C. F. W. Walther, Interpreter of Luther on the American Frontier

by ROBERT KOLB*

THE PICTURE OF LUTHER projected by a theologian or school of theologians, observes Jaroslav Pelikan, "is frequently a most

reliable index to their understanding of the Christian faith."1 It was true of C. F. W. Walther. He shaped his epoch by adapting Luther's teachings to the needs of nineteenth-century German immigrants on the American frontier.2

Walther himself was part of the emigration from Germany, a member of a group most of whom came from Saxony, under the leadership of the almost cultic figure, Martin Stephan. In southeast­ern Missouri, Stephan betrayed their trust and Walther became their leader, going on to become the builder of the largest single Protestant group of German-Americans.

As did most emigrants Walther's fellow emigrants had many rea­sons for leaving Germany.3 But this group was different. As Walter Forster pointed out, "Readers of the New York Observer had the movement represented to them as a sort of Protestant hejira, al­though 'the Prophet' [Stephan] was somewhat more numerously and solicitiously attended than his prototype. . . . To the generally sympathetic St. Louis public the bumptious German press pictured the entire project as a mass hoax, whose victims were doomed to fail­ure. To themselves, these 'victims' appeared to be the family of the faithful, fleeing from 'Sodom and Gomorrah.' "4

What made Germany a Sodom and Gomorrah for Walther and his followers was not so much the prevailing moral as the intellectual and theological climate. German society had adopted a world-view which denied the principles which informed Walther's way of life. He decided to seek a new milieu.

Walther came from a long line of pastors, and had studied at the University of Leipzig. During his student days there in the early

*This essay was originally presented at a conference held at Concordia College, Saint Paul, on May 2, 1987, "Religious influences on the German Immigrant Commu­nity, A. C. F. W. Walther Commemoration," sponsored by Concordia College, Saint Paul, the Minnesota Humanities Commission, and the German Interest Group, Min­nesota Genealogical Society; copyright is held by Concordia College, Saint Paul, and the essay is reprinted here with permission.

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1830S the Enlightenment and F. D. E. Schleiermacher's reaction to it were casting their shadows across the theological instruction. Hav­ing come from a home in which the faith of the Orthodox and Pietist periods still reigned, Walther did battle against the new tendencies. He found support in the lectures of Professor August Hahn, and in the company of a group of friends, nourished by Martin Stephan, a pastor from the Saxon capital of Dresden. Walther's faith was also strengthened during a six month illness, 1831-1832, through read­ing Luther's works. When, in 1838-1839, his mentor Stephan led a group of some seven hundred followers to Perry County, Mis­souri, Walther was among them, and succeeded to leadership after Stephan's fall in May 1839. His preaching, his cogent writing, and his organizational abilities propelled him eight years later to the pres­idency of the newly organized Evangelical Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, an office he held for four decades.5

At the University of Leipzig he had received a thorough theologi­cal education. He could cite Luther's writings at length. Evidence of theologians he read can be found in his lectures on law and gospel.6

He knew Luther's successors in German Lutheran theology; in his lectures on law and gospel, for instance, he makes reference to Luther's successors: Martin Chemnitz (1522-1586), Aegidius Hun-nius (1550-1603), Johann Gerhard (1528-1637), Johann Arndt (1555-1621), Leonhard Hutter (1563-1616), Johann Huelsemann (1602-1661), Johann Konrad Dannhauer (1603-1666), Hieronymus Kromayer (1610-1670), Johann Andreas Quenstedt (1612-1686), Abraham Calov (1639-1713), and Johann Wilhelm Baier (1647-1695).7 He makes reference as well to German theologians of his day, his friend Franz Deutsch (1813-1890), Karl Friedrich August Kahnis (1814-1888), whom he also knew personally, and Christoph Ernst Ludhardt (1823-1902).8 He makes mention also of some rationalist opponents, among them the French philosophe, Denis Diderot (1713-1784).9 Yet he seldom discussed the work of the most signi­ficant theologian of the early nineteenth century, Schleiermacher, and did not distinguish his school from the rationalist theologians whom both opposed.

