The Voice of Our Church in the Question of Church and Office

By C.F.W. Walther, Anniversary Edition. Zwickau. 1911. (At the same time a contribution to the elapsed Walther Celebration.1) No writing of Walther is so closely interwoven with the history of the Missouri Synod, nothing in this country has become so significant for the organization of the Lutheran Church, nothing has exercised so much influence abroad, and nothing for him and for his synod has become so characteristic as his book on "Church and Office". One can say: It was born in the Missouri Synod. Although first published in 1852 by Deichert in Erlangen, when Walther and Wyneken had come to an understanding with Lhe in Germany, its origins go back as far as 1840. The Stephanite emigration from Saxony (approximately 800 souls with 7 pastors and 7 candidates) had been stained with many sins and errors. Roman [Catholic] ideas of Church and Office and an idolatrous faith in these ideas before the eyes of men, such faithful and worthy men, had led some of the pastors, including Walther of Braunsdorf, to forsake their congregations. Many of their members set aside their professional obligations to emigrate with them, "in order to establish the true, beatific Church in America". So when Stephan had been exposed and removed, particularly through Lber's efforts, a despair seized the Saxons in Perry County that threatened to shatter the whole colony. Guenther writes: "They doubted whether a Christian congregation was still present; they harbored suspicions against all pastors; they doubted about the validity of their official acts. There were heavy hearts among the pastors that they had abandoned their congregations in Germany, that they were to blame for the sins that occurred during their emigration, etc." Walther himself describes the confusion at that time as follows: "The main issues that we are now handling among us are: Are our congregation Christian-Lutheran congregations? Or are they mobs? Sects? Have they the power to call or to excommunicate? Are we pastors or not? Are our vocations valid? Do we still belong in Germany? In particular Pastor Lber, who had not even received an authoritarian dismissal from office? Could we have to be divinely called, because we have forsaken our German divine call and according to our false conscience and have run away? Should the congregations not now remove us, because they realize only now with us that we have given great offense? Would it not be better if the congregations at least dismissed us for a time they should seek to survive only through the exercise of the spiritual priesthood and then choose either old or new pastors? It is impossible for me to write to you all the different answers to all these questions that are given about that. Mr. Marbach (an emigrated lawyer) doubts in the very strongest way that our congregations are ChristianLutheran congregations - that they could validly call and excommunicate and that we are
1

The 100th anniversary of Walther's birth.

pastors. Mr. Sp. denies most emphatically. Both advise an immediate dissolution of all ecclesial congregations, no longer to go to Divine Service and to restrict ourselves to house Divine Service; the former candidate Klgel and Mr. Barthel the tax auditor in part think the same in the main thing. Brohm also had similar qualms, but more in the depths of his soul; he attended public Divine Service and did not separate himself at all. All candidates generally precede us to recognize the affliction. Further to provide Divine Service at the landing place, they could not decide in the vague, general condition, on this point they could not cleanly come concerning their call; neither whether the local congregation does right when they requested them to preach as interims, nor whether they can regard them as our vicars, since all members have chosen one pastor among us as their confessor. They have cancelled their further preaching, in writing, about four weeks ago; these resignation letters have produced great agitation in their souls and the question of vocation has made for a fairly common one." It seems Walther himself left his main congregation in Dresdenau and moved to Johannisberg (in the settlement). He himself was very confused. "So many I see clearly: Those who, against God have emigrated and even have to fulfill responsibilities in Germany, where they are able, must go back again or first legally can relieve themselves from their obligations, before they could remain here under God's blessing and delight; but obviously this can only be said of the least number of people.... Here we also do not add the laity, as we are truly lost; I truly value we pastors as the most wretched.... He (Marbach) increasingly finds in our previous sermons (nowadays he doesn't hear them) defects and clumsy division and mutilation of Law and Gospel; I must admit he is right in many ways.... Now, either one deposes us, because I myself am convinced we should not go, or one has patience with us and seeks to help us." In another letter Walther laments about not coming to rest over the divinity of his call and to be able to study and preach only with great doubt, anxiety, uncertainty, and shame. "O, how bitter are the fruits of sin, of human bondage, and apostasy from God's Word!" One sees, these were the teachings of church, ministry, and vocation, that the emigrants made such great temptations. Hermann Walther seems to have been the only clear one. But he was in St. Louis and died in 1841. Our Walther first came to clarity and stability in Perry County, and he soon led the entire settlement upon solid ground. He had read a whole portion of Luther in his father's library as a candidate in Germany. Now he threw himself with much prayer into the study of Luther and other fathers and soon came to the certainty that these people, despite all sins and mistakes was nevertheless a Christian Church and had legitimate vocations, that the office of the pastors are the right office of Christ and their official acts valid, that they needed nothing else than repentance over their sins, returning to the pure teaching of the Word of God, and the development of congregations according to principles and examples given in Scripture. In April of 1841 a public debate happened in Altenburg between Walther and his opponents, whose leader was the lawyer Marbach, in which Walther gave the truth not only in victory, but also won most of his opponents and the fearful hearts of the colonists again was made confident and founded on the rock. The Altenburg Debate was the conception of the founding of the Missouri Synod six years later and of Walther's book on Church and Office. He had triumphantly asserted eight theses:

