Chapter 11

53. Spirit of the Movement.--The true inwardness of the "American Lutheranism" with which the General Synod was infected from its very birth, and which reached its crisis in the Definite Platform of 1855, was revealed in all its nakedness by the _American Lutheran,_ a paper into which the _Lutherische Kirchenbote_ of Selinsgrove, Pa., had been transformed in 1865. Its standpoint is characterized by _Lehre und Wehre_ as being beneath that of the _Observer_ "the hollowest so-called American Lutheranism, a concoction of rationalism and sentimentalism." (1865,61.) When Prof. Sternberg, a fanatical anti-symbolist (opponent of the Lutheran Confessions), had been removed from Hartwick Seminary, the _American Lutheran_, June 22, 1865, wrote: "The days when compromises with and concessions to symbolism were made are passed. If a clash between symbolism and American Lutheranism is unavoidable within the General Synod, the sooner it comes, the better it is." (_L. u, W._ 1865, 253.) In its issue of July 20, 1865, the _American Lutheran_ published a number of letters in which the hope is expressed that the day was near when the Lutheran Church in America would shake off the yoke of symbolism and step forward, recognized by the great Protestant world. "The attempt"--the correspondent continues--"to live in one and the same house with the symbolists is useless. We thank God that we have a paper which says in its first year: No compromise any longer with symbolism! Hallelujah! May the whole Church hear it." (_L. u. W._ 1865, 277.) Revealing both its ignorance and animus, the _American Lutheran_, Rev. Anstaedt then being the editor, said in its issue of January 24, 1867: "The difference between the symbolists [Lutherans true to their Confessions] and American Lutherans is a radical one, going down to the innermost heart of Christianity and involving eternal interests, the salvation and hope of immortal souls. The _American Lutheran_ believes that religion is a personal and individual matter, while the symbolist believes that it is but a congregational matter. Their articles of faith are: 1. All men are born in sin. 2. The Church must redeem us from sin. 3. The Church consists of the priests and the Sacraments. 4. The priests have the power on earth to administer the Sacraments and to forgive sins. 5. The Sacraments have in themselves the power to save. 6. Baptism regenerates the child. 7. The Lord's Supper nourishes the seed implanted in Baptism. 8. Hence man is not saved by the individual experience of something, but in a mass. I know that our symbolists will say that this is slander. But I affirm that it is a sincere and honest presentation of the matter.... The advocates of symbolism probably have never been converted, or they have backslidden again. This is a severe judgment. So it is. But must we not judge them by their fruits? How many souls have been converted by these symbolists? Go into their congregations and speak to their members on religion; what do they know of it? In 19 out of 20 cases their members, when awakened, seek Christ in other churches. We have held back too long with our testimony. I fear that by our negligence souls have gone to hell. And what have we won by our pusillanimity? The advocates of symbolism have grown and become more impudent by their success." (_L. u. W._ 1867, 88.) In a subsequent issue the same paper, after boldly defending the baldest Zwinglianism, remarked with respect to the symbolists that, in a way, their success involved a certain blessing, inasmuch as they would serve as "an ecclesiastical sewer into which sooner or later the dead formalism, the cold, heartless ritualism, and the lager-beer Lutheranism of this country would find its way." (_L. u. W._ 1867, 125.) Even the _Lutheran Observer_ was censured by the _American Lutheran_ for becoming too conservative. (_L. u. W._ 1875, 375.) But the difference was one of degree only. In its issue of October 3, 1873, the _Observer_ charged the Germans and Scandinavians, because of their adherence to the Lutheran Confessions, with sectarian presumption, enmity against other Christians, foreign bigotry, dead orthodoxy, cold dead faith, etc. "The position," the _Observer_ continued, "which these bigots assume in our enlightened land of churches, where the Lord Jesus is more universally honored than in any other country of the world, is ridiculous.... For while these short-sighted men set themselves against the liberal and enlightened spirit of the General Synod and against the times and the country in which they live, other churches annually lead away thousands of their most intelligent members." (_L. u. W._ 1873, 375.) Enmity against Lutheranism--such was the spirit of the counterfeit American Lutheranism championed by Schmucker and his compeers. Nor is the assumption warranted that this spirit died with its early protagonists. In 1885 Dr. Butler characterized the Americanization of Lutherans in the _Lutheran Observer_ as follows: "It is a great mission of the _Observer_ to open the blind eyes and to convert our Teutonic people from the fetters of its language and customs to the light and to the liberty of this Bible-loving, Sabbath-keeping, water-drinking, church-going and God-fearing country." (_L. u. W._ 1885, 120.) As late as 1906 the _Observer_ wrote: The General Synod is in possession of the American spirit in the greatest measure. It is her mission to inject this spirit into the Lutheran Church in America. This spirit embraces: adoption of the English language; acknowledgment and toleration of the lodges; fellowship with the sects. "The American spirit is that of fellowship. Failure to be American in this is sure to bring us into ridicule and even disrepute with the mass of the best Christian people of the land." (_L. u. W._ 1906, 229.)