Both his conception of theology—that it is a practical rather than an academic discipline at its heart—and the exigencies of building a new church in a foreign land prevented him from writing the momo-graphs which made theological reputations in Germany. Emanuel Hirsch has observed that the Lutheran confessional revival was more suited for ecclesiastical periodicals than for learned theological writing.10 Walther would have agreed and would have seen that as a

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positive rather than a negative observation. He believed that theol­ogy should speak to pastors and their people directly, for application to daily life.

His first parish in Saxony had given him a view of congregational life in the shadow of Enlightenment, and he abandoned hope that the gospel could be effectively proclaimed in the environment he found there. He was aware of the revival of confessional Lutheran theology which had begun in Germany by the 1830s; he had, however, little confidence that it would save the German situation. He hoped that the new world would provide a better setting.

Although he rejected the excessive subjectively of many Pietists, he believed that genuine Orthodoxy should produce a living faith. Whatever the public profession of the rationalist Christians of his generation, Walther believed that their intellectual understanding of religion opposed the true Christian faith. They had set loose the pes­tilence of religious scepticism and unfaith and thus poisoned their own souls and those of others. Professors inimical to the Scriptures implanted unbelief11 He had seen it happen. Theological prowess had been demonstrated by "declaring the mysterious doctrines of Christianity errors of former dark ages" and by treating "the doc­trine of God, virtue, and immortality as the real kernel of the Chris­tian religion. " Walther rejected this kind of theology, which reduced preaching to mere discussion of pedestrian themes. These are actual sermon titles he recalls: "Intelligent Agriculture; Profitableness of Potato-raising; Tree-planting a Necessity; Importance of Genuine Sanitation. " He recognized that some rationalists had not been so ex­treme and cited Joachim Spalding as an example, but he nonetheless rejected the theology which had permeated the intellectual world of his youth and had debilitated the faith of the people of his first par­ish.12

Walther also believed that his faith had been subverted by the Un­ion of Lutherans and Reformed in the Kingdom of Prussia. The Prussian monarchs of the Hohenzollern family had become Calvinist in the early seventeenth century. In the early nineteenth the king, Friedrich Wilhelm III, attempted to improve the lot of the small mi­nority of Reformed Christians in his domains by issuing an edict which united their church with the Lutheran Church. This Union had directly affected the members of Walther's emigrant group who had lived in the Prussian province of Saxony. The Union was wrong, Walther charged, because it glossed over the errors of Re­formed theology.13

Through recollection of the insights of Luther and the Lutheran

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confessors of his era Walther believed that the twin evils of Rational­ism and Unionism could be combated. In 1867, preaching on Leviti­cus 25:8-12, Walther compared the three hundred fiftieth anniver­sary of the posting of Luther's Ninety-five Theses to the jubilee which God had commanded to the people of Israel to give them a "living memory" of God's blessing in giving them the land of Israel. In the same way the heritage of the Reformation was "an unspeak­ably more costly and glorious inheritance than a thousand lands of Canaan, flowing with milk and honey."14

In introducing his edition of the Epitome of the Formula of Con­cord, he recalled the words of the seventeenth-century theologian Jo­hannes Quistorp, "We all are called adherents of the Augsburg Con­fession, but in our lands this public confession of the faith is not drilled into the youth publicly or privately; it comes to the attention only of the intellectuals. "15Walther issued his edition of the Epitome to make certain that the lay people whom he could touch would also understand and live out the heritage given by God through Martin Luther, and he strove in countless other ways, as well, to make this happen.

Walther denied the charge that he was repristinating seventeenth-century dogmatics. His intent, at least, was to return to Luther. In 1875 he wrote, "They do not know us who label our theology that of the seventeenth century. As highly as we treasure the immense ac­complishments of the great Lutheran dogmaticians of this period, it is nevertheless not really to them that we return, but rather above all to our precious Book of Concord and to Luther, in whom we recog­nize the man whom God chose as the Moses of his church of the New Covenant, to lead his church, which had fallen into slavery to the Antichrist, out ofthat slavery. He is the column of smoke and fire of the Word of God, clear and pure as gold as it is."16 Franz Pieper, Walther's student and his successor as president of Concordia Semi­nary and of the Synod, commented on Walther, "In Luther he saw not just one more theologian alongside others, but the Reformer of the church whom God Himself had selected, the one who revealed the Antichrist."17

