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Letters to Lutheran Pastors, No. 25 Concerning the Unity of the Lutheran
Church Prof. D. Theol. Hermann Sasse 41 Buxton Street North Adelaide, South Australia Pentecost 1952 Dear
Brothers in the Office! In
these weeks, we have all been occupied mentally, and more than a few of us
physically, by the pending meeting of the LWF in Hannover and by the
theological and ecclesiastical conferences which will follow it. Will
Lutheranism succeed, after so many missed opportunities, after so many
self--inflicted defeats, in bringing its own house into order, and thereby
performing for all Christians a service which it owes to them? For
the Lutheran churches are indeed the last churches in the Christian world,
apart from a small group of Presbyterians and some other reformed churches,
which still have maintained something of the dogmatic heritage of its
Reformation. This, however, nobody will expect of Hanover, that it will bring
to pass a unification of all Lutheran churches. If ever there was such a hope,
that the LWF would bring about a true federation of all churches of Lutheran
confession, of all churches which want to be Lutheran confessional churches,
then this hope was dreadfully disappointed by the manner in which the meeting
in Germany has been prepared. The booklet, Hanover 1952: Papers for Preparation
of the Meeting of the LWF, which has been distributed throughout the whole
world, published by the German national committee, shows quite clearly whither
the LWF listeth. Next to the Lutheran territorial churches, many union churches
in Germany appear in the list of national committees and their leaders, with
the exception of the Pfalz, whose union confession is indeed nothing else than
the purest calvinism (cf. Karl Müller, The Confessional Writings of the Reformed
Churches, pg. 870). One could understand it, if, as in the old World
Convention, those Lutherans in the union churches, who reject the union as an
injustice and want to re--establish the Lutheran church, were brought in for
advice and collaboration. But an entire union church council is found among
thee "national committees", and the church of Berlin-Brandenburg even
completed a masterpiece of ecclesiastical politics, when it placed Dr.
Krummacher, the only one of its general superintendents who is consciously
Reformed, at the head of its delegation for Hanover. Article VI of the LWF's
constitution, according to which the executive committee has the right to admit
for advisory votes representatives of Lutheran congregations in the union
churches, offers the legal foundation for these ecclessio-political operations.
But where, e.g., are Lutheran congregations in Baden? And are congregations,
which don’t at all want to leave the union, but rather merely raise the legal
claim to enjoying as union congregations the complete rights of a Lutheran
congregation, because in them the Augsburg Confession is still nominally
"valid", really Lutheran in the sense of the LWF? If in Germany the
door into the LWF is opened widely to the union, then what sense can there be
in expecting additionally the entry of the Missouri Synod and of the Lutheran
free churches, which once, because of the union, left the territorial churches
on account of conscience? Once again, they proceeded here according to the same
recipe, exactly as in the case of Brazil, of setting precedents which one
cannot take back. Here again, a decision of incredibly broad consequence was
made behind the iron curtain of an executive committee. The plenary assembly
now merely has the task as legalizing the decision already-made. How could
they, in the presence of the celebratively invited guests, openly discuss the
question of whether the invitation was proper or not? Under these
circumstances, the Lutherans who are true to the confessions have no other
choice than to discuss this question among themselves, and to make clear to
themselves and to others, what actually constitutes the community of the
Lutheran Church. They will need to do this without any resentment toward those
who think otherwise. Perhaps they can also do it – hopefully they can do it,
working together with the LWF, to which so many loyal Lutherans belong, who in
the simplicity of their hearts cannot imagine that responsible Lutheran
churchmen can practice a type of church politics in which "Yes" is no
longer "Yes" and "No" is no longer "No", and
namely because they have a thousand considerations to make and are not at all
any longer in the condition to work according to the clear reading off the
confession. So the time has then come, inwhich all who still whole heartedly
profess the Book of Concord must answer the question, in what does the unity of
the Lutheran Church actually consist? The following lines are intended to
encourage consideration of that question. The
unity of the Lutheran Church may not be confused with the unity of the Church
of Christ in general; for we do not confuse, as do the Roman Catholics, our
church with the Una Sancta. In what does the unity of the one, holy, catholic,
and apostolic church consist? The 7th article of the Augsburg Confession
teaches that: wherever the gospel is announced so that humans can thereby come
to faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior, and where the sacraments are still
administered according to the institution of the Lord, there is the one holy church,
the community of saints, i.e., the sinners who have faith and who are justified
in faith. That can happen inside of, and outside of, our denominational church.
Indeed, Lutheranism has never given up the faith, that the true church of
Christ is all around the earth, hidden among the historically metamorphosed
"churches", wherever even only the voice of the Good shepherd can
still be heard. Here is the great and authentic ecumeny of our church, which
has found its most powerful expression in that which the Apology to the
Augsburg Confession, article 7/8, says about the "comforting article"
of the ecclesia catholica: this remains certainly true, that the group and the
individuals are the true church, which here and there in the world, from
sunrise to sunset, truly believe in Christ, which then have one gospel, one
Christ, one baptism and one sacrament, governed by one Holy Spirit, even if
they have different ceremonies. (Müller, pg. 154 This church and its unity are a reality in the world, but a reality which must be believed, as the explanation of the third article in Luther’s large catechism so clearly says: I believe that there is on earth a little holy flock or community of pure saints under one head, Christ. It is called together by the Holy Spirit in one faith, mind and understanding. It possesses a variety of gifts, yet is united in love without sect or schism, (Müller, pg, 457) True
ecumeny, which sees the one church of Christ wherever the
means of grace are yet preserved - through which the Lord calls to His church
-even beyond the boundaries of one's own ecclesiology, stands opposed to false
ecumeny, which treats Christians of all denominations as brothers in faith.