DEFINITE PLATFORM.

54. Now or Never!--Believing that the Lutheran Confessions, though not an authority above, or alongside of, the Bible, are doctrinally in perfect agreement with the Word of God, Walther, Wyneken, Sihler, Craemer, and others, since 1840, boldly, aggressively, and victoriously unfurled the banner of Lutheran confessionalism. Gradually, though timidly and rather inconsistently, the same spirit began to enter, and manifest itself in, some of the Eastern synods. A conservative tendency was developing and increasing. Especially since the return of the Pennsylvania Ministerium in 1853 the number of the so-called conservatives in the General Synod, who refused to go all the lengths with Schmucker and Kurtz, was materially strengthened. Among these New School men the powerful growth of confessionalism in the West and the silent increase of the conservatives in the larger Eastern synods gradually began to cause alarm, fear, and consternation. They first despised and ridiculed the movement as chimerical and utterly futile in America, then feared, and finally hated and fanatically combated what they termed "foreign symbolism." They felt the fateful crisis drawing nearer and nearer. To be or not to be was the question. Nor was there any time to be lost in protecting the General Synod against what they regarded as the Western peril. "Now or never!" they whispered. Indeed, Schmucker and his friends had long ago decided that a new confessional standard was needed. As early as 1845, at Philadelphia, the General Synod had appointed Schmucker, Kurtz, Morris, Schmidt, and Pohlman to formulate and present to the next convention an abstract of the doctrines and usages of the American Lutheran Church on the order of the Abstract requested by the Maryland Synod, in 1844. And though, in 1850, at Charleston, the report of this committee was laid on the table and the committee discharged from further duty (27), Schmucker did not abandon the idea of substituting a new "American Lutheran Creed" for the Augsburg Confession. Moreover, the conviction of the dire need of an American restatement of Lutheranism grew on him in the same proportion as confessionalism swept the West and threatened the East. His brother-in-law, S. Sprecher, was of the same opinion. In 1853 he wrote: "I hope that this unhappy condition of the Church will not continue long, and that the churches of the General Synod will do as the churches of the Augsburg Confession did in 1580--exercise their right to declare what they regard as doctrines of the sacred Scriptures in regard to all the points in dispute in the Church. I do not believe that the present position of the General Synod can long be maintained; it will either result in the Old-Lutheran men and synods gaining the control of the General Synod, and reintroducing those doctrines and practises of the symbols which the churches in this country and everywhere ought to abandon and condemn, _and say that they do;_ or the friends of the American Lutheran Church must define what doctrines they do hold, and what they do reject, and refuse to fraternize with, and to make themselves responsible for, and to give their influence as a Church in favor of, men and doctrines and practises which they hold to be anti-Scriptural and injurious to the spiritual kingdom of Christ. I do not see how we can do otherwise than adopt the Symbols of the Church, or form a new symbol, which shall embrace all that is fundamental to Christianity in them, rejecting what is unscriptural, and supplying what is defective. _A creed we must have_, or we can have no real church union, and we must have a catechism which shall be a standard in the catechetical instruction of our children, in which there shall be no doctrines which we do not want our children to believe, and which shall, notwithstanding, be thoroughly orthodox, so that our children may be made strong in the faith of the Gospel in these times of doctrinal looseness and confusion. As long as the General Synod regards with equal favor, and is ready to receive, the Old Lutheran as well as the American Lutheran Synods, the symbolical men have a vast advantage, and they, no doubt, regard it as a triumph when the General Synod, meeting after meeting, continues to hold out its arms to every Lutheran synod, and recommends as heartily the reviews and institutions which are laboring to upturn its present foundations, as it does those which are known to hold the sentiments which it has hitherto fostered." (Spaeth 1, 347.) Five months before the readmission of the Pennsylvania Synod, Sprecher declared: "I fear there will be divisions, no matter what course is taken. As to the hope of gaining over the Symbolic Lutherans, I consider it altogether delusive. If they ever join the General Synod, it will be with the hope of controlling it eventually into their own views and for their own purposes." (353.) Thus, realizing the giant strides which Western confessionalism had already made, and the steady growth of the conservative element in the East, and, at the same time, fully understanding that Lutherans loyal to their Confessions would give no quarters to a counterfeit substitute of Lutheranism, Schmucker, Kurtz, Sprecher, and others decided on a _coup d'etat_ in order to force the issue, to create a test-question, to separate the parties, to eliminate the "symbolists," and thus forever to make the General Synod immune against genuine Old School Lutheran confessionalism and safe for their own mongrel Puritanic-Calvinistic-Methodistic-American Lutheranism.

