Part 3

Inspiration

In Zöckler’s Handbuch der Theologischen Wissenschaft,¹ alongside the Reformed theologians Kohlbrügge, Gaußen, and Kuyper, Walther in St. Louis is named “on the Lutheran side” as a representative of the old church doctrine of inspiration. Although a reference is made to an article published in “Lehre und Wehre” and latter in pamphlet form, which was not written by Walther,² the statement of the “Handbook” is nevertheless correct. Walther truly maintained the old church doctrine of inspiration throughout his entire teaching career, not only with full conviction, but also in declaring any abandonment of this doctrine to be, in principle, a falling away from Christianity itself.

Already in the first volume of Lehre und Wehre,³ in a review of Kahnis’ work, Der innere Gang des deutschen Protestantismus [The Internal Method of German Protestantism], etc., attention is drawn to the following words of this work: “Protestantism stands or falls with the Principle of the sole authority of Scripture. However, this Principle is independent from the doctrine of inspiration as found in the old dogmaticians. To readopt it as it was then, can only happen by hardening oneself against the truth.” Kahnis held to a better position at that time than he did later on. His name still had garnered respect in the Lutheran Church at that time. But Walther already remarked on the words just quoted:

We must confess that when we read these words, we were truly frightened from the bottom of our hearts. Who would want to go along with a new theology that introduces itself as the further development of the old Lutheran one, yet deviates from the doctrinal type of our old church precisely in the doctrine of the Formal Principle of theology, of Holy Scripture (ratio formalis scripturae), namely, that which makes Scripture Holy Scripture?

Thus wrote Walther in the first volume of Lehre und Wehre. He also deals with inspiration in the last preface written by him, that of the 32nd volume of “Lehre und Wehre” (1886).

Which doctrine of inspiration Walther considered correct, he briefly presented in Lehre und Wehre in 1875, pp. 257 f., in three short quotations from Baier and Quenstedt. He treated this subject very extensively each time in his regular lectures and finally again in his evening lectures during the academic year 1885–1886. Walther’s doctrine of inspiration can be summarized briefly as follows: Holy Scripture does not merely contain God’s Word, but is in its entire scope God’s Word in the proper sense, because God spoke through the sacred writers or inspired them with subject matter and words, so that now in Holy Scripture not the slightest error, neither in dogmatic nor in historical, geographical, or other matters, can occur. Thus, says Walther, one must believe concerning Holy Scripture if he accepts “what Holy Scripture says of itself,” 2 Tim. 3:16, 2 Peter 1:20, 21, 1 Cor. 2:13, John 10:35, etc. For him, the concept of the inspiration of Scripture is abandoned by all those “who recognize only an inspiration of the what and not of the how, of the things and not also of the words of Holy Scripture, or who assume degrees of inspiration of one book over another, or admit that Scripture contains any error, or that it condescends not only to the comprehension of the simple people but also to their false notions.” Regarding those who confuse inspiration with illumination and transform inspiration into a mere preservation from error, as the only manner in which we have an inerrant Scripture, Walther remarked, among other things: “That seems harmless enough, yet with that the entire doctrine of inspiration is abandoned. We need not merely truth, but divine truth. We must have a word that has gone through the mouth of God and is consequently glowing with divine power and sharpness, as it were, immersed in God’s mind. Simple truth works through persuasion; not so God’s Word.” Regarding the expressions of the church fathers and the old Lutheran teachers, that the holy writers were as it were manus, calami, notarii, tabelliones of the Holy Spirit, Walther remarks: “Let these neo-Protestants (Neugläubigen)⁴ mock these expressions. They express the doctrine of Holy Scripture.” He explained the difference in the written style found in the individual books of Scripture, along with the great majority of the old teachers, by the fact that the Holy Spirit used the instruments as he found them; for “the essence of inspiration does not lie in new words, but in the fact that words that were otherwise in use went through the mouth of God, were made into His words by God.” Whether the Hebrew vowel points found in the diacritical Hebrew text available to us now were written in the text from the beginning, as the majority of the old Lutheran teachers assumed, Walther declared to be a critical question, not a dogmatic one. He, for his part, agreed with Luther, who declared the transmitted Hebrew pointing system to be a product of later times.

