THE
ST. LOUIS THEOLOGICAL MONTHLY.
PUBLISHED
BY THE
GERMAN EVANG. LUTHERAN SYNOD OF MISSOURI, OHIO, AND OTHER STATES.
EDITED BY
C. H. R. LANGE.
“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh- (for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” 2 Cor. 10. 3—5.
1881 & 1882.
ST. LOUIS, MO.:
CONCORDIA. PUBUSHING HOUSE.
(M. C. Barthel, Agent.)
CONTENTS
1881
MAY
Shall we retain our Confessions?
Literature
JUNE & JULY
The Cause of Election
Lord, Keep us steadfast in Thy Word
Election and Faith
Election in the narrow and wide senses
Literature
AUGUST
The Thirteen Theses
What is Calvinism
“New Tract”
Literature
SEPTEMBER
Is Election a Judicial Act?
The personal Assurance and precious Consolation of our gracious Election to Salvation
Calvinism and Synergism versus Lutheranism in the Doctrine concerning Conversion
“New Tract”
General Religious Intelligence
OCTOBER
What does St. Paul Eph. 1, 3-14, teach of the Eternal Election of God?
Election and Persevering Faith
General Religious Intelligence
NOVEMBER
What does St. Paul Rom. 8. 28-30 teach concerning Election
Election and Persevering Faith
Dr. Walther once and now
Duties of a Beneficiary
Reasons for Suspending my Membership in the Joint Synod of Ohio and Other States
That Oath
Ohio’s Standpoint
General Religious Intelligence
DECEMBER
The New Confession of the Ohio Synod
Literature
General Religious Intelligence
1882
JANUARY
A Few Prefatory Remarks
“Full Assurance of Hope”
In Defense of a Brother in the Faith
Review of Comments on our Reasons for suspending Membership in the Ohio Synod
General Religious Intelligence
FEBRUARY
Sermon preached at the meeting of the Protest Conference at Logan, Ohio, and given to the public by request of the Conference, by F. Kuegele
The Distinction between Foreknowledge (Praescientia) and Predestination in the Formula of Concord
Review of Comments on our Reasons for suspending Membership, &c.
General Religious Intelligence
MARCH
New Doctrine
“To the Law and to the Testimony”
Review of Comments on our Reasons for suspending Membership, &c.
The Dates of Dr. Martin Luther’s Birth and Death
General Religious Intelligence
APRIL
Sin and Grace
God without His promises of Grace and God the Promiser of Salvation
Review of Comments on our Reasons for suspending Membership, &c.
General Religious Intelligence
MAY
“Perfection”
Those Innovations
Dr. M. Luther on the Christian’s Certainty of Predestination and Salvation
General Religious Intelligence
JUNE
Quenstedt on Synergism
Dr. M. Luther on the Christian’s Certainty of Predestination and Salvation
The Book of Concord; or, the Symbolical Books of the Ev. Luth. Church
Literature – General Religious Intelligence
JULY
Investigation of the Causes producing the Decline of Orthodoxy
General Religious Intelligence
AUGUST
Investigation of the Causes producing the Decline of Orthodoxy
General Religious Intelligence
SEPTEMBER
A Brief Recapitulation
An Answer to the Question whether we teach what Calvinists term “Irresistible Grace”
General Religious Intelligence
OCTOBER & NOVEMBER
An Answer to the Question whether we teach what Calvinists term “Irresistible Grace”
A “Cheap” Tract
General Religious Intelligence
DECEMBER
Wilful Resistance
Original Sin
Notice
[[@VolumePage:1,1]]
THE ST. LOUIS THEOLOGICAL MONTHLY.
Vol. 1. May 1881. No. 1.
Shall we retain our Confessions?
Up to this time the Missouri Synod maintained the character of an infant in the use of the English language. It contented itself with having its cause supported by friends. Sudden and violent changes, however, occurring in the American Lutheran Church have destroyed former relations, and necessitate the Missouri Synod to accustom itself to the use of its own power of speech in its behalf. The writer, a member of that body, in defending it, will take the liberty to use the pronoun we for the sake of convenience.
It seems demanded to state at once the occasion of this writing. The editor of “The Lutheran Standard”, in whose care we had left the interests of our common faith within the bounds of the English Lutheran Church, has suddenly turned our adversary. In a manner unlooked-for he found himself bound in conscience to start a new periodical announcing that he must lift up his voice, to protect the Church against the Missouri Synod. In this periodical, the “Columbus Theological Magazine”, he makes the serious charges that we had troubled Israel, marred the visions of peace and prosperity in the Church, propagated an error that revolutionized the whole system of Christian doctrine, and provoked conscientious indignation. He represents the animus, said to be revealing itself in our teaching, to be of so wicked and blasphemous a sort, as was never found among men professing religion, either Christians, or Jews, or Mohammedans, or Pagans. He makes the accusation against us that we were inculcating a doctrine the first effect of which is to render a pious man speechless from sorrow; [[@VolumePage:1,2]]that we denied the attribute of goodness in the Divine Being, and made God really so treat His miserable creatures, that when in their anguish they look up to Him for some crumb of comfort, He closes the door upon them with the cold rebuff that He owes them nothing. In making these charges he piously trusts in the grace of God that his words will not wound but convince.
