. Further, without any pretensions of being exhaustive, it identifies remaining differences and sketches some possible ways forward. Reception of the “Statement of Agreements” by the appropriate bodies of The Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church with a corresponding commitment to address the remaining questions will move us significantly forward on the way to full communion. Inspirations and Aspirations The inspirations and aspirations behind this Declaration on the Way are many. An important one is the December 2011 speech given by Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Seeking the next steps beyond the work of Harvesting the Fruits presented by Cardinal Walter Kasper in 2009, he noted the need to identify and receive the achievements of bilateral dialogues and to indicate ways forward for resolving remaining differences. Another significant inspiration is the 2012 document of the international Lutheran–Roman Catholic Commission on Unity, From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran–Catholic Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017. This Declara-

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

tion on the Way responds to two of the “ecumenical imperatives” with which the report concludes: 1. Catholics and Lutherans should always begin from the perspective of unity and not from the point of view of division in order to strengthen what is held in common even though the differences are more easily seen and experienced. 2. Lutherans and Catholics must let themselves continuously be transformed by the encounter with each other and by mutual witness of faith. ..... Why Now? Why now? Because among the faithful there is a “holy impatience” as they pray and long for clearer and deeper expressions of our unity in Christ. As The Lutheran World Federation General Secretary Martin Junge has said, the baptized are not only accountable to God for living out the unity given to them but accountable also to one another, “particularly to those who bear the costs of Christian separation.” Thus, ecumenical work must hold itself responsible not only for its “theological honesty, rigor and quest for truth but also for its urgency and its love.” Why now? Because when political and religious contexts are so often experienced as polarized, fragmented, and fearful of differences at all levels, we have the opportunity to witness the good news that “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away: see everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:17–18). Why now? Because through 50 years of theological dialogues, Catholics and Lutherans have shown repeatedly that we have the resolve and the capacity to address doctrines and practices that have kept us apart. Through our dialogues, we are renewed in our commitment to continue together on the way to full communion. . . . Why now? Because in 2017 we will commemorate the 500th anniversary of a reformation movement that began in deep divisions and now calls us to the continued work of reconciliation for the sake of the gospel and our witness and work in the world. Responding to the convergence of these considerations, the leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops convened a

425

theological task force in 2012 to develop this Declaration on the Way on the themes of church, ministry, and eucharist. Reception of the Statements of Agreement This Declaration on the Way is presented with the prayer that it be affirmed and received into our common life. It is hoped that Catholics and Lutherans at the highest level will receive formally the 32 statements of agreement it contains. It is recommended that together The Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity create a process to implement the Declaration of these agreements, confirming that there are no longer church-dividing differences with respect to them. Our journeying together on the way to full communion will also be sustained and renewed when Catholics and Lutherans strengthen their ties of common action at every level, wherever they gather in local communities for prayer, dialogue, and shared service in response to those who live in poverty and on the margins of society. You are invited to read this Declaration on the Way with an open mind and heart as together we seek to discern God’s will and to follow it in love. INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUES 520. ERNEST TROELTSCH ON THE QUESTION OF WORLD RELIGIONS (1923) In consideration of religions outside of Christianity, some key questions involve the issues of particularity and universality, especially how the various religions manifest the culture context of their founding and present realities. Troeltsch posed a real challenge to traditional claims that Christianity was the “absolute” religion. Ernest Troeltsch, “The Place of Christianity Among the World Religions,” in Owen Thomas, ed., Attitudes Towards Other Relig Religions: ions: Some Christian Interpr Interpretations etations (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 73–91. History cannot be regarded as a process in which a universal and everywhere similar principle is confined and obscured. Nor is it a continual mixing and remixing of elemental psychical powers, which indicate a general trend of things towards a rational end or goal of evolution. It is rather an immeasurable,

426

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

incomparable profusion of always-new, unique, and hence individual tendencies, welling up from undiscovered depths, and coming to light in each case in unsuspected places and under different circumstances. Each process works itself out in its own way, bringing ever-new series of unique transformations in its train, until its powers are exhausted, or until it enters as component material into some new combination. Thus the universal law of history consists precisely in this, that the Divine Reason, or the Divine Life, within history, constantly manifests itself in always-new and always-particular individualizations—and hence that its tendency is not toward unity or universality at all, but rather toward the fulfillment of the highest potentialities of each separate department of life. It is this law which, beyond all else, makes it quite impossible to characterize Christianity as the reconciliation and goal of all the forces of history, or indeed to regard it as anything else than a historical individuality. . . . The further investigations, especially into the history of Christianity, of which I have given the results in my Social Teachings, have shown me how thoroughly individual is historical Christianity after all, and how invariably its various phases and denominations have been due to varying circumstances and conditions of life. Whether you regard it as a whole or in its several forms, it is a purely historical, individual, relative phenomenon, which could, as we actually find it only have arisen in the territory of the classical culture, and among the Latin and Germanic races. The Christianity of the Oriental peoples—the Jacobites, Nestorians, Armenians, Abyssinians—is of quite a different type, indeed even that of the Russians is a world of its own. The inference from all that is, however, that a religion, in the several forms assumed by it, always depends upon the intellectual, social, and national conditions among which it exists. On the other hand, a study of the non-Christian religions convinced me more and more that their naive claims of absolute validity are also genuinely such. I found Buddhism and Brahminism especially to be really humane and spiritual religions, capable of appealing in precisely the same ways to the inner certitude and devotion of their followers as Christianity, though the particular character of each has been determined by the historical, geographical, and social conditions of the countries in which it has taken shape. . . . It is historical facts that have welded Christianity into the closest connection with the civilization of Greece, Rome and Northern Europe. All our thoughts and feelings are impregnated with Christ-

ian motives and Christian presuppositions; and conversely, our whole Christianity is indissolubly bound up with the elements of the ancient and modern civilizations of Europe. From being a Jewish sect Christianity has become the religion of all Europe. It stands or falls with European civilization; while, on its own part, it has entirely lost its Oriental character and has become Hellenized and westernized. . . . Its primary claim to validity is thus the fact that only through it have we become what we are, and that only in it can we preserve the religious forces that we need. Apart from it we lapse either into a selfdestructive titanic attitude, or into effeminate trifling, or into crude brutality. . . . We cannot live without a religion, yet the only religion that we can endure is Christianity, for Christianity has grown up with us and has become a part of our very being. . . . Christianity could not be the religion of such a highly developed racial group if it did not possess a mighty spiritual power and truth; in short, if it were not, in some degree, a manifestation of the Divine Life itself. The evidence we have for this remains essentially the same, whatever may be our theory concerning absolute validity—it is the evidence of a profound” inner experience. This experience is undoubtedly the criterion of its validity, but, be it noted, only of its validity for us. It is God’s countenance as revealed to us; it is the way in which, being what we are, we receive, and react to, the revelation of God. It is binding upon us and it brings us deliverance. It is final and unconditional tor us, because we have nothing else, and because in what we have we can recognize the accents of the divine voice. But this does not preclude the possibility that other racial groups, living under entirely different cultural conditions, may experience their contact with the Divine Life in quite a different way, and may themselves also possess a religion which has grown up with them, and from which they cannot sever themselves so long as they remain what they are. And they may quite sincerely regard this as absolutely valid for them, and give expression to this absolute validity according to the demands of their own religious feelings. . . . 521. NATHAN SÖDERBLOM ON THE QUESTION OF CONTINUING REVELATION (1933) For inter-religious dialogues, a key question for participants is the issue of the nature of God’s revela-

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

tion to humanity, and whether God’s revelation may be considered as continuing in the world, outside of the classical Biblical texts. Söderblom was Archbishop of the Church of Sweden and a scholar of world religions. From Nathan Söderblom, The Living God (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 350–55.

Fig. 12.5. Archbishop Nathan Söderblom

But that it is absurd to look upon God’s Revelation as finished with Christ or the Bible, is clearly shown by another question. Our question: ‘Does God continue to reveal himself to mankind?’ gives rise to another question. ‘Did God ever reveal himself to mankind?’ I am anxious to emphasize this question, which lurks behind our topic. It makes evident how impossible it is to realize and to maintain the conviction of a real Revelation of God without applying it also to the present time. Take somebody who does not believe in any working of God; take a man for whom the Living God does not exist; how are you to convince him of the existence of a God who has once revealed himself to mankind, if God does not reveal himself to that man as living and working his salvation? But there are pious people who believe in God, not only as a law and principle, or as a great all-per-

427

vading mystery, but as a Will, as Love, that has made itself known and perceptible to man, yet who consider that the Revelation in a proper sense was finished with Christ or with the Bible. The following survey strives to pursue the Christian thought of revelation as referring to a continued divine self-communication. This self-communication presents itself as a creating power and a saving will chiefly in three ways: (1) in Nature, (2) in History, (3) in Moral life; or (1) in genius as a part of nature, (2) in the continuity and aims of history, (3) in the individual’s regeneration and forming of character. As far as this continued revelation is taking place in Christianity, it is the continued action of the Christ, the Logos. The belief in his living power and the experience of the same is the common characteristic of all Christianity. Men of genius are appointed to be interpreters of God’s creation. Existence is difficult to understand, and often seems to be bitterly void of meaning. By their actions, their personalities, and their creations, the men of genius, and saints as the genius of unselfishness and love and patient suffering, help us to grasp the meaning of existence, not only, nay, not even chiefly as thinkers, but also as heroes, martyrs, saints, artists, poets. Their peculiar gifts point to a mysterious connection with creation itself. . . Carlyle’s desire that there should be a history of all heroisms means for me at the same time that there should be a history of God’s continued revelation. The important point is that our eyes should be opened that we may see the heroisms in our own time. They are concealed by violence and meanness, but they exist. These heroisms of our epoch equal the greatest moral splendour that history has ever witnessed. Deeper and farther than the statesmen go the heroes of religion. They have struggled and won, no, not won, but on their knees they have received as a gift a new certainty of the plan of God’s ways. They fought for their cause and for their age, but we, the many, profited by it. God was with them, and his Holy Spirit works through them. Let me analyze one such man. Melanchthon in a letter of 1537 characterized Martin Luther as a prophet sent by God. It is not strange that the sorrow felt at his death took strong expression. Dr. Jonas said in his funeral sermon at Eisleben that when the times had been at their worst, the greatest prophets and men of God had lived and passed away, and their death had always been followed by a severe and terrible punishment. Melanchthon in his discourse made use of the follow-

428

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ing words amongst others: It is not through human acuteness that the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins and of the belief in the Son of God has been discovered, but it has been revealed to us by God through this man, whom he has called.’ Several of the really great saints of Christendom reveal in their measure something of God’s own nature; they enable us to see how the Father of Jesus Christ lives and works until now. Of none of these, however, so far as my knowledge and judgement go, does this hold good in a higher degree than of Luther, whether one looks at the originality and the prophetic significance of his thoughts or at the vigour, force, and richness of his personality as a witness to the living nearness of God. With Christ, Socrates, Paul, to name the greatest of all—and also with those who are merely ‘puffed up with their own conceit’—he shared the consciousness of his own importance . . . No one who studies such men thoroughly can help recognizing in their words the perfect consciousness of their call, which characterizes the greatest among God’s inspired prophets; this knowledge did not render them self-sufficient but humble and obedient. Great men of genius when serving God consciously and with all their hearts belong to the saints. The doctrine of saints lost its importance in Evangelic theology when the cult of the saints was abolished in the name of the Gospel. In this matter I agree with the Roman Church and its theology in so far as the saints are Christian men and women who specially reveal the power of God. But divine power ought not to be assigned in a primitive way to extraordinary cases of suggestion. It ought not to be defined as a miracle, but be regarded in accordance with a Christian conception of God. . . . All forms of religion are united in a common group of phenomena, and this union corresponds to the prophetic and Christian belief in a divine selfcommunication also outside the ‘chosen people’ and Christendom. It may be difficult to decide what it is in a certain form of religion that constitutes its trait of revelation from a Christian point of view. And it becomes impossible if we employ an intellectualistic view. But a measure of revelation, i.e. of divine: selfcommunication, is present wherever we find religious sincerity. That has been expressly declared by the belief in revelation within and without Christianity. I have made an attempt to indicate the universal application of the belief in revelation as regards time. According to Christian conviction the divine self-

communication is for all ages valid and inexhaustible in the sacred history, in Christ’s own personality. But it is equally certain that belief in revelation cannot be maintained unless it is extended beyond the period of the Bible. 522. THEODORE LUDWIG ON LUTHERAN THEOLOGY AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE (1988) Some have questioned whether an openness to dialogue and the truth claims of other religions might be detrimental to the authority of Christian theological claims. Ludwig, who was a professor at Valparaiso University, here suggests that dialogues with other religious groups might in fact be a way to strengthen and deepen our understanding of traditional Lutheran theological positions. From Theodore Ludwig, “Some Lutheran Theological Reflections on Religious Pluralism,” J. Paul Rajashekar, ed. Relig Religious ious Plur Pluralism alism and Luther Lutheran an Theology (Geneva: The Lutheran World Federation, 1988), 142–55. . . . It is especially crucial to recognize that a doctrinal rule like sola gratia, a guide to making the offer of God’s grace in Christ, functions in an alien way when used as a standard of judgment on someone following a different religious path. Its proper function is to help us make sure we stay on the Christian path of grace, letting the gospel function to keep us from boasting and lording it over others. [George] Lindbeck has suggested that the doctrine of no salvation outside the church also means that there is no damnation outside the church. “One must, in other words, learn the language of faith before one can know enough about its message knowingly to reject it and thus be lost.” These principles must be embodied in concrete languages and practices of prayer, ritual, meditation, and the like. There is a Christian vocabulary, syntax, and semantics for embodying the sola gratia principle—in fact, this principle grew out of Christian experience in the first place. What might it really look like in another religion? How would we recognize it or even have a hunch about it without first getting inside that system and learning its vocabulary, syntax, and semantics? This is why our theology must be theology in dialogue, that is, theology done in close connection with a deep understanding and experience of these religions by which others live. Our theology needs to take note not just of the fact of religious pluralism

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

but of what is really happening in the concrete experience of those who live by other religions. . . Perhaps the best position for the present is a tentative position. We know God’s salvation in Christ; we do not know it for sure anywhere else. But what we know of God compels us to look for the complete divine activity wherever God is at work in the world—which, we confess, is among all peoples past and present. I think it is enough for the time being, until new understandings are developed, to put forth a simul theology of the religions that both confesses our certain knowledge of Christ and, acknowledging our limited knowledge of the mystery of God, leaves open the question of God’s saving activity in the other religions. We know salvation only in Christ through faith. We know, too, that God is at work as the complete God among the people who live by other religions, and therefore we can anticipate that they also know of God’s law and of God’s grace in ways that we do not yet comprehend. A stance of firm commitment to our own faith and mission together with an open expectancy with regard to the truth and value of other religions would seem to be possible as a tentative basis for theology in dialogue. This kind of attitude well befits what I really think is the heart of the Lutheran sensitivity, the theology of the cross. It allows us to respond and share in our real concrete situations of living together with people of many different religions. The theology of the cross helps us meet people where they really are, and that includes the three-fourths of the world’s people who live by other sacred stories. This stance certainly does not call for a lessening of our sense of mission and witness. In fact, it provides strong motivation. That would be the topic of another paper, however. The proposal is that authentic mission and witness are always done in a serving and responding posture—that is, in dialogue. Most of the poor and needy of the world, whom we are called to serve in terms of both bodily and spiritual needs, have their spiritual roots in other religious paths. A theology of the cross in dialogue would lead us to take their spiritual commitments seriously as we serve them and share our faith with them. And in the process—if we are serving and sharing, we are also receiving and listening—we will no doubt find new understandings of our traditional doctrines and also new images by which we can interpret Christ’s meaning in this new context. There is a risk in this kind of theology in dialogue, of course. Perhaps that is why some today speak so strongly about never giving up the key Christocentric principles. The risk is that our theology will

