Chapter 24

131. Reformed Tendencies.--In the _Lutheran and Missionary_, April 13, 1876, Dr. Seiss declared that it was an arrogance to make the doctrine that unbelievers as well as believers receive the true body and blood of Christ at the Lord's Table an article of faith. Nor was the Puritanic doctrine concerning the divine obligation of the Sunday, universally held in the General Synod, discarded by the synods and congregations constituting the General Council. The Reading _Kirchenblatt_, December 19, 1903, wrote: "On the second Sunday in Advent the Philadelphia Sabbath-Association celebrated its anniversary in the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Rev. C.L. Fry) in Philadelphia. Addresses were made by prominent Sabbath-workers. The leading speakers were the well-known John Wanamaker (Presbyterian) and the Methodist Rev. Dr. Mutchler.... Pastors of our own Synod foster un-Lutheran doctrine, and our superiors remain silent. Do they know of it? Certainly! All the dailies brought the news: first the invitations, then long reports. And what do our professors say to it? They keep silence.... But why do so many of our pastors hold a false, Puritan doctrine of the Sabbath? Because they have learned no better. If the students in our institutions would learn Luther's true doctrine concerning Sunday and sanctifying the holy-day, they could not, after becoming pastors of Lutheran congregations, take part in the fanatical doings of the sects. But, as it is, they go hand in hand with the sects, invite them to their churches, and permit them to present a false doctrine of the Sabbath to their Lutheran church-members." (_L. u. W._ 1904, 38; 1901, 85.) In his _Catechist_ Dr. Gerberding teaches: "The law of one holy day of rest: its purpose is rest for the body and refreshment for the soul. All works of mercy and real necessity are allowed." In 1816 the District Synod of Ohio refused to discipline a pastor who did not believe that a child becomes a Christian, and is endowed with faith, in Baptism. (_Luth. Witness_ 1918, 341. 356.) Rev. Brenner: "How long ago has it been considered a good policy in the General Council for its Mission Boards to agitate 'working together with the denominations about us for the best interest of our fellow-men,' and to 'agree on a program to lift the world to a higher level' by 'petitioning, demanding, and insisting upon special legislation for abolishing the saloon,' and doing a thousand other things which is the business, not of the Church, but of the State.... Individual synods have passed prohibition resolutions. Individual pastors have gone entirely too far in this matter. They are fanatical on the subject. Some have almost gone daft over the liquor problem." (_L. u. W._ 1917, 465.) The _Home Missionary_, December, 1916, declared that what the Lutheran Church teaches in reference to the separation of Church and State is "rot" and "fool" theology. (464.)

132. Qualified Confessional Subscription.--It was an ultrasymbolism, not countenanced by the Lutheran Church, when the _Lutheran and Missionary_ maintained in its issue of September 27, 1867, that it was false, dangerous, and inconsistent to declare it the duty of Lutherans to compare for themselves the confessions received from the fathers with the Scriptures, and if found erring, to correct them; that this unbridled and radical theory, resting on the false assumption that private investigation of the Scriptures is the foundation of our faith, could not be proved by the Scriptures, and, reduced to practise, would endanger all purity of doctrine, and finally destroy all ecclesiastical communion. (_L. u. W._ 1867, 371.) In the _Lutheran_, March 5, 1908, however, Dr. H.E. Jacobs, defending the other extreme, wrote: "Some of the difficulties that men whom we esteem have urged against the acceptance of all our Confessions are due to a misunderstanding of what is involved in a confessional subscription. They conceive of the Confessions as an external law that binds the conscience to a mechanical acceptance of all [doctrinal matter] that may be found in these documents. What is properly confessional in these documents is their answers to the questions that rendered the framing of a confessional statement necessary.... We must study our Confessions as an organism, and appreciate the relation of each part to the other parts and to the whole Confession. Where the heart of each confession and of each doctrine confessed lies, must be the object of our search. To tear passages from their connection, or to represent isolated passages and merely incidental statements as having confessional authority is as unfair to the Confessions as it is to the Holy Scriptures." (Jacobs denies that all of the astronomical, geological, historical, and similar statements of the Bible are true.) The _Lutheran World_, commenting on Dr. Jacobs's statements, remarked: "But do not Dr. Jacobs's declarations sound very much like a _quatenus_ rather than a _quia_ mode of confessional subscription? For a long time we have not seen a theological statement that reminds us so much of the 'substantially correct' mode of subscription formerly in vogue in the General Synod. It certainly does not sound as stalwart as the General Synod's resolution in 1895, when she declared 'the Unaltered Augsburg Confession as throughout in perfect consistence with that Word'--namely, the Word of God." (_L. u. W._ 1908, 233.) In his _Book of Concord_, 1893, Dr. Jacobs declared that only the primary, not the secondary, arguments of the Confessions are involved in the subscription. "'The primary,' says Jacobs, 'are the dogmas set forth with the purpose of showing they are believed and taught by the Lutheran Church, the confutations of errors whereby it wished to declare that it contradicted them, and formulas of speech either expressly prescribed or proscribed.' The secondary are 'all those particulars introduced to confirm or illustrate the former,'" etc. (2, 13.)