Here is just one example of the manner in which Walther refuted the objections raised against the church’s doctrine of inspiration. Modern theologians, as is well known, claim that they only abandon the old doctrine of inspiration in order to save the “divine-human character” of Scripture, which earlier theologians had overlooked. So also the Handbuch der theologischen Wissenschaften, loc. cit. Walther said:

Among the manifold objections raised by the modern believing theologians against the doctrine of inspiration of our old dogmaticians, one of the most common is that this doctrine, in emphasizing the divinity of Holy Scripture, does not do justice to the human aspect of it, indeed, entirely abolishes this aspect. As once in the apostolic age the sect of the Docetists denied that God had become a true man in Christ, and taught that what seemed to be human in Christ was a mere appearance, so, it is now said, the old Lutheran dogmatics does with the Bible; the old dogmatics also makes everything human in the Bible a mere appearance. — But all this is simply not true. The old dogmatics also acknowledges a human aspect of the Bible, albeit in a certain sense. It acknowledges that the Bible was not written directly by God’s finger itself, like the Ten Commandments, but through men, namely the Apostles and Prophets. The old dogmatics further acknowledges that the Bible does not speak the language of heaven, of which Paul says he there heard inexpressible words, but that the Word of God has clothed itself in our human language and human writing. Yes, the old dogmatics admits that the Bible was written by the sacred writers not in a state of rapture, but with full consciousness, and that the Holy Spirit adapted or accommodated Himself to the language and human style of each Apostle and Prophet. — However, the old dogmatics and we with it teach that just as the Son of God in Christ became a true man, but without sin, so the Word of God in the Bible has become true human speech, but without error. Now, just as a man, for the reason that he is without sin, is not a mere appearance of a man, but is a true man, so also human speech that is without error is therefore not a mere appearance of a human speech, but true human speech. — What, then, is this outcry that the old dogmatics does not do justice to the human side of Scripture? Nothing else than this: Our error is said to consist in the fact that we do not ascribe errors to Holy Scripture like any other human writing, but that among all books, we want to let it be the book of truth.⁵

Why did Walther adhere so firmly to the church’s doctrine of inspiration? First of all, because this is the clear doctrine of Scripture about itself. But then also, as already indicated, because with the abandonment of the church’s doctrine of inspiration, the truth that Scripture alone is the source and norm of Christian doctrine is also abandoned. It is incomprehensible how a man like Kahnis, who had been labeled a “thinker,” could assert that the Principle of Protestantism concerning the sole authority of Scripture is “independent” of the old church doctrine of inspiration, i.e., of the doctrine that Holy Scripture is the perfectly inerrant Word of God. Everyone will immediately agree with Walther when he repeatedly states: “We must absolutely adhere to the doctrine of inspiration of our orthodox dogmaticians. If we admit that even the slightest error can occur in the Bible, then man must set out to separate the truth from the error. Man is thereby placed above Scripture, and Scripture has thus ceased to be the source and norm of faith. Human reason is made the norma of truth, and Scripture sinks to the norma normata. The slightest deviation from the old doctrine of inspiration brings a rationalistic germ into theology and sours the entire doctrinal structure.”⁶

Regarding the same subject, Walther said, with reference to the recent controversy over the doctrine of inspiration provoked by the Dorpat professors Volck and Mühlau:

With the doctrine of inspiration stands or falls the truth, certainty, and divinity of Holy Scripture and therewith that of the entire Christian religion and Church. It is not merely one doctrine among others, but all other doctrines rest upon it as their foundation. If Holy Scripture is not inspired by God, but produced by human will, then it is not a divine, but a human writing. But if one says: Everything that Scripture reports and declares about acquiring and attaining eternal salvation is of divine origin and therefore inerrant; only in matters which are not directly connected with this, in non-essential, incidental things, is it of human character and therefore certainly not entirely free from error — even then the matter is not helped. For with the assertion that human error is interspersed with the divinely true content of Scripture, not only a part, but the whole of Scripture is rendered shaky and unstable, and the reader is made the supreme judge of which parts of Scripture contain or at least can contain the essential and which the inessential, which the divine and which the human, which are true and which are in error. Then it would be a grand and crass deception to claim that the Christian church has hitherto always regarded Holy Scripture as the Principle or the pure source of all its Christian knowledge, as the inerrant rule and guide of all faith and life, and as the supreme, highest, and last judge in all doctrinal and religious disputes. Then one should not exhort a Christian, as often as he opens the Bible, to pray with Samuel: ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth,’ but rather one should warn every Bible reader not to give himself up to Scripture with full confidence, and exhort him to read Scripture with great caution and with constant discretion, in order to separate the divinely true from the human error himself.⁷