429

change and grow, finding new meanings and even new metaphors and principles that we have forgotten or perhaps not even known before. But there is also a risk in allowing theological principles to stagnate and not grow with the challenge of the new situation. Some of the most exciting periods of Christianity have been in such situations of encounter and transformation: the matrix of the New Testament world of Judaism and Hellenism; the confrontation with Greek and Roman philosophy; the encounter with the Eastern cultures that produced the distinctive vision of Eastern Christianity; the intra-Christian encounters that fomented the Reformation and Counter-Reformation; the experience in the new world, and so forth. The presence of people of other religions, with the real possibility of being in daily contact and dialogue with them, is a blessing from God for Christians today, giving us still another opportunity to serve and grow and be transformed into what we as yet only know dimly and tentatively. We can recover the posture of the pilgrim church, on the way, living in hope, sharing that hope with our neighbors of other religions, and receiving from them new depths of understanding of God’s saving ways. The theology of the cross is a theology in dialogue. 523. WOLFHART PANNENBERG ON THEOLOGY AND WORLD RELIGIONS (1990) Pannenberg, a German Lutheran theologian, attempts here to counter an approach to world religions that discounts doctrinal formulations in favor of a sociological approach. He suggests that it is possible to hold to Christian truth claims and still allow for the possibility of religious truth within other religious traditions. From Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Religious Pluralism and Conflicting Truth Claims: The Problem of a Theology of the World Religions,” Gavin D’Costa, ed., Christian Uniqueness Rec Reconsider onsidered ed (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990), 96–106. According to [John] Hick, “doctrines are secondary, and yet essential to the vital matter of receiving salvation, somewhat as packaging and labelling are secondary and yet essential to transmitting the contents of a parcel.” All this, of course, means that truth questions get relativized: They are “not of great religious . . . importance.” The only important thing seems to be the experience of salvation in the encounter with absolute reality. If so much is granted, then of course Hick is correct: “When I

430

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

meet a devout Jew, or Muslim, or Sikh, or Hindu, or Buddhist in whom the fruits of openness to the divine reality are gloriously evident, I cannot realistically regard the Christian experience of the divine as authentic and their non-Christian experiences as inauthentic.” If everything comes down to human experiences, then the obvious conclusion is to treat them all on the same level as so many “varied human responses to a transcendent divine Reality.” But unfortunately, the notion of salvation as presently available in terms of experiential transformation does not square with the biblical evidence. It has no basis in the New Testament usage of the term. When Jesus affirmed the presence of the kingdom in his exorcistic activity (Lk 11:20), the point was not so much the occurrence of exorcism as such, for there were other exorcists besides him. The point was that the exorcism was related to his message of the imminence of the kingdom and of its priority over all other concerns as well as to the faithful acceptance of that message. It claims that God is not some transcendent reality which human beings may experience and respond to in different ways. Rather, the claim is that the transcendent God is present in Jesus’ activity and that the appropriate response can only be faith. It is the truth of this message that is decisive soteriologically.” And that truth depends on God’s vindication of the claim involved in Jesus’ activity, a vindication that the disciples discerned in the Easter appearances of their Lord that, however, remains dependent on the final future of God. Considering the specific character of the Christian faith as based upon a historical past and related to an eschatological future of salvation, the truth claims of the Christian proclamation are at its basis, and the differences with other religions finally result from conflicting truth claims. A theology of the world religions that wants to be true to the empirical situation in the way the religious traditions confront each other must not evade or play down the conflict of truth claims. If we look to the history of religions in the past, there was always competition and struggle for superiority on the basis of different truth claims. Although claims of this broad kind cannot be easily judged once for all, they nevertheless admit provisional judgment in terms of whether a religious tradition continues to illumine the life of its adherents in the context of their world. In the case of encounter or confrontation between different religious cultures (or sometimes between different religious strands within one and the same culture) this means, whether a particular tradition proves superior in illuminating the peoples’ experiences of their life and world. The great

changes in the history of religions can largely be accounted for in this way. It is the encounter of conflicting truth claims that challenges each religious tradition to reaffirm itself in facing those challenges. That means to incorporate whatever one has to recognize as elements of truth in other traditions into one’s own faith. But it can never mean to give up on the specific truth claims of one’s own tradition. If that happens, it would precipitate the end of that religious tradition. Therefore, the advice of some promoters of a theology of religious pluralism to relativize and play down the Christian truth claims could prove disastrous. In order to engage in genuine inter-religious dialogue, Christianity should deal with the situation of religious pluralism in a different way. It must be open and ready to accept whatever truth the Christian can accept and learn from other religious traditions in order to incorporate those elements of truth into our own understanding of God and of his revelation. But that does not require relativizing the claim of the Christian faith to eschatological finality. Rather, this claim should produce an awareness of the provisional character of our present experience and knowledge to the effect that the Christian should be enabled to recognize his or her need for deeper insight, not least in a situation of encounter with other religious traditions. In dialogue with people from other religious traditions as well as in his or her own theology the Christian may recognize the face of Christ in some of the persons who follow other ways of religion. The Christian may also recognize the work of God’s providence in their lives and in the developments of their own tradition. This does not necessarily involve that those other persons be able to recognize that in their turn. If they did they might become baptized. As long as that does not occur, the situation of religious dialogue, as viewed from the Christian perspective, remains somewhat ambiguous. When a Hindu or Sikh prays to God, how can we know that in his intention it is the same God we worship? Even in the case of a pious Muslim this is not clear, because his way of turning to God is informed by his belief in Muhammad, although in part we share the same “cumulative tradition.” Is it nevertheless the same God? This is a question to be decided’ by God, not us. The same is true with regard to the religious life of the followers of those other ways. As Christians we can recognize with deep respect that many of them take the demands of their tradition more seriously than many Christians do. But does the religious transformation of their lives positively correspond to what the Christian hopes for as eschatological trans-

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

formation of our bodies by participation in the glory of God? There may be many forms of religious transformation, and some may look more similar to what we hope for than they are. Human experiences of salvation are as ambiguous as other human experiences. It all depends on whether there is communion with God, the God of Israel and of Jesus. Such communion is promised to Christians, provided they do not desert their faith. But even as they continue in faith they are assured of such communion in Christ in whom they trust, not in themselves as they can be looked upon in abstraction from Christ. When it comes to the basis of our Christian confidence in our future salvation, if the spiritual life that Christians experience among themselves remains ambiguous, how could it be less ambiguous in the case of the non-Christians? We may hope that God will look graciously upon them as we hope for ourselves. But one difference remains: The Christian has the promise of God in Christ. The other religious traditions do not provide that particular promise. 524. MARTIN LUTHER, LUTHERANS, AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE (1994) A long-standing difficulty in Lutheran–Jewish relations is certain anti-Jewish writings of Martin Luther, from the latter part of his career. This declaration by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America from 1994 repudiates these anti-Jewish writings, and offers hope of a better dialogue between these groups in the future. From “Declaration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to the Jewish Community” at http://www.elca.org/ecumenical/ interfaithrelations/jewish/declaration.html. The Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on April 18, 1994, adopted the following document as a statement on Lutheran–Jewish relations: In the long history of Christianity there exists no more tragic development than the treatment accorded the Jewish people on the part of Christian believers. Very few Christian communities of faith were able to escape the contagion of anti-Judaism and its modern successor, anti-Semitism. Lutherans belonging to the Lutheran World Federation and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America feel a special burden in this regard because of certain elements in the legacy of the reformer Martin Luther and the catastrophes, including the Holocaust of the twen-

431

tieth century, suffered by Jews in places where the Lutheran churches were strongly represented. The Lutheran communion of faith is linked by name and heritage to the memory of Martin Luther, teacher and reformer. Honoring his name in our own, we recall his bold stand for truth, his earthy and sublime words of wisdom, and above all his witness to God’s saving Word. Luther proclaimed a gospel for people as we really are, bidding us to trust a grace sufficient to reach our deepest shames and address the most tragic truths. In the spirit of that truth-telling, we who bear his name and heritage must with pain acknowledge also Luther’s anti-Judaic diatribes and the violent recommendations of his later writings against the Jews. As did many of Luther’s own companions in the sixteenth century, we reject this violent invective, and yet more do we express our deep and abiding sorrow over its tragic effects on subsequent generations. In concert with the Lutheran World Federation, we particularly deplore the appropriation of Luther’s words by modern anti-Semites for the teaching of hatred toward Judaism or toward the Jewish people in our day. Grieving the complicity of our own tradition within this history of hatred, moreover, we express our urgent desire to live out our faith in Jesus Christ with love and respect for the Jewish people. We recognize in anti-Semitism a contradiction and an affront to the Gospel, a violation of our hope and calling, and we pledge this church to oppose the deadly working of such bigotry, both within our own circles and in the society around us. Finally, we pray for the continued blessing of the Blessed One upon the increasing cooperation and understanding between Lutheran Christians and the Jewish community. 525. CARL BRAATEN : RELIGIOUS TRUTH CLAIMS AND GOD’S SALVATION (1995) American Lutheran theologian Carl Braaten argues for caution in questions of inter-religious dialogue and religious truth claims. While he admits that God’s revelation may be seen in many areas of human existence, he argues that the Good News (Gospel) of God’s salvation, and its power for transformation, can only be found in Christianity. From Carl E. Braaten, “No Other Gospel: God reveals himself in many places, but salvation is found in one name only,” The Luther Lutheran an, October, 1995, 20–23.

432

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

. . . The first Christians knew their faith embraced the final truth of God for the salvation of the world in Jesus Christ, not merely one truth among many. The New Testament and the Christian creeds present Jesus not as a son of God, but as the only Son of God, not as a savior, but as the Savior, not as a lord, but as the Lord. These exclusive titles for Jesus are part of the kernel of the gospel, not so much husk that can be thrown, away. The “one and only” statements about Jesus in the New Testament were—and are countercultural, not merely a product of a primitive religious outlook. Early Christians placed their lives on the line to confess that Jesus is Lord and Savior in a unique sense. Christian martyrs were not merely campaigning to have the blessed name of Jesus, the name above all names, included in a pantheon of the world’s divinities. There is no basis in Scripture and the Christian faith for the pluralistic theology of religions. Its origin is found in non-Christian philosophies and religions. About 100 years ago a young Hindu reformer, Swami Vivekananda, came to the West proclaiming that for 2,500 years India had accepted a philosophy of religious pluralism. Hindu pluralism is illustrated by the famous fable of the elephant and the blind men. Six blind philosophers inquire into the nature of the elephant. One falls against its side and thinks the elephant is like a wall. A second feels the tusk and thinks the elephant is like a spear. For the others, the trunk is like a snake, the leg is like a tree, the ear is like a fan and the swinging tail is like a rope. The philosophers each think that their distinctive experience represents the truth. Likewise, the fable suggests, each of the great world religions thinks its experience with the mystery of ultimate reality is the truth. But superior wisdom, the logic continues, teaches the “real” truth: Each of the religions teaches truth, one-sided as it is. Their only mistake is believing that its partial perspective is the whole truth, that its relative grasp of reality is absolute. Like the storyteller of the elephant fable, the pluralist knows that all religions are groping to be in touch with “ultimate reality,” and that they use a limited metaphor to describe it. Christians us Jesus to seek truth, Muslims use Mohammed and Buddhists use Gautama, and so forth. That’s all right, pluralists argue, so long as they don’t blindly claim their particular experience represents universal truth. A correlation exists between the rise of this plu-

ralistic teaching and the collapse of world evangelization. Why evangelize if all peoples are equally blessed by the same God who is working to save them through the great variety of religious rituals and experiences? The best we can expect of a church acting on a pluralist vision is a mission of dialogue to share ideas. Evangelization is the hard and risky work of missionaries who preach the gospel and plant new churches. Too often, inter-religious dialogue becomes a fashionable substitute, carried on politely by academicians at room temperature. Of course, we need dialogue among people of different religions. Religious differences often are one root of conflict and violence between warring factions. The world needs greater tolerance and respect for people of other loyalties. But this doesn’t mean that Christians should march down one of the aisles to the high altar dedicated to one other than God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. At stake, finally, is the heart of the gospel: God’s act of salvation mediated through Christ alone. There is salvation in no other name. There is no other gospel for the world’s salvation. But we need to see another side of the story. Paul entered into a dialogue with the philosophers of Athens. Standing in front of the Areopagus, he said: “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands . . . indeed, he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said” (Acts 17: 22–24, 27b–28). The exclusive claim of the gospel of salvation through Christ alone does not deny that God has revealed something of “his eternal power and divine nature . . . through the things he has made” (Romans 1:20). Other religions are not striving for nothingness or false gods. They are looking toward union with the divine mystery that the Christian gospel announces has already appeared in the person of Jesus Christ. God’s revelation outside the Bible and the church means there are other words that hint at and point to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The God reveal in Jesus Christ is the same God at

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

work in all the religions of humankind and the secular world. Still, we must remember: Revelation is one thing, salvation is another. Not all revelation is saving. God’s law is revealed, but only the Gospel saves. The gospel is something extremely particular; it can only be found through faith in Christ. The law, however, is general. We find it everywhere in the everyday world of nature, history, society, conscience, and religious experience. Revelation is like a broad highway that runs through all the religions. Salvation is a narrow path. It starts with God’s call of Abraham and proceeds by means of a narrow column of events that includes God’s election of Israel, the death and resurrection of Jesus, the outpouring of the Spirit, the creation of the church, and the mission to the nations that continues until the Lord returns in glory. There is simply no way to generalize those particular events into a universal theory of the religious without losing what is distinctively Biblical and Christian. Nor can we reduce that gospel into an abstract religious ideal that lies hidden in the symbols of other religions. We have a profound theological reason for our interest in the place of Christianity among the world religions—the great commission of our risen Lord to tell the gospel to all people. Without this commission Christianity would have remained a dinky Palestinian sect long since forgotten. The early Christians, though weak and few, dared to take on the world. They were convinced that God’s eternal truth and his coming kingdom had arrived in the person of Jesus. Their calling was to tell the world about it. Through the centuries millions of believers, convinced of the gospel, have obeyed that call. Pluralists, however, feel that laying so great an emphasis on the uniqueness of Christ leaves no chance for the salvation of non-Christians. But they miss the point. What is unique about Jesus is his universal meaning. Jesus is not only my personal Lord and Savior; he is the Lord and Savior of the whole world. Now we have grounds for hope, not only for ourselves—but for all. Even Orthodox Christians believed that somehow Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle would be saved, along with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, along with Peter, James, and John. How to understand that in a coherent theological was has long been the subject of mind-boggling speculation. We have no consensus in the Christian tradition

433

how things will turn out in the end. The salvation of those who do not believe in Christ in this lifetime is ultimately a mystery. We cannot unveil it by speculation. Meanwhile, it is necessary to go to the nations with the one gospel of salvation, knowing that Jesus died and was raised for all. That’s the good news. As we go along, it is good for us to pray that God’s will be done, trusting the word that it is God’s will that all shall be saved and come to the knowledge of truth. 526. CONSIDERATIONS ON LUTHERAN–MUSLIM RELATIONS (1998) Relations between Christians and Muslims have historically been difficult to develop and maintain. The Islam Working Group of the Lutheran World Federation developed this statement as a suggested guide for Lutheran–Muslim dialogues that could be helpful in finding common points between these two groups. From “Summary Report: the Islam Working Group of the Study Project, Theological Perspectives on Other Faiths,” in Roland E. Miller and Hance A.O. Mwakabana, eds., Christian–Muslim Dialog Dialogue: ue: Theolog Theological ical and Pr Practical actical Issues (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1998), 377–86. Christians are living in the context of the global village. There, on the one hand, members of the different religious traditions live in isolation from each other, governed by a ghetto mentality. But at the same time there are neighbors who live, work, celebrate and mourn together. In this situation the gospel is reminding us of the importance and power of this word: All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message [word] of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us . . . (2 Cor 5, 18–20; RSV).