ROMANISM.

133. Jacobs and Haas on Ordination, etc.--With respect to the doctrine that the public office of the ministry originates in, and is transferred by, the local congregation, Dr. Jacobs declared: "Nothing can be clearer than the antagonism of our great Lutheran divines to this position, nor anything be more convincing than their arguments against it." (Gerberding, _The Lutheran Pastor_, 73.) Luther's language on this question, Jacobs maintains, is "not guarded with the same care as that of the later dogmaticians." (74.) According to Jacobs the right to call a minister "belongs neither to the minister alone nor to the laity alone, but to both in due order." (_Summary of Christian Faith_, 427. 424.) Dr. J.A.W. Haas: "The transference theory has been developed in antithesis to Rome, and in it Lutherans have agreed with the Reformed." It "makes the ministry an organ growing out of the congregation, which ill befits the divine origin of the ministry." "In it the main accent is placed on the vocation, of which ordination is the attestation." (Gerberding, _l.c._, 77.) Ordination, Dr. Haas declares, is "the prerogative of the whole Church." It includes "the separation for the ministry with invocation of blessing and consecration under divine approval." For this reason "ordination is not repeated." (112.) "This realism of a divine gift [in ordination] was apparently not held by Luther.... He declares the right of all believers to the office, because of the spiritual priesthood, and sees the consecration (_Weihe_) in the call. 'Ordo est ministerium et vocatio ministrorum ecclesiae.'" (116.)