Therefore Walther exclaims: “May God have mercy on His poor Christendom in this last troubled and dangerous time,”⁸ where Christians are being robbed of their Bible, “the lamp to their feet and the light on their path to eternity, their staff and rod in the dark valley of tribulation, in short, God’s Word, and therewith their comfort in the anguish of sin, their hope in the night at the hour of their death.”⁹ He therefore desires that in the future Lehre und Wehre continue to warn against the deniers of the inspiration of Holy Scripture “as against the worst false prophets of our time.” He writes:

Indeed, it is now truly time that every believing theologian, for the sake of his salvation, enter the battle for the highest treasure of Christians which God has given to men after the gift of His Son, with the utmost seriousness. Woe to him who wants to be counted among the theologians and yet will not recognize that this above all is his calling: to preserve for the common Christian that upon which faith, and thus his salvation and blessedness, rests, the ‘foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone’! Woe to him who wants to be counted among the theologians and on the contrary believes precisely for that reason he must strive above all to preserve full freedom for science! For therein lies the deepest reason for the ever more complete falling away of modern theology from revealed divine truth and the complete transformation of the Christian religion into a human science, such that modern theology no longer wants to be a habitus practicus θεόσδοτος, but ‘the scientific self-consciousness of the church’ or ‘the ecclesiastical science of Christianity’”¹⁰

Open Questions

Walther had the same interest, namely the preservation of the Principle of Scripture or the adherence to the truth that Holy Scripture alone is the source and norm of Christian doctrine, also in the controversy concerning “open questions.” If, by denying the church’s doctrine of inspiration, human reason or science is made the norm of Christian doctrine, then through the modern theory of open questions, “the church” with its doctrinal decisions takes the place of Holy Scripture. In what sense, for example, did Pastor Löhe, the Iowa theologians, and the authors of the Dorpat opinion speak of “open questions”? They wished to regard as open questions all such doctrines which, although revealed in Scripture, had not yet been decided by the church in its Symbols, or concerning which no consensus had yet formed among orthodox theologians.¹¹ They declared the doctrine of the Church, ministry, and the power of the keys, of a millennial kingdom expected in the future, of a twofold visible future coming of the Lord and a twofold bodily resurrection, of Sunday, etc., to be such doctrines.

Walther also recognizes “open questions,” but in a completely different sense. He wants the term “open questions” to be used synonymously with “theological problems.” Therefore for him, open questions are those which God’s Word leaves open, questions which may arise in the discussion of Christian articles of faith, “but which find no solution in God’s Word.”¹² Walther insists most emphatically that open questions be recognized in this sense, namely, so that the Principle of Scripture remains intact. If one were to “close” a question that God’s Word leaves open, one would add to Scripture. He writes:

“What is not contained and decided in God’s Word, therefore, must also not be placed on the same level as God’s Word and thus added to God’s Word. This would happen if orthodoxy were made dependent on any doctrine not contained in God’s Word, or if the denial of the same were considered sufficient to divide the Church. Therefore in this sense, open questions are all doctrines not decided by God’s Word either positively or negatively, or all such that by affirming them, nothing that Holy Scripture denies is affirmed, and by denying them, nothing that Holy Scripture affirms is denied.”¹³