. . . Many Christians live in multireligious societies. It is therefore imperative that they include this fact in their theological agenda. Especially in regard to Muslim neighbors, Christians do not only have a long history of encounter with a unique character. They share important aspects of their faiths based on a common religious history, but there are also considerable divergences on some major theological

434

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

issues. This awareness demands a profound reconsidering of relations between Christians and Muslims. Many churches and Christians, however, consider their relationship with Muslims under negative aspects. Some fear the political power and goals which are linked with actual Islamic movements. Especially those Christians living as minorities in the midst of Muslim majorities have experiences of discrimination that tend to inhibit initiatives for dialogue. Others are afraid that a religious or theological encounter with people of another faith—Muslims—might weaken their own faith; and others are afraid of both. But “there is no fear in love” (1 John 4:18), nor is fear a good counselor. Therefore the churches need to be enabled to recognize that any approach to Muslims is based on the example of God’s activity in Christ, which was concerned with the wholeness of humanity and creation (John 3:16). The world which is still hostile must be the paradigm of any Christian encounter with Muslims. But God in Christ is reconciling the world to God. The churches, therefore, also need their attention drawn to the kenotic principle as expressed in the life of Christ Jesus who “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:7). This principle implies that God has allowed his own agenda to be dictated by a humanity which had turned away from God. That agenda, which is based on God’s outgoing love for all, led to what seemed to be a total failure when God’s Messiah was rejected. But in reality it proved to be the ultimate way to victory, as seen on the road to Emmaus when Jesus opened the eyes of the disciples to understand the new chapter in human history which arose from the ruins. Christ invites them, and us, to follow him. What appears in his life as defeat now leads to the beginning of our witness to the redemptive will of God. This will is directed toward all humankind. Therefore it needs to be communicated by the people of God who are sent to be witnesses to God’s reconciling love: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Pet 2:9–10). One way this happens is in dialogue, in a living and witnessing encounter with the neighbor. Since dialogue implies the witness to God’s great deeds, it cannot and may not become a deceptive means of faith propaganda. The sense of responsibility implies that the neighbors in dialogue and their witness to

the faith become an integral part of the engagement. In many instances the Bible gives testimony that God was working at places where the believers did not expect his presence. Therefore the Christian will eagerly and sincerely, and with an open mind, listen to what is being shared in order to detect the signs of God’s work and presence in the other one. Martin Luther, whose dealing with Islam was mentioned frequently in the course of our meetings, wrote: “The natural light of reason is strong enough to regard God as good, gracious, merciful and generous; that is a strong light” (WA 56, 177). Perhaps the other’s witness may lead the Christian to deeper insights of his or her own faith, further enriching the understanding of the boundless dynamics of God’s grace and love. Such dialogical encounter demands a sincere commitment to one’s own faith as well as a sincere respect for the other’s faith; it does not impose a theological judgment on the faith of Muslims. It encourages, however, a basic aspect of the faith, which time and again has been described in biblical narration, and witnessed to in the experience of the church, that theology and theological reflection is done “on the way,” in conversation with God or other companions on this way. It creates not static dogmatic formulations but an open awareness of new steps which God had already prepared for the faithful. The unavoidable closeness of Christians and Muslims in our time may be such a new step prepared by God. And therefore, accepting the Muslims as participants on this way of doing theology may be the right response to God’s activity in our time. In this engaging process we will trust in the continuing promise of Christ who said: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). In the Muslim tradition there is an impetus for believers to set aside theological disputes and meet on the common ground of ethics: “If God had willed, He would have made you one single community, but He wanted to test you. So vie one with another in good deeds. To God you will all return and He will decide wherein you differed.” (Quran, V: 48). Objectives In our discussions about an appropriate approach to the task given to us, that is to reflect on “theological perspectives on Islam,” it became clear to us that the objective will not be a “theology of Islam,” or the like. It will not help to improve the relations between Christians and Muslims to compare dogmatic structures or expressions with each other, and

LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE

come finally to some kind of theological judgement. Such an approach would consider both Christian theology and Islamic teaching as something merely static. This is an inappropriate approach, and one that is rejected by many believers in both communities. The starting point is to improve relations between Christians and Muslims, and initial efforts should be geared to that task. Christians and Muslims are living together, and this fact implies that they share many problems which have to be overcome through common effort and action. This can be achieved only when both refrain from bearing false witness against each other, from spreading false rumors about the other, and from attempting to harm each other. . . Together on the way, Christians and Muslims talk and witness about their respective faiths. These conversations reflect their common situations which bring them to live together as neighbors. Both firmly believe that God has given them the task to safeguard his creation. This means not only to take care that life on earth remains possible, but to develop conditions wherein life becomes pleasant. Although in certain aspects the understanding of Muslims and Christians may differ, they still need to reflect more seriously about their common ground and the common task of achieving shared goals. The question may be raised why Christians and Muslims have a common task in creation. Would it not be better if both made separate attempts to fulfil the good according to the obligations which are demanded by their respective faiths? Yet, since both of them, together with other people, have to share the ground which God has prepared for them, and since the actions of one side will necessarily have

435

its impact on the other side, there is also practically no other way than caring together for the common good in a common world. If it is the common understanding that God created this world in order that it should live, and that humankind is responsible that this aim remains alive, then the formulation of common aims becomes an imperative, in spite of differing motivations and conceptions which lead to the achievement of these common objectives. . . All these areas of human problems that we have mentioned are in urgent need of common consideration and solution. In fact, in many cases it is actually Christians and Muslims themselves who are depriving each other of their rights and dignity, and are preventing these goals from being achieved. Therefore, it is their credibility and faithfulness towards their creator whom they confess in their prayers which is at stake. Neither will be able to convince the other that their faith is serious and their piety is genuine as long as they pay primary attention to the correctness of dogmatic expressions, and obedience to rules and laws claimed to be of divine origin, but at the same time neglect the implementation of God’s will for the well-being of creation, for the health of human society, and for positive living together. The members of this group agree that the concrete topics and the practical areas of concern must be identified more comprehensively in the localities themselves. The local contexts can be very different, given the great variety of Christian and Muslim traditions in terms of theology, culture, expressions of piety, and jurisprudence. It is there that the agendas for relevant dialogue and action must be set up.

Notes

CHAPTER 1 1. See volume one of this Documentary History of Lutheranism, chapters 6 through 8. 2. Peter Gay, ed. Deism—An Anthology. (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1968), 29–46. 3. In the Plattdeutsch dialect of Hanover, Leibniz was sometimes pronounced ‘Glövenix,’ which sounds similar to the German words for “to believe nothing” (Glaube Nichts). 4. See chapter 2 for more on Semler’s significance for biblical studies. 5. Critique of Pure Reason, Preface to the Second Edition (1787), trans. by Max Müller. (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1966), xxxix. 6. Quoted in G.R. Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason (1648–1789). (Hamondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1960), 98. 7. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819) turned to philosophical writing after a successful financial career. He wrote books against Kant, Fichte, and Shelling and engaged in an extensive debate with Gotthold Lessing about Spinoza’s thought. He popularized the term “nihilism” and associated it with Enlightenment thought. Note: some of the letters of Hamann included in this chapter were written to Jacobi. 8. Philip M. Merklinger. Philosophy, Theology, and Hegel’s Berlin Philosophy of Religion 1821–1827. (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993), 99. 9. Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) was a Dutch jurist who advocated religious toleration and defended the reasonableness of Christianity in On the Truth of the Christian Religion (1627). He supported Arminianism against traditional Calvinism – denying double predestination. 10. Semler refers to the fourth century Christological debates that led to the formation of the Nicene Creed. 11. Georg Calixtus (1586–1656), a synergist theologian in Helmstadt introduced a freer

438

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

doctrine of inspiration during the late sixteenth century. Taking over the Roman Catholic theological distinction between revelation and assistentia (divine direction), he argued that Scripture is not called divine because everything contained in it came from a special divine revelation. The writers were guided so as not to write anything untrue. 12. Abraham Calov (1612–1686) was a professor of systematic theology in Wittenberg and a staunch defender of Lutheran orthodoxy. He published a widely-used version of the Bible in 1672 and emphasized its inerrancy. 13. Johann Klefeker (1698–1775) was a diplomat and scholar of jurisprudence who published a twelve volume collection of constitutions and legal texts. He was an important supporter of the Enlightenment in Hamburg. 14. René Descartes. 15. Hamann probably has in mind passages in Hume such as the following from his Inquiry on Human Understanding: “So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity. And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.” See The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill. Ed. by Edwin Burtt. (New York: The Modern Library, 1939), 667. 16. Hamann repeats the bold motto, which Kant took from the Epistles of Horace (1.2.40), and pairs it with a more deflating phrase from the same author (1.6.1). 17. Claude Helvétius (1717–1777) was a French philosopher who attacked the pretention of metaphysicians. He wrote: “When one attaches precise ideas to each expression, the scholastic who has so often confounded the world will be nothing but an impotent magician.” CHAPTER 2 1. For example, the rulers of Pfalz–Zweibrücken were Lutheran in 1668, Catholic in 1678, Lutheran in 1731 and Catholic again in 1755. See Nicholas Hope, German and Scandinavian Protestantism 1700–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 64. 2. Tanya Kevorkian, Baroque Piety: Religion, Society and Music in Leipzig 1650–1750 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 21. 3. From Gellert, In Vom Wandsbecker Boten, chap. 59 Eine Disputation. 4. Günther Stiller, Johann Sebastian Bach and Liturgical Life in Leipzig, trans. by H. Bouman, D. Poellot, H. Oswald (St. Louis: Concordia, 1984), 157–67. 5. Karl Heinrich Sack, Geschichte der Predigt in der deutschen evangelischen Kirche von Mosheim

NOTES

439

bis auf die letzten Jahre von Schleiermacher und Menken (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1866), 177–241. 6. Ian Hunter, “Kant’s Religion and the Prussian Religious Edict,” Modern Intellectual History 2, no. 1 (2005), 1–27. 7. Andrew L. Drummond, German Protestantism since Luther (London: Epworth, 1951), 184–213. 8. Some of the Prussian dissenters sailed from Hamburg in 1839 and settled in New York State, forming the Buffalo Synod. Later, another wave of Lutheran conservatives fled Saxony because of their discontent with the spread of rationalism and the Roman Catholic affiliation of the Saxon royal family. They settled mainly in Missouri, reorganizing themselves in 1847 as the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. See chapter 9. 9. Helmut Walser Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict – Culture, Ideology, Politics 1870–1914 (Princeton: Princeton U Press, 1995), 87–94. 10. The Inner Mission will be analyzed further in chapter four as part of the nineteenth century efforts to revitalize Lutheranism. It provided charitable aid for the poor without addressing the reform of the structure of society to the extent advocated by the figures discussed in this chapter. 11. Johann Konrad Dannhauer (1603–1666) was a Lutheran dogmatician in Strasburg who supported the inclusion of music in worship as long as the intention for its use was clearly to praise God (see Volume 1, chapter 6). 12. Johann Georg Gichtel (1638–1710) was a mystical follower of Jakob Boehme who was deeply critical of the Lutheran Church. He spent much of his life living among other separatists in the Netherlands. 13. The Reichenspergers mentioned in this text were two brothers, Alex (1808–1895) and Peter (1810–1892), who co-founded and led the Catholic Center Party in the Reichstag (parliament). CHAPTER 3 1. The Neologians attempted to develop a “true middle way,” which defended Christian revelation but also supporting critical analysis of both doctrine and Scripture. See more in chapter 1. 2. Hegel drew a contrast between natural religion and positive religion. Positive religions focus on the supernatural and information that transcends reason. He claimed that simple and fundamental truths tend to become gradually overlaid with accidental elements or errors resulting from ignorance. Furthermore, a positive religion tends to focus on a particular founder and is thus more particular than universal. The needs of religious feelings are such

440

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

that religion tends to appear in positive forms. Hegel, The Positivity of the Christian Religion, Part 3 (1795). 3. Adolf Schlatter’s father was a member of a pietistic Lutheran free church, and his mother was Reformed. He was a lifelong member of the Swiss Reformed Church, but collaborated closely with the Lutheran theologian, Hermann Cremer, on the development of a critical response to liberal theology while they both taught at the University of Greifswald. (See chapter 6.) Schlatter’s perspective was quite ecumenical and he once said that he was Reformed in Switzerland, United when in Prussia and Lutheran while studying theology in Tübingen. See Michael Bräutigam, Union with Christ: Adolf Schlatter’s Relational Christology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2016). CHAPTER 6 1. Adolf Harnack, The History of Dogma. (1885, 3rd edition), trans. by Neil Buchanan (1900). (New York: Dover, 1961), volume 7, chapter 4, Concluding Observations, 272. CHAPTER 7 1. Nicholas Hope, German and Scandinavian Protestantism, 1700–1918 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 590–600. 2. Daniel Borg, The Old–Prussian Church and the Weimar Republic. (Hanover NH/London: University Press of New England, 1984), 46. 3. J. R. C. Wright, ‘Above Parties’ The Political Attitudes of the German Protestant Church Leadership 1918–1933 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), 54 4. Ernst Helmreich, The German Churches under Hitler (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979), 139. 5. Stefan Berger, “Germany” in Robert Gerwarth (ed.), 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 192

Twisted

Path:

Europe

6. See Hitler’s Table Talk (Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier), ed. Hugh Trevor Roper (New York: Enigma Books, 2000). 7. Victoria Barnett, For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest against Hitler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 35 8. http://www.global–ethic–now.de/gen–deu/0c_weltethos–und–politik/ 9. Peter Thompson, “East Germany: The Most Godless Place on Earth,” The Guardian. September 22, 2012. 10. Deutscher Michel was a personification of the national character of the German people

NOTES

441

(like Uncle Sam for the United States). This allegorical figure first appeared in the 16th century and was given graphic depictions in the 1640s. He was portrayed as decent, plain, easy–going, maybe somewhat gullible, and prone to accept governmental authority. In the period between the end of the Napoleonic era and the start of the revolutions of 1848, he was often see as a victim of oppression. 11. The Olof Palme Peace March, in September 1987, started in Stralsund and went across East Germany to Dresden. It involved people from East and West Germany and Czechoslovakia and was named in honor of the former prime minister of Sweden who had been murdered in Stockholm a year before. Palme had been an opponent of nuclear weapons. CHAPTER 8 1. James Stayer, Martin Luther, German Saviour: German Evangelical Theological Factions and the Interpretation of Luther, 1917–1933 (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2000), 3–47. 2. Søren Kierkegaard launched an “Attack upon Christendom” in which he criticized the Danish church for its “Cultural Christianity.” Franz Overbeck was a professor of New Testament and Church History in Basel, where he developed a friendship with Friedrich Nietzsche. He wrote a book about Christianity and Culture and argued that theology often obscured the real meaning of Christianity. 3. “Extra-Calvinisticum” was a term used by seventeenth century Lutheran scholars to criticize the view held by Calvinists who argued that the eternal Son of God was fully united to human nature after the incarnation but was not restricted to the flesh. The issue had implications for the understanding of the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper.

Bibliography of English-Language Resources

CHAPTER ONE: THE IMPACT OF ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALISM Adler, Hans & Köpke, Wulf. A Companion to the Works of J G Herder. Rochester: Camden House, 2009. Backus, Irene. Leibniz: Protestant Theologian. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Bayer, Oswald. A Contemporary in Dissent- Johann Georg Hamann as a Radical Enlightener Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. Beck, Lewis White. Early German Philosophy – Kant and His Predecessors. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969. Flygt, Sten. The Notorious Dr Bahrdt. Nashville: University of Tennessee Press, 1963. Goldenbaum, Ursula. “Leibniz as a Lutheran” in Leibniz, Mysticism and Religion. Edited by Allison Coudert, Richard Popkin, and Gordon Weiner, 169-92. Boston/Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1998. Hodgson, Peter. Hegel and Christian Theology – A Reading of the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Kleinig, Vernon. “Confessional Lutheranism in the Eighteenth Century.” Concordia Theological Quarterly 60, no. 1–2 (January–April 1996): 97–125. Reardon, Bernard. Kant as Philosophical Theologian. London/New York: Palgrave McMillan, 1988. Yasukata, Toshimasa. Lessing’s Philosophy of Religion and the German Enlightenment: Lessing on Christianity and Reason. Cambridge/New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

CHAPTER TWO: CHURCH LIFE IN GERMANY IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES Drummond, Andrew. German Protestantism since Luther. London: Epworth, 1951. Fulbrook, Mary. Piety and Politics – Religion and the Rise of Absolutism in England, Württemberg and Prussia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Gawthrop, Richard. Pietism and the Making of Eighteenth Century Prussia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Kevorkian, Tanya. Baroque Piety: Religion, Society, and Music in Leipzig 1650–1750. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007. Stiller, Günther. Johann Sebastian Bach and Liturgical Life in Leipzig. St. Louis: Concording, 1984.

444

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

CHAPTER THREE LUTHERAN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP AND THE QUEST OF THE HISTORICAL JESUS Dawes, Gregory, ed. The Historical Jesus Quest – Landmarks in the Search for the Jesus of History. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999. Harrisville, Roy, and Walter Sundberg. The Bible in Modern Culture – Theology and Historical- Critical Method from Spinoza to Käsemann. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995. Kissinger, Warren. The Lives of Jesus – A History and Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1985. McKim, Donald. Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters. Downer’s Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 1988. O’Neill, J. C. The Bible’s Authority – A Portrait Gallery of Thinkers from Lessing to Bultmann. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991.

CHAPTER FOUR: LUTHERAN RENEWAL MOVEMENTS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY GERMANY Crowner, David & Christianson, Gerald, eds. The Spirituality of the German Awakening. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2003 Ferguson, David, ed. The Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth Century Theology. Chichester: WileyBlackwell, 2010. Green, Lowell. The Erlangen School. Ft. Wayne, IN: Lutheran Legacy Press, 2010. Heick, O. W., and J. L. Neve. A History of Christian Thought, Vol. 2: History of Protestant Theology. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1946. Shanahan, William. German Protestants Face the Social Question. Vol 1. The Conservative Phase 1815-1871. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1954. Welch, Claude. Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century 1: 1799-1870. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972.

CHAPTER FIVE: LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA, 1619–1865 Anderson, Hugh G. Lutheranism in the Southeastern States, 1860–1886. Hague: Mouton & Co., 1969. Baepler, Walter, A Century of Grace: The Missouri Synod, 1847–1947. St. Louis: Concordia, 1947. Conser, Jr., Walter H. Church and Confession: Conservative Theologians in Germany, England, and America, 1815–1866. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1984, Granquist, Mark A. Lutherans in America: A New History. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015. Meyer, Carl S., ed. Moving Frontiers: Readings in the History of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. St. Louis: Concordia, 1964. Nelson, E. Clifford, ed. The Lutherans in North America. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975. Rigforgiato, Leonard. Missionary of Moderation: Henry Melchior Muhlenberg and the Lutheran Church in English America. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1980. Splitter, Wolfgang. Pastors, People, Politics: German Lutherans in Pennsylvania, 1740–1790. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher, 1998. Suelflow, August R. Servant of the Word: the life and ministry of C.F.W. Walther. St. Louis: Concordia, 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE RESOURCES

445

Tappert, Theodore. G., ed. Lutheran Confessional Theology in America, 1840–1880. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. Wengert, Timothy, ed. The Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Tradition. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2017. Wentz, Abdel Ross. Pioneer in Christian Unity: Samuel Simon Schmucker. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967. Wiederaenders, ed. Historical Guide to Lutheran Church Bodies of North America. Second Edition. Lutheran Historical Conference Publication 1, St. Louis: Lutheran Historical Conference, 1998. Wolf, Richard C., ed. Documents of Lutheran Unity in America. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966.

CHAPTER SIX: LIBERAL LUTHERANISM Becker, Matthew. Nineteenth Century Lutheran Theologians. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015. Cunliffe-Jones, Hubert. Christian Theology since 1600. London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 1970. Livingston, James. Modern Christian Thought from the Enlightenment to Vatican II. New York: Macmillan, 1971. Reardon, Bernard. Religious Thought in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966 Welch, Claude. Protestant Thought in the Nineteenth Century 2: 1870–1914. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985

CHAPTER SEVEN: CHURCH STRUGGLES IN EUROPE DURING THE WARS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Baranowski, Shelley. The Confessing Church, Conservative Elites, and the Nazi State. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1986. Barnett, Victoria. For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest against Hitler. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Bergen, Doris. Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Caroline Press, 1996. Borg, Daniel. The Old-Prussian Church and the Weimar Republic. Hanover, NH/London: University Press of New England, 1984. Doellinger, David. Turning Prayers into Protests—Religious-based Activism and its Challenge to State Power in Socialist Slovakia and East Germany. Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2013. Goeckel, Robert. The Lutheran Church and the East German State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. Helmreich, Ernst. The German Churches under Hitler. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979. Hockenos, Matthew. A Church Divided: German Protestants Confront the Nazi Past. Bloomingtson, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004. Jenkins, Philip. The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade. New York: HarperOne, 2014. Scholder, Klaus. The Churches and the Third Reich. Vol. 1 & 2. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1988. Tyndale, Wendy. Protestants in Communist East Germany: In the Storm of the World. New York: Routledge, 2010.

446

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Wright, JRC. ‘Above Parties’ The Political Attitudes of the German Protestant Church Leadership 1918–1933. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974.

CHAPTER EIGHT: TWENTIETH CENTURY LUTHERAN THEOLOGY IN EUROPE Braaten, Carl and Robert Jenson, eds. A Map of Twentieth Century Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. Ford, David, ed. The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century. 2nd Edition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1997. Forde, Gerhard. The Law-Gospel Debate. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1969. Grenz, Stanley & Roger Olson. 20th Century Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2010. Mattes, Mark. Twentieth-Century Lutheran Theologians. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. McGrath, Alister. The Making of Modern German Christology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Schilling, S. Paul. Contemporary Continental Theologians. Nashville: Abingdon, 1966. Wilson, John. Introduction to Modern Theology: Trajectories in the German Tradition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007.

CHAPTER NINE: LUTHERANS IN NORTH AMERICA: 1865–2017 Bachmann, E. Theodore, The United Lutheran Church in America, 1918–1962. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. Burkee, James C. Power, Politics, and the Missouri Synod: A Conflict that Changed American Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011. Cimino, Richard, ed. Lutherans Today: American Lutheran Identity in the 21st Century. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Erling, Maria, and Mark Granquist. The Augustana Story: Shaping Lutheran Identity in North America. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2008. Gilbert, W. Kent. Commitment to Unity: A History of the Lutheran Church in America. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988 Johnson, Jeff G. Black Christians: The Untold Lutheran Story. St. Louis: Concordia, 1991. Klein, Christa. Politics and Policy: The Genesis and Theology of Social Statements in the Lutheran Church in America. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989. Nelson, E. Clifford and Eugene L. Fevold. The Lutheran Church Among Norwegian-Americans. 2 volumes. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1960. Nelson, E. Clifford. Lutheranism in North America, 1914-1970. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1972. Nelson, E. Clifford. The Rise of World Lutheranism: An American Perspective. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982. Rogness, Alvin N. The Story of the American Lutheran Church. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1980. Threinen, Norman J. A Religious-Cultural Mosaic: A History of Lutherans in Canada. Vulcan, AB: Today’s Reformation Press, 2006. Todd, Mary. Authority Vested: A Story of Identity and Change in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000. Trexler, Edgar R. Anatomy of a Merger: People, Dynamics, and Decisions that Shaped the ELCA. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1991.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE RESOURCES

447

CHAPTER TEN: LUTHERANISM IN SCANDINAVIA, 1750-PRESENT Aarflot, Andreas. Hans Nielsen Hauge: His Life and Message. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1979. Arden, G. Everett. Four Northern Lights: Men Who Shaped Scandinavian Churches. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1964. Eriksson, Anne-Louise, et al., eds. Exploring a Heritage: Evangelical Lutheran Churches in the North. Church of Sweden Research Series, 5. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012. Foltz, Aila, and Miriam Yliniemi, eds. A Godly Heritage: Historical View of the Laestadian Revival and Development of the Apostolic Lutheran Church in America. Frazee, MN: Self-published, 2005. Hope, Nicholas. German and Scandinavia Protestantism, 1700–1918. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. Hunter, Leslie Stannard, ed. Scandinavian Churches: The Development of the Churches of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1965. Jalkanen, Ralph, ed. The Faith of the Finns: Historical Perspectives on the Finnish Lutheran Church in America. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1972. Molland, Einar. Church Life in Norway, 1800–1950. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1957. Ősterlin. Churches of Northern Europe In Profile. Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press, 1995. Ryman, Björn, et al., eds. Nordic Folk Churches: A Contemporary Church History. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005. Saarnivaara, Uuras. They Lived in the Power of God: Lutheran Revival Leaders in Northern Europe. Minneapolis: Ambassador, 2011. Stephenson, George M. Religious Aspects of Swedish Immigration. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1932. Thulstrup, Niels, and Marie Mikulova Thulstrup, eds. Kierkegaard and the Church In Denmark. Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana 13. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzels Forlag, 1984.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: LUTHERANISM AS A WORLDWIDE MOVEMENT Bachman, Theodore, and Mercia Brenne Bachman. Lutheran Churches of the World: a Handbook. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989. Christine Heller, ed. The Global Luther: A Theologian for Modern Times. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009. Jacobson, Arland, and James Aageson. The Future of Lutheranism in a Global Context. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2008. Scherer, James. Gospel, Church and Kingdom: Comparative Studies in World Mission Theology. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1987. Yee, Edmund, and Rajashekar, J. Paul. Abundant Harvest – Stories of Asian Lutherans. Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2013.

CHAPTER TWELVE: LUTHERANS, ECUMENISM, AND INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUES The Apostolicity of the Church: Study Document of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity. Lutheran University Press, 2007. Fey, Harold E., ed. A History of the Ecumenical Movement: Volume 2, 1948-1968. Philadelphia: Westminister, 1970.

448

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Flessner, Dorris A. American Lutherans Help Shape World Council: The Role of the Lutherans Churches of America in the Formation of the World Council of Churches. Lutheran Historical Conference Publication 2. St. Louis: Lutheran Historical Conference, 1981. From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017. Report of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt/Bonifatius, 2013. Karl Lehmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg, eds., The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still Divide? Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990. Nelson, E. Clifford. The Rise of World Lutheranism: An American Perspective. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982. Rouse, Ruth, and Stephen Charles Neill, eds. A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517–1948. Philadelphia: Westminister Press, 1967. Scherer, James. Mission and Unity in Lutheranism: A Study in Confession and Ecumenicity. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969. Schjørring, Jens Holger, et al., eds. From Federation to Communion: A History of the Lutheran World Federation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997.

Sources and Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 1 Fig. 1.1. Wikimedia Commons / Cranach Digital Archive / gallerix.eu. Fig. 1.2. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 1.3. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 1.4. Wikimedia Commons / Voit Collection. Fig. 1.5. Wikimedia Commons / Carte d Visit. Fig. 1.6. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 1.7. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 1.8. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 1.9. Wikimedia Commons. CHAPTER 2 Fig. 2.1. Wikimedia Commons / The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. Fig. 2.2. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2.3. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2.4. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2.5. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2.6. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2.7. Wikimedia Commons.

450

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Fig. 2.8. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2.9. Wikimedia Commons / Gerard Blot. Fig. 2.10. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2.11. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2.12. Wikimedia Commons / James Steakley. Fig. 2.13. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2.14. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2.15. Wikimedia Commons. CHAPTER 3 Fig. 3.1. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 3.2. Wikimedia Commons / James Steakley. Fig. 3.3. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 3.4. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 3.5. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 3.6. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 3.7. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 3.8. Wikimedia Commons / Welcome Images Wellcome Library, London Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0. Fig. 3.9. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 3.10. University of Tübingen. Fig. 3.11. Wikimedia Commons / Engelbert Reineke. CHAPTER 4 Fig. 4.1. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 4.2. Wikimedia Commons / Digitale Sammlungen. Fig. 4.3. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 4.4. Wikimedia Commons.

SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Fig. 4.5. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 4.6. Wikimedia Commons / Landeskirchliches Archiv Nürnberg. Fig. 4.7. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 4.8. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 4.9. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 4.10. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 4.11. Wikimedia Commons. CHAPTER 5 Fig. 5.1. Lutheran Archives Center, Philadelphia, PA. Fig. 5.2. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 5.3. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 5.4. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 5.5. Concordia Historical Institute, St. Louis, MO. Fig. 5.6. Abel Ross Wentz Library, Lutheran theological seminar, Gettysburg, PA. Fig. 5.7. Wikimedia Commons / University of Pennsylvania. Fig. 5.8. Lutheran Archives Center, Philadelphia, PA. Fig. 5.9. Hubbard/ Holman Family History. Fig. 5.10. Luther College Archives, Decorah, IA. CHAPTER 6 Fig. 6.1. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 6.2. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 6.3. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 6.4. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 6.5. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 6.6. Wikimedia Commons.

451

452

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

CHAPTER 7 Fig. 7.1. Wikimedia Commons / Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Fig. 7.2. Wikimedia Commons / Voit Collection. Fig. 7.3. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 7.4. Wikimedia Commons / German Federal Archives. Fig. 7.5. Wikimedia Commons / German Federal Archives. Fig. 7.6. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 7.7. bpk Bildegentur / Photo: Rotraut Forberg / Art Resource, NY. Fig. 7.8. http://www.bibelarchiv-vegelahn.de/bibel_aa.html. Fig. 7.9. Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo / Alamy Stock Photo. Fig. 7.10. INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo. CHAPTER 8 Fig. 8.1. Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Photo. Fig. 8.2. Public Domain. Fig. 8.3. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 8.4. Public Domain. CHAPTER 9 Fig. 9.1. Scanned from Sigurd Christian Ylvisaker, Chr Anderson, and George O. Lillegard, Grace for Grace: Brief History of the Norwegian Synod (Mankato, MN: Lutheran Synod Book Co., 1943), 39. Fig. 9.2. Archives of the ELCA, Elk Grove Village, IL. Fig. 9.3. Archives of the ELCA, Elk Grove Village, IL. Fig. 9.4. Archives of the ELCA, Elk Grove Village, IL. Fig. 9.5. Archives of the ELCA, Elk Grove Village, IL. Fig. 9.6. Archives of the ELCA, Elk Grove Village, IL.

SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

453

CHAPTER 10 Fig. 10.1. Wikimedia Commons / Grapher UQHCast-bcBx5w at Google Cultural Institute. Fig. 10.2. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 10.3. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 10.4. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 10.5. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 10.6. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 10.7. CC BY-SA 4.0. Fig. 10.8. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 10.9. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 10.10. Public Domain. Fig. 10.11. CC BY-SA 4.0. Fig. 10.12. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 10.13. Harvard Divinity School. CHAPTER 11 Fig. 11.1. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 11.2. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 11.3. LWF archives. Fig. 11.4. Safer South Africa. Fig. 11.5. LWF archives. / H. Martinussen. Fig. 11.6. LWF archives. Fig. 11.7. LWF / Anli Serfontein. Fig. 11.8. Used courtesy Dictionary of African Christian Biography (www.DACB.org). Fig. 11.9. LWF archives. Fig. 11.10. Used courtesy mitriraheb.org.

454

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Fig. 11.11. Used Courtesy LTSP.edu. Fig. 11.12. Courtesy Christian Confernence of Asia (cca.org). Fig. 11.13. Courtesy El Salvadore Times. CHAPTER 12 Fig. 12.1. Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 12.2. Courtesty University of Helsinki. Fig. 12.3. ELCA news Service. Fig. 12.4. LWF /Photo: Church of Sweden/Magnus Aronson. Fig. 12.5. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Permission Acknowledgments

221. page 7. Used by permission of Cambridge University Press. 222. page 8. Used by permission of Cambridge University Press. 233. page 19. Used by permission of Open Court. 240. page 28. Used by permission of University of California Press. 249. page 47. Used by permission of Liberty Fund. 272. page 75. Used by permission of University of Pennsylvania Press. 282. page 87. Used by permission of Westminster John Knox Press. 285. page 90. Used by permission of SPCK. 287. page 94. Used by permission of HarperCollins. 288. page 95. Used by permission of Baylor University. 296. page 111. Used by permission of Oxford University Press. 301. page 118. Used by permission of Paulist Press. 307. page 130. Used by permission of Edward Mellen Press. 313. page 137. Used by permission of Lutheran Quarterly 326. page 151. Used by permission of Lutheran University Press. 331. page 161. Used by permission of Cambridge University Press. 369. page 206. Used by permission of Cambridge University Press. 370. page 207. Used by permission of Westminster John Knox Press. 371. page 209. Used by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

456

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

373. page 211. Used by permission of Westminster John Knox Press. 377. page 214. Used by permission of the Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University, Prague. 378. page 216. Used by permission of Augustana College. 381. page 225. Used by permission of Westminster John Knox Press. 384. page 230. Used by permission of Westminster John Knox Press. 387. page 236. Used by permission of SPCK. 388. page 237. Used by permission of SPCK. 389. page 239. Used by permission of University of Chicago Press. 390. page 240. Used by permission of University of Chicago Press. 395. page 248. Used by permission of Pilgrim Press. 397. page 250. Used by permission of Westminster John Knox Press. 398. page 252. Used by permission of Westminster John Knox Press. 411. page 270. Used by permission of Concordia Publishing House. 417. page 277. Used by permission of Concordia Publishing House. 423. page 287. Used by permission of the Lutheran World Federation. 430. page 304. Used by permission of Princeton University Press. 435. page 311. Used by permission of the Luther-Agricola Society. 440. page 318. Used by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 442. page 320. Used by permission of MacMillan Co. 449. page 329. Used by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 450. page 330. Used by permission of Pickwick Publications. 451. page 332. Used by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 461. page 349. Used by permission of the Lutheran World Federation. 462. page 349. Used by permission of the Lutheran World Federation. 465. page 353. Used by permission of the Lutheran World Federation.

PERMISSION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

467. page 356. Used by permission of the Lutheran World Federation. 469. page 359. Used by permission of the Lutheran World Federation. 471. page 361. Used by permission of Lutheran Quarterly. 472. page 362. Used by permission of the Lutheran World Federation. 473. page 364. Used by permission of the Lutheran World Federation. 478. page 368. Used by permission of Concordia Publishing House. 479. page 369. Used by permission of Concordia Publishing House. 481. page 370. Used by permission of Lutheran Forum. 482 page 372. Used by permission of World Council of Churches. 485. page 377. Used by permission of the Lutheran World Federation. 487. page 380. Used by permission of Lutheran University Press. 488. page 382. Used by permission of Lutheran University Press. 490. page 385. Used by permission of Lutheran University Press. 503. page 401. Used by permission of Oxford University Press. 508. page 408. Used by permission of Paulist Press. 509. page 409. Used by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 510. page 410. Used by permission of Paulist Press. 513. page 414. Used by permission of the Lutheran World Federation. 514. page 416. Used by permission of the Lutheran World Federation. 515. page 417. Used by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 517. page 420. Used by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 521. page 426. Used by permission of Oxford University Press. 522. page 428. Used by permission of the Lutheran World Federation. 523. page 429. Used by permission of Orbis Books. 525. page 431. Used by permission of Carl Braaten. 526. page 433. Used by permission of the Lutheran World Federation.

457

Index

Africa/African Lutherans, 128, 160, 255, 339–40, 345–46, 355–56, 416–17 Ahnfeldt, Oskar, 295 Akikepe, 388–89 Althaus, Paul (1888–1966), 180, 181, 183, 187–88, 199–200, 203, 234, 237 allegory, 26, 63, 373–74, 440–41 Altenstein, von, Baron, 6 Altmann, Walter, 342, 393–95. See also Liberation Theology America (United States of)/Lutherans in: African-Americans/Alpha Synod, 255, 270–71, 280–82; American Civil War (1861–65), 128, 155–56, 255; American Lutheranism (1849, 1851), 127, 146–48, 256–57, 259–60, 270; American Lutheran Church (ALC), 146, 149, 257, 259–60, 278–80, 282, 283–84, 290–91, 341, 346, 404, 419; American Revolution, 126, 136–37; Confederate States Lutherans, 154–55; Great Depression (1933), 258, 276–77; Southern Lutherans, 128, 154, 255. See also Lutherans/Lutheranism: North America; North American Lutheran Church Anabaptists, 399 Anglican Church/Episcopal Church, 287–88, 358, 401–2, 414–16, 419–20, 340 anti-Semitism, 38, 182, 373, 376, 401, 431. See also Jews apartheid, 339–40, 350–52. See also South Africa apocalypse. See eschatology Arab Lutherans. See Middle East Aristotle, 246, 433 Arminianism, 437n9 Arouet, François-Marie. See Voltaire (1694–1778) Aryans/Aryan Christians, 181; Aryan Paragraphs, 202, 203–5

Asia/Asian Lutheranism, 340, 378–80 Asmussen, Hans (1898–1960), 183, 184, 207–9 Association of Evangelical Lutheran Congregations (AELC), 259 atheism/irreligion/doubt, 7, 10, 25, 35, 37, 49, 123, 155, 184, 195, 207, 214–15, 240, 337 atonement, 67, 256, 267–68, 295, 309–11, 316, 318–19. See also Augustana Synod; Jesus Christ; Waldenström Augustana Synod, 256, 263, 267–68, 277, 404 Aulén, Gustaf (1879–1977), 297, 298, 316–17, 318 awakening/Awakening, 98, 101, 106–7, 293–95, 296, 297, 306, 338, 340, 360–61. See also Pietism; revivalism Axiomata. See Philosophy Ayana, Ebise, 365–67 Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685–1750), 32–33, 38, 41–42 Bachmann, John, 154 Bacon, Francis (1561–1626), 1, 7 Bagamoyo Statement (1994), 359–60. See also Tanzania Bahrdt, Karl Friedrich (1741–1792), 3–4, 12–13 Bamatengnuka, 389–90 Bangsund, Judith, 360–61 baptism. See sacraments Barmen Declaration, 183, 207–9, 221, 222. See also confessions Barth, Karl (1886–1968), 183, 198–99, 207, 221–26, 225, 230–36, 237, 250, 297 Bassler, G., Rev., 142 Basumatary, Songram, 380–82 Baumgarten, Otto (1858–1934), 180, 190 Baumgarten, Siegmund Jakob (1706–1757), 3 Baur, Ferdinand Christian (1792–1860), 66, 67, 76–78, 159 Bavaria, 80 Beck, Vilhelm (1829–1901), 295–96, 306

460

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 179, 186 Bengel, Johann Albrecht (1687–1752), 64, 68–70, 68 Bennett, Robert, 368, 369 Berg, Carolina Sandell (1832–1903), 295, 313–14 Berggrav, Eivind, 324–25 Berkenmeyer, William (1687–1751), 126 Berlin, 184; Nikolaikirche (Nikolai Church), 48–49; Peace, Pastors Call for, 191 Bethge, Eberhard, 247 Bethlehem. See Middle East/Jordan/Holy Land Bible/Scripture/Word of God, 5, 279, 374–75, 439n1; authority of, 258, 348; canon, 70–72; historical-critical study of, 63–96; inerrant and infallible, 4, 15–16, 67, 98, 274, 279, 438nn11–12; inspiration/plenary or verbal, 70–72, 268–70, 437–38; letter vs. spirit, 14–16; new testament, 4, 12, 63–64, 67, 68–70, 82, 83, 90–92, 96, 99, 117, 159, 160, 171, 176–77, 178, 181, 233, 237–39, 253, 279, 304–5, 338, 342, 374, 418; objections to, 16; Old Testament, 63–64, 67, 81–82, 99, 104–5, 117, 182, 219, 373–74, 418; and religion, 16; scholarship, 63–96; spirit vs. letter, 14–16; Tamil, 338, 342; textual criticism, 68–70 [see also Bengel, Johann Albrecht]; witness of saving truth, 81 Bismarck, Otto von (1815–1898), 36, 37, 57, 179, 190 Blass, Eduard, 60 Blumhardt, Christoph Friedrich (1842–1919), 101 Blumhardt, Johann Christoph (1805–1880), 98, 101, 106–7 Bodelschwingh, Friedrich (1831–1910), 101 Bodelschwingh, Friedrich II (1877–1946), 101, 182, 222 Boehme, Jakob, 439n12 Bohemians, 118 Boltzius, Johann Martin, 130–31 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (1906–1945), 183, 203–6, 222, 224, 243–45, 247 Bormann, Martin (1900–1945), 182, 200–201 Bornkamm, Günther (1905–1990), 68, 94–95 Braaten, Carl (1929– ), 400–401, 431–33 Brazil, 392–95 Breit, Thomas, 207

Brock, Hans, 128 Bromander, Jonas, 336 Brunner, Emil, 232, 233 Büchner, Karl, 53 Bukambu, Judes Kamala, 356–57 Bultmann, Rudolf (1884–1976), 67–68, 90–92, 223, 224–25, 230, 236–37, 245–47 Burgess, Andrew, 367, 368 Burke, Edmund, 334 Buthelezi, Manas (1935–2016), 349–50, 350–51 Buxtehude, Dietrich (1637–1707), 32 Calculus, 2–3 Calixtus, Georg (1586–1656), 13, 64, 437–38 Called to Common Mission (CCM), 287–88, 399, 419–20. See also Anglican/Episcopal Church Calov, Abraham (1612–1696), 16, 64, 438n12 Calvin/Calvinism, 31, 34, 221, 264–66, 410, 437n9, 441n3; Reformed Protestantism, 99, 117, 233–34, 297, 397, 399 Campanius, Johan, 129–30 Canada/Canadian Lutheranism, 126, 142–43 Cargo cults, 390. See also Papua New Guinea Caspersen, M. Casper, 128 Cassidy, Cardinal, 420 catechisms/catechists, 129, 359 Catholicism, Roman, 233, 336, 337, 406, 420–25; Center Party (Germany), 37, 181, 195, 439n13; papal infallibility, 37, 413. See also Joint Declaration on Justification; Kulturkampf; Central America. See Latin America Chemnitz, 60 Chemnitz, Martin (1522–1580), 73, 269 Cherbury, Edward Herbert of, Lord, 2 China, 347 Christ Seminary in Exile (Seminex), 259, 285–87. See also Missouri Synod (LCMS) Christian VI, King, 338 Christian Democratic Party (CDU), 217 Christian Social Labor/Workers’ Party, 37–38, 58–59, 60–61, 101 Christianity, 2, 6, 26, 35–36, 46–47, 64, 76–77, 97, 123, 130, 158–61, 173–74, 221, 224, 226–28, 233, 236–37, 248–49, 304–5, 316–17, 328–29, 400–401, 431, 437n9; as Absolute Religion, 6, 29, 76, 115, 161, 338, 354, 397, 425; blessedness, 305; essence of,

INDEX

161; ethos, 177; Hellenization of, 160; positive, 66, 75–76, 80, 181–82, 194–95, 197–98; Protestantism, 6, 37, 44–46, 53–54, 116–17, 127, 140–41, 147, 160, 161, 168, 169–72, 226, 232, 233, 273–74, 297, 337, 398–99, 424; Protestantism, cultural, 37, 57, 221, 225–30; religionless, 224, 247; and social problems/teachings, 176–78; spiritual and moral foci, 164–65. See also religion Christology, 67, 82, 100, 104, 158, 175, 233, 239, 394, 399, 406, 407–8, 437n10, 440n3 Church, 111; Catholicism (catholic tradition) of, 272–74, 325–27; Church Convention (Kirchentag), 101, 123–24, 193–94, 218; churches in exile, 297; churches in homes/ conventicles, 296, 298–99; as community, 378; congregational autonomy, 268; participation, 43–47; polity, 100, 103, 186, 260–61, 338; Reunification, 266; social issues/teachings, 58–61, 176–78; and society, 290, 327, 334–36; struggles in Europe during wars (20th Century), 179–220; Union, 98–99, 103, 116, 222; vestments, 33, 360. See also deaconesses; Kirchentag; music; sacraments; worship civil rights, 185, 259, 280. See also Race Relations Claudius, Matthias (1740–1815), 33, 42 clergy/pastors/preachers/vicars, 102, 191, 210; bishops/superintendents, 401–2; historic Episcopate, 419; Reichsbischof, 202 Collin, Nicholas, 136–37 communism. See Marxism Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche), 183–84, 224, 234 confessions: Altona Confession, 183, 206–7; American Recension, 148–50; Augsburg Confession, 127, 139–40, 146–51, 358, 401; Bethel, 222; Formula of Concord, 109, 149, 265, 269–70, 280 confessionalism/confessional Lutherans, 66, 98, 99, 108–11, 111–14, 127, 138, 140–41, 143, 159, 222, 234, 255–56, 265, 309, 320, 330, 423 conscience, 102, 227 consciousness: confessional, 331–32; God-consciousness, 158, 161, 163–64, 428; human,