1. The true Church in the most proper and most perfect sense is the totality of all true believers, which from the beginning of the world to the end from all nations and languages are called and sanctified by the Holy Spirit through the Word. And because only God knows these true believers2, it is also called the unseen Church. No one belongs to this true Church who is not spiritually united with Christ, for she is the spiritual body of Christ. 2. The name of the true Church belongs also to all those visible companies of men among whom God's Word is purely taught and the holy Sacraments are administered according to the institution of Christ. True, in this Church there are godless men, hypocrites, and heretics, but they are not true members of it, nor do they constitute the Church. 3. The name "Church", and, in a certain sense, the name "true Church", belongs also to those visible companies of men who have united under the confession of a falsified faith and therefore have incurred the guilt of a partial departure from the truth; provided they possess so much of God's Word and the holy Sacraments in purity that children of God may thereby be born. When such companies are called true Churches, it is not the intention to state that they are faithful, but only that they are real Churches as opposed to all worldly organizations. 4. The name Church is not improperly applied to heterodox companies, but according to the manner of speech of the Word of God itself. It is also not immaterial that this high name is allowed to such communions, for out of this follows: 1. That members also of such companies may be saved; for without the Church there is no salvation. 5. The outward separation of a heterodox company from an orthodox Church is: 2. not necessarily a separation from the universal Christian Church nor a relapse into heathenism and does not yet deprive that company of the name Church. 6. Even heterodox companies have: 3. church power; even among them the goods of the Church may be validly administered, the ministry established, the Sacraments validly administered, and the keys of the kingdom of heaven exercised. 7. Even heterodox companies are: 4. not to be dissolved, but only to be reformed. 8. The orthodox Church is chiefly to be judged by the common, orthodox, public confession to which its members acknowledge and confess themselves to be pledged. One sees at a glance how these eight Altenburg Theses foreshadowed the nine theses on the Church and the ten theses on the Preaching Office in the book of 1852. They were crafted in a special way, as we have them, through the deliberate attacks of Grabau soon after the Altenburg Debate. Only a few months before that debate Walther's brother Hermann died in St. Louis, and he succeeded his father. Around the same time as the
2