This false ecumeny tries to make visible and tangible that which we humans
cannot see and touch, the church as the people of God, as the Body of Christ,
as the temple of the Holy Spirit. This false ecumeny changes the "article
of faith" about the church into an "article of sight." It
understands the unity of the church, which only the Holy Spirit can create and
maintain, as something which we humans can produce. And it tries to produce
this unity, in that it works to realize the one faith, the one baptism, the one
sacrament of the altar as a compromise of various forms of faith, various
interpretations of baptism, and various understandings of holy communion. In so
far as it does that, this false ecumeny overlooks [the fact] that the various
understandings of the means of grace are not only different possibilities of
understanding the truth, but rather that soul-murdering errors and
church-destroying heresy also hide among them. True ecumeny sees this.
Therefore, it is able to recognize the true unity of the church only there,
where it recognizes the one correct faith, the one correct baptism, the one
communion of the Lord Christ. True ecumeny asks, therefore, not first about
unity, but rather about truth. It knows that where the true church is,
there, and there alone, is also the one church. In this sense it
understands the high priestly prayer of the Lord, too, in which the "that
they may all be one" is linked inseparably with "sanctify them in
Your truth; Your Word is the truth" (John 17:17,21) Does
an explicit common confession belong to the unity of the church in this sense?
The answer to this must be: no. The one common faith of the church will
certainly find its expression. The true church of Christ has, at all times,
confessed its faith and will confess it until the end of the world. The content
of this confession will always be the same; it will be nothing other than an
explication of the original confession of the church, that Jesus is the Son of
God, the Christ, and ???? ??. But this confession can have very different
forms, as in the old church very different forms of common confession of faith
existed along each other, until later a few confessional formulas took over in
theEast and in the West. But is it telling, that even the three symbola
catholica seu oecumenica received by the Lutheran church are not, in a
strict formal sense, ecumenical, not even the so-called Nicene with the filioque.
The confession of the correct Christian faith belongs to the essence of the
church, but not anyone confessional formula or confessional document. Even the
much-discussed sentence from article 7 of the Augsburg Confession says this,
about that which is sufficient "for true unity of the Christian
church," namely "that the gospel is preached clearly according to
pure understanding there, and the holy sacraments are distributed according to
the gospel" (Müller, pg. 40). The unity of the church depends on this:
that the gospel is really preached purely and in large quantity, and that the
sacraments are administered according to their institution. It is therefore a
serious mis-use of this passage from the confession, when it was said in the
German union churches, and when even the so-called "Confessing
Church" repeatedly announced through its leading theologians, that a
common doctrinal confession does not constitute the unity of the church, but
rather the common contemporary announcement of the gospel; therefore, having a
common confessional document is unnecessary. Against this, it is to be said: confessional
documents as such are not necessary for the unity of the church, but for that
which happens in them, namely the distinction between truth and error, pure
teaching and heretical teaching. Without this distinction there is, indeed,
no pure preaching of the gospel and no correct administration of the
sacraments. Nobody can know what the one church of God is, if nobody
knows what the one gospel, the one faith, the one baptism,
and the one sacrament of the altar are. Every Christian congregation,
wherever it is, each part of Christendom, however it may label itself, must
have one answer to this, and has one answer, even if they aren't quite sure
about the contents and implications of their own answer. 2. If
a particular historical confession does not actually belong to the essence of
the church of Christ, then it does however belong to the essence of the
Lutheran Church. By "Lutheran Church" we mean that segment of
Christendom which accepts as scriptural the great doctrinal decisions of the
Lutheran Reformation, as they are recorded in the Lutheran confessions. As we
determine this, so we guard against the misunderstanding which appeared in the
Lutheran church of the 19th century, that the church be like a type
of association and the confession, so to speak, the rules of the organization,
as a political party has a platform as a type of worldly confession. Such a
party or association is indeed held together by such rules, as its individual
members declare their joining based on such rules. Hardly any other
misunderstanding of the Lutheran confession has damaged our church like this
one. The confession of the church is never, like the rules of an association,
the expression of the opinions of individuals who link themselves together into
a body. It is the expression of the consensus about the correct faith, brought
about by the Holy Spirit. It must be noted that the confessional writings are
not caused by the Holy Spirit, but rather the faith, to which they attest, and
the consensus of faith in the community of the church. The riddle, which is
inconceivable to the world, of how the confession of personal faith by the
individual Christian - nobody else can believe for me - can be, at the same
time, the confession of the entire orthodox church (and vice-versa), is
explained by the fact that the Holy Spirit always does both at the same time,
as Luther says it so well in the explanation of the third article: ...the Holy Spirit has called me by means of
the gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the
correct faith; just as He calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies, and keeps all
Christendom with Jesus Christ in correct, unified faith. This distinguishes the true ecclesiastical confession from the pseudo-confession of modem protestant churches, those formulas of compromise, which serve more to veil unbelief than to confess belief, formulas, in which one attempts to bring the religious views of many individual(ist)s together under a common name. The Lutheran confessions did not come about in this way. Even the introductory sentence of the Solid Declaration may not be understood in such a manner: The primary requirement for basic and permanent concord within the church is a summary formula and pattern, unanimously approved, in which the summarized doctrine commonly confessed by the churches of the pure Christian religion is drawn together out of the Wordof God …. In the same way we have from our hearts and with our mouths declared in mutual agreement that we common confessions which have at all times and in all places been accepted in all the churches of the Augsburg Confession ... and which were kept and used during that period when people were everywhere and unanimously faithful to the pure doctrine of the Word of God ... (Müller, pg. 568) Neither
the common agreement of the authors of the Formula of Concord, which the
signatories approved, nor the determination that the church needed a
"summary formula and pattern, unanimously approved" can be
interpreted in this sense, as if the confession were a party platform or an
association's rule, arising from the will of individuals who set a norm for
themselves. Already the fact that "we believe, teach, and confess”
contradicts such a view; the phase with which the doctrinal decisions of the
Formula of Concord begin corresponds to the great "we" which is the
speaking subject in all great confessions of the church, from the pisteuomen
of the Nicene Creed to Luther's hymnic form of the credo: "we
all believe in one God" and to the ecclesiae magno consensu apud nos
docent of the Augsburg Confession. The Lutheran confession, understood in
this sense, belongs indeed to the essence of the Lutheran church. It alone
makes it into that which it is. Our church is essentially a confessional church
in a sense in which neither the Catholic nor the Reformed churches are -
because all these churches have, in addition to their confession, something
else, which characterizes them in their uniqueness and holds them together:
their constitution, their liturgy, their discipline, or whatever else. The
Lutheran Church does not have all that. It is part of its understanding of the
divine Word, of the distinction between Law and Gospel, that it finds no laws
in the New Testament about church constitution, church discipline, and liturgy.