55. Casting Off the Mask.--In the early part of September, 1855, leading ministers of the General Synod received a pamphlet: "Definite Platform, doctrinal and disciplinarian, for Evangelical Lutheran District Synods; constructed in accordance with the principles of the General Synod." Spaeth: "The new Confession came without a confessor. It appeared as an anonymous document, proving by that very fact that the men who concocted it were not called by God to lead the Church on this Western Continent to a better, fuller, purer conception and statement of the faith of the Gospel than that of the Fathers." However, it was not long before Schmucker was generally known to be its author. Soon after its publication Krauth, Sr., wrote: "My colleague don't disclaim the authorship, so that it has a daddy." Ten years later Schmucker wrote: "Although my friend Dr. Kurtz and myself passed it in review together, and changed a few words, every sentence of the work I acknowledge to have been written by myself." (Spaeth 1, 357.) Besides a brief Preface the Platform contains two parts: 1. "Preliminary Principles and the Doctrinal Basis or Creed to be subscribed"; 2. "Synodical Disclaimer, or List of Symbolic Errors, rejected by the Great Body of the Churches belonging to the General Synod." Part II was not to be individually subscribed to, but published by Synod as a Disclaimer of the symbolical errors often imputed to her. (Second edition, 2. 6.) Its chief object, as appears from the Platform itself, was to obviate the influences of confessional Lutheranism coming from the West, notably from the Missouri Synod. The Preface begins: "This Definite Synodical Platform was prepared and published by consultation and cooperation of ministers of different Eastern and Western synods, connected with the General Synod, at the special request of some Western brethren, whose churches desire a more specific expression of the General Synod's doctrinal basis, being surrounded by German churches, which profess the entire mass of former symbols." (2.) Part I expresses the same thought, stating that the "American Recension of the Augsburg Confession," as Schmucker called the Platform, had been prepared "at the special request of Western brethren, whose churches particularly need it, being intermingled with German churches, which avow the whole mass of the former symbols." (4.) Furthermore, according to the Platform, Lutherans who believe in private confession and absolution should not be admitted into the General Synod; and Part II makes it a point to state: "By the old Lutheran Synod of Missouri, consisting entirely of Europeans, this rite [private confession, etc.] is still observed." (25.) Accordingly, in order to check the progress of the Missouri Synod's Lutheranism, a more specific declaration of the General Synod's basis was deemed indispensable. In the interest of truth, they claimed, it was necessary to specify, without hesitation and reservation, the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession which were rejected, some by all, others by the great majority of the General Synod. To satisfy this alleged need of the Church, the Platform was offered to the District Synods with the direction, for the sake of uniformity, to adopt it without further alterations and with the resolution not to receive any minister who will not subscribe to it. Thus, in publishing the Platform, Schmucker and his compeers cast off the Lutheran mask and revealed the true inwardness of their intolerant Reformed spirit--a blunder which served to frustrate their own sinister objects. The reception which this document met was a sore disappointment to its author. In the commotion which followed the publication of the Platform the conservative element was strengthened, a fact which, a decade later, led to the great secession of 1866, and gradually also to the present ascendency of the conservatives within the General Synod, and the subsequent revision of its doctrinal basis, completed in 1913. H. J. Mann wrote in 1856: "The Platform controversy will, in the end, prove a blessing. The conservative party will arrive at a better understanding. In ten years Schmucker has not damaged himself so much in the public opinion as in the one last year." (Spaeth, 178.)

56. Viewed Historically.--In explanation and extenuation of the Platform blunder Dr. Mann remarked in 1856: "The more thoroughly we investigate the history of the Lutheran Church of this country, the better we will comprehend why all happened just so. No one is particularly guilty; it is a common misfortune of the times, of the conditions." (Spaeth, 175.) H. E. Jacobs explains: "The ministers, in most cases, did not obtain that thorough and many-sided liberal culture which a college course was supposed to represent, and this was felt also in their theological training. ... It may serve as a partial explanation of the confusion that prevailed that there was not a single professor of theology in the English seminaries in the North who had obtained the liberal training of a full college course, except the professor of German theology at Gettysburg. The controversy connected with the 'Definite Platform,' prepared and published under a supervision characterized by the same defects, may be more readily understood when this in remembered." (History, 436.) The explanation offered by Dr. Jacobs might be reenforced by the report of the Directors of the Seminary in 1839: "It is to be regretted that the students generally spend so short a time in theological studies. But few attend to the full course of studies as laid down in the Constitution. The average time of the stay of the major part is only about two years. Thus the theological education of those who go out from the Seminary is necessarily defective." (23.) C. A. Stork admitted with respect to the students at Gettysburg, notably the scholars of Prof. J. A. Brown (since 1864): "It is true, our young men did not know Lutheran theology thoroughly; on many minor points they were cloudy." (Wolf, _Lutherans_, 371.) Howbeit, explanation does not spell justification. Nor is it correct to view the Definite Platform as a mere derailment, a mere incidental blunder, of the General Synod. It was, on the contrary, the natural result and full development of the indifferentistic and unionistic germs which the General Synod inherited and zealously cultivated during the whole course of its history. Dr. Neve: "If Schmucker and his friends had not made this mistake, now condemned by history, others would surely try to do so now. These men therefore have rendered our Church a service. We have learned much from their mistake." "Sic non canitur"--such indeed is the lesson which Lutherans may learn not only from the Platform movement, but also from the greater part of the history of the General Synod.

57. Platform Theology.--The Platform charges the Augsburg Confession with the following alleged errors: Approval of the ceremonies of the mass, private confession and absolution, denial of the divine obligation of the Sunday, baptismal regeneration, the real presence of the body and blood of the Savior in the Eucharist. Of the Augustana eleven articles are mutilated and eight (the eleventh and the last seven) entirely omitted. The following declaration takes the place of the Eleventh Article: "As private confession and absolution, which are inculcated in this Article, though in a modified form, have been universally rejected by the American Lutheran Church, the omission of this Article is demanded by the principle on which the American Recension of the A. C. is constructed; namely, to omit the several portions which are rejected by the great mass of our churches in this country, and to add nothing in their stead." (11.) In all the articles the condemnatory sections are omitted. Even the deniers of the Trinity are not rejected. The Apostles' Creed is purged of "He descended into hell." The Athanasian Creed is omitted. The rest of the Lutheran symbols are rejected, on account of their length and alleged errors. (5.) The Platform declares: "The extraordinary length of the other former symbolic books as a whole is sufficient reason for their rejection as a prescribed creed, even if all their contents were believed to be true.... The exaction of such an extended creed is subversive of all individual liberty of thought and freedom of Scriptural investigation." (20.) Part II of the Platform, the "Synodical Disclaimer," contains a list of the symbolic errors with extracts from the Lutheran symbols, "which are rejected by the great body of the American Lutheran Church," to wit: I. Ceremonies of the mass (A. C., Art. 24; Apology, Art. 12). 2. Exorcism (Luther's _Taufbuechlein_). 3. Private confession and absolution (A. C., Art. 11. 25. 28). 4. The denial of the divine institution and obligation of the Christian Sabbath (A. C., Art. 28). 5. Baptismal regeneration (A. C., Art. 2; Apology, Art. 9; Luther's Catechisms; Visitation Articles, Art. 3). 6. The outward form of baptism (Large Catechism, Smalcald Art.) 7. Errors concerning the personal or hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ (Form of Concord, Art. 8). 8. The supposed special sin-forgiving power of the Lord's Supper (Apol., Art. 12; Catechisms). 9. The real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist (A. C., Art. 10; Apol., Art. 7. 8; Smalcald Art., Art. 6; Small Catechism; Form of Concord, Art. 7). According to the Platform, believers in exorcism, in private confession and absolution, and in the ceremonies of the mass should not be tolerated in the General Synod. To believers in the real presence, baptismal regeneration, etc., liberty was to be granted, provided that they regard these doctrines as nonessential, cooperate peacefully with members rejecting them, and adopt the Platform. Dr. Mann was right when he characterized the Platform as "the emasculated Augsburg Confession." (Spaeth, 178.)