Walther, with the older theologians, counts as open questions, among others, the following: Whether Mary bore more children besides Christ (i.e., the semper virgo); whether the soul is transmitted to every human being by propagation from their parents, like flame from flame (per traducem, Traducianism), or by creative infusion (Creationism); whether the visible world will perish on the Last Day according to its essence or only according to its properties, etc.¹⁴ On the other hand, Walther insists most emphatically that nothing be declared an open question and treated as such which is clearly taught in God’s Word and thus decided by God’s Word. And here it makes no difference whether the doctrine in question is fundamental or non-fundamental. For here the Principle of Scripture is at stake, namely, whether everything is to be accepted by men in faith, that God, in Scripture, has given men to believe. Walther writes: “We cannot hold and treat as an open question any doctrine clearly taught in God’s Word or contradicting God’s clear Word, however subordinate and far from the center of the doctrine of salvation it may seem to be or actually be.”¹⁵ And soon after: “We maintain that in the orthodox church no error contrary to God’s clear Word should be granted validity, that it should not be permissible in the orthodox church to deviate from God’s clear Word in even the slightest point, whether negatively or positively, directly or indirectly, and that every such deviation from God’s clear Word, even if it consisted only in denying that Balaam’s donkey spoke, requires the orthodox church to intervene against it, and that if all instructions, admonitions, warnings, threats, and all demonstrated patience prove fruitless and ineffective in moving the person or community concerned to abandon their contradiction against God’s clear Word, finally nothing else than exclusion, i.e., a schism, can follow.”[16]

Walther further explains how the Principle of Scripture is at issue here:

What is the assertion that even such doctrines as are clearly contained in God’s Word could belong to the open questions, other than the assertion that one can indeed ‘take away’ something from God’s Word, that one need not always go ‘according to the law and the testimony,’ that ‘a little leaven’ of false doctrine does no harm and is therefore to be tolerated, that Scripture can sometimes be ‘broken,’ that one does not need to believe exactly ‘all that the prophets have spoken,’ that all Scripture is not necessary and ‘useful,’ indeed, that it is permissible to ‘dismantle’ many things in Scripture? What, then, does one do by recognizing open questions in the sense of modern theology other than contradict the Holy Spirit to His face? And more: Even if it is granted that all those quoted[17] and any similar passages were not found in Holy Scripture, who, if only he truly holds God’s Word to be God’s Word, would not yet find that theory reprehensible? For, if the Bible is God’s Word, then all the statements contained in it are decisions of the high divine majesty itself. But is it not appalling to declare what the great God has decided as still undecided? When the great God has spoken, to give freedom for man to contradict Him? Where the great God has given His final judgment, to speak of the right of any creature to hold another judgment? To determine to sift through what eternal wisdom and eternal love have revealed for the salvation of men and to say: This you must believe, confess, and teach, but that you can reject?¹⁸

If someone now says that doctrines should still be regarded and treated as open because the orthodox church has not yet decided on them in its Symbols, or because a complete consensus has not yet formed among the teachers of the orthodox church concerning them, then the Principle of Scripture of the Lutheran Church is openly abandoned and blatant Papism is adopted. Walther exclaims: “Where the church has not yet spoken and decided, there man is free to accept or reject what God has spoken and decided in His Word; but as soon as the former has happened, then freedom ceases!!”¹⁹ “Therewith, the church is put in the place of Scripture, and man and his decision in the place of God and His decision. Therewith the supreme Principle of true Protestantism is abandoned and the principle of the antichristian papal church, from which all its errors and abominations grow, is imposed upon our church.”²⁰

The question regarding whether a doctrine revealed in God’s Word is first raised to the dignity of a publicly recognized article of the faith through the symbolic decision of the church coincides with the question whether dogmas are only formed gradually, or whether doctrines of the Word of God only become dogmas when they have gone through the church’s struggle and are “symbolically fixed.” Walther expresses himself on this as follows, while at the same time precisely defining the status controversiae and admitting what must be admitted:

“It is true, it is prophesied in God’s Word and the history of the church has confirmed it, that the church does not always stand in the same glory of public pure preaching, but rather, as the ancients express it, like the moon, it wanes and waxes, experiencing times of particular gracious visitations and times of eclipses; but it is erroneous that it gains an ever-increasing store of divine doctrines from century to century, and an ever deeper and richer knowledge according to the law of historical development. Indeed, the church is compelled by men who arise from it speaking perverse things, to draw disciples after themselves (Acts 20:30), to formulate the pure doctrine which she has ever more precisely, so that the deceitful spirits of error may be unmasked and false doctrines may not creep in under ambiguous phrases; but thereby its dogmas do not increase in number; but thereby her dogmas do not increase in number, but rather they are only guarded ever more carefully against perversions. That Christ is ὁμοούσιος with the Father, that the union of the divine and human natures in Christ happened ἀσυγχύτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀχωρίστως, that Mary is θεοτόκος, that ‘in, with, and under’ the bread and wine in the Holy Supper the body and blood of Christ are present, administered, and received orally by the worthy and unworthy — these are indeed doctrinal formulas that first found acceptance in the orthodox church after Arius, Nestorius, Eutyches, and Zwingli, but they are not new dogmas. Furthermore, it cannot be denied that through the Church’s continued searching of Scripture, much that was previously obscured due to the Church lacking knowledge of the language and history was later clarified, and this the content of the articles of faith also at times undergoes an explication and unfolding that it had not experienced before, and in this sense one can indeed speak of a progress in knowledge; however, this by no means results in that gradual arising and increase of dogmas of which modern theology dreams. Rather, in this way, what has already been known merely receives new confirmations.”²¹

