ROUGHLY EDITED COPY
CH3-053
PROFESSOR LAWRENCE RAST
PROFESSOR WILL SCHUMACHER
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format.
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>> DAVID: Clearly, one distinction that characterized the
LCMS was its bold confessional stance. But was the Missouri
Synod the only confessional Lutheran Church in America at
this time? If not, who were the other leaders among
confessional Lutherans? What is the status of these
churches now?
>> DR. WILL SCHUMACHER: David, that's a great question.
And the quick answer is: No, of course the Missouri Synod
was not by any means the only Lutheran church body in the
19th century that was committed to the Lutheran
confessions. There were other confessional leaders as well,
even though there were also some disagreements among these
confessional leaders about what the implications of such
confessional commitment should be for America and American
Lutheranism in their time.
It’s important to remember that the Missouri Synod never
demanded that churches or pastors join their synod, join
the Missouri Synod in order to be considered truly Lutheran
and confessionally sound. Membership in the Missouri Synod
was never the litmus test for whether someone was orthodox
or not. They were always very happy to recognize
confessional Lutheran doctrine wherever they found it. So
in the early days of the synod, the Pennsylvania
Ministerium, which had already existed for a long time by
that point, had withdrawn its membership from the General
Synod because of the General Synod’s lack of confessional
commitment. And the Missouri Synod applauded that in its
official publications and said this is a very important
move. We welcome this move by our Lutheran brothers and
sisters in the Pennsylvania Ministerium. In the same way,
they happily acknowledged that a group like the Tennessee
Synod which had developed as a confessional body largely
English speaking in the American south. They were very
happy to find that they were a confessional body and didn't
immediately require as a demonstration of confessional
commitment these folks in the Tennessee Synod join Missouri
or anything like that. They were happy to find and
celebrate and to welcome a confessional Lutheran stance
wherever it occurred.
If you compare the picture, the overall picture, of the
American scene, Lutheranism in America, at the end of the
19th century, with what that landscape looked like at the
beginning of the 19th century, you'll find that virtually
all church bodies that called themselves Lutheran, by the
close of the 1800's, had become much more intentional and
explicit about their allegiance to Lutheran doctrine and
the Lutheran confessions than the bodies had been at the
beginning of the 1800's. I mentioned the General Synod and
its lack of any explicit commitment to the Lutheran
confessions when it was organized in 1820. That really
wasn't possible for a Lutheran group at the end of the 19th
century. Every group virtually had to state its position
about Lutheran doctrine and be much more intentional about
what it meant to be a Lutheran. This is part of what we
mean when we talk about the 19th century being a period of
confessionalization because the confessions became much
more important in general than they had been a century
earlier. People became much more interested in studying and
teaching about what it meant to be a Lutheran
theologically. So in one way, all Lutherans in America were
more confessional on average than they had been at the
beginning of the 19th century. But of course, that doesn't
mean that they were all agreed. We frequently use the word
confessional Lutheran to indicate a really strong and
unconditional subscription to the Lutheran confessions as
our doctrinal standard.
The fact is that even among Lutherans that took the
confessions seriously in the 19th century, there were
different views about how the confessions should really
function in the life of Lutheran churches in their day.
Charles Arand, in a book called Testing the Boundaries,
outlines at least four different ways of looking at the
Lutheran confessions. Maybe I'll just run through those
four ways for you.
First of all, there were Lutherans who said that they
were committed to the Lutheran confessions because these
documents from the 16th century gave us a statement of a
Protestant consensus. This was essentially Samuel
Schmucker's view. The Augsburg Confession was valuable, not
because of its details or because of the specifics of how
it confessed doctrine, but because it expressed a
Protestant consensus over against Roman Catholicism.
Obviously, this isn't a very strict or binding way of
thinking about the confessions. But even Schmucker and
those who followed him theologically understood the
confessions as important in the life of the church, but
important in a particular way. That is, because they
distinguished us from Roman Catholicism. They were less
interested in using the Lutheran confessions to distinguish
us from other Protestants.
The second stream of Lutheranism might be embodied in a
figure like Charles Porterfield Krauth of the General
Council. Krauth understood the confessions as primarily
catechetical documents. That is, these documents were first
and foremost to be used as teaching tools and not just the
catechisms, but all the documents in the Book of Concord
were important to teach each new generation the Lutheran
faith. Now, of course, that's not wrong. We do use the
confessions in that way as tools to teach the faith to
subsequent generations. But Walther and the Missouri Synod
and other Lutherans in the Synodical Conference took yet a
stronger approach to the confessions. Not only were these
tools for teaching, but they were also to be used as
doctrinal norms. This meant that preachers and teachers in
the church could actually be held accountable to their
commitment to the Lutheran confessions. They could be held
accountable for what they preached and taught measured
against this doctrinal standard of the Lutheran
confessions. And that use of the confessions also to
exercise doctrinal discipline did distinguish Walther and
the Synodical Conference Lutherans from the General Council
Lutherans where the confessions were valued, but primarily
as teaching tools.
There was yet a fourth way of understanding the
confessions. One of the main proponents of this view was
Wilhelm Lohe who didn't come to America himself but
influenced many Lutheran theologians in this country,
particularly in the Iowa Synod and some also in the
Missouri Synod. Lohe’s view was that the Lutheran
confessions are important as historical decisions. That is,
at a certain point in time in the 16th century, the church
had to face and answer certain doctrinal questions and
problems. And the confessions that we have in the Book of
Concord represent the Church’s answer to those particular
questions and problems. What that historical view of the
confessions allowed Lohe to do was to suggest that there
are other questions that might still have to be settled,
that there might, in fact, be new doctrines that that the
church would have to develop as it faced new situations.
Now, Walther and the Missouri Synod and the rest of the
Synodical Conference that wanted to use the confessions as
doctrinal norms considered Lohe’s historical view and
concluded that this made the confessions unusable, really,
as a doctrinal standard because you could always argue that
you wanted to answer a new question or a new situation, and
that demanded a new doctrine. This allowed, in fact, the
doctrine of the church to change over time, and that was
unacceptable to Walther and the Missouri Synod.
This is not to say that Lohe didn’t take the Lutheran
confessions seriously. He certainly did as did Charles
Krauth. The point is that even among Lutherans who took the
confessions seriously, there could be, and in fact where,
differences in how they read those confessions and how they
felt those confessions should function in the life of the
church. The Missouri Synod position was that Lutheran
union, that is a bringing together of Lutheran church
bodies, a merger or fellowship or cooperation, required
true Lutheran unity. Union required unity as a
prerequisite. Unity, genuine Lutheran unity, meant unity of
doctrine. That unity of doctrine was always the primary
goal of the Missouri Synod. That was why they sponsored and
encouraged the free conferences as a free exchange of views
about the Lutheran confessions. And that's why the Missouri
Synod was never primarily interested in the institutional
mechanics of mergers or external union. Those kinds of
things might or might not result from genuine doctrinal
unity. That was not really considered terribly important or
an end to be pursued in and of itself.
The main goal for the Missouri Synod was always genuine
unity, not external union. That sort of drove their
relationship with other Lutherans and especially with other
Lutherans that definitely took the Lutheran confessions
very seriously.
*****
This text is being provided in a rough draft format.
Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is
provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility
and may not be a totally verbatim record of the
proceedings.
*****