2 Tim. 2:19.

Saxons, Grabau emigrated to Buffalo and Milwaukee and the surrounding area with a group of about 1,000 Lutherans and several pastors and teachers from Silesia, Pomerania, Neumark, Uckermark, and the province of Saxony. Grabau was caught up in even grosser papistic ideas of Church, Office, and Church Government, as the Saxons had been initially under Stephan, and sought contact with them, as they with him. He sent them his first "Pastoral Letter" (Hirtenbrief - very significant!), in which he instructed and exhorted his congregations concerning the authority and dignity of the preaching office, and they asked for an assessment of the letter. This opinion (Gutachten), written by G.H. Lber, expressed in very mild words a partial dissent from Grabau's position. "First of all, we should give a summary judgment about the contents of the Pastoral Letter, it seems to us, on the one hand, while so many of the well known old church orders confused the essential and unessential, and in so doing restricts Christian freedom, on the other hand, attributed to the Preaching Office more than its due and thereby turned aside the spiritual priesthood of the congregation." Now there was an ever-sharper exchange of letters between Grabau and the Saxons. The last of the outgoing invitations to oral discussion assumed Grabau did not feel offended in his imagined dignity and superiority, rather he publicly attacked, after he had founded in 1846 "The Lutheran Synod of the Immigrant Church of Prussia" (Buffalo Synod), the Saxons in his synodical letter as false Lutherans and thus laid the foundation for the long-standing and very violently led struggle over the doctrines of Church and Office, in the end, as amply known, the Buffalo Synod, except for a small remnant, was destroyed. Meanwhile, Walther had founded (September, 1844) the "Lutheran". What bright trumpet blasts penetrated the profound doctrinal articles of the new paper every two weeks through St. Louis and the surrounding area and soon through the whole country. What impelled the Lutheran was especially the point, in addition to the doctrine of justification and the Scriptural teaching on the Church, according to the various sides, that the Lutheran Church as the church of the pure Word of the true visible church on earth, i.e., the outer shape of the church is the one that corresponds to the Word of God. Walther immediately fell into controversy with Father rtel, with the Unionist Nollau, with the halfLutherans of the East and the West, with the Methodists, Baptists and other sects - with his thorough knowledge of Scripture, the Symbols, Luther and the Lutheran fathers and matching wits with the superior dialectic of his opponents. As he incited enemies on all sides through his powerful witness, on the other hand he gained over time a significant number of faithful and capable immigrants, especially the Lutheran pastors sent over by Lhe, for that so clearly attested and powerfully proven by him doctrine of the Lutheran Church. Above all, there were Wyneken from the Synod of the West, Sihler and Ernst of the Synod of Ohio, Crmer, Lochner, Hattstdt and Trautman from the Michigan Synod, these sided with Walther for the sake of his clear and decisive Lutheranism and now entered in battle against the Buffalo Synod. In the "Lutheran" of November 17, 1846 is found the first publication of the state of things between Buffalo and Missouri, signed by Lber, Keyl, Walther and Brohm, after Grabau the year before had come forward with a public accusation against the Saxons. After the Missouri Synod came into being in April, 1847 in Chicago and the "Lutheran" had become the synodical organ, the dispute was intersynodical and attracted not only the eastern Synods, but also the Lutheran Church in the old country in sympathy. Particularly Lhe had taken, even if only temporarily in private, against the Missourian doctrinal position. The Breslauers were known to be moved in

the Romanist doctrine of office and church government. But the doctrines of church, office, and church government were generally in flux for a long time in the old country under the positive Lutherans and union theologians. After vulgar Rationalism outlived its usefulness, the Napoleonic War distress taught many to pray again and a new spring of the Spirit found its way in many hearts in northern and southern Germany, it had ushered in the lands of Prussia, Baden, and Nassau, partially by force, union throughout Germany, also arousing again confessional Lutheran awareness and here and there produced Lutheran separations like the Breslauers. Along with political turmoil that broke out in 1848, church government conditions throughout Germany were also in disarray and looking for firm new foundations. The question of church, office, church government were discussed by the most renowned theologians and statesmen (Gschel und Stahl) in many writings in principle. As Walther and Wyneken traveled in August, 1851 to Germany, to achieve in particular an agreement with Lhe, they took advantage of the opportunity to take consultation with the leading Lutheran theologians of Germany about their concerned doctrines. They visited Guericke in Halle, Kahnis in Leipzig, Harless in Dresden, Delitzch, Hofmann, Thomasius, Hfling and Schmid in Erlangen, along with Lhe. And the interviews with these men had determined some things in the version of Walther's book, whose final editing he attended to in Erlangen. When it was published in 1852, the spirits frequently separated it many times there as here. Harless, Guericke, Schmid, also Hfling, Strbel and Brmel were by and large on Walthers side; Lhe, Delitzsch, Kahnis, Philippi, Kliefoth, Mnchmeyer und Wucherer, also Kurtz and Karsten, even Rudelbach, and of course the Breslauers, frequently were against Walther's position, to approve without his clerical practice. Grabau and Heinrich von Rohr traveled in 1853 to Germany in order to appeal to the German church to arbitrate in the struggle. The Leipziger and the Frther Conferences, and the Breslauers also fell for the lamentations of the Buffalo envoys and directed long writings of exhortation to both synods, but they learned from Walther in the "Lutheran" an almost classical rejoinder. Harless wrote a book of 18 theses in the sense of Walther, and the "Leipziger Repertorium" as well as the "Darmstadter Theological Literature Paper" recommended Walther's book as, in many respects, the most important work that had been written on the doctrines of church and office for a long time. Dr. K Zimmerman wrote, "No evangelical preacher should leave unread this informative book that is worth reading if only because of its historical content. It drives one into the Scriptures, into the church fathers, into the testimonies of the most important teachers of our church and shows us with holy earnestness to our shame, how frequently one has deviated from the teachings of the Lutheran Church as a result of the so-called Enlightenment. So we would like to recommend particular attention what is taught in relation to the transfer of the preaching office by the church as custodian of all church power or the keys, because among us mostly congregations have meddled in nothing more than filling pastorates.... Whoever wants to review the principles of the doctrine of church, office, power of the keys, church order, and the like, for clarity and certainty of the faith, by reading this book, which has the merit, the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, which are buried for so many in the dusty writings of our theologian fathers, again have sought to put forth and brought to light." Here in America, above all outside the Missouri Synod, was Chas. P. Krauth, who declared himself joyfully and almost unreservedly for Walther's book and provided in many