It can live with presbyteral, episcopal, or congregational forms of
constitution. Its liturgical possibilities reach from Swedish high-churchliness
to the liturgy-lessness of W ürttemberg. It has only its confession. If Gospel and sacrament are the notae
ecclesiae, by which we recognize the presence of the church of Christ, then
the notae ecclesiae Lutheranae, the trait by which we recognize whether
a church is Lutheran or not, is the Lutheran confession. Inasmuch as we
determine this, we do not need, after all that has been said, to protect
ourselves primarily from the misunderstanding, that we would place the notae
of the invisible church of God on the same level with the traits of earthly
historical ecclesiologies. We believe the church of God to be in, with, and
under the earthly ecclesiologies, because we see the Gospel and the sacraments
there, and insofar as we see the Gospel and the sacraments there. The confession, by which we recognize the
Lutheran church, is for us nothing else than the "Yes!" to this
Gospel and to these sacraments. 3. What
is confession which belongs to the essence of the Lutheran church, according to
its content? What belongs in it, and
what not? It is significant for our church, that it has always had a great
hesitation about new formulations of the confession, and always only then, when
it could not possibly be otherwise, formulated new confessions, but then also
with great power. The Augsburg Confession wants to confess no other faith than
the primordial faith, which the apostles already had, and which the early
church symbols expressed. For this reason it begins with a confirmation of the
Nicene Creed and does not make an entirely new beginning, in which it would
perhaps formulate the principle of Scripture and from that develop a new
confession. Even the Formula of Concord wants to confess nothing new, as the cited
passage shows. It is a commentary on the Augsburg Confession, insofar as it
wants to resolve the disagreements which had arisen between adherents to the
Augsburg Confession. It is known how Calov, in the l7th century, strove vainly
to complete the Book of Concord by adding a confession against syncretism. The
mass production of new "confessions" during the German church
struggle is explained not only by the need to speak confessionally to the
important questions of the era, but rather also by the fact that people were no
longer acquainted with feeling of timidity in the face of new confessions, and
in the face of the imposing responsibility of a new confession. Luther and the
confessors of the Book of Concord submitted their confessions with a continual
concern about Judgment Day, when they would be called to account for their
affirmations and rejections. It is to be feared that modern theologians, who
take such great joy in [the appearance of] new confessions, will now transfer
their workspace to the territory of the LWF. Granted, it could be necessary to
speak the content of the Book ofConcord in a new form to people at the end of
the 2Oth century; the average student in America and Australia is already so
far removed from the German history of the 16th century that he can hardly
still understand many historical allusions. Even the learned theologians in
America have a difficult task in translating the confessions. What shall we
even say, then, about the young churches in the mission field! But such a necessity
of "translating" the Lutheran confessions may never serve as a
pretext for replacing the old confession with a new one. It is the old faith,
the faith of the fathers, the faith of the correct church from the very
beginning, which we have to confess anew as our faith. Nothing of this old
faith may be lost. In
this sense, the content of the Lutheran confession is and remains determined by
the Book of Concord. It is true that the Lutheran Church is the Church
of the Augsburg Confession. But the Formula of Concord remains a
decisive commentary on the Augsburg Confession for the Lutheran Church, even if
some churches did not accept the Formula of Concord for historical reasons, as
[they did] the Apology, especially in those questions which crypto-calvinism of
all eras directs toward our Church. If one wants to interpret the confessional
article of the LWF in such a way, that even churches which reject as error the
doctrinal content of those confessions not named in this article -especially
the Smalcald Articles, the Large Catechism, and the Formula of Concord – can be
members of the LWF, then the LWF is not actually a Lutheran federation, and it
should find another name for itself. Moreover, the conscious rejection of the
Formula of Concord usually goes hand in hand with the denial of the real
presence in the sense of Lutheran doctrine. There should be no doubt about
this, that for Luther and for the Churches of the Lutheran Reformation, the
article about the Lord's Supper is similar in importance to the article about
justification, a fact which Michael Reu has many times pointed out, especially
in connection with his works for the Lutheran World Convention. If the article
about justification is the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae in
the discussion with Rome and with the Pelagianizing fanatics [Schwärmer], then
the article about the Lord's Supper has no less importance for the Church
battle against the spiritualism of the fanatics, and against the spiritualism
of the humanists, which destroy the church. Both [articles] belonged
inseparably together for Luther in his doctrine about Christ. Already, the
entire historical context of the Augsburg Confession with the events of the
year 1529 indeed actually show, rather, that the 10th article of the Augsburg Confession
is to be understood in no other way. The 10th article of the Augsburg
Confession contains no other teaching than that which the Lutherans had
confessed at Schwabach and Marburg. In this way, too, then, Zwingli had also