We do not undertake a defence of our persons beyond what may appear to be subservient to the cause the support of which is the object of our lives' work. We do not assume a claim upon the attention of our readers to a specification of the reasons from which our adversary and his adherents draw their atrocious charges, and to the evidence we are able to present, to show these charges to be mere imputations. We may rely on the consideration that any innocent person may be accused, but no one can be proved guilty unless he is so. Those charges will stand unaltered whether on a careful examination we be found to have made mistakes, or not, in promulgating a doctrine forming part of our Confessions. Those charges would not be affected in substance, even if it were clearly demonstrated that we had done nothing else than insisted on believing, and not merely professing, what Dr. Luther in his Small Catechism has set forth to be Christian doctrine. Those charges together with all the misstatements, reckless deductions, and delusive declamations, with which our opponents make head against us, are but a vast nebula surrounding a nucleus which though as yet but indistinctly presented, consists in the rejecting the authority of our Confessions as the standard of Lutheran doctrine.
What treatment our persons are put to, we do not care. We are accustomed to misrepresentations of both our character and labors. We deem it an honor to be counted among those whom the Apostle Paul describes as being made as the filth of the world, and the offscouring of all things. Let our souls be hunted down with calumnies and imprecations. Let our hearts be tortured by tearing from us a brotherly love we hold in esteem. Only let the Church be lighted and led by the Word of God proclaimed in her Confessions. Then, indeed, our dearest aspirations have obtained their object. As long, however, [[@VolumePage:1,3]]as the cause we are devoted to, is so mixed with our persons that the defamation of the latter imports the suppression of the former, we demand proofs to show that in upholding our Confessions we were walking in craftiness, or handling the Word of God deceitfully.
The doctrine we are accused of having promulgated is set forth in our Confessions as revealed in the Word of God. Having through God’s grace become members of the Church of the Reformation, and convinced of her having professed no other than the apostolic doctrine and divine truths, we strive to be in union with her in all we teach, and to have all dissensions decided by her Confessions. The blessing with which God’s mercy has crowned the faithfulness to these Confessions, strongly admonishes all her members to have a regard to what is entrusted to them to keep and defend. The troubles raised now are but a new phase of the temptation, our American Church was exposed to repeatedly, which is, to disregard and finally abandon the Confessions of the Church of the Reformation which she has made her own.
Half a century ago, those in our country who were called Lutherans, formed a sort of Lazzaroni among the Christian denominations. Having forsaken the majestic structure of doctrines owned by that Church whose name they bore, they preferred living without a shelter against the errors pouring upon them. Having nothing of their own to defend or preserve, they satisfied their little wants by feeding on the crumbs of doctrine falling from the tables of their neighbors. Though thousands were lying around in distress, they had nothing to divide with them, no occasion for being disturbed in their sweet idleness. Delighted at the honor of being graciously admitted to assist, whenever some pageant was instituted to enhance the glory of their superiors, they strove to imitate all their old or new “measures”. The more to ingratiate themselves with their benefactors, they abused their own glorious inheritance, the Lutheran Confessions, with approbrious epithets, exclaiming against them of being a hiding-place of popish superstitions, stupid nonsense, and remnants of antichristian idolatry. Behaving good-naturedly toward all, they showed pluck only against those who ventured to remind them of their degradation. [[@VolumePage:1,4]]The Lutheran Church who, rising from the bondage and pollution of AntiChrist’s kingdom, had been decked out like a queen by her heavenly King, and endowed with treasures of divine knowledge and love to enrich the minds and hearts of the inhabitants of the earth, appeared to have left all her queenly possessions, to have shamed all the honors of her high descent, and to have become a beggar in mind and condition.
But those very Confessions, through which the Church of the Reformation had sent forth the everlasting gospel to be preached unto them that dwell on the earth: “Fear God and give glory to Him”; and had testified of her new and heavenly birth; those very Confessions God’s gracious love caused to anew assume life and vigor. Their voice was heard in our dear country, and was gladly, and earnestly, responded to. Within a short period, thousands succeeded in the honor of proclaiming the truths, once proclaimed by those who had, long since, gone to their triumphant rest. A new life of faith, and hope, and brotherly kindness, and charity, began. Men immigrating to improve their earthly prospects, found“the hidden treasure”. Matth. 13.44. Poor as they were, and, mostly, still are, they willingly set to erecting churches, parochial schools, colleges, seminaries, homes for the forsaken and distressed; sending and sustaining without cessation hundreds of young men to aid in spreading the pure gospel truths at home and abroad; studying, and nourishing their minds with the best literature of our Church when in her prime; and mindful of the benefits they had received through those Confessions, cause them to be introduced in constitutions and deeds, to prevent their being neglected by those who were to succeed them.