applications in deposited doctrines and principles within the General Synod. Among the Buffaloans it was fought most bitterly, especially in its doctrine of the spiritual priesthood and the transference of the office. The Iowa Synod, jumping bravely with the Buffaloans, was founded in 1854 by Lhe as opposition against Missouri, without being able to escape the influence of the Missourian doctrine of the congregation and doctrine of the office in the embodiment of their own congregational structure and synodical structure. Within the Missouri Synod itself, which in subsequent years always enormously spread, particularly through the establishment of their schools, their congregational education, including through the publication of their theological journal "Doctrine and Defense", with the simultaneous collapse of the Buffalo Synod, and also winning over with great influence the newly formed Wisconsin Synod, Walther's pace not only worked continuously uniting by his so clearly stated doctrines, but it was also the overall resounding norm for the practice and the formation of the congregational constitution, particularly in 1862 after the "superintendant's book" "The Proper Form" had appeared and the practical implementation of the doctrines set forth in "Church and Office" and had explained commonly understood principles. In fact, it has also become the book that has created not only most of the orthodox Lutheran Church in America, but far beyond the limits of America, set forth the churchly practice and the forming of the congregation and the synod. What does Walther actually teach in this work? There are nine theses on the Church. The form of the theses, against which they are written, reveals the contradictions are not always sharp. One must recover these from the contemporary polemics, from the "Informatorium", the Buffaloan "Synodical Letter", and from the "Lutheran" and the Missourian synodical reports, later from "Doctrine and Defense". They may be summarized in a few major points. Grabau, the "Lutheran Herald" (Moldehnke), the Iowans and a greater part of the German theologians, with the Breslauers, the later Immanuelites, Lhe, Dietrich, etc. all had one thing in common, that they emphasized too strongly the visibility, the external part of the Church and made the ecclesiastical institutions of the essence of the church. The Church to them was essentially a thing or a divinely ordered system of things, an institution, the institution of salvation that was instituted by God on earth for the salvation of sinners. Word and Sacrament and other divine congregational institutions form the Church into a spiritual machinery which, initially unconnected from the Christian people, should be set in motion and ruled through the pastoral office [Pfarramt] in the congregation and the world. The pastoral office [Pfarramt] lies not in the congregation, came about not through transfer of the public administration of the spiritual priesthood, but by direct establishment of the Lord in and over the congregation, by means of official pastoral ordination, which was of divine ordinance (i.e. actually through apostolic succession). So the Church was a factual established divine institution founded directly by Christ and without the congregation as an intermediary and should be administered through their regular pastoral class for the best of the congregation. This papist view Walther opposed with the doctrine of Scripture, Luther and the Symbolical Books, that the Church does not exist for things, but for people, not for institutions and ordinances, but for new creatures of God, not for conveyance of grace, but for pardoned sinners, not for a machine of salvation with specifically authorized officials as their