134. Gerberding and Fry on the Ministry.--In his _Lutheran Pastor_ Dr. G.H. Gerberding, professor at the seminary of the General Council at Maywood (Chicago), declares: It is clear "that this transference theory is not held by our older theologians. Neither have we been able to find any ground for it in Holy Scripture. Where is there a single proof that the congregation, made up of believing priests, does on that account possess the right to exercise the ordinary functions of the ministry? Where is the proof that the ministry is created by the congregation? Where is it written that the minister is amenable to the congregation? If the congregation of laymen alone makes the minister, then it can also unmake, or depose, him from his office. The whole theory is unscriptural and unhistoric. Only the fanatical sects, which have a low view of the means of grace, can, with any consistency, hold such a view." (82.) Again: "This [the outward call] does not come from the ministry alone. Neither does it come from the laity alone. It must come from the Church. But the Church is neither the ministry without the people nor the people without the ministry.... Christ, then, exercises His power to call men into the ministry through the Church [ministers and laymen]. The Church may exist either in the congregation or in the representative Church [synod], made up of ministers and lay representatives of congregations. Either the congregation, as defined above, not without a pastor, or the representative body, made up also of pastors and people, has a right to extend the outward call." (86.) "The transference theory is unscriptural and not consistent with the Lutheran doctrine of the means of grace." (110.) "It is unscriptural and un-Lutheran to hold that the meaning and use of ordination consists essentially in this that it publicly attests and satisfies the validity of the call." (110.) Ordination "conveys the special grace needed for the special work of the ministry." (120.) In his _Pastor's Guide_, 1915, Dr. J. Fry, professor at the seminary of the General Council in Mount Airy, Philadelphia, teaches: The call to the ministry "must come from God, from the Church [synod] and from a particular place or congregation." (5.) "Of all these qualifications [required for the ministry] the Church [synod] must be the judge, and in her synodical organization and authority must extend the call to the ministry." (6.) "A pastor serving a parish of more than one congregation has no right to resign one congregation and retain the others without the consent of the president of the synod to which the parish belongs." (14.) "The call should also specify that either party desiring to withdraw from the agreement [between the pastor and congregation] must give three months' notice to that effect to the other party. This provision will do away with the very objectionable custom in some congregations of holding annual elections for a pastor." (9.) "The power to decide and impose penalties belongs to the pastor and church council." (92.) Dr. Fry regards "the pastor and church council as the highest authority in all congregational matters." (98.) All of these tenets are corruptions of the Scriptural and evangelical doctrines as proclaimed again by Luther. Consistently developed, their terminus is Rome. However, in the atmosphere of American liberty, where State and Church are separated and the will of the former is not foisted on the latter, Romanistic tendencies cannot thrive, nor did they ever to any extent succeed in practise in the Lutheran Church, a Church whose fundamental articles are the doctrines of justification by faith alone and absolute spiritual freedom from every human authority.

SYNERGISM.

135. Synergistic Teaching on Conversion.--In his _Confessional Principle_, 1911, Dr. T.B. Schmauk rejects Melanchthon's _aliqua causa discriminis in homine_, some kind of discriminating cause in man. Schmauk writes: "Several qualities and motives in Melanchthon's nature, including his humanist outlook on free will, and his tendency to emphasize the necessity of good works, contributed to inspire him with erroneous views, when the evangelical doctrine began to be wrought out more expansively, and led him to find the cause for the actual variation in the working of God's grace in man, its object. This subtle synergistic spirit attacks the very foundation of Lutheranism, flows out into almost every doctrine, and weakens the Church at every point. And it was practically this weakness which the great multitude of Melanchthon's scholars, who become the leaders of the generation of which we are speaking, absorbed, and which rendered it difficult to return, finally, and after years of struggle, to the solid ground once more recovered in the Formula of Concord." (611; _L. u. W._ 1912, 33.) Evidently, this is sound Lutheranism; and similar testimonies were occasionally heard within the General Council throughout its history. (_L. u. W._ 1904, 273: Rev. Rembe; 1917, 473: Rev. G.H. Schnur.) But it was the song of rare birds. The synergistic note was struck much more frequently and emphatically. For making his anti-synergistic utterances Schmauk was called to order by Dr. Gerberding. And in 1916 Schmauk himself opened the _Lutheran Church Review_ to L.S. Keyser, the zealous exponent of synergism within the General Synod, who wrote: "Faith's experience always includes the fact that, while the ability of faith is divinely conferred, the exercise of that ability is never coerced, but belongs to the domain of liberty.... The same is true of all volitions: the ability to will is divinely implanted; the act itself belongs to the sphere of freedom. The ability to repent is from God; the use of that ability belongs to man's liberty." "The Scriptures never command men to regenerate; they always put that category in the passive voice, 'Except any one be born again'; but the Bible again and again commands men to repent and believe, putting the verbs in the active voice, imperative mood. What inconsistent commands these would be if man possessed no freedom in the exercise of repentance and faith!" "God's fiat of the individual's election unto salvation must have been decided upon in foresight and foreknowledge of the whole content of faith, including both its divine enablement and its human element of freedom." (65.) Similar views on man's freedom and responsibility were expressed by Dr. Haas in _Trends of Thought_, 1915. In his book, _The Way of Life_, 1917, Dr. Gerberding explains: "After prevenient grace, however, begins to make itself felt, then the will begins to take part. It must now assume an attitude, and meet the question: Shall I yield to these holy influences or not? One or the other of the two courses must be pursued. There must be a yielding to the heavenly strivings or a resistance. To resist at this point requires a positive act of the will. This act man can put forth by his own strength. On the other hand, with the help of that grace already at work in his heart, he can refuse to put forth that act of his will, and thus remain non-resistant." According to Gerberding man "may be said, negatively, to help towards his conversion." (167 ff.; _L. u. W._ 1917, 214.) Prior to 1901 Rev. C. Blecher, by order of the pastoral conference of Connecticut, belonging to the Council, published a pamphlet which was recommended for the widest possible distribution by the _Lutherische Herold_. In it Blecher, in direct opposition to the Formula of Concord, Art. 11, section 60 ff., maintains: Two persons are never in equal guilt when the one resists the grace of God from inherited blindness and weakness, like Peter, while the other resists contumaciously and purposely, like Judas." (_L. u. W._ 1901, 65; 1902, 144.) In 1900 Dr. Seiss had maintained in the _Lutheran_: "Conversion is largely one's own act. God first makes it possible; but then the responsibility rests upon ourselves to determine whether or not we will comply with the truth brought to our understanding." (_L. u. W._ 1900, 243. 246.) Misstating historical facts and revealing his own synergistic attitude, Dr. G.W. Sandt wrote editorially in the _Lutheran_ of March 27, 1919, concerning Dr. Stellhorn's polemics against the Missouri Synod: "When the controversy with Missouri was at its height, he [Stellhorn] could do no other but cast his soul into it and stand for the defense of the universal call to grace and salvation as over against the special call as Calvin and others teach it. He resented the charge of synergism which came from his opponents, and renounced it as strongly as any Missourian could."