understood it. The later twisting of the meaning, as if the 10th article of the
Augsburg Confession already contained the late Melanchthonian view of a
presence of Christ in the celebration and in the action but without being bound
to the elements, was only made possible by the fact that one no longer
considered the clear words of the German text. So the confession, by which
the church is recognised as Lutheran. is the understanding of the Holy
Scripture, which is clearly witnessed in the confessional documents of the
evangelical Lutheran church. 4. What,
more exactly, does it mean, that this is the confession of our church? In
what does its "validity" consist, and how far does this validity
go? Werner Elert repeatedly drew our attention to the fundamental difference
between the Roman Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran understandings about
ecclesiastical confessions of doctrine. It. consists in this, that the Roman
doctrinal confession has the form of an imperative, while the Lutheran has the
form of an indicative. Roman dogma is a command of faith; the Lutheran an
expression of faith. There, a credendum is presented with a command to
accept it.. Here is expressed, what the church [already} believes: "we
believe, teach, and confess." The difference is deeply-rooted in the
concept of faith. Faith, in the Catholic sense, is the supernatural virtue, by
the power of which I hold for true that which the church presents to be as the
content of revelation: fide divina et catholica ea omnia credenda sunt,quae
in verbo Dei scripto vel tradito continentur et ab ecclesia sive solemni
iudicio, sive ordinario et universali magisterio tanquam divinitus revelata
credenda proponuntur. “With the divine or catholic faith, everything must
be believed, which is contained in the written or transmitted Word of God, and
is presented by the church as divinely revealed thus as to be believed, whether
it be in a celebrated decision of faith, or whether it be by the orderly and
general office of teaching." (Vaticanum, Const. de fide catholica, cap. 3,
Denzinger No. 1792). Thus the objectum fidei, the object of faith, is
defined. Corresponding to the concept of faith as "holding something to be
true", the object of faith is, for a Catholic, always dogma, for example
the dogma about Christ. Corresponding to the evangelical concept of faith as fiducia,
as trusting the divine promise of grace in the gospel, is the fact that, for
the Lutheran, the objectum fidei is not the dogma about Christ, but
rather Christ Himself, not the dogma about the Trinity, but rather the Triune
God; not the Bible as such, but rather God, Who speaks to us in each word of
the Scripture. This important distinction was mis-used, by Ritschl and his
school in his time, but then by the entirety of modern liberalism, in order to
get rid of dogma in general. What a mis-use was created with simply one phrase
of Melanchthon's, his famous phrase that recognizing Christ means recognizing
His benefits, but not His natures and form and manner of the incarnation! As if
the benefits of Christ would exist without the mystery of His incarnation, His
true divinity and true humanity! As if one could believe in Jesus Christ,
without believing that he is the God-man! No, the Lutheran church did not set
dogma aside, but rather gave to it its proper place, and thereby brought it to
be honored, as it is honored in no other church. For the assensus, which, like
the notitia - to use the expressions of the old dogmaticians - is
indivisibly bound to the fiducia, has indeed a very different import,
when it is not merely the obedience of the intellect to the office of teaching
and the documents of revelation - Scripture, tradition, doctrinal decisions -
presented by this office, but rather the "Yes!" of the heart and of
the spirit to God's own Word. Ecclesia magno consensu apud nos docent
decretum Nicaenae Synodi de unitate essentiae divinae et de tribus personis
verum et sine ulla dubitatione credendum esse. This beginning of our
confession has only a superficial similarity to the Catholic command to faith,
the command to take up the credendum in obedience of the intellect and of the
will. Melanchthon, as often happened with the theologians of the Reformation -
e.g., in the semper virgo of the Latin translation of the Smalcald
Articles (Prima Pars, Müller, pg. 299) - simply retained the catholic [Latin]
expression and formed a connection between the word credendum and the
word decretum, which Elert (Morphology, vol. I, pg. 178) rightly
notes as a mistake. The German text, which in the case of the Augsburg
Confession has indeed the same authority as the Latin, contains nothing which
reminds one of a command to belief. The normative character, which is here as
in other passages in the Book of Concord ascribed to the confession, is
explained by its relation to Holy Scripture. Our churches - the plural here as
in the Formula of Concord is explained by ancient Christian linguistic
patterns, in which the Church consists of individual churches, local churches -
teach in great agreement this or that. They do this, because the scripture teaches
this or that. The confession is, as Edmund Schlink properly states with great
emphasis, "the summa of the Holy Scripture" (Theology of the
Lutheran Confessional Writings, 2nd edition, pg. 39 ff.), as the catechism
is, according to Luther, "a short excerpt and copy of the entire Holy
Scripture" (introduction to the large catechism, MülIer, pg. 379). The
authority of the confession is therefore derived from the authority of the
scripture. The confession is norma normata for the church's
announcement. [of the Gospel] and stands thus under the norma normans of
the scripture, but within this limitation it has true authority. From
this, the question is to be answered, how far does the validity of the
confession go? It goes exactly as far as it holds to pure exposition of the
Holy Scriptures. The scripture is God's Word; the confession is a human word.
The scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit, the confession is not, even if
it, as is correct preaching, is produced with the assistance of the Holy
Spirit. The scripture is infallible, the confession is not infalli ble, its
content needs continual supervision vis-a-vis the norma normans of the Holy
Scripture. But, where the confession as summa of the scriptures
accurately reflects the contents of the scriptures, then it participates in the
authority of the scriptures, in a similar fashion to correct announcement of
the gospel in preaching. In so far as the examination of the confession in
relation to the scripture gives us certainty that it "has been taken from
God's Word, and is firmly and thoroughly grounded in it," we may, indeed,
we must own it with the quia of true doctrinal duty. As we do that, we
give witness that its teaching, i.e., its recognition of the teaching of the
scripture, is correct. That does not mean that we own every sentence of the
confession and hold it to be correct, as we must accept every sentence and
every word of the Bible. It could be that the exegeses of an individual
biblical passage is not sufficient - one must say, e.g., that in John chapter 6
there is a relation to the Eucharist which Luther and the Lutheran confession
did not see - or that philosophical argumentation or propositions of an older
view of nature are no longer intelligible to us - like the unusual opinion
about the effect of garlic onmagnets. It. is the scriptural exposition of the
confession, i.e., the conceiving and portraying of the doctrinal content of the
scripture, the deciding of doctrinal questions based on the scripture, which we
accept, whereby it is of no consequence, whether such a decision is introduced
by the express declaration "we believe, teach, and confess" or not,
or whether it happens in a positive development of pure doctrine or in a
rejection of a false teaching. As we thus accept the teaching of the
confession, we profess the communality of the church, which in its confession
gives the answer of faith to the Word of God. 5. Thus
the confession creates the unity of the Lutheran church. We have no other sign
or means of unity and communality for our church. Because the confession
gathers the church, it at the same time draws the borderline against
everything which does not belong to it. At least, it's supposed to be that way.
Is it that way in reality? Or is all that perhaps only a theory, which once was
correct, but which today is no longer true? There was a time - Elert described
it impressively in his Morphology of Lutheranism - in which the Lutheran church
really from Upsala and Drontheim all the way to Nürnberg and Tübingen, from
Straßburg all the way to Dorpat, from the Netherlands all the way to Hungary,
in all the diversity of languages, constitutional forms, and liturgical orders,
really was a united [body] in the confession and by means of the confession.
There was no common organization, but what kind of close community is evidenced
in, e.g., the reports of the Reformation's 100th anniversary in 1616 and 1617!
Never again has the Lutheranism of the world been such an authentic unit as in
the centuries of orthodoxy, when there was no other bond of unity than common
confession, even if they could occasionally be of very different opinions about
the explication of it. By what is a church like the church of Hannover, with
its 3,900,000 souls, of which more than a million were previously members of the
Old Prussian Union, and with its more than 1,300 pastors, of which likewise
more than 300 were taken over from the Union, actually bound into a unity
today? Certainly not by means of [its] confessional status, which is
"Lutheran", but is understood differently and determined differently,
according to whether or not the Formula of Concord was valid once, several
centuries ago, in the individual regions and cities. This same question could
be asked in the case of the Scandinavian churches, which have never seriously
experienced the problem of the union in their own countries. Certainly, in
Sweden the Book of Concord is still valid. But is this judicial validity much
more than the validity of that Danish imperial law which forbids, as a capital
crime, any introduction of the Formula of Concord, and which has been left on
the books merely because it was forgotten and ignored? Essentially, all these
national and territorial churches are held together by very different bonds,
and not by means of their confession, by the same bonds which, e.g., hold
together the Church of England and the Church of Scotland. But even if one
considers these large church bodies, historical and bounded geographically, for
what they are in reality, organizations in which politics and ecclesiology are
inseparably mixed, and if one turns one's eye rather to the spiritual office
and the Christian congregation which live in these organizations: is the
spiritual unity which exists in this congregation still determined by the
Lutheran confession? That was once the case. There was a time in which the
Swedes, the Danes, and the Hannoverians were Lutherans, good ones or bad ones,
but in any case formed in their inner lives by the confession of their church,
and affirming this confession. One can say this still today only about a
disappearing minority in these once-Lutheran peoples and tribes. One must see
this reality, in order to understand the hopeless struggle of German
Lutheranism against the union. The confession has lost the power over souls
which it had in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was in the 19th century
still conceivable, to gain this power back, at least in a segment of European
Christianity; the Lutheran Awakening, the struggle of Lutheranism in the union,
and the founding of Lutheran "free churches" witness to this. But the
minority who found their way back to the confession of the church was too weak
to make a major impact in the large regional churches and in the modern mass
societies. Even the confessional struggle against the [Nazi] totalitarian state
led in only a few cases to a re-discovery of the content of the
confession. Thus one must understand that the large Lutheran Churches of Europe
even in those countries in which there are no Reformed Churches at all, no
longer see the ecclesiastical boundary lines against the reformed or the
Anglicans. Lutheran bishops, who commune in Reformed and Anglican churches,
Anglican bishops who co-officiate with Lutheran bishops in theconsecration [of
the elements of the sacrament]: those are the images which one did not see in
earlier centuries. How would the Christian congregation of earlier times have
reacted to this! It
seems as if a process is completing itself within Lutheranism, a process which
the Reformation Churches already have behind them, and a process which one must
mark as a dying of the confession of the Reformation. Certainly, the confession
is not entirely forgotten. But it retains only a historical meaning. It is one
of the great keepsakes, which every church likes to maintain. But it has lost
its original function of collecting and making distinct, the difference between