administrators, but for becoming saved through faith in Christ and together to form one united body of spiritual kings and priests where God in and with Word and Sacrament gives as hereditary ownership all grace, all gifts of the Holy Spirit, heaven and earth and she has originally and immediately appointed administrators, preachers and stewards. In short, he taught: The Church is none other than believers, Christians 3 that Christ has endowed with all His heavenly riches4. This Church is no visible institution of salvation, but an unseen congregation, society, people, House of God, a definitely recognizable (locatable), external fellowship or society through the pure confession and the right handling of the Word and Sacraments, which despite the fact that as such random hypocrites are mixed in her, that cling to her in doctrine and life in great affliction, yet the true children of God possess all the goods and power and rightly bears the name of Church, if only as a synecdoche.5 So while his opponents stressed the factual, institutional and visible side of the church and falsely made it of her essence, Walther stressed thoroughly her personal nature and showed that she also does not lose this essential character as an external appearance, as "visible" Church. The Church is never to be defined as an objective institution of salvation with individual, particular administrators divinely appointed by God, this is essentially the concept of the Roman church and leads almost inevitably into the Papacy, into legalistic ways, clerical rule and bullying of Christianity, but it is anxiously noted that the Church, viewed from any point of view, consists of Christian people that are endued with the goods and power of Christ, have the substantive commission with the personal proclamation of the Gospel to save themselves and the world. Gospel and Sacraments, offices and powers are the goods of the Church, never her essence; these belong to the people of Christ alone. Because Walther with this doctrine had brought back on track only the Scriptural doctrine of Luther and the Confessions (Augsburg Confession, Apology, Smalcald Articles, Large Catechism), the responses of his opponents were exactly the same as those who had once led the Papists into the field against Luther and our church. One accused Walther that he made all Christians into called pastors, he taught an Anabaptist mess and contempt for the congregational preaching office; he sought to establish a democratic Church, he set up mob rule; and one prophesied that he ultimately would bring about anarchic conditions over the Church, under which the divinely ordained administration of the preaching office was altogether impossible. The Buffaloans in particular taunted and slandered Walther's doctrine of the spiritual priesthood, his "unseen church", his "Platonic-Christian church", his "mob and gang of priests church", the judgment of God overtakes once again and will suddenly destroy everything at once, so much they understood to attract through cursing adulation against the mob now "the Lutheran in name only masses". That this did not come true, that Missouri increasingly grew, many synods won with its doctrine and also externally aligned with them in the Synodical Conference, while Buffalo in
3 4

Theses I, II, III. Thesis IV. 5 Theses V-IX.

