IT’S TIME

BOOK REVIEW: At Home in the House of My Fathers: Presidential Sermons, Essays, Letters, and Addresses from the Missouri Synod’s Great Era of Unity and Growth. By Matthew C. Harrison. Fort Wayne: Lutheran Legacy Press, 2009. 826 pages. Hardcover. $19.95.

Pastor Matthew Harrison, Executive Director of LCMS World Relief and Human Care is the editor of At Home in the House of My Fathers. This volume of over 8oo pages contains sermons, letters, convention addresses and essays of the first German-born presidents of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod: C.F.W. Walther, F.C.D. Wyneken, H.C. Schwan, Franz Pieper and F. Pfotenhauer. While the volume has particular interest for those in the Missouri Synod, readers from other segments of North American Lutheranism will find in this volume primary sources for understanding the circumstances of Lutheranism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover the documents in this volume suggest that Walther and his immediate successors were well aware of challenges to Lutheran identity in the new world and attempted to respond faithfully.

The documents in At Home in the House of My Fathers range from sermons to personal correspondence to convention essays. Over a third of the book is devoted to the writings of Walther. In light of the eventual break between Walther and Loehe, Walther’s trip report on his 1851 journey to Germany to visit Neuendettelsau is most interesting, leaving the reader to wonder “What if….” As an addendum to the trip report, Loehe’s correspondence on unionistic communion practice is included. Walther and Wyneken stood with Loehe in his insistence on not communing non-Lutheran or Lutherans who remained in a union church. Walther’s classic essay, “Why Should Our Pastors, Teachers, and Professors Subscribe Unconditionally to the Symbolic Writings of Our Church?” delivered to the Western District Convention in 1858 is included. Several of Walther’s writings on the ministerial office are assembled here. In light of present challenges, Walther’s letter to Pastor J.A. Ottesen, “On Luther and Lay Preachers” sounds a clear note against the Schwaermer who would assert an entitlement to preaching without call and ordination.  

Two letters from Walther to Erlangen theological student Johann Fackler are especially significant. In response to Fackler’s inquiry as to whether or not he should leave the Bavarian territorial church whose confession was orthodox but corrupt in practice, Walther urges the young man to stay until he is expelled. No doubt there is some relevance here for pastors tempted to prematurely leave a church body. Fackler, however, did not heed Walther’s advice and ended up in Saint Louis.

Readers concerned about Lutheran liturgical life diluted by the American Protestant environment will resonate with Walther’s essay of 1883, “Methodist Hymns in a Lutheran Sunday School.” Lest there be any doubt, Walther was decidedly against the practice!

For Walther, true doctrine was never an abstraction or theoretical assertion. True doctrine gives certainty in the consolation proclaimed to broken sinners. False doctrine robs Christ of His glory and sinners of the absolution. This is a theme that echoes throughout Walther’s work even in his polemical moments. Here witness his 1872 sermon “On Pure Doctrine for the Salvation of Souls” preached before a meeting of the Synodical Conference in Milwaukee in 1872 as well as sermon from 1874 on Absolution and another from 1877 on the 300^th anniversary of the Formula of Concord.

In 1887 Walther presented a fascinating conference paper on “The Fruitful Reading of the Writings of Luther.” In this paper Walther encourages pastors to read Luther and provides helpful tips as to how this might be best undertaken. Well read in Luther himself, Walther suggests that Luther will be understood best by starting with the polemical writings (such as “The Great Confession on Christ’s Supper”) and then moving to the Reformational writings like “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church”). After that one should move to the doctrinal writings such as “The Bondage of the Will.” After that would follow a study of the Reformer’s exegetical writings, sermons, and letters. Walther lays out a hermeneutic for reading Luther for pastors encouraging them to read a bit of Luther each day and assemble a collection of Luther’s citations for pastoral and sermonic use.