This young American daughter of the Church of the Reformation was brought up, like her mother, in perpetual warfare. The men of “the good old times” never failed in finding occasion to deride, and decry, the “foreigner”. This enmity, though annoying, was not dangerous. At her very birth, however, she was at the point of being infected with the poison of hierarchical principles, which, if not resisted in time, would have jeoparded her health, and growth, and honor. Strong arguments were brought to bear upon the young Church, to[[@VolumePage:1,5]]make her surrender the rights she held in virtue of the standard of faith she had adopted, in order that they might be settled upon her clergy: avowals of sincere attachment; the unanimity of the Lutheran Church as to the clergy being the rightful owners of all ecclesiastical power; assertions, that the Lutheran Church never had any other doctrine; the duty of understanding the Confessions in accordance with the interpretation given by her great teachers. Even declamations, such as are at present put forward, were resorted to. All in vain. The struggle was hard. Through God’s grace the young American Church faithfully adhered to her Standard.—Our present opponents seem to have quietly slept in their cradles during the contest with the Buffalo Synod; else they could not, with a hope of success, venture to again set up an authority, which it was necessary to overcome, and force to resign its claims for ever, before the Church could enjoy in peace the privileges granted by her Lord to every believer.
Soon a new trouble arose. The attempt was made to crush out a large portion of the Confessions at once. The directing principle was the same, as before, but differently unfolded. It was this. The doctrine of the Church depends on her agreement as exhibited by her teachers. Those doctrines in her Confessions as to which her teachers are unanimous, must retain their binding force. Those, however, in regard to which there is no unanimous consent of her teachers, are “open questions.”—The men who, in this way, undertook to tempt the young Church to become faithless to her rule of faith,[1] and around whom the Iowa Synod collected, were, and still are, almost entirely dependent on Germany as to men, and means, and doctrine. Ordered, at first, to exert themselves in holding the American Church, in all her institutions and government, in dependency on Germany, they were soon thrown upon [[@VolumePage:1,6]]another track, by the collapse of the hierarchical projects. Their patrons in Germany considering it a piece of arrogance in the young American Church to rest satisfied with the doctrines as they are laid down in her Standard, the men of the Iowa Synod strenuously labor to introduce the improvements on the divine truths made by the learned theologians of Germany, and to defame an honest, and faithful, adherence to the Confessions. The Church, however, in spite of these disturbances, has continued to be nourished, and strengthened, by the old, and pure, doctrines, she had learned to prize in their true worth, and to grow, and prosper, far beyond the limits of the Missouri Synod.
And now, the quiet of the young American Church has again been suddenly disturbed by a movement that warns her, again to take care of her rule of faith. The directing principle of this movement, as far as unfolded up to the present time, is this. The doctrine of the Church is exhibited in the teaching of her great teachers. The Confessions must be interpreted in the sense agreed on' by her teachers subsequent to their establishment as rules of faith.—This principle, alike preposterous and dangerous, the Church, if not minded to abandon her standard, is now called forth to combat. It is preposterous. For that which is to rule, and that which is to be subject to it, are made to interchange their functions while retaining their offices; the judge is arraigned before the bar of those on whose conduct he is still to decide; the government is subjected to those who swore loyalty to it, and bound themselves to uphold its decisions as those of their own government, in order to have these decisions supplanted by their own decisions in the capacity of being that government’s subjects. It revolutionizes the state and constitution of the rights of the Church, and makes away with the Confessions as Standards of faith. If they need interpretation as to their true sense, those whose faith was originally set forth in them, must be consulted; not those who were entirely foreign to, and ignorant of, that faith at the time when its statement was framed. If the latter are to be judges of the sense of our rule of faith, the whole matter depends on our belief, that not we, but only they, were able to correctly understand it. The loyalty of the Church to her[[@VolumePage:1,7]]Confessions, in that case, is based, principally, on the opinion we have formed of the state and condition of the mind and heart of some eminent teachers; it ceases to be founded on the truths as exhibited in them. But our Confessions need no interpretation; as it ought to be the case with statements of the faith of a Church for times present and subsequent. The need of an interpretation is felt only by those who, having conceived a notion of the matter beforehand, have an interest in reading them with the determination of having the same notion presented in them.—The principle is dangerous, too. For, if agreed on to be correct, it will apply to other doctrines as well, as to the one now in controversy. To mention but one instance; eminent teachers, subsequent to the publication of our Confessions, all agreed on explaining our standard of faith in respect to ecclesiastical power in a way, that their agreement resulted in permanently settling the rights of the Church on king and consistory.