part went over to it and to us, as the rest tore themselves apart, that the Waltherian doctrine also penetrated other Lutheran bodies ever more, regulating practice, shape, and congregational life in the Lutheran sense, that had a good reason for the fact that Walther's doctrine was the clear doctrine of Scripture, Luther, and the Lutheran Confessions and in itself bore power. Here is not the place to prove that; we only want to draw attention that in this struggle it was not limited to minor matters, but dealt with the great central truth for which Luther entered against the papacy. The doctrines of Church and Office are the only practical, on the congregational life of Christian-oriented aspect of the doctrine of justification or of Christian freedom. Luther basically had only one thing against the pope: "That he does not want Christians to be saved without his authority, which indeed is neither ordered nor commanded by God."6 "He will not let you believe, but says one should be obedient to him, thus one may be saved."7 This was also the doctrine of justification and of Church and Office. Properly understood, Luther fought for nothing else than for the doctrine of the Church and of the Office. The question was whether the sinner who wants to be saved is bound to the grace of Christ and to the Means of Grace alone, or even in addition to an alleged institution founded by Christ, called Church, and to a standing monopolistic office in addition to the Gospel. Luther basically taught nothing other than the free spiritual kingdom and priesthood of all justified by faith that is subject to no one except Christ alone and with the Gospel possesses all spiritual authorities and offices as peculiar hereditary ownership, that stands infinitely higher and is more than all offices of apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, rulers, and miracle workers. Walther taught nothing else. He let only Luther, the Confessions, and the orthodox fathers of our church talk to us in these things. He was as little an enthusiast as Luther. He carefully distinguished the nature of the Church by its divine-human constitution in the world; the authority and rights of Christians in the ordinary exercise of the same. His ten theses about the Office testify to that. The Lord has purchased the Office of the Word, the New Testament Preaching Office, through His blood and explicitly ordered His congregation. He has entrusted to His faithful to exercise with the Gospel the Office of the Keys. They should use it world-wide. The public preaching office is God's command and order both inside and outside of Christianity. But it does not follow from the spiritual priesthood of all believers that they all are eo ipso already congregational preachers. What all have equally, must not be removed from the others by itself. "No one should publicly teach or preach in the Church or give the Sacrament without a proper call." Through the call to the congregational preaching office, the public administration of all common priestly authorities is transferred from a certain number of Christians to these one or more persons. Thus the congregational preaching office or "pastoral office" [Pfarramt] comes about. That having been said, this is no human, political situation, but divine order. The pastoral office, which, along with the apostolic and evangelistic offices, is mentioned in Scripture itself and set up by the Apostles, is one exemplar of the universal preaching office obtained and explicitly inaugurated by Christ, to the institution of which Christianity of all ages
6 7

Smalcald Articles II:IV:10. ibid, paragraph 12.

is regularly bound. Whoever despises it, despises Christ. However, its functions are not new. It has merely the powers and duties of the spiritual priesthood and is different from it only in the accident, that it performs priestly works in the name of all other Christians of the local congregation in their midst for the sake of the fellowship. However as surely as it is of divine institution and order, it is still simply set, "for the sake of order", in order that all things are done honestly and orderly in Christendom, so that disorder and disorganization is resisted in the Church. It is neither an absolute law nor a means of grace. His non-establishment is not in and of itself sinful, but only to the extent that one despises the Gospel and wants to be smarter than the Lord. Its existence makes Word and Sacrament not only strong, or more powerful than they are in and of themselves, even outside the handling of the pastoral office. Thus obedience and faith are also due the pastoral office, but only when it conducts God's Word, no farther. One should retreat from false teachers and tyrants of conscience, while faithful pastors are worthy of double honor. Otherwise the establishment of the congregational preaching office restricts the exercise of the rights and duties of spiritual priests although, forasmuch as no one may grasp a strange office, but not abolish it. In private, a Christian should be pastor to others, in an emergency any Christian can and should also baptize and administer the Lord's Supper, the "laity" should always watch over doctrine in the congregational assembly, particularly in cases of discipline, but also in establishing adiaphora, indeed even at larger church assemblies or synods they have divine right to sit and vote, while they outwardly remain public apostles and prophets of Christ and all should preach the Word, when they take hold of no man's office. We would like to point out one point in particular. As the Church only comes into being through the faith of individuals and ecclesiastical rights and responsibilities only through the spiritual priesthood of individuals, - not vice versa, so too the pastoral office comes into being from the spiritual priesthood, not vice versa. The pastor receives his rights only from spiritual priests, these do not receive theirs only from the pastoral office. Christians are the original authorized representatives and delegates of Christ, pastors also indeed are from God, but only through them. They only administer their privileges and obligations within the circle of the congregation, and this, as just shown, only partially. Gospel and Sacraments belong, with all their goods, not to the pastor, but are and remain altogether the possession, the children's heritage of all individual Christians. The pastor bestows them the children of God not as a charity or gift of grace from a public right of the same, or as if Christ had indeed purchased them to the best of the faithful, but they only bequeathed the pastoral office as a dispensing official treasure for possession according to His instructions; no, the pastor is not merely Christ's servant and steward over God's mysteries, but he only stands alongside the congregation in relation to servant and steward. His office is only a service. The bread that he distributes belongs to the children of the house; it is their property he administers, not his own. They have a right to its administration through him. He preaches to them their Gospel, he bestows to them absolution, comfort, the Sacraments that Christ won for them and has given as their own. He gives to them only from their own treasures, from their own chamber, not from his own. It is not his possessions that they expect from him, but their own property, according to their own right. And they also are not minor children, as in the old covenant, but adult and

mature who themselves have say and watch over these things, that their servant and steward serves them according to their Lord Christ's Words, he does not oppress, he does not deprive them what they deserve, he does not neglect and misappropriate his service. As much as the child and the heir of the house is higher than the guardian, so much of the Christians state is more than the pastoral state. - It does not follow, as Grabau railed incessantly, mob rule and pastoral suppression, degradation of the pastoral office to the shoe shiner's office. The congregation has no human power over the performing of the preaching office. She has neither created nor established it. The Lord has done it and has fixed the performance of the office once for all in His Word. The servant of the Word is ultimately responsible to them and his instructions, which are as clear as the rest of God's Word, determine from the outset about everything that the pastor has to do and to allow as such. No Christian, no congregation, and no council has shaken that. No congregation has to say even one iota about the pastor with regard to these divine provisions, they have added nothing to his official duties, neither deducted nor imposed to it. As with Christ every congregation and every individual Christian freely stands over the pastor, so the pastor stands over every Christian and congregation. There is neither mob rule nor priestly rule in the Church. We are all soldiers of Jesus Christ and brothers toward one another. It is not so, as Grabau claimed, that the congregation, yes, every individual Christian, should owe obedience to the pastor in all things that are not against God's Word. It is also not so that according to God's Word the pastor, because he is merely the servant of the congregation and individuals, would have to obey anyone outside of Christ in the slightest things. Christians arrange, laymen and pastors, by free mutual consent in love, What is not divine law in Christianity, without making that one to another a matter of conscience. This is Luther's teaching and the teaching of our Confessions. It is the teaching of Scripture, inseparably linked with the doctrine of justification solely by faith. One cannot purely preserve one without the other. Walther's masterpiece is that he purely "repristinated", preferably, "reproduced" both doctrines from Luther and the Confessions, and has brought great recognition to the Lutheran Church of America. That secures him his place among the first greats of the Church and gives him claim to the gratitude of all those who love Zion. We must not now think we have pulled down the doctrine of Church and Office to its foundations. Like the doctrine of grace in general, this doctrine in particular is in constant danger of corruption, especially from servants of the Word. And mainly in one direction, as history teaches. The fanatics, who reduced the preaching office and have made disorder in the Church, no longer push it or have gone far. The danger threatens much more from another side. The apostles were hardly dead when their students and followers of the Church were beginning to make the Church into a visible institution and the preaching office into a ruling office over the congregation. Nothing came from the persecution of Christianity more easily than the idea of an external kingdom of God that must be governed by prelates, in order to overcome the world. The idea of the papacy is quite homogenous of reason. The Church in the world impressed under no form and so ignorant Christians, as in the form of the powerful, appointed priestly governance with divine prerogatives. The idea of priests as divine mediators between God and man equipped with particular powers and mysteries is in all pagan religious systems, because they know nothing of the one great Mediator, Who brought to terms all