truth and error. Can one turn back the wheel of time? Whoever has stood for
decades in the vain struggle against the spirit of the current age in the church,
and has experienced how German Lutheranism has retreated from one position
after another, after each time declaring that this would be the position where
it would conquer or perish, has no illusions any more. But what would it mean,
if the Lutheran church sank into being merely a theological school of thought
inside of a Reformed-biblicist- liberal-freemasonic or even a
Reformed-fundamentalist world protestantism? Thereby, we would lose that which
God gave to Christendom in the Reformation: the understanding of the gospel in
distinction from the law, and the understanding of Baptism and the Eucharist as
means of grace. The real presence would remain with the Roman church. And of
all the confessions of the Reformation era, only the confession of the Roman
Reformation, the Tridentinum, would remain. But for the humans at the end of
the 20th century, tired of the secular dogmas of the large political systems,
yearning for the Christian dogma and for a firm Christian doctrine, nothing
would be left, faute de mieux, except for the road to Rome. Consider the
question, why in England, but not only there, so many educated people are going
this way! 6. The
fear, that the time of the Lutheran confession and the Lutheran confessional
church could be over, is intensified when one considers the churches which, in
contrast to the European regional and ethnic churches, base their unity even
today still on the profession by the church members of the Lutheran
confessional documents. This is the case in the large and small free churches,
above all in America. It is worth pondering the question, to what degree
even in these churches the "confession of the fathers" has already
taken on a historical dimension and become a treasured inheritance, the inner
adoption of which is becoming ever more difficult, and how far the churchly home
has become a "home church", which is more "home" than
"church". One does no injustice to the Lutheran Churches of America,
when one determines that in them, this process of de-confessionalization has
already largely completed itself in connection with the loss of the old
(German, Swedish, Norwegian, etc.) church languages, the advancing assimilation
to the Anglo-American surroundings, and the deep spiritual transformation which
has occurred in the entire American people since 1917. What especially causes
one to think is that the retreat of the old Lutheran confession is even to be
seen in those places in which American Lutheranism passionately professes
orthodoxy. We have already indicated this once in connection with the internal
developments of the Missouri Synod (letter 20). We cannot ask our American
brothers in faith earnestly enough to turn their full attention to this
problem. What is at stake can be made clear by an example. In
September of 1951, in Okabena, Minnesota, the "Orthodox Lutheran
Conference" organized itself, a small circle of pastors and laity from the
Missouri Synod - how many congregations or parts of congregations stood and
stand behind it is difficult to say, but in any case we're talking about a very
small group - whose consciences forced them to believe that they must give up
fellowship with the Missouri Synod, until it would return to the allegedly
ignored orthodoxy. The main point here is not which particular errors were the
cause of the rebuke toward the mother synod - mainly it was about the
evaluation of the "Common Confession" made between Missouri and the
"American Lutheran Church" - but rather our interest is in the way in
which church fellowship is understood and how it is founded. The dogmatic basis
of the new conference was expressed in a "confession of faith professed
and practiced by all true Lutherans", which consists of two parts, a
general section about the confessional foundation, and a specific section which
considers 12 doctrinalpoints. In the general section, the thesis is established
about the authority of the Bible, the symbols, and the "Brief
Statement", the doctrinal declaration of the Missouri Synod from 1932. We recognized and accept with our whole hearts and without any reservation the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments as the inspired Word of God. - We accept the Lutheran confessions as they are contained in the Book of Concord of 1580, as a correct explication of the Word of God in regard to all the teachings discussed therein. - We accept the Brief Statement of the Missouri Synod (accepted in 1932 and confirmed in 1947) as a correct explication of the Holy Scriptures about an the questions discussed therein. It
is telling, that the modern doctrinal declarations are no longer understood as
a necessary explanation of the confession of the church, but rather that they
receive the status of a confession, as a binding explanation of scripture, and
are practically placed above the old confessions. No decision about the
disputed questions is made on the basis of the church's confession. At one
point, the passage from the Formula of Concord (Solid Declaration, article 10,
sections 5, 7, and 16) is quoted with its warning for Christians to not adapt, even in external forms, to customs which are associated with the enemies of the truth. and
added this is the determination: separation is demanded by God, when church fellowship with others, even inside Lutheran groups, is equivalent with the toleration of error and with the supporting of erroneous teaching. But
what is the church-destroying erroneous teaching which is thereby placed on the
same level with Roman erroneous teaching, which the representatives of the Interim
once themselves de facto tolerated? What are the false teachings,
which according to the opinion of this document are tolerated by the leaders of
the Missouri Synod, so that one can have with them no church fellowship? Have
these men tossed away some dogma of the church, some proposition from the
confessions? The only positive error which these "orthodox Lutherans"
can find in the case of the leaders of Missouri is the disputation about the
proposition that engagement is actually a marriage vow. This proposition is,
however, not a component of the Lutheran confession. Beyond that, the matter is
about whether the Missouri Synod, in its negotiations with the America Lutheran
Church, and in its behavior toward other Lutheran churches, had made itself
guilty of unionism, and especially whether it used ambiguous expressions, which
do not fully give witness to the biblical-confessional truth, in the
"Common Confession". Now, it can happen, naturally, and it has
happened often enough, that a church, otherwise loyal to the confessions,
denies with the deed that which it confesses with its mouth. No church is
certain against this, as every confessor can become a denier, as did the very
first confesser, Simon Peter. It can be, that a Lutheran Church, by means of
its practical dealing, blurs the borderline against error, and finally ceases
to be Lutheran. It can be, that one will have to separate one's self from it,
for the sake of truth. But in order to justify that separation, the situation
must be so evident, so grievous and irreparable errors - perhaps entry into a
church like the EKD, which cannot be reversed - must be present, such as no
sober observer can find them in the case of the Missouri Synod. The vast
majority of all of those, who do not approve of the Common Confession, have
also not taken part in this separation. It is as if some severe disease has
broken out in conservative American Lutheranism, when one reads the expressions
with which one speaks about the "teachers of error and false
prophets" of the Missouri Synod in the discussions at Okabena (e.g., Proceedings,
pg. 31) If
we set aside, for a moment, the human and ethical aspect of this matter, which
reminds us very much of certain tragedies in old Lutheran orthodoxy, what is
the theological sickness, which is here manifested? It is recognizable,
when one sees, how the unity of the church is here considered. The consensus
which binds the Lutheran church is no longer the consensus de doctrina and
evangelii et de administratione sacramentorum expressed in the confessions,
but rather it is the agreement in all and every doctrine of the Holy
Scripture, whether or not it istouched upon in the confessions. By
"doctrine" is understood in this case every doctrinal proposition,
which one can directly or indirectly take out of the Holy Scripture. Because
"everything which was written previously, that was written for us as a
teaching" (Romans 15:4), and this everything includes not only the
actual dogmatic passages, but rather additionally all other determinations, historical
reports, geographical data, and comments made in passing (Confession of
Faith 11,5; Proceedings pg. 52 f.). But
because the scripture is completely clear in all questions which deal with
"life and faith", it is dangerous and misleading to speak of
exegetical difficulties, theological problems, and open questions in the
exposition of the doctrinal content of the Bible, or so we are further told in
the "Confession" (II, 7; ibid., pg. 53). we reject the claim that is neither necessary nor possible to be united in all points of doctrine or that complete agreement in details of doctrine and practice is not required (ll,6). We
stand here before a concept of the "doctrine" contained in the
scripture and in the confession, a form which is unknown to the confessional
documents, and which in this extreme form, at least, was not even shared by the
Lutheran orthodoxy of the 17th century. If
one wants to understand this hyperorthodoxy - this word is really at home here,
because we are dealing with a theology which goes beyond Lutheran orthodoxy -
then one must begin with the concept of "doctrine". But what was written before, that was written for us as a teaching, so that we may have hope by means of the patience and comfort of the scripture (Romans 15:4). How
can one read from this sentence, that, even geographical data in the scripture
are given to us as "doctrine"? The
Greek word, didaskalian which
the Vulgate renders as doctrina, has here the meaning of
"instruction". What kind of instruction is meant is shown in the
context. It is not the instruction, by means of which the extent of our
knowledge is expanded, but rather the instruction about the fact that we have a
Savior. Notetur, quam monstrosos vas habeatis articulos fidei answered
Aegidius Hunnius at the religious debates in Regensburg in 1601 to Tanner the
Jesuit, as the latter stated with emphasis that it was an article of faith,
that Tobias took a dog with him on his trip (Tobias 11:9). The orthodox fathers
of the 17th century often used this example in order to distinguish themselves
from the Catholic concept of faith and article of faith. Today it is time to
remember this again. Even if these fathers still very strongly emphasized the assensus
in the faith, the faithful acceptance of that which is revealed to us, then
they still really never forgot that the actual essence of the faith is fiducia.
Even if, in their case, the credendum of the dogma was more and more
emphasized, and faith was in danger of finding its object in the doctrine of
God instead of in the Triune God Himself, then they still express repeatedly,
even in their dogmatism, that Christian faith is nothing else than faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ. But this truth gets lost, if one understands a passage like
Romans 15:4 in the manner which is found in the already-cited "Confession
of faith professed and practiced by all true Lutherans" above. "You
have rather odd articles of faith, "one is tempted to say to some of our
American brothers in faith, when they tell us, that some historical or geographical
item in the Old Testament contained revealed truth and is, therefore, an object
of faith, even if not of justifying faith; that each such truth is a article of
faith, if not a fundamental article. Even Luther never doubted the correctness
of the biblical history. But this assensus, which he expected from every
Christian, was for him still not the faith. The Christian faith, for Luther, is
always the faith in Jesus Christ, faith in the deus incarnatus, and
therefore justifying faith. An article of faith is, for him therefore, always a
proposition in which the faith in Christ is buried, like the sentences of the
Apostles' Creed. Because even the faith in God the creator, in the Holy Spirit
Who spoke through the prophets, is faith in Christ. Because I confess the one church,
the one baptism, the community of the saints, the real presence of the body and
blood of Christ, and the resurrection of the dead, I confess Jesus Christ.
Believing in the scripture as the inspired Word of God means, for him,
believing in Jesus Christ, to Whom the scripture gives witness from the first
sentence to the last. In this sense, Luther understands the article of faith as
a unit, even in the famous passage from his last [formulation], the "Short
Confession concerning the Holy Sacrament": therefore, the matter is believing everything entirely, completely, and purely - or having believed nothing! The Holy Spirit does not allow Himself to be divided or separated, that he should teach one thing truthfully, and another falsely, or allow it to be so believed ... for all heretics are of this manner, that they begin by rejecting only one article, but after that, they must all, and all together, be rejected: just as when a ring, if it has a crack or a chink, is of no value to us any more, and when a bell has a fault on one side, it does not ring at all anymore, and is entirely worthless. (EA 32:415) Luther
does not want to say by this that faith is a system, the sum of many individual
doctrinal propositions, which one takes from the Bible and brings into a
systematic ordering, but rather it is a unit because it is always the faith in
Jesus Christ, Who is the actual objectum fidei in an propositions of
faith. The divine truth, which we believe in every individual Word of
scripture, is not in each case identical with the intellectual content which
grammar and logic transmit, but rather this truth can be buried deeply behind
the text, which, e.g., everyone will agree is the case for the Song of Solomon.
The clarity which we ascribe to the Holy Scripture does not mean, indeed, the
same thing as the "clarity" of a philosophical book. It does not
assert, that the full and exhaustive meaning of a biblical passage must be
instantly grasped by every Christian reader of good will It also does not
assert that we can instantly find the harmony which exists between [various]
statements which extremely diverge from each other. If the clarity and
perspicuity of the Holy Scripture are to be understood in this way, then the
history of the church and her doctrinal struggles would be an unintelligi ble
riddle. For this history was not only the history of a fall from the once
perfectly given truth and the struggle for the reproduction of the truth, but
rather it was also the history of the wrestling by the true church of Christ
toward an ever deeper and fuller understanding of the one eternal unchanging
truth. Therefore, there are not only "so-called exegetical
difficulties, theological problems, and open questions" in the
understanding of the Scripture, as the "confession" of the
"orthodox Lutherans" opines, but rather there is actually all of
that, from the days of the apostles onward, who also did not all have the same
theology and the same interpretation of the Old Testament, until that Day, of
which it is said: "but then shall come completion, then shall the partial
cease!" This
is the teaching which American Lutheranism, insofar as it still really takes
the confession of the fathers seriously, must take from the tragic event of the
most recent splitting. It must recognize that the consensus which binds the
Lutheran church into a unit, can not be a system of exegetical and dogmatic
discoveries, in which one thinks to have "the doctrine" of the
scripture, which one theoretically identifies with the confession of the
Lutheran church, but practically expresses in new confessions. The message,
which we must send to these churches today, is the warning, not to consider the
Lutheran confession as an obvious possession, which one could lose. One can
lose the confession of the Lutheran Reformation, not only in giving it up, but
also by believing with far too great a certainty that one possess it. Karl
Barth once quoted (Theology and Church: Historical Lectures, vol 2, pg.
80) the verses of a German Lutheran in the middle of the previous century: a certain church is our church, a wall around it, salvation, and arms, Augsburg's victorious confession, like a fortification around it. What
a false security that was! What would Luther have said to this Lutheran! How
gruesomely did the judgments of God in Europe sweep away this illusion. We must
ask our brothers in America to examine themselves to what extent they still
perhaps live under the illusion of the "certain" confession and of
the church "secured" by the confession. "Back to the Brief
Statement!" That is the call which the people around "Confessional
Lutheran" [movement] continually send to their church. The "Brief
Statement" is the confession, by which the people of [the] Okabena
[movement] measure the orthodoxy of the "Common Confession" and other
documents. Would it not be appropriate at this time, that people on all
[different] sides should first pause and study again the Lutheran confession,
and honor it? It is, indeed, still a powerful force in the churches of our
faith in America. Behind the formulas of the old orthodoxy, which is still
vital there, and of modern fundamentalism, which attempts to seep into
Lutheranism from the Reformed environment; lies buried the Lutheran faith,
which can still distinguish between Law and Gospel, and which knows what the
means of grace are. But nobody knows what will become of the next generation,
if the fleeting agreement of [various] theological schools, with its pseudo
confession made [only] for the [present] moment, takes the place of consensus
of the Church which lasts over time, as the Lutheran confessions express it. It
is a false concept of unity in doctrine, if a complete uniformity in the
explanation of all passages of the Bible with dogmatic content is demanded, and
if this demand is justified with the warning of Paul, that you at all times speak unitedly, and do not let divisions be among you, but rather hold firmly to one another in one mind and in one belief. (1 Cor. 1:10) It
is the same false concept of doctrinal unity, if one directs the warning that you watch those, who start divisions and
disagreements contrary to the teaching which you have learned, and avoid them.
(Rom 16:17) toward
every brother in faith who has a different theology. The teaching which Paul
mentions in both passages is clearly the pure doctrine of the gospel, the articulus
stantis et cadentis ecclesiae, the doctrine of justification of the sinner,
which he announced in Corinth with Peter and Apollos, although he did not come
from the same theological school as these men. These passages, and equally the
great passage about the unity of the church in Ephesians 4, which are the basis
for article 7 of the Augsburg Confession, really assert clearly nothing else at
all than that which the Lutheran Church has found in them, the consensus de
doctrina evangelii et de administratione sacramentorum. But what is here
called doctrina should really be clear: not a theological theory
about the gospel together with a system of theories about all the questions
connected with it, but rather the teaching or the gospel itself, which
happens in the church in the pulpit and lectern, in the confessional and in
pastoral counseling. There, where the unity of the church of Christ is at all,
there is also the unity of the Lutheran Church to be sought. Thus the great satis
est of the 7th article of the Augsburg Confession is also the
foundation of all unity among Lutherans. What this satis est includes
in particular, what the consensus about the teaching of the gospel is in
detail, this is what the confessions of our church tell us. Therefore, these
confessions are, as they are collected in the Book of Concord, the only means of
real ecclesiastical unification for the Lutherans of the world. It
is not necessary, that I discuss with you, dear brothers, why the return to
confession, if it is really taken seriously, is no re-pristination, no romantic
attempt to call the past again into life. But because I know that you, as
Lutherans loyal to the confessions, encounter again and again this reproach,
and that it has been raised especially these months against us all, as we alert
the Lutheran world to what the unity of Lutheranism is, for this reason I would
like to say to you, what we have to reply to this. The "back to the
confessions" is not one of the many romantic calls of this type, which we
have heard in our lives since the start of the German youth movement: back to
Kant, back to Thomas, back to the early church, back to Luther, back to
orthodoxy, and whatever else. The call to confession is for us nothing else
than the call to the Word of God, which it explains and from which it alone has
its authority. No biblicism can be a replacement for that, as the tragic
history of all biblicist movements shows, whose end is always in fanaticism ["Schwärmer"],
because there is no distinction between true and false interpretation of
scripture without the formation of confession. One can return to the Word of
God, because it is not the past alone, but rather the present and the future.
But this homecoming to the Word is Reformation, the repentance of the church. My
special greeting goes to those among you who are to take part in the convention
in Hannover and in the meetings which are attached to it. God bless all the
work for the true unity of the Lutheran church, and every witness which is
given for the pure doctrine of the gospel! Greeting
you in the bonds of faith at Pentecost in this fateful year, Your Hermann Sasse |