Lest one be given the impression that this anthology presents the early Missourians as plastic saints without trial and suffering, Harrison has included letters from Walther and Wyneken describing their mental breakdowns. Anfechtungen was not unknown to these men. Both Walter and Wyneken know weakness and affliction; but they also know how to make an evangelical use of the doctrine of justification for consolation under cross-bearing. There is an authentic Luther-like echo in letters as they face these realities head on.

Eleven pieces by Wyneken are included in At Home in the House of My Fathers. Here we see Wyneken as churchman and missionary addressing conflict in these tender years of the Synod’s life. Wyneken demonstrates no triumphalism in an address of 1857 under the title “The Missouri Synod: A Strength Made Perfect in Weakness.” It is reported that Billy Graham once referred to the Missouri Synod as a sleeping giant. Synod leaders have often quoted this cliché to prod the Synod “to be all that you can be.” Wyneken is far too much a theologian of the cross for this sloganeering. Rather he calls Missouri to faithful reliance on the Lord’s promises in the midst of struggle and contradiction. Echoing Walther, Wyneken delivers an address in 1852 entitled “On the Spiritual Priesthood and the Office of the Ministry” and aptly subtitled “We Will Not Tolerate Any Little Lutheran Pope.”

The post notable contribution from Heinrich C. Schwan is “Propositions on Unevangelical Practice” delivered to the Central District in 1862. Here Schwan is forthright in addressing a seemingly ever-present problem in the Missouri Synod – pastors who equate orthodoxy with abrasiveness and confessionalism with legalism. Schwan’s also addresses the Temperance Movement in an 1871 essay. Several of his essays deal with synodical unity. With the Missouri Synod now addressing proposals for restructuring, his 1896 convention essay “On the Synod’s Constitution and Institutions: Striking the Middle Road between Freedom and Love” is strikingly contemporary. Schwan’s funeral sermons for Wilhelm Sihler and Walther are included as well.

Francis Pieper is most often remembered as the author of a three volume Christian Dogmatics. In the nineteen essays and editorials, we are given a glimpse into the mind of Pieper as a churchman as he labors to guide the life of the growing Synod while passing on the theological legacy of Walther. An essay from 1901, “The Assassination of President McKinley and Public Misfortune: What Does God Desire to Teach Us through the Public Misfortune That Has Come Upon Our Country?” is a call to repentance and faith. Other essays such as “All Christians Agree with Us” and “Ecumenical Lutheranism” reflect Pieper’s believe that confessional Lutheranism was not a sectarian movement but the embodiment of New Testament Christianity.

Significant items from Friedrich Pfotenhauer who in some ways was a transitional president for the Missouri Synod reflect the relationship of doctrine to mission, issues of church structure and unity, and encouragement for pastors. In “Revitalization of the Synod Shall Come from Neither Missions or More Synod Power: The Word is the Only Remedy,” Pfotenhauer is pointedly relevant as he speaks to those who see the survival of Lutheranism tied to managerial maneuvers. Only the living Word of the Lord will bring renewal and revitalization, not cleverly designed programs and movements of missionary activism. Likewise his essay, “Avoiding Political Factions in the Church” and “God’s Co-Workers Do Not Lust for Power” are especially timely as the Missouri Synod approaches yet another convention with threats of acrimony and rancor.

The key to the future of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod lies in her past. In other segments of American Lutheranism, the great names of Charles Porterfield Krauth, Theodore Schmauk, Henry Eyster Jacobs, Herman Amberg Preus and J. Michel Reu are all but forgotten. The results of such spiritual and historical amnesia are clear. Thankfully, there are those in the Missouri Synod who still remember that the early decades of the life of the Synod were marked with unity and growth as C.F.W. Walther and others who followed him were unashamed to be confessing Lutherans in a religious context hostile to the truth of the Reformation. Harrison has collected and translated the literary legacy of these years in sermons, essays and correspondence. Not only an item for church historians but for pastors and laity, this anthology will give insights into the Missouri Synod’s theological vitality and missionary zeal in the nineteenth century and it promises to encourage and inspire similar faithfulness today not only in the Missouri Synod but in global Lutheranism.

John T. Pless is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministry and Missions at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana