Altlutheraner

The following articles were originally written in Lehre und Wehre, 50, pp. 369 ff.

Concerning the refusal of joint prayer in Detroit on the part of the representatives of the Synodical Conference, The Lutheran Observer writes on July 8: “In Detroit it was that various branches of our Church met in order to reach a better understanding. To open and close their sessions with ‘psalms and hymns and spiritual songs’ and prayer, of all things best calculated to unify hearts and households, would have been but a most natural thing to do. God and His Church expected it. The outside world looked for it. All were disappointed. It was openly stated that non-church-fellowship precludes fellowship in prayer. If that be so our Master must have forgotten this rock-ribbed principle, for He frequently worshiped with Jews and Judas. Peter and John must have ignored it when they ‘went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer,’ and joined the Christ-slayers. And with what indecorum the very father of Lutheranism behaved when he prayed with and for his beloved co-worker, who at one time was ‘almost Zwinglian,’ at another ‘crypto-Calvinistic,’ and again accused of ‘taking Cruciger’s part’; whose views Luther himself at one time termed ‘tenacious phantasies,’ and who actually committed the unpardonable sin of writing the Confessio Variata. Could Luther have been at all times of one mind with Melanchthon? Yet, when in the jaws of death, the former rescued the latter by prayer, saying: ‘Philip, you must still further serve the Lord.’ D. S. Moody and the Bishop of Rome prayed together. But alas! Mr. Moody is discredited by our friends. Should Pharisee and publican meet and pray, but Missourian, Ohioan, and Iowan meet but to debate and differ? It was a Frenchman who, when convinced of the variance of his methods with the facts in the case, rejoined: ‘So much the worse for the facts.’ This should not be the plea of the noble German! We are willing to submit this matter to the unbiased Christian conscience to judge if the brethren of the Synodical Conference beyond all controversy are so superlatively Christian, so purely Lutheran, so superbly logical, so rigidly right? If affirmatively answered, I for one recant and join.”

So the Observer — only this one thing we highlight from its in every respect baseless words — demands that Lutherans cultivate prayer fellowship with the Reformed, Papists, and enemies of Christ. Nor do we see how all those who make it a reproach to Missouri that it did not want to cultivate prayer fellowship with the Ohioans, who declare us to be Calvinistic false teachers and have separated from us as false teachers, before the unity of faith is restored, want to evade this consequence. Are the Ohioans and Iowans also ready, like the General Synodists, to enter into prayer fellowship with the sects and Papists? F. B.

Joint prayer, the conditio sine qua non of all discussions concerning unity of faith — Now the Lutheran, too, has pledged itself to this principle, which is just as immoral as it is fanatical and intolerant, which Dr. Jacobs pronounced in Pittsburg. The Iowan Kirchenblatt of July 23 quoted the following passage from the Lutheran: “We are so far from approving what we recognize in this particular case as a thoroughly unchristian and unscriptural position on the part of Missouri that we would absolutely refuse to attend any Lutheran conference from which public spoken prayer is excluded.” — “People who take such an extreme position should have the freedom to keep to themselves until they are willing, not only to shake hands with others, to debate with them, to eat and to drink and to smoke, but also to pray with them, and in so doing to begin with the short and splendid prayer of the publican: ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’”

The negative principle: No discussions concerning unity of faith with such Lutherans, who do not want to pray together with us, here seems to be completed positively by the Lutheran thus: With whom we may eat and drink and smoke, we can also confidently hold joint prayer services. We Missourians stick with our old principle: Prayer fellowship is church fellowship, and church fellowship with the heterodox is forbidden in God’s Word, is in itself dishonesty and a lie, involves a disavowal of the truth, and is therefore a great annoyance in the Church.

In the same issue in which it complained that the representatives of the Synodical Conference did not want to hold a “joint liturgical service” with the Ohioans and Iowans in Detroit, the Iowan Kirchenblatt pledged itself to the statement “that church fellowship should not be allowed to be cultivated with those who persistently deny the clear teachings of Scripture.” Now, however, the Ohioans for more than 25 years have separated themselves from the Missourians as from “false teachers”; and for 25 years the Ohioans have cried out against the Missourians in all of Christendom as Calvinistic false teachers. And the same applies to the Iowans.

Therefore, if the Kirchenblatt wants to be consistent, then it must admonish the Ohioans and Iowans to either retract their reproach against Missouri, or it must enjoin them not to cultivate prayer and church fellowship with the “Missourian false teachers.”

We Missourians make a distinction between the weak and those who are not, also with regard to doctrine. And we take a different stance towards the former than towards the latter, also with regard to church fellowship. But we can no longer regard Iowa and Ohio as weak. F. B.

On the battles between the Synodical Conference and its opponents, the Kirchenblatt of the Iowa Synod writes on June 11 that it “in these battles, which have long since taken on a fundamental character, deals with nothing less than the preservation of the historic Lutheran Church, which is in danger of being turned into a sect by the Synodical Conference.” How so? The Kirchenblatt answers this on July 23: Because Missouri also counts its doctrine of transference and its doctrine of the Antichrist among “the doctrines of faith, which are clearly revealed in Scripture.”