“That dogmas are only gradually formed, and that therefore there are articles of faith that are partly still in the process of formation, and partly have not yet entered into the historical stream of dogmatic formation at all, or only in outline, some of which have ‘have come down to us as questions not yet concluded, not yet settled, and unfinished matters,’ or ‘open questions,’ because up to now ‘no unanimous consensus has formed regarding these things in the Lutheran Church’: this theory, which is more or less decidedly represented and widespread by almost all modern theologians, but is completely foreign to the old orthodox theologians of our church, we consider the πρῶτον ψεῦδος [primary falsehood] of modern theology, a daughter of Rationalism disguised as Christian, and a sister of Romanism masked as Protestant. As for the rationalists, it is well known that they were the first who understood dogmas not as the unchangeable, divine, fundamental truths of Christianity, but as doctrinal opinions that emerged from a scientific process or at least were elevated to being valid church doctrines by the various denominations when they adopted them. Hence they made a strict distinction between ecclesiastical and biblical dogmatics. … That the Romanists also teach the gradual emergence of dogmas requires no proof. Indeed, we experienced that spectacle only a few years ago, when the present Pope publicly declared the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which had previously been considered an open question in the Roman Church, a dogma and first decreed it binding for all his ‘faithful’; and presently²² it is rumored that the alleged heir to the throne of Peter is preparing to enrich his church with yet another new dogma by decreeing his own infallibility. While modern Lutheran theologians are indeed far from claiming for the Roman church or even the Pope the power to create new articles of faith, what else is this theory that dogmas are developed gradually through the formation of a ‘unanimous consensus’ on certain points, or through the church finally having ‘spoken’ and ‘decided’ on them, other than a sister of Romanism masked as Protestant?”²³

Particularly important is the principle asserted by Walther: “Every biblical doctrine is Church doctrine.” Whoever hears Scripture even from the lowliest layman thereby hears the Church, because the Church knows and confesses nothing other than the truth revealed in Scripture. Walther writes: “How much it cost Luther to break through to this knowledge... is well known. … Later, Luther finally recognized that he would truly have heard the Church if even the lowliest layman had convinced him with Scripture. Our modern Lutherans, however, have returned to the state of Christians before the Reformation. No matter what clear Scripture a common Christian brings them, they regard this as mere ‘private and individual Christian conviction, even if otherwise well-founded, and the result, in its time, of conscientious and believing searching of Scripture,’ as Dorpat puts it, and wait for the decision of the church, ‘because (until then) there is no recognized standard for their validity in the Church and the question of their scripturalness is still an undecided point of dispute.’ For them, scripturalness is to be decided not from Scripture but by the Church. That they should be hearing the Church when a poor Missourian brings them Scripture is a ridiculous idea to them. For them, it requires above all that the scholars come together, discuss, dispute, and finally decide.”²⁴

Thus, Walther also decidedly rejected the assumption that only what the Church expresses in its symbols is “Lutheran Church” doctrine. No, every true biblical doctrine is Lutheran Church doctrine, even if it may not be Lutheran Symbolical doctrine. The Lutheran Church, even in its symbols, by no means commits itself only to the doctrines that it, for certain reasons, explicitly names therein, but to the entire Holy Scripture, and thus to all doctrines contained therein. “It is true, concerning a false church that establishes a false Principle, and does not accept God’s Word as it reads, but wants it interpreted either according to reason or tradition, concerning such a false church it cannot indeed be said: ‘Every biblical doctrine is church doctrine,’ but this does apply with regard to the true orthodox church, and therefore also to our precious Evangelical Lutheran Church.” Walther then cites passages from the Lutheran Confessions in which it is said that whoever brings the Scripture, the word of the prophets and apostles, allows the Christian church to speak.²⁵ “What is truly churchly is always biblical, and what is truly biblical is always churchly. Our church does not want to be a special church with a special faith, but nothing other than a part of the Church of the apostles and prophets, a part of the old Bible Church. That it has a Confession is not because its entire religion is contained therein, or because it has only come to a decision regarding the doctrines contained in its symbols, but because it was compelled by false churches and false teachers to explicitly confess certain doctrines in particular, while it has not so far seen itself called upon to make a solemn confession of the other doctrines. The entirety of its faith is therefore not to be found in the symbols, but solely in the Bible. Its symbols are not so much ‘as it were the landmarks of her internal development,’ as the landmarks facing outwards [dividing her from specific errors].”²⁶ “If our church claims only symbolic and not at the same time rightfully canonical unity, as Gerhard calls it, namely biblical unity, then our church is not an orthodox church, but a pathetic sect that unites not by the confession of the entire Word of God, but solely by the confession of some of its doctrines. However precious and valuable the incomparably glorious confessions of his church are to every Lutheran, he will never allow them to be made into a “Lutheran Bible” in which the entire faith of his Church is contained, while all other biblical doctrines are nothing but subjects of ‘private and individual Christian convictions, even if otherwise well-founded.’”²⁷ “It is indeed strange,” — Walther adds — “that precisely those who constantly rail against putting the Confession above Scripture declare themselves bound as Lutherans only by the symbolically fixed doctrines; but thereby it becomes evident who truly stands on Scripture and likewise believes in its supreme judicial authority and its clarity, and who does not.” Pastor Hochstetter, who participated in the colloquium held with representatives of the Iowa Synod in Milwaukee in 1867, writes: “It became truly clear to me²⁸ there that the strength of the Missouri teachers rests not so much on adherence to the symbols as rather on the fear of God’s Word! Isa. 66:2. It was said there: ‘Every Biblical doctrine is Church doctrine, whether or not it is contained in or established in the Symbols, if only it stands in Holy Scripture.’”²⁹

Endnotes

¹ 2nd Ed, III, 149

² The following article: “What do the new theologians wishing to be orthodox teach about Inspiration?” Lehre und Wehre, 1871, p. 33f.

³ 1855, p. 248.

⁴ Neugläubigen, meaning “new believers” was a term originally applied to the Lutherans in the 16th century to distinguish them from the “old believers,” meaning the adherents of the Pope. Here Walther uses it derisively to refer to those who supposedly have discovered some new orthodox Lutheranism in distinction to the old — Ed.

⁵ Evening Lecture on the Doctrine of Inspiration, December 18, 1885.

⁶ In a lecture, 1874–1875.

⁷ Evening Lecture on the Doctrine of Inspiration, Nov. 27, 1885.

⁸ Lehre und Wehre, vol. 32, p. 77.

⁹ Ibid., p. 76.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 6.

¹¹ As evidence for the fact that the above-named really spoke in this sense of open question, see L.u.W. 14:129 ff. Later, it is true, the Iowans declared that it never entered their mind to speak of open questions in this way.

¹² Lehre und Wehre, vol. 14, p. 33.

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 34.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 66.

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 68.

¹⁷ Deut. 4:2, 12:32, Isa. 8:20, Rev. 22:19, Gal. 5:9, John 10:35, Luke 24:25, 2 Tim. 3:16, 17, Matt. 5:18, 19.

¹⁸ Lehre und Wehre, vol. 14, p. 69.

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 162.

²⁰ Ibid., p. 163.

²¹ Ibid., p. 137.

²² 1868

²³ Lehre und Wehre, v. 14, pp. 133–136.

²⁴ Ibid., p. 209.

²⁵ Ibid., p. 208.

²⁶ Ibid., p. 210.

²⁷ Ibid., p. 211.

²⁸ Pastor Hochstetter had recently come from the Buffalo Synod to the Missouri Synod.

²⁹ Geschichte der Ev.-Luth. Missouri-Synode, p. 288.