Part 4
The Lutheran Fathers
We have seen that Walther wanted the old church doctrine of inspiration to be upheld precisely so that the Christian principle of the Church of the Reformation would be preserved. We further saw that in the same interest, when discussing the theory of “open questions,” Walther rejects any authority of the Church or its teachers to establish or validate dogmas.
Nevertheless, the accusation has been raised against Walther that his theology was a dead repristination of the doctrinal formulations of the old Lutheran Church and the old Lutheran teachers. The accusation seems to have some justification if one initially looks only at the outward form of most of Walther’s published writings. For there is probably no Lutheran theologian who has quoted Luther, the Lutheran Confessions, and the writings of the dogmaticians as much as Walther. He himself admits: “It is true that it appears as if our theology were a doctrinal traditionalism that lacks independence, and a dead repristination,” because “until now, our publications have been characterized by a constant effort to substantiate our statements with references to the older orthodox teachers of our church.”1
But Walther firmly rejects this accusation as unjustified. Regarding such citing of church teachers, he writes of himself and those who have worked in similar manner:
We believe we have done this in such a way that whoever was willing to do so had to see that we did not follow those faithful teachers of our Church blindly, but with a living conviction, not mindlessly repeating and following them, but as their sons, so that at all times we have been able to say: “I believed, therefore I have spoken.” The Confessions and their confessors were indeed our guides, but we have let ourselves to be led by them into the Scriptures, so that we have always and in all points finally been able to say: We now believe not because of your word, but have read and recognized for ourselves that your doctrine is the truth of God. As incomparably valuable as the pure confession of our Church has been to us, above all else, we have never subjected ourselves to it as some doctrinal law imposed on us, but rather have accepted it with joyful gratitude to God for His unspeakable grace, because we found it to be our own confession. Our American-Lutheran Church has also had to fight many hard battles against the proud sects who are here, whom we could not, of course, oppose by presenting them with the testimony of our fathers. Whoever has witnessed these battles knows that God’s written Word has proven itself to be a victorious weapon, even in our weak hands.2
That Walther, despite all his citing of the Lutheran doctrinal fathers, adhered to the Lutheran Principle of Scripture — the Principle that the canonical Scriptures of the Apostles and Prophets, inspired by the Holy Spirit, are the sole source of all saving truth and the only judge in all doctrinal controversies — is well attested by the outward form of his writings and the many synodical essays he delivered. Thus, even where he mostly quoted Luther, the Confessions, and the old Lutheran teachers, he always prefaced such expositions with the proofs from Scripture. Therefore Walther always criticized the sainted Philippi for following the newer theological fashions, and accepting a threefold source from which Christian doctrine should draw its material: 1. enlightened reason, 2. Church doctrine, and 3. Scripture.3 Walther protests against such a coordination of Scripture and church teaching when it concerns the “source” of Christian doctrine. The teachers of the church should be left exclusively in their position as testes veritatis [witnesses to the truth].
But why, rather than elaborating on the whole subject dogmatically in his own words, did Walther so extensively let the old Lutheran teachers speak for him? This too he himself explains in his remarks made in the year 1875:
We were compelled to proceed in just this way by the circumstances in which we found ourselves in the beginning and still find ourselves today. We have unfortunately not enjoyed, like our fathers, the unspeakable blessing of being able to fight alongside a cloud of witnesses within our church against its enemies, but rather the very people who bear the name Lutheran with us have been our most vehement opponents and have wanted to deny that our doctrine is that of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. When we Lutherans of America again unfurled the good old banner of our church and again gathered around it in closed ranks, while all about us Zwinglianism, fanaticism, and rationalism sailed under the Lutheran flag, it was immediately said: We are starting a new sect! One shouted: You are on the way to Rome! Another: You are Unionists! Others: You are Independents! Still others: You are Pietists, enthusiasts, Donatists, Calvinists! — and who can name all the sects that were supposed to have risen afresh with us? In short, we were supposedly everything except what we ourselves declared we wanted to be — confessors of the doctrine of the Reformation, that is, Lutherans. What else could we do if we did not want to be branded a sect? As long as we were denied the character of being faithful Lutherans, we had to continually call upon the precious Confessions and the old undisputedly faithful teachers of our Church to appear as witnesses for us.4
So Walther himself! However, there is another reason must be given to explain the form of Walther’s theological works. He believed that he would gain an advantage for the cause if he let his own words step back before those of the old theologians. He thought that these could speak better about the individual doctrines than he himself. We are firmly convinced that Walther was somewhat mistaken here. Walther certainly does not lag behind most of the old theologians of our Church in terms of spiritual experience, theological erudition, logical acumen, and the gift of presentation; in our opinion, he surpasses many of them in these respects. To substantiate our judgment, we refer to the independent doctrinal expositions that Walther wrote either as a preface or as an afterward to the presentations of the old theologians. Walther’s own expositions not only do not fall short of those of the old teachers in terms of clarity and sharpness of perception, but often it is Walther’s presentation above all that makes the matter really clear.
Indeed, if one wants to correctly understand Walther’s position on the teachers of the old Lutheran Church, the following should also be noted: Even though Walther looked up to the theologians of the old Lutheran Church with great reverence, he made a great distinction among them. The theologians of the 17th century lag behind those of the 16th century in his view. It is true that, according to him, the former shed brighter light on individual points of doctrine and also gave individual points a more thorough formulation. But through the systematization of doctrine that was practiced in this period, the purity of the same has sometimes suffered in various places. Walther wanted a return to the theology of the 16th century, above all to the theology of Luther and the Lutheran Confessions. He writes, also in the year 1875:
Incidentally, those who call our theology that of the 17th century do not know us. As highly as we esteem the immense work that the great Lutheran dogmaticians of this period have done, it is not actually they to whom we have returned, but above all to our dear Concordia and to Luther, in whom we have recognized the man whom God has chosen as the Moses of His Church of the New Covenant, to lead His Church, which had fallen into the bondage of the Antichrist, out of it with the pillar of cloud and fire, that is, with the pure and unadulterated word of God, proceeding before them. As immeasurably rich as the treasures of knowledge and experience stored up in the dogmaticians of that time may be, and even if we learn from them with pleasure and joy day and night, they are neither our Bible nor our Confession. Rather, we perceive even in them, here and there, a clouding of that stream that gushed forth so crystal clear in the 16th century.5
Above all, Walther wanted to be a faithful student of Luther, “whose writings he confesses to have made his principal study.” In Luther, he sees not one theologian among others, but the one chosen by God Himself to be the reformer of the Church and the revealer of the Antichrist. “Would it not be” — he exclaims6 — “unspeakable ingratitude to God, who sent us this man, if we did not want to listen to his voice? Then we would not have recognized the time in which God has visited us. … God holds Christendom responsible if it does not recognize this man as the reformer of the Church. … Woe to the Church if she will not use God’s instrument, but passes him by! A Church in which Luther’s writings are not studied first by pastors and then, at their urging, by common Christians, certainly does not have Luther’s spirit, and Luther’s spirit is the pure evangelical spirit of faith, humility, and simplicity.”
Endnotes
1 Lehre und Wehre, vol. 21, p, 66.
2 Ibid., pp. 66, 67.
3 Baieri Comp. ed. Walther, Proleg. II, p. 91.
4 Lehre und Wehre, vol. 21, p, 66.
5 Ibid., p. 67.
6 Lehre und Wehre, vol. 33, p. 305f.