461

113–14; self-consciousness, 6, 26, 77, 89, 158, 163–64, 176, 238. See also mysticism conservatism, 64, 104–6, 155 consistory/consistorium. See church: polity Conventicle Acts, 294, 295, 296, 298–99. See also Pietism conversion/rebirth, 275, 296, 299–300, 367–68, 369. See also awakening; Pietism Cremer, Hermann (1834–1903), 160, 173–74 creeds: Apostles’ Creed, 150, 160; Batak Confession of Faith (Indonesia), 341, 344, 384–85; Formula of Concord, 109, 149, 265, 269–70, 280; Nicene Creed, 73, 150, 222, 437n10. See also confessionalism/confessional Lutherans crisis theology. See Neo-Orthodoxy culture struggle (Kulturkampf), 37, 57 Czechoslovakia, 214 Dahlemites, 183 Dannhauer, Johann Konrad (1603–1666), 41, 439n11 Darwinism, 187 deaconesses, 100–101, 118–24. See also church: polity; social action death: afterlife/immortality, 5, 17–18, 24, 46, 76, 86, 385 Deckman, Julius, 272 Definite Synodical Platform, 148–51, 149 deification/divinization. See theosis Deism/Deists/Naturalists, 2–5, 12–13, 52, 65 Delbrück, Hans, 189 Denmark/Danish Lutherans, 128–29, 256, 295–96, 302, 304, 306, 319, 322–23, 441n2 Descartes, René (1596–1650), 1, 3, 6, 26, 242, 438n14 determinism, 3. See also predestination; science Devil/Satan. See also exorcism Dibelius, Martin (1883–1947), 67, 68 Dibelius, Otto, 184, 212 diets: Augsburg, 150; Worms, 196 disestablishment, 181, 333–34 divinization/deification. See theosis doctrine/dogma, 6, 29, 33, 64, 158, 232–34, 439n1, 439n11; Christian, 26–27, 35, 77–78, 114–17, 157, 158, 176, 320 Dorner, Isaak August (1809–1884), 100, 115–17, 115, 157

462

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Eastern Europe/Baltic Lutherans, 38, 185, 214–20, 256–57, 323, 417; Church of Greece, 418; Romanian Orthodox Church, 417; Russian Orthodox Church, 417; Slovak Lutherans in America, 256 Eastern Orthodox Churches, 336, 417–19 Ebeling, Gerhard (1912–2001), 225, 237, 253–54 ecclesiastical tradition, xix, 6 ecumenism, 290, 297, 330, 378–79, 397–401, 401–25; World Missionary Conference (Edinburgh), 398 education/parochial schools, 17–18, 119–21, 181, 257. See also Universities Egede, Hans (1686–1758), 338 Einstein, Albert, 189 El Salvador, 391–92. See also Gómez, Medardo Elert, Werner (1885–1954), 183, 203, 222–23, 234–36 empiricism, 1, 7, 355 England/Great Britain, 1–2, 32, 106, 119, 123, 125–26, 179–80, 186, 189–90, 294, 297, 322, 398–99, 409, 414–16. See also Anglican Church/Episcopal Church enlightenment, 1–29, 33, 34, 35, 42, 43–47, 50, 63, 64, 70–72, 97, 158, 176, 246–47, 325, 338, 397, 400, 437n7 Erasmus, Desiderius (1466–1536), 63, 228 Erlangen School/Theology, 99, 111–14, 203 Ernesti, Günther Gottlieb (1759–1797), 34, 43–44 Ernesti, Johann August, 33 eschatology: apocalyptic/apocalypse, 67, 69, 86, 91, 251, 376; Eschatological Consciousness of Jesus, 86–90, 160 Estonia, 323–24. See also Eastern Europe/Baltic Lutherans ethics, 1, 5, 99–100, 101–2, 112–14, 222, 241–47 Ethiopia (Abyssinia), 362–67 Europe: Central, 38; Lutheranism, 1, 6, 97–124, 221–54, 337, 397–98, 404 Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), 184, 185, 212–14, 222, 417, 418 Evangelical League for the Protection of German-Protestant Interests, 37, 57–58 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), 137–38, 260, 288–90, 364–65, 399, 419–20

Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan & the Holy Land (ELCJHL), 340, 370–72 Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea (ELCONG), 341, 391 Evangelical Lutheran Church in South Africa (ELCSA), 339, 350, 351 Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT), 358–62 Evangelical Lutheran Congregations, 266–67, 273 Evangelical Social Congress, 37–38 Evangelische Bund, 398 evangelism/evangelization. See missions/mission societies; social action Evil: radical in human nature, 19–20; theodicy, 2, 8–9; victory of good over, 20–21 exegesis, 63–64, 82, 120–21, 374 existentialism, 223, 238, 239–41, 246, 378 exorcism and demonic/spirit possession, 106–7, 150, 340, 368–39, 430. See also Devil; Spirit experience (religious), 1, 99–100, 157–58, 168, 171, 222, 226, 250, 299, 433; intuitions, 24, 158, 162–63 faith, 5, 34, 94–95, 113, 163–64, 166–67, 175–76, 187–88, 236, 248–49, 250–54, 260–61, 265, 278–79, 287–88, 316–17, 319–20, 347, 390, 421–22; confession of, 12–13, 302–4, 320, 330, 384–85; German Christian Movement, 194–201, 204; and good works, 46–47, 385, 422 Faith and Order movement, 297, 398, 411, 416 Falcke, Heino, 184, 217 Falckner, Justus (1672–1723), 125 fanaticism, 1, 5, 8, 20, 45, 51, 148, 154, 323, 375. See also superstition Farisani, Tshenuwani Simon (1947– ), 351–52 Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR/East German Federation (BEK), 184, 185 Federation of Evangelical Lutheran Churches in Southern Africa (FELCSA), 339 Federation of Evangelical Lutheran Churches in India (FELCI), 341, 379, 382 fellowship/pulpit and altar, 259, 263, 274, 318. See also church: Union Feuerbach, Ludwig (1804–1872), 6

INDEX

Finland/Finnish/Finns, 256, 295, 296, 311, 312, 329–30, 332–33, 417 Fliedner, Theodor (1800–1864), 100, 118–21 folk (Volk/Volkstum), 181, 182. See also Germany; Scandinavia; Spirit: Volkgeist folk churches (Volkskirche), 256, 298, 302, 331–33 Formula of Agreement, 399 France, 2, 3, 4, 37, 49, 64, 119, 123, 179–80, 186, 189, 350, 370 Francis, Pope, 424 Francke/Franke, August Hermann (1663–1727), 1, 51, 64, 180, 187, 337, 380; Franckean Synod, 153–54 Franke, Gotthilf August, 130–31 Frederick IV, King, 338 freedom/liberty; equality, 22, 38, 60–61, 215, 224, 284, 333, 342, 346, 357, 378; freethinkers, 3; free will, 34, 44, 209, 301, 343, 359; of man, 3, 8–9, 249; of religion, 192, 272, 333, 335, 380. See also Toleration Friedrich, Christian, 383 Friedrich I, King, 54 Friedrich II, King, 35 Friedrich Wilhelm I (Frederick William, 1602–1688), 35, 37, 48–49, 51, 54 Friedrich Wilhelm II (Frederick William, the Great, 1712–1786), 3, 35, 49–53, 52 Friedrich Wilhelm III (Frederick William, 1770–1840), 36, 54–56, 116 Friedrich Wilhelm IV (Frederick William, 1795–1861), 56–57, 101 Führer, Christian (1943–2014), 219 Führer, Katharina, 219–20 full communion/intercommunion, 287–88, 297, 399, 401–2, 409–10, 414, 423–25; Galesburg Rule (1875), 263; unionism/syncretism, 151, 400, 413–14. See also Fellowship Gauck, Joachim, 185 Gellert, Christian Fürchtegott (1715–1769), 33, 42 General Council, 147, 255, 256, 266, 338, 345 General Synod, 127, 138–40, 146–51, 154–55, 255, 338, 345 General Synod South, 128, 255, 266 Gentili, 114 Gerber, Christian (1660–1731), 40–41

463

Gerhard, Johann (1582–1637), 64, 230 Gericke, Samuel Theodor, 35 Gerlach, Ludwig von (1795–1877), 6, 27, 98 Germany/German Lutherans, 2–6, 27, 38, 64, 97–98, 160, 161, 179, 181, 183, 221, 255, 256, 323, 422–23, 440–41; Christian Handbook, 196–97; church life (18th and 19th Century), 31–61; church struggle (20th Century), 201–12; Confessing Church and Resistance, 201–12; East German Church and Stasi, 216–17, 220; Germanness (Deutschtum), 194, 198–99; Pfalz-Zweibrücken, 438n1; Protestant Church, 190–91, 193, 195–96; Thuringian Christians, 199–200; Die Wende (The Turnaround), 184–85, 216, 219 German Christians (Deutsche Christen), 194–201, 204 German Democratic Republic (GDR), 38, 216–17, 219; Reunification, 184–85; Quisling Regime, 211, 297, 320; Second Reich (Empire), 179–80; Third Reich (Empire), 195, 209, 211, 212, 328 German Evangelical Church Federation (DEK), 181–83, 184, 193, 208; Territorial Churches (Landeskirchen), 177, 181; Weimar Republic, 191–94 Gesenius, Dr., (Consistorial Councillor), 27 Gichtel, Johann Georg (1638–1710)/Gichtelians, 51, 439n12 Giertz, Bo (1905–1998), 297, 298, 325–27 Gieseler, Johann Karl, 147, 148 globalization, 339, 377, 386 glorification. See theosis God, 240–41, 249–50, 275–76, 318–19; communion with, 167–69; goodness of, 8–9; nature of, 70, 81, 166, 230, 426; and nature, 1, 5, 33, 34; otherness of, 222; proofs of existence/revealed, 250–52; Trinity, 6, 18, 64, 73–74, 384–85; wholly other, 222, 229. See also atheism; Jesus Christ; pantheism; Spirit Goebbels, Joseph, 182 Goethe, Wolfgang, 5, 179, 186, 245 Goeze, Johann Melchior (1717–1786), 4, 13–18 Gogarten, Friedrich (1887–1967), 222, 224; and Christian faith, 230–32, 248–49 Golden Rule, 397 Gollwitzer, Helmut (1908–1993), 183, 209–10

464

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Gómez, Medardo (1945– ), 342, 391–92 good works. See faith Gorbachev, Mikhail, 184 Gospel, 63, 113–14, 222, 233–36, 347, 375, 431; faith and history in, 94–95; history, 79–80. See also Bible government: aristocracy/nobles, 24, 37–38, 103, 334, 355, 412; authority, 105–6, 441n10; Church-State relations, 47–58, 202, 207, 293, 298, 324–25, 333; democracy, 105; monarchy, 31, 37–38, 98, 101; secular, 385 grace/mercy, 21–22, 117, 243–45, 251–52, 421–22; cheap, 243–45, 393. See also salvation Graebner, Edison Theodore, 271–72 Great Britain/England, 1–2, 32, 106, 119, 123, 125–26, 179–80, 186, 189–90, 294, 297, 322, 398–99, 409, 414–16. See also Anglican Church/Episcopal Church Gros, Antoine-Jean, 32 Grotius, Hugo (1583–1645), 12, 64, 437n9 Grundtvig, Nikolai F. S. (1783–1872), 256, 294, 295, 302–4, 306, 314–15, 319 Halle, 12, 47, 130–31. See also University of Halle Hallesby, Ole (1879–1961), 297, 315–16 Hamann, Johann Georg (1730–1788), 5, 22, 23, 24, 33, 437n7, 438n15–16 Hammar, H. B., 335 Handel, Georg Friedrich (1685–1759), 32 Hanover, 2, 31, 32, 183, 437n3 Harless, Adolf Gottlieb Christoph von (1806–1879), 99–100, 112–14 Harms, Claus (1778–1855), 97–98, 101–3 Harnack, Adolf (1851–1930), 38, 157, 159–60, 161, 169–72, 173–74, 176, 179, 185, 189, 221, 222 Hauge, Hans Nielsen (1771–1824)/Haugeans, 294–95, 296, 299–300, 311, 367–68 Hedberg, Frederick G., 256, 296 Hegel, Georg W. F. (1770–1831), 6, 28–29, 65–66, 75–77, 100, 117, 159, 439–40 Hegstad, Harald, 330–32 Heidegger, Martin, 68, 223, 246 Helmstadt, 437–38 Helvétius, Claude (1717–1777), 24, 438n17 Hengstenberg, Ernst Wilhelm T. H. (1802–1869), 6, 66, 98, 104–6

Henkel, Paul, 140–41 Henrici, Christian Friedrich (Picander, 1700–1764), 33, 41 Herder, Johann Gottfried (1744–1803), 5–6, 23, 24, 25–26, 33, 64–65, 70 heresy/heterodoxy/apostasy, 114, 140, 198, 200, 202, 231, 239, 269, 275–76, 294, 305, 310, 320, 350, 359, 384, 414 hermeneutics, 99, 225, 278, 283, 375 Herrmann, Johann Wilhelm (1846–1922), 159–60, 167–68, 179, 221 Heyer, J. C. F., 341 Heyer, John Frederick (1793–1873), 383 Himmler, Heinrich, 182 Hirsch, Emanuel (1888–1972), 182, 198–99 history, 2, 221, 249, 250–54; accidental truths, 4, 13, 16; supra-/pre-, 96. See also Bible: historical-critical study; Jesus Christ: quest of the historical Jesus; salvation History of Religions School (Religionsgeschichtliche Schule), 161, 175–78 Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945), 181, 182, 196–97 HIV/AIDS, 354–56 Hof, Loescher and Petsch (photographers), 59 Hofmann, Johannes Christian Konrad von (1810–1877), 66–67, 80–82, 99, 100 holiness, 228–30 Holl, Karl (1866–1926), 176, 221–22, 226–28 Hollweg, Bethmann, 189 hope, 114 holy communion. See sacraments Holy Land. See Middle East/Jordan/Holy Land Holy Roman Empire, 12, 31, 196 Horace, 438n16 Hossenfelder, Joachim (1899–1976), 181 Hromádka, Josef (1889–1969), 184, 214–16 Hume, David, 23, 438n15 Hunnius, Nikolaus (1563–1616), 73 Hutauruk, J. R., 385–86 Huygens, Christiaan (1629–1695), 2 hymns. See music Iceland, 128, 256, 316 immigration, 127, 255–59, 296, 332, 341 inculturation/cultural adaptation, 347 India, 340, 341, 342–44, 345, 377–84; Brahmins, 342, 343; Malabarians, 342–44 Indonesia/Batak Church (HKBP), 340, 341, 344, 380, 384–87

INDEX

Inner Mission Movement, 37, 38, 101, 118–24, 182, 296, 306, 439n10 International Court of Justice (ICJ), 348 inter-religious dialogues, 338, 376–77, 397–401, 425–35; Lutheran-Adventist, 399; Lutheran(s)-Africa, 416–17; Lutheran–Anglican/Episcopal, 399, 409–10; Lutheran(s)-Baptist, 408–9; Lutheran–Jewish, 375–77, 401; LutheranMethodist, 399; Lutheran-Muslim, 376, 401, 416–17, 433–35; Lutheran(s)-Orthodox, 365, 417–19; Lutheran-Reformed, 103–4, 214–16, 406–8, 410–12; LutheranRoman Catholic, 412–13, 420–25 Ireland, 399, 414 Jacobs, Charles M., 272–74 Jacoby/Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich (1743–1819), 6, 23, 437n7 Jansenists, 51 Jansson, Eric, (1808–1850), 295 Japan, 347 Jaspers, Karl, 250 Jensen, Christian Albrecht, 302 Jensen, Rasmus (d. 1620), 125, 128 Jesuits, 37, 58, 313 Jesus Christ, 249–50, 347; biblical, 67; burial of, 74–75; communion with God mediated, 167–69; crucifixion/death of, 74, 79, 171, 223, 235–36, 237, 315–16; divinity/Son of God, 70, 73; incarnation, 6, 111–12; intention of, 72–73; life of, 66, 77–79, 82, 88–89; kenosis (self-limitation/accommodation), 111–12; New Being, 241; resurrection, 4, 6, 26, 27, 66, 74–75, 79, 84–86, 171, 223, 250–54; quest of the historical Jesus, 63–96, 77–86, 89–90, 92–96, 99, 160, 174, 221, 225; as Savior/ Redeemer, 28, 49, 52, 83, 90, 111; teachings of, 73; work of, 27, 111–12, 165–66. See also Kingdom of God Jews/Judaism, 11, 38, 60, 66, 67, 160, 181, 182–83, 203–4, 205–6, 365, 375–76, 380, 400, 401, 431; Jewish Christians, 374; Hebrews, 2, 4, 8, 27, 77, 83, 171, 246, 310. See also Anti-Semitism; xenophobia Johnson, Gisle (1822–1894), 294–95, 300–302 Joint Decree on the Doctrine of Justification (JDD, 1999), 420–23. See also salvation

465

Jonas, Justus, 427 Junge, Martin, 424 Kähler, Martin (1835–1912), 67, 82–84, 96 Kaiserswerth, 118–19 Kamungsanga, Sila, 388 Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804), 4–6, 18–22, 23, 24, 25, 35, 36, 65–66, 158, 159, 179, 186, 438n16 Käsemann, Ernst (1906–1998), 68, 92, 225 Keffer, Adam, 142–43 Kerrl, Hans (1887–1941), 182 Kerygma, 67, 68, 90–93, 223, 225, 236–39, 361. See also sermons/preaching; Gospel Kibira, Josiah (1925–1988), 338, 357–59 Kierkegaard, Søren (1813–1855), 221, 224, 295–96, 304–5, 441n2 Kingdom of God, 20–21, 38, 67, 86–87, 88–89, 118–19, 158–60, 170, 191, 221. See also eschatology; Jesus Christ Kirchentag, 123–24, 193–94, 218 Klefeker, Johann (1698–1775), 16, 438n13 Kliefoth, Theodor (1818–1895), 99 knowledge, 4–5; degrees of, 2; of God, 76, 109, 231, 251, 299, 354; epistemology, 1–2, 226; perfected, 4; saving knowledge; value judgments, 159, 166, 231–32 Knubel, Frederick, 272–74 Koch, Kurt, Cardinal, 424 Köberle/Koeberle, Adolph (1898–1990), 223, 224, 237, 241–43 Koening, Cardinal, 406 Koren, Vilhelm Ulrik (1826–1910), 268–70 Kottwitz, Hans Ernst von, Baron (1757–1843), 98, 100, 101, 117 Kraus, Jacob, 23–24 Krause, LWF President, 420 Krause, Reinhold (1893–1980), 182 Krauth, Charles Porterfield (1823–1883), 127, 147–48, 260–61, 265–66 Krüger, Fr., 114 Kulturkampf (Culture Struggle), 57 Laestadius, Lars Levi/Apostolic Lutherans, 256, 295, 296, 312–13, 415–16 Lange, Joachim (1670–1744), 3, 9–10 Läsare (Readers), 293–94 Latin America, 224, 341–42, 346, 395. See also Brazil

466

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Latvia. See Eastern Europe/Baltic Lutherans Lauha, Aila, 332–33 Laury, Preston, 345 law, 63, 233–34, 234–36, 308–9, 375; civil/secular law, 53, 192; divine law, 112–13, 177, 209, 211, 321, 405; natural, 397. See also Gospel Leibnitz/Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646–1716), 2–3, 4, 7–10, 7, 35, 51, 158, 427n3 Leipzig, 31–34, 38–40, 41; Nikolaikirche (Nikolai Church)/Peace Prayers, 184, 218–20; Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church), 32–33, 39 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729–1781), 4, 13–18, 65, 66, 75, 437n7 Leuenberg Agreement (1973), 406–8 Leutheuser, Julius, 200 liberalism, 106; liberal Lutherans/Lutheranism, 6, 157–78, 221, 222, 296–97, 400; social liberalism, 38 liberation theology. See theology Liberia, 369–70 Life and Work movement, 277, 297, 398 Limassol, 418–19 Link, John W., 272 Linner, Synod President, 141 liturgy/agenda. See worship Locke, John (1632–1704), 1–2, 7 Löffler, Kurt, 219 Löhe, Wilhelm, (Loehe, 1808–1872), 99, 100, 108–9, 108, 232 London, 121 Lord’s Prayer, 134, 170, 179–80, 186, 302 Lord’s Supper. See sacraments love, 113–14, 118–19, 170, 373 Ludwig, Theodore (1936– ), 400, 428–29 Luther, Martin (1483–1546), xix, 6, 32, 63–64, 149, 176–77, 180–81, 190, 196–97, 199, 214, 221–22, 225, 226–28, 230, 234, 244, 293, 298, 329–30, 342, 357, 369–70, 375–77, 400, 401, 427, 431, 434, 441n1; Luther Renaissance, 221, 297–98, 330 Lutheran Church in America (LCA), 259, 279–82, 419 Lutheran Church in North India (LCNI), 381, 382 Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea (LCONG/LCPNG), 391

Lutheran Communion in Southern Africa (LUCSA), 340 Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC), 260, 290–91, 399 Lutheran Free Church, 268, 296–97, 404, 440n3 Lutheran World Convention (LWC), 398, 402–4 Lutheran World Federation (LWF), 185, 258, 338, 349–50, 356, 357, 359, 365, 370, 393, 399, 418, 420, 424 Lutheranism/Lutherans, 6, 51, 97, 103, 108–9, 117, 140–41, 221–54, 232–34, 392–93, 403–4; conservative, 400; denominations, 255–59, 290–91, 338, 339; dissenters/separatists, 56, 296, 413–14, 439n12; Europe, 97–124, 221–54; identity, 98, 140, 184, 331, 375, 380, 419; liberal (19th century), 157–78; North America (1619–1865), 125–56; North America (1865–2016), 255–91; revitalization (19th century Europe), 97–124; Salzburg, 130–31; worldwide, 257, 324, 337–95 Maanga, Godson, 361–62 Madagascar, 340, 367–69 Maimela, Simon (1944– ), 353–54, 400 Mainz, Elector of, 2 Manchala, Deenabandhu, 377–78 Mannerma, Tuomo (1937–2015), 298, 329–30 Marahrens, August (1875–1950), 183 Marheineke, Philip (1780–1846), 6 Marxism/communism/Bolshevism, 37, 181, 182, 184, 214–20, 297, 323–24, 362; MarxistChristian dialogue, 214–16 mathematics, 1–4, 7, 10, 24. See also science Mazière, Lothar de (1940– ), 185 mediating theology (Vermittlungstheologie), 100, 114–18, 157 Mekane Yesus Church [Ethiopian Evangelical Church] (EECMY), 340, 362–67. See also Ethiopia Melanchthon, Philip, 148–50, 239, 269, 427 Mendel, David, 100 Mendt, Dietrich (1926–2006), 216–17 Mennonites, 399 Merkel, Angela, 185 messianic consciousness/theology, 67, 86–90, 104, 174

INDEX

metaphysics, 2, 4, 9–10, 23, 49, 158–60, 161–63, 176, 226, 242, 246–47, 438n17 Michaelis, Johann David (1717–1791), 3, 11, 65, 74–75 Middle East/Jordan/Holy Land, 340, 370–77 Mikaele, 389 Ministerium of Pennsylvania, 126, 127, 133–34, 338, 345. See also synods: in America Minz, Nirmal, 382 miracles/mysteries, 4, 9, 13, 158, 229 missions/mission societies, 257–58, 338, 342–48; Rhenish, 338, 339, 341, 344, 349, 386 Missouri Synod (LCMS), 128, 143–45, 255, 256, 257, 259, 260, 264–65, 271, 275–76, 277–78, 282, 285–87, 338, 400, 413–14. See also Christ Seminary in Exile (Seminex) morality, 1, 5, 397 Moravians, 116–17, 118, 125, 158, 293, 295, 339 Möttlingen, 106–7 Muhlenberg, Henry Melchior (1711–1781), 126, 127, 131–32, 133, 132, 135–36, 255, 257, 266 Müller, Ludwig (1883–1945), 182, 197–98, 197 Munck, Jens, 128 Munk, Kai (1898–1944), 297, 322–23 music, 32–33; cantatas, 32–33; chorales, 32, 39; hymns/hymnals/hymnbooks, 3, 33, 41–42, 190, 266, 302, 313–15; innovations, 40–41; librettists, 33, 41; organs, 33, 40–41 Muslims/Islam, 336, 365, 380, 397. See also inter-religious dialogues mysticism, 35, 117, 158, 167–68, 221, 439n12 myth. See theology: demythologization Namibia (South West Africa), 348–56; South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO), 349 Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), 31, 32, 36, 97, 296, 441n10. See also France nationalism, 38, 179, 181, 182 National Council of Churches, 258, 392, 399 National Evangelical Foundation, 295 National Lutheran Council, 258, 282, 398, 400, 403 National Social Union, 38 National Democratic Socialist Worker’s Party, 194

467

National Socialist Worker’s Party (NDSAP)/Nazis, Nazism, 181–84, 193, 194–201, 209–10, 211–12, 214–15, 222, 223, 224, 237, 297, 298, 320, 322, 324, 375, 400, 401, 411, 439n13; denazification, 212–13 Naturalists/Deists, 2–3, 5, 12–13, 52, 65 nature: creation, 328–29, 376–77; and God, 1, 5, 33, 34; laws of, 2, 188, 201, 252. See also theology: natural Naumann, Friedrich (1860–1919), 38, 60–61, 101, 179 Neander, August (1789–1850), 98, 100, 114–15, 157 Neander, Johann (1789–1850), 66 Neologians, 3–4, 11, 34, 65, 122, 439n1 Neo-Lutheranism, 36, 80, 98–99, 108–11, 223 Neo-Orthodoxy/Dialectical Theology/Crisis Theology, 221, 222, 225, 230–36, 243, 297 Netherlands, 1, 439n12; New Netherlands (in America), 125 Neumeister, Erdmann (1671–1756), 32, 33 New Guinea. See Papua New Guinea Newton, Isaac (1643–1727), 2 Nicolai, Philipp, 337 Niemöller, Martin (1892–1984), 182–83, 184, 202–3, 222 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 214, 441n2 Nigeria, 340 Nihilism, 214, 224, 245, 249, 330, 437n7 Nommensen, Ludwig Ingwer (1834–1918), 338, 344 North American Lutheran Church (NALC), 260, 290–91. See also America (United States of)/Lutherans in Northern Evangelical Lutheran Church (NELC), 380, 381 Norway/Norwegian Lutherans/Norwegian Lutheran Church in America, 153, 256, 261–63, 268–70, 274, 294–95, 315, 320–22, 324, 330–32 Nujoma, Sam (1930– ), 349. See also Namibia (South West Africa) Nürnberger, Klaus (1933– ), 354–55 Nygren, Anders (1890–1978), 297, 298, 318–19 obedience, legal, 113 Old Lutheran movement, 36, 56, 98, 103, 109. See also Scheibel, Johann

468

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

ordination. See church: polity; women Orthodoxy (Lutheran), 1, 3, 64, 73, 97, 99, 223, 233, 293, 298, 329–30, 337, 400, 438n12 Otto, Rudolph (1869–1937), 222, 228–30, 250 Overbeck, Franz, 441n2 Pachelbel, Johann (1653–1706), 32 paganism/heathens/idolatry, 8, 22, 98, 102, 183–84, 343–44, 385 Pakpahan, Binsar J., 386–87 Palestine. See Middle East/Jordan/Holy Land Palme, Olof, 441n11 Pannenberg, Wolfhart (1928–2014), 68, 95–96, 225, 250–53, 400, 429–31 pantheism, 25, 66, 80, 110, 159, 168 Papua New Guinea, 340, 341, 388–91 Pastor’s Emergency League (Pfarrernotbund), 182–83, 202–3 Pastoral Letter of the Norwegian Bishops (1941), 320–21 pastoral care, 119–21, 344 Payne, Roland (1920–1994), 369–70. See also Liberia peasants, 311–12 persecution/coercion, 12, 35, 48–49, 54, 73, 75, 163, 180, 185, 202–3, 235, 312, 324, 338, 374–75, 380, 399 Pesne, Antoine, 49 Philadelphia, 131–32 philosophy, xvii, 5, 6, 7, 9–10, 16, 18–26, 28–29, 38, 343–44. See also theology Picander. See Henrici, Christian Friedrich (Picander, 1700–1764) Pietism, xvii, 1, 3, 4, 33, 34–35, 43–47, 64, 97, 98–99, 100, 101, 106–7, 158, 159, 223, 293–94, 295, 298, 306, 337, 339, 378, 397, 440n3 Plato, 23, 238, 433 Platz, Elizabeth, 283 Plütschau, Heinrich (1677–1752), 337 politics. See government Pontifical Council for Promoting Church Unity, 424 popes, 57 Porvoo Common Statement (Agreement, 1992), 398, 414–16 prayer. See Lord’s Prayer predestination (election), 255, 256, 264–66, 270, 399, 406–8, 437n9; Leuenberg Agreement

(1973), 406, 408; Madison Agreement (1912), 270. See also Calvin/Calvinism; salvation; will Prenter, Regin (1907–1990), 297, 298, 319–20 Preus, Herman/Hermann Amberg (1825–1894), 151–53, 261–63 Preus, J. A. O. (1929–1994), 259 Preus, Linka Hjort (1829–1880), 151–53 Princell, J. G., 267 prophecy/oracles, 4, 11, 22, 63, 65, 82, 98, 105, 116, 210, 303, 306, 325, 327 Protestantism. See Christianity: Protestantism Prussia/Brandenburg-Prussia, 31, 51, 98, 179, 439n8; Catholic Church in, 57; Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia, 98 [see Scheibel, Johann]; Prussian Union (Old Prussian Church), 36, 54–55, 56–57, 100, 101–4, 158, 159, 161–64, 180, 191–92, 210 Quakers, 51 Quenstedt, Johann (1617–1688), 64 Quentin de La Tour, Maurice, 50 quest of the historical Jesus, 63–96, 77–86, 89–90, 92–96, 99, 160, 174, 221, 225. See also Bible; history; Jesus Christ race relations/racism, 280–82, 350–51. See also apartheid; civil rights; slavery Raheb, Mitri, 373–75 Rajashekar, J. Paul, 378–80, 397–98 rationalism, 1–29, 35–36, 77, 97, 100, 102–3, 106, 221, 233, 294, 338, 439n8; radical, 12–13; reason, 4–6, 19–22, 23, 24, 33, 43–44, 102; systematic theology, 26–27, 111, 158, 159, 239–40, 438n12. See also enlightenment Reclam, Frédéric, 52 redemption, 6, 90–91, 159, 236–37, 385 reductionism, 100, 103 Reformation, 6, 27, 31, 36, 51, 117, 124, 160, 173, 176, 185, 423; 300th anniversary (1817), 36, 397; 400th anniversary (1917), 97, 180, 190–91, 345; 500th anniversary (2017), xix, 399, 424–25. See also Luther, Martin Reformed Protestantism. See Calvin/Calvinism Reimarus, Hermann (1694–1768), 4, 65, 66, 72–73 religion/religiosity: essence of, 161–63; freedom