136. Synergistic Predestination.--Synergism in the doctrine of conversion naturally leads to synergistic teaching on predestination. Moreover, the doctrine of predestination is, as it were, the bacteriological test whether one's Lutheran blood is really and absolutely free from synergistic infection also in the doctrines of conversion and justification. However, also in these tests as to the doctrinal purity of the General Council the results, as a rule, were negative. In his _Summary of Christian Faith_, 1905, Dr. H.E. Jacobs gives the following presentation of the doctrine of predestination: "Since God has not predestinated all that He has foreknown ('for all that the perverse, wicked will of the devil and of men purposes and desires to do and will do, God sees and knows before,' _ib._), but, in His inexplicable will, has allowed a certain measure of freedom and contingency in His creatures, and afforded them a degree of moral responsibility, knowing from all eternity what will be the result of their use of this trust, He also has determined how in every case their decision and activity will be treated." "When, therefore, God has willed that He will be determined in a certain decision by the free decision of a creature, that freedom of the creature will certainly be guaranteed in the result; but what in the exercise of this freedom the decision of the creature will be, as well as the determination of His will concerning it, He knows from all eternity, and makes His plans accordingly." "The fulfilment or non-fulfilment of the proviso or condition is contained in the foreknowledge which determined the free destination." (556 f.) According to Jacobs, then, Predestination depends on the divine foreknowledge of the use that man will make of the freedom with which God has entrusted him. Plainly synergistic doctrine!

LIBERALISTIC TRENDS.