With regard to the doctrine of transference, Missouri believes Matt. 18:17–20, where Christ conferred upon the local congregation the Keys of the kingdom of heaven and thus all spiritual power. And with our confession we believe that the Pope is “the very Antichrist,” papam esse ipsum verum antichristum (Triglotta, 475), because the Pope clearly bears the characteristics mentioned in 2 Thess. 2. Now because Missouri, with our confession, counts these doctrines among the doctrines to which they evidently belong, namely, among the clear doctrines of Scripture, and not among human opinions and open questions, and holds that every Christian is under obligation to accept these doctrines, and because Missouri accordingly rejects all synodical rule and all chiliasm in the Church, Iowa therefore contends against the Synodical Conference and calls upon the General Council, for it is “the preservation of the historic Lutheran Church, which is in danger of being turned into a sect by the Synodical Conference.”

No, not love of truth, but fanaticism and ignorance dictated this judgment of the Iowan writer into the pen. The Iowan Kirchenblatt obviously has no real idea of what is actually “historic” and what is “Lutheran,” nor of what “Church” and what “sect” is, nor of even what the “Synodical Conference” is. F. B.

Church fellowship presupposes unity in all matters of doctrine and practice. P. Offermann rightly emphasizes this in the Lutherisches Kirchenblatt of Reading. He writes: “The Lutherische Zionsbote, a paper published by the General Synod, brings in its issue of June 2nd one last article ‘On the Intersynodical Conference.’ It was prompted to do so by a sentence in one of my articles on the Pittsburg Conference, which read verbatim: ‘Church fellowship between individual synods is (nevertheless) essentially fellowship of confession; it presupposes that the synods concerned are in complete agreement with one another in all matters of doctrine and practice and can therefore recognize each other as confessionally faithful Lutherans.’

“The second part of this sentence in particular is a thorn in the side of the Zionsbote. It goes to great lengths to prove that the demand for complete agreement in doctrine and practice as a precondition for church fellowship is unthinkable, a demand whose absurdity must be obvious to any fair-minded person upon closer examination. The reasons it gives may be summarized in the following sentences: 1. What one only wants to make a condition of church fellowship, was and is in reality its greatest obstacle. 2. The demand for complete agreement in doctrine and practice is not held by any Lutheran synod except Missouri and has just recently been decidedly rejected by Iowa. 3. ‘How can such a demand be justified Scripturally (sic!)? 4. Where will the end be found once we start speaking of all matters of doctrine? 5. Agreement in practice is especially completely impossible. 6. Important questions of church practice, however, are pulpit fellowship with those of other faiths and the position towards the lodges. 7. But to make certain regulations even concerning these questions, opposing Christian freedom, is synodical hierarchy, bondage of conscience, and Papal presumption. 8. Concluding admonition: ‘Do not become servants of men!’ It is not my intention to refute these points in detail. I have only cited them in order to show by way of example how even ‘conservative’ men in the General Synod think and write today concerning the confession as the basis of all true unity.

“If the Zionsbote wants to be consistent, then it certainly must draw the simple conclusion from these sentences, that no agreement in doctrine and practice at all is necessary for church fellowship; that any obligation to the confession, whatever its nature, impairs Christian freedom; and that therefore a religious fellowship in which each believes, teaches, and acts as he pleases represents the highest ideal of the Christian Church. The Zionsbote naturally shied away from drawing these consequences. But its entire line of argument can only be understood from the standpoint of a blurred unionism, which in principle advocates equal rights for all directions and dissolves all the truths of faith into subjective opinions. This is also the standpoint of the General Synod.

“The Zionsbote well writes: ‘As Lutherans we accept the Augsburg Confession as our chief confession.’ But how little is actually said by that. The Lutheran character of a synod is by no means guaranteed by the mere acceptance of the Augsburg Confession, if it is not also ensured that its members actually teach and act according to it. Now, anyone who is reasonably acquainted with the conditions in the General Synod will testify to me that, on the whole, they care very little about what individual pastors teach and what practices they follow. Certainly, they subscribe to the Augsburg Confession (and why should they not?), they accept it — as a figurehead; but that is as far as it goes. It is left to the discretion of each individual how much or how little of it he ultimately wants to accept for his person. The synod has no objection if its members want to be confessionally faithful Lutherans. But neither does it object when its pastors promulgate profoundly false doctrines; join godless, unchristian societies; and allow all kinds of sectarian preachers into their pulpits. Thus complete freedom rules in the General Synod, but it is not freedom in the truth. The misery nowadays is that in our church the brush of whitewashing is used everywhere, that people deceive themselves and others with beautiful speech while persistently closing their eyes to the obvious damages and defects in their own midst. The Zionsbote could do its synod a real service if it wanted to bear a strong, manly witness against every kind of religious syncretism, against all unsound doctrine and un-Lutheran practice.” F. B.