INDEX

of, 192, 272, 333, 335, 380; historical and cultural approaches, 175–78; human-centered, 101–2, 230–31; natural vs. positive, 439–40; philosophy of, 28–29; plurality, 296, 298, 333, 343, 353, 366, 375, 379–80, 384, 398, 416, 428–30, 432–33; public vs. private, 4–5, 13, 20, 170; and reason, 19–22, 23, 24, 43–44, 102; after the Reformation, 51; religionless Christianity, 224, 247; truth claims, 431–33; understanding, 226–28; world, 425–26, 429–31. See also theology Repristination Theology, 98, 104–6 resurrection. See Jesus Christ revelation, 11, 17, 158, 168–69, 251–52, 426–28, 438n11, 439n1. See also Bible: inspiration; theory of accommodation, 65 revivalism, 141–42, 293–94, 296, 312, 313, 367. See also awakening righteousness, 15, 86, 89, 114, 166, 170, 208–9, 227, 235, 242, 267, 281, 307–9, 311, 328, 330, 378, 385, 409, 418, 421, 422 Ritschl, Albrecht (1822–1889)/Ritschlian School, 67, 157–60, 161, 164–74, 221 Roloff, Michael, 48–49 Roman Catholics. See Catholicism, Roman Romanticism, 3, 6, 158 Romero, Oscar, 391 Rosenberg, Alfred (1893–1946), 182 Rosenius, Carl Olof (1816–1868), 295, 308–9, 314 Rosenmüller, Johann Georg (1736–1815), 33–34, 43, 44–46 Rothe, Richard (1799–1867), 157 Rousseau, Jean Jacques (1712–1778), 6, Ruotsalainen, Paavo (1777–1852), 296, 311–12 Russia, 179, 257, 296, 323 Saarinen, Risto, 417 sacraments, 151; baptism, 302–4, 388; confession, 43, 265, 302–4, 309, 423; Lord’s Supper/holy communion, 32, 34, 35, 37, 40, 99, 103, 402, 406, 407, 441n3 salvation, 67, 265, 337, 353–54, 399, 406, 419, 431–33; forgiveness of sins, 27, 159; justification, 159, 164–66, 222, 223–24, 242–43, 267–68, 392–95, 417, 418, 420–23; reconciliation, 117–18, 164–67; salvation history (Heilsgeschichte), 99, 199–200; sanctifica-

469

tion/regeneration, 223–24, 241–43, 300–302, 307. See also atonement; Jesus Christ Salzburg/Salzburgers, 130–31 Sasse, Hermann (1895–1976), 222, 232–34 Saxony/Saxon Lutherans, 31, 40, 143–44, 216 Scandinavia: Lutheranism, 38, 151–53, 255–56, 293–336, 387, 414. See also Denmark; Finland; Norway; Sweden Schartau, Henric (1757–1825), 294, 295, 306–8 Scheibel, Johann Gottfried (1783–1843), 98, 103–4 Scherer, James, 347–48 Schlatter, Adolf (1852–1938), 67, 84–86, 440n3 Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1768–1834), 36, 53–54, 66, 100, 116–17, 158, 159, 161–64, 222, 397 Schlesinger, Jacob, 28 Schmidt, Ervino, 392–93 Schmucker, B. M., 267 Schmucker, Samuel Simon (1799–1873), 127, 146–47, 148, 149 Schoenherr, Albrecht (1911–2009), 184 Schweitzer, Albert (1875–1965), 67, 88–90, 160–61, 174, 221 science, 110–11; physics, 2–4, 22–23, 25, 252. See also determinism; mathematics Scott, George, 295 Scripture. See Bible/Scripture/Word of God secularism/secularization, 37, 224–25, 230, 247–50, 298, 325, 334–36 Seeberg, Reinhold (1859–1935), 179, 180, 189 Semler, Johann Salomo (1725–1791), 3–4, 12–13, 36, 65, 71–72, 73–74, 437n10 sermons/preaching. See worship sexuality, 288–90, 339, 364–65; Dodoma Statement (2010), 361–62; homosexuality, 260, 288, 332, 339, 365; “Gift and Trust” Social Statement, 288–90 Sigismund, Johann, 54 Sihombing, F. P., 385–86 Silesia, 4, 103, 187 Simon, Richard (1638–1712), 64 sin, 117–18, 385; in African World, 353; original, 4, 12, 18, 231, 275. See also redemption Singmaster, Elsie, 345–46 slavery, 128, 153–54. See also civil rights social unrest/oppression/revolution, 224, 441n10; French Revolution, 97; revolu-

470

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

tions of 1848, 441n10. See also war; America: American Revolution social action, 101, 118–24, 290; social service institutions, 34 Social Democratic Party (SPD), 37 social issues, 58–61, 177–78, 290 socialism/social democracy, 38, 59–60, 60–61, 217; Christian Socialism, 101. See also Marxism/communism Socrates, 22, 29, 428, 433 Söderblom, Nathan (1866–1931), 297, 398, 400, 426–28 Sölle/Soelle, Dorothee (1929–2003), 224, 245–47, 249–50 sorcery/witchcraft, 51, 343, 353, 355, 367, 388–90 soteriology, 354–55, 417–18, 430 South Africa, 339–40, 348–56 South America. See Latin America Spalding, Johann Joachim (1715–1804), 33–34 Spener, Philip Jacob (1635–1705), 1, 64, 121, 123, 312–13 Spinoza, Baruch (1632–1677), 1, 6, 25–26, 64, 158, 242, 437n7 spirit: Absolute Spirit, 6, 28–29, 66; ancestral spirits (Indonesia, Liberia, Madagascar, PNG), 341, 389–90; proof of, 13–14, 16; Volkgeist, 6. See also Bible: spirit vs. letter Stendahl, Brita, 327–28 Stephan, Martin, 143 Stoecker, Adolf (1839–1905), 37, 38, 58–59, 60, 101 Stough, John (1806–1807), 137–38 Strauss, David Friedrich (1808–1874), 6, 66, 77–79, 80, 100 Stuckenberg, John H. W., 155–56 Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt (1945), 184, 212 Suomi Synod, 256, 404 Supernaturalism, 3, 11, 64, 70–72 superstition, 51; curiosity as, 22. See also fanaticism Sweden/Church of Sweden/Swedish Lutherans, 129–30, 133, 256, 267, 295, 298–99, 306, 308, 309, 312, 316, 318, 325, 327–28, 333–36, 341, 361, 398, 401–2, 409, 426, 427, 441n11 Switzerland/Swiss Reformed Church, 34, 119, 123, 183, 221, 315, 440n3 synergism, 243, 265, 270, 275, 437–38

Synodical Conference, 151 synods, in America, 127–28, 138–40, 148–54, 255, 265, 274, 345, 439n8. See also church: polity; specific synod(s) Syrdal, Rolf, 346–47 Tanzania (Tanganyika), 340, 356–62 Telemann, Georg Philipp (1681–1767), 32 territorial churches, 177 theology, 1, 2, 5, 6, 29, 221–54, 392–93, 428–31; criteria, 239–40; demythologization, 67–68, 90–92, 224, 230, 236–39, 247 [see also Bible]; dialectical, 221, 222, 225, 230–36, 243 [see also Neo-Orthodoxy]; Europe (20th Century), 221–54; evangelical, 225–26; of facts vs. rhetoric, 99, 109–11; High Church Confessional, 108–11; liberation, 224, 246–47, 342; Lundensian School, 318; natural (theologia naturalis) vs. revealed, 10, 11, 222; political, 245–47; renewal, 294; theocentric, 225–30; True Method, 7. See also philosophy; religion/religiosity theosis (deification/divinization), 207, 298, 329–30, 417–18 Thielecke, Helmut (1908–1986), 223, 237–39 Tholuck, August (1799–1877), 66, 67, 79–80, 100, 101, 117–18, 157, 159 Thomasius, Christian (1655–1728), 34, 35, 47–48, 51 Thomasius, Gottfried (1802–1875), 99, 100, 111–12 Thorendal, Anders, 335 Tidemand, Adolph (1814–76), 299 Tillich, Paul (1886–1965), 183–84, 211–12, 223, 239–41 Tindal, Matthew, 2 toleration, 4, 35, 47, 386, 437n9. See also freedom/liberty Töllner, Johann Gottlieb (1724–1777), 34 transcendentalism/transcendence, 20, 24, 188, 223, 239, 250, 300, 354, 430 Troeltsch, Ernst (1865–1923), 38, 161, 175–78, 189, 222, 400, 425–26 Tumsa, Gudina (1929–1979), 362–64 Turks, 2, 200, 375–76 Union Congregations, 125. See also church: Union

INDEX

United Evangelical Church, 36 United Evangelical Church in India (UELCI), 382 United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany (VELKD), 184, 213, 214, 217 United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA), 257–59, 272, 404 United Nations (UN), 348, 352, 372 United Synod South, 255 universities: Berlin, 6, 66, 100, 176; Bonn, 183, 221; Breslau, 67, 98, 230; Erlangen, 67, 80, 99, 180, 183, 199, 234; Frankfurt, 183; Göttingen, 3, 67, 68, 132, 157, 159, 182, 230; Greifswald, 67, 160, 440n3; Halle, 3, 6, 27, 34–35, 65, 66, 67, 100, 158, 159, 293, 337; Heidelberg, 6; Jena, 6, 33; Heidelberg, 237; Königsberg, 4, 5; Leipzig, 33; Lund, 297; Marburg, 3, 67, 99, 159, 183, 222, 223; Nürnberg, 6; Oslo, 294, 297; Prussian, 100, 119–21; Tübingen, 6, 66, 237, 450; Wittenberg, 63; Zurich, 66; KwaZuluNatal, 354 Ursinus, Johann Heinrich, 337 Vatican, 420; Vatican Council, First (1870), 37; Vatican Council, Second (1962–65), 399, 405–6. See also Catholicism, Roman Versailles, 180, 191–92 Vethanayagamony, Peter, 382–84 Vilmar, August Friedrich Christian (1800–1868), 99, 109–11 virtue(s), 34, 46, 177, 230, 300, 307 Voltaire (1694–1778), 3, 35, 49–51 Vööbus, Arthur, 323–24 Vorwerk, Dietrich (1870–1942), 179–80, 186 Waldenström, Paul Peter (1838–1917), 256, 267, 295, 309–11, 318 Walther, C. F. W. (1811–1887), 128, 144–45, 151, 264 war: church struggles during (20th century), 179–220; Great Northern (1713–1721), 293; Thirty Years War, 31, 103, 397; World War I, 37, 38, 67, 127, 179, 185–91, 191–94, 221, 225, 257, 258, 271–72, 297, 340, 398, 402; World War II, 68, 184, 212–14, 234, 258, 280, 297–98, 328, 358, 389, 398, 401. See also America: American Revolution; American Civil War

471

Wathiyar, Kanapadi, 382–83 Weber, Max, 38, 189, 325 Weber, Otto, 233 Weger, August, 38 Wegscheider, Julius (1771–1849), 6, 26–27, 77 Weimar Republic, 5, 38, 181, 191–94 Weiss, Johannes (1853–1914), 67, 86–87 Weltz, Justinian von (1621–1668), 337 Westhelle, Vitor, 342 Westphalia, Treaty, 31 Wichern, Johann Hinrich (1808–1881), 101, 121–24 Wilhelm I (Kaiser/ Emperor), 3, 34–35, 37, 51, 54 Wilhelm II (Kaiser/Emperor), 35, 38, 51, 52, 179, 180, 185, 190–91, 226, 340 Wilhelm III (Kaiser/Emperor), 6, 36, 54, 55–56, 97, 116 Wilhelm IV (Kaiser/Emperor), 36, 56, 101 Wilhelm, Georg (George William), 54 will: God’s Will, 44, 47, 76, 170, 172, 180, 187, 195, 198, 200, 204, 222, 235, 264, 267, 282, 299, 311, 319, 321, 330, 395, 413, 416–17, 425, 433–35; free will, 34, 44, 209, 301, 343, 359. See also predestination Wingren, Gustaf, 298, 328–29 Wittenberg, 123–24, 196, 438n12 Wolff, Christian (1679–1754), 2–3, 7–10, 23, 25, 35 Wolfenbüttel Fragments, 4, 65, 72–75. See also Lessing, Gotthold Wöllner, Johann Christoph von (1732–1800), 35–36, 51–53 Women, 118–19, 210, 313, 345, 356–57, 382, 383; ordination of, 259, 282–85, 298, 327–28, 384 Word of God. See Bible/Scripture/Word of God World Council of Churches, 258, 352, 358, 371, 377, 398, 404–5 worship, 38–42; ceremonies, 40–41; liturgy/services, 32, 34, 38–40, 44–46, 134–35, 266–67, 279, 360–61; rituals, 2, 66, 298, 340, 353, 355, 432; sermons/preaching, 33–34. See also church; sacraments Wrede, Wilhelm (1859–1906), 67, 87–88 Württemberg, 106–7 xenophobia, 257–58, 271

472

A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF LUTHERANISM

Yadessa, Solomon Endashaw, 364 Younan, Munib A. (1950– ), 370–73, 375–77, 424 Young Reformation Movement, 182, 201–2 Young, Rosa, 270 Ziegenbalg, Bartolomäus (1682–1719), 337, 342–44, 380, 383

Zigenhagen/Ziegenhagen, Mr., 131–32 Zinzendorf, Nicholas von, count (1700–1760), 51, 126, 131–32, 132. See also Moravians Zittau, 216 Zschokke, Heinrich (1771–1848), 34, 46–47 Zurenuo, Zurewe, 391 Zwingli, Ulrich, 104, 233, 337

Eric Lund is professor emeritus of religion at St. Olaf College. He taught courses on church history and historical theology for thirty-six years and served for nine years as the college’s director of international studies. His publications have covered the Protestant Reformation, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Lutheran spirituality, and the English reformer William Tyndale. Mark Granquist is associate professor of church history at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is the author of Lutherans in America: A New History (Fortress Press, 2015) and Scandinavian Pietists: Spiritual Writings from the 19th Century Denmark, Sweden, and Finland (2015) and coauthor of The Augustana Story: Shaping Lutheran Identity in North America (Fortress Press, 2008).

Praise for Volume 2: From the Enlightenment to the Present “Each chapter of this volume could stand alone as a rich resource for learning about Lutheran history, contemporary theology, and church life. Topics range from rationalism and modern biblical interpretation to social engagement and struggles for liberation. The chapter on Lutheranism as a worldwide movement is especially beneficial for an informed understanding of Christianity in the twenty-first century. This volume will be useful for individuals, discussion groups, and classes who want to learn how Lutherans around the world have approached important matters of faith and practice.” Martin Lohrmann Wartburg Theological Seminary “Offering a panorama of Lutheranism’s resilience and growth over the last five hundred years, this book engages readers with the Lutheranism’s most significant leaders and their responses to movements such as the Enlightenment, industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and globalization. Lund’s and Granquist’s introductions to each chapter provide a context for each of the selected readings and so make them accessible and relevant. As Lutherans anticipate their continuing mission in the world, this volume will well serve church leaders, as well as anyone interested in Lutheranism’s historical depth and global breadth.” Mark Mattes Grand View University

L. DeAne Lagerquist St. Olaf College

Church History / Lutheranism / American Church History

A Documentary History of Lutheranism T

his unique collection of excerpts from Lutheran historical and theological documents—many translated here for the first time—presents readers with a full picture of how the Lutheran movement developed in its thought and practice. The editors’ judicious selections and helpful introductions acquaint readers with both the enduring characteristics and changing features of this revolutionary Christian momement, always with an eye to how it affected and was experienced by ordinary people. Volume 1 covers the period from the Reformation to the rise of Pietism. Volume 2 analyzes the evolution of post-Enlightenment Lutheranism as it spreads to all the religions of the world.

2 From the Enlightenment to the Present

“In this second collection of documents, Lund and Granquist conduct us through several centuries and regions. They have selected significant texts from theology, biblical scholarship, worship and devotional life, and social engagement. These, together with their informative introductions, shine light upon the Lutheran Reformation as ongoing. In doing so, they take an important step toward a full history of Lutheranism in its birthplace.”

A Documentary History of Lutheranism

Writings that shaped the direction of Lutheranism worldwide

Lund Granquist

Volume 2

From the Enlightenment to the Present

Eric Lund & Mark Granquist, Editors