137. Rejecting Verbal Inspiration.--Even the doctrines of the verbal inspiration and the complete inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures have been assailed by prominent representatives of the General Council and the _Lutheran Church Review_. Dr. H.E. Jacobs, in his introduction to _Biblical Criticism_ (1903) by Dr. J.A.W. Haas, states: "It is, therefore, the Word and not the words; the divine substance and not the particular human form in which that substance is clothed; the divine truth and not the human language, with all its limitations, which, in accommodation to human finiteness, the Holy Spirit employs, that is 'the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.'" (18.) "Nevertheless, the subordination of the words of Holy Scripture to the Word in no way diminishes the need of the most reverent handling and the most careful judgment of the words themselves when considered in the place which they are intended to serve." (19.) "A text from Genesis and one from John, one from the Psalms, and another from Romans, cannot stand upon the same footing.... Many a precious passage in the Old Testament can no longer be used as the sincere expression of Christian faith in the light of the clearer revelation of the Gospel." (21.) "There are few theorists who would assign the same degree of inspiration to the statistics and rolls in Ezra or Chronicles as to those parts of the New Testament for whose reading the dying ask when all other earthly words have lost their interest. Even the distinction between the Petrine and the Pauline theology, which the Tuebingen school so greatly exaggerated, contains within it an element of truth, when the difference is found to be one of degree, but not one of kind." (21.) "The time has come when, in antagonism to such [radical] criticism, the Church must offer a restatement of its doctrine of the Holy Scriptures. The theories of our dogmaticians are not the confessional declarations of our Church. The Augsburg Confession contains no statement on this topic." (26.) "It is only the Formula of Concord that gives an official utterance.... But it formulates no definition either of revelation or inspiration. It simply presents to us in the Scriptures an inerrant and infallible judge concerning all religious truth.... Religious truth, it declares, 'is to be received only as revealed in God's Word," and for this Word we turn to the Scriptures." (27.) "For the truths made known by such revelation we are referred to a record. But that such a certain and indubitable record should be made, another supernatural act is necessary, and this is inspiration. This includes everything that is necessary to render the record an infallible standard of all religious truth." (27.) "If the verbal theory of inspiration mean that every word and letter are inspired, so that the writer was purely passive and performed a merely mechanical office, as 'the pen of the Holy Ghost,' this, we hold, is an assumption for which we have no warrant.... All we need to know is that in the Holy Scriptures we have a complete, clear, and unerring record of revealed truth, that is made the standard, for all time, of religious teaching." (28.) Evidently, then, Drs. Jacobs and Haas do not believe that the Holy Scriptures everywhere are inspired and free from error.

138. Bible Fallible in Scientific Matters.--Dr. J. Stump, professor in the seminary of the General Council in Chicago, supporting Dr. Jacobs, maintained in the _Lutheran Church Review_ of January, 1904: One cannot speak of a confessional Lutheran doctrine of inspiration. Quenstedt's doctrine of verbal inspiration is mechanical and in conflict with all that we know of the Holy Ghost's activity; it cannot be proven from the Scriptures, nor indeed is it necessary. Stump considers the Bible free from error in its religious teachings, but not in its astronomical, geological, physical, and similar statements. To quote literally: "The holy writers were not inspired, however, to be 'teachers of astronomy, or geology, or physics,' and no number of contradictions in this sphere would shake our confidence in the absolute authority of Holy Scripture as the infallible test of theological truth, and inerrant guide in all matters of faith and practise." "The dogmaticians were led to maintain it [the verbal inspiration] by the exigency of the times and the stress of their severe dialectics. [The interest of the dogmaticians was to present the clear doctrine of the Scriptures on inspiration.] And as a result of their doctrines, they were logically obliged to claim the absolute impossibility of any kind of error or inaccuracy whatsoever in the Scriptures, even in unimportant externals; and further more to claim that the Scriptures are not only the sole and infallible guide in matters of religion, but also an infallible guide in matters of human science so far as they touched upon any part of science's domain, --claims which a careful examination of the Scriptures and the purpose for which they were written do not bear out." (_L. u. W._ 1904, 85.) It was in agreement with these views when the _Lutheran_, prior to 1904, maintained that the Bible must be explained according to the modern sciences.