things between God and men, and infected the awareness of the necessity of reconciliation ineradicably in the conscience of the natural man. Even the Christian all too easily gives ear to this conception of the pastoral office. Roman Catholics cannot live without that thought because, according to Roman Catholic doctrine, the reconciler must first be reconciled to himself. That Christian people themselves are the true priestly class and the pastor its public servant, is one diametrically opposed to the feeling of natural men, specifically Christian, revealed doctrine, that is kept only through anxious vigilance in the Church. That the papacy broke themselves in the Reformation had its origin in virtually unspeakable abuse and satanic excesses of its arrogated power. That the doctrine and the system itself is of tremendous energy proves the current reattachment and strengthening of the papal church on earth, especially in our country. That Grabau and his comrades did not succeed was due to the senseless fury with which they advanced against others, against their congregations and against each other. With much more wisdom and a little more thorough scholarship, the Buffalo Synod, in spite of Walther, would have brought themselves to greater things. The idea of the visible church with a powerful office is, per se, in the world equally efficacious as wrong. It is also not withdrawn from the outset by our democratic political circumstances of the land, as has been said over there. This proves the growth of the papacy in our country. One measures spiritual and ecclesial conditions from the outset not with the same measure. And we servants of the Word are naturally more inclined to praise our office and to expand its authority. There is certainly much truth in the proverb: "There is no little priest that is too little to have a little pope stuck in him."8 Without any ill will our understanding of the power and authorities of our office increases, especially with the inclination of so many who flatter us and depend upon us. In addition to that comes a legalistic view of the Gospel, to serve the vain addiction, an externally great one, laced into beautiful human rules, to create visible congregations and synods, rather than that we are guided only by the idea of bringing the Gospel to men and to be helpful to save as many as possible on our small part - thus we will lose the meaning of Christ more and more and create a church that is painted beautifully on the outside, but inside is full of decay and dead bones. - It is already the third generation of pastors after Walther in office. We apply the word: "What thou hast inherited from thy fathers, acquire it to make it thine!"9 As we only need to acquire again the doctrines of justification, of election of grace and conversion through our own study of Scripture and the fathers, so we must learn afresh the doctrines of Church and Office ourselves again through our own studies. And therefore we must not content ourselves to read through Walther's book and all his works again or arm ourselves with early Synodical reports. Synodical reports certainly often contain sufficient inaccuracies and lopsided presentations, even if the papers were delivered by eminent men. Walther's books have mostly theses, with proof texts from Scripture, the witnesses from the Symbols and the teachers of the Church. This has its great advantages, but also significant drawbacks that in "Church and Office" remain unhidden to experts. Theses are always summary synopses of a larger complex of ideas, because the execution naturally lacks elaboration. The proof texts or witnesses often do not precisely make the intended point, they
8 9

"Es ist kein Pffflein so klein, es steckt ein Ppstlein darein." "Faust", Part One, Scene One.

often bring a slightly different or a secondary thought to the expression that gives the whole a slightly skewed direction or obscures the actual point. Is the connection and the antithesis, from which a quotation is taken, not the same as the one in which it is utilized, thus one is probably allowed to say something completely different than the citation he meant. Thus Walther frequently did this with his citations from the apostolic and church fathers, which he copied mostly from Lutheran dogmaticians because he, as he himself complains, almost completely lacked patristic literature. So in our opinion the second Waltherian thesis on the Office, when compared with the "proof from God's Word" and the "testimony of the Church in their public Symbols" and the "testimony of the Church in the private writings of their teachers", is not of desirable clarity. Preaching Office or spoken word, the Gospel, the Office of the Word, the Office of the New Testament appears to us to get confused with preaching office in the sense of pastoral office, congregational pastoral office. Only in this way have we always been able to make sense of the thesis and its evidence, that Walther just like Luther acquired and allows to be used the pastoral office as a main species of the "service of the Word and Sacraments" with that of Christ in the citation from "A Sermon on Keeping Children in School". We must pass through Walther to the Confessional writings and Luther, on whose remarks the Confessional writings are straight in this part. Yes, even those who have not read Luther cannot say that he is able to understand somewhat thoroughly Luther's teaching. And finally, we also do not want to get stuck on him, but study the Scriptures ourselves, then we will find that things are still in him, particularly from his early days, that one does not easily accuse, least of all take out of context and should proclaim as Luther's teaching. We belong in the Scriptures. Walther and Luther want to lead us to the thing that binds and frees the conscience and secure us in Divine Truth, because these have no human weaknesses in their presentation. What they said, we can and should always and everywhere say according to them, without fear of saying something perverted. The detailed discussion among us now about Church, Synod, and discipline is an invitation for everyone to study anew the doctrine of Church and Office. To that end, Walther's classic book is the most obvious to us and the best "kindergarten"10. The current new anniversary edition is the fifth and is published by the Saxon Free Church in Zwickau. It is a pleasing volume with nice, clear print. The citations from the Latin and Greek Church Fathers as well as from the dogmaticians are included in several editions since the original. Likewise, even a number of citations collected by Prof. Krauss, after that a list of writers and an alphabetical subject index. The price is $1.25. To be obtained through our bookstore. Aug. Pieper.

10

lit. Vorschule.