Like Luther's own students18 and many of those influenced by his writings in succeeding generations, Walther looked upon the Re­former as a unique, prophet of God. In a sermon delivered at the three hundredth anniversary of the reformer's death Walther called him "God's true servant," whose accomplishments were "not the work of a human being but rather work which God himself brought

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about."19 Walther's writings show relatively little of a modern bio­graphical interest; the historical details interested him only in so far as they affected the way in which his proclamation and teaching might be passed on. He knew nothing of the speculation about Luther's "tower experience. 992° German scholarship had not yet invented that experience for Luther, and so, in line with his scholarly contempo­raries, he was quite indifferent to how Luther came to his break­through. He attempted something of an explanation by sketching the medieval ecclesiastical background, focusing relatively little on the moral degradation of the late Middle Ages, and focusing instead on more traditional concerns: papal tyranny, but above all "the frightful hopelessness and anxiety of conscience," which resulted in the works-righteousness of the period. However, God had put lonely stars in the medieval night, Peter Waldo, John Wyclif, and John Hus and the Bohemian Brethren; and then in Luther God "brought the light of the Gospel back with his might like the dawn of a new day, and with marvelous speed he scattered the thick darkness so that within just a few years the full noonday sun of the pure evan­gelical teaching shone over all Christendom."21

Walther also emphasized Luther's blessed death. The shadow of Johann Cochlaeus, the sixteenth-century Roman Catholic biogra­pher of Luther, lay over the theme. Cochlaeus had described the death of a restless heretic, and Luther's followers had for three centu­ries used the eyewitness reports of his peaceful death and his final confession of the faith as evidence against Cochlaeus's lie.22 Walther returned to that tradition at the three-hundredth anniversary of Luther's death. "Luther had not only preached the Gospel but also demonstrated with his own example that whoever receives the Gos­pel which he preached in his heart will be a true Christian. He dem­onstrated that his teaching can endure the test of death's trial, that it permits one to die well, and that one who holds fast to this faith can overcome all the temptations of Satan and every terror of death, hell and judgment in a certain and victorious fashion."23 Walther's treat­ment of Luther's life and career, then, was sacred history, not of modern biography.

For Luther was, according to Walther, a unique instrument in the hands of God. He was not to be idolized as one whose accomplish­ments were perfect—he was not incapable of error, and had no direct infusions of truth.

Our faith is not, beloved congregation, built on Luther but on the Word of God, which never changes and which never deceives. Luther brought that

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Word to the light of day once again and proclaimed it so faithfully and purely and defended it so zealously throughout his life.24

Instead, Luther's accomplishments were to be viewed as God's ac­complishments.25 For through him God had restored the pure gos­pel to Christendom.

As had Luther himself, Walther emphasized the reformer's call to be a teacher of the Word, a doctor of the Scriptures. That meant, in Walther's view, that he was more than a learned man. He also pos­sessed "a living, unusual, command of saving doctrine, a penetrating eloquence, a comprehensive knowledge of the original languages of the Scriptures, a heroic faith, and an outstanding ability to deny him­self."26 Walther particularly cherished Luther's "joy in the faith," which he believed a gift from God, for it had flourished in the face of opposition and tribulation, triumphed over the wisdom and might of pope and emperor, and survived betrayal by friends and early sup­porters.27 Such factors reinforced Walther's conviction that God's providence had protected the revival of the gospel which the Lord had placed in Luther's hands.28"His Reformation was a Reformation from the Bible, the Christianity which he proclaimed a Christianity of the Bible, the church for which he fought a church of the Bible, and every controversy which he pursued was a controversy in behalf of the Bible." For all his teaching was rooted in the articles of faith presented in the Scripture.29 For Luther the Scriptures were "the Sun which lighted his path, the source from from which his inspiration flowed, the touchstone of his teaching, the weapon with which he fought, the fortress which defended him, the jewel for which he strove; in a word, it was that which motivated the entire witness, work, and battle of his life."30

The Scriptures were so important to Luther because they set loose the power of God's saving Word. The Lutheran Reformation rests, Walther stated, on two basic principles: Only God's written Word is the truth which saves sinners, and only God's free grace in Christ is the way to eternal salvation.31 "The teaching of justification, that is, the teaching that the human creature becomes righteous in God's sight and is saved only by grace, only for Christ's sake, and only through faith without any merit of human accomplishment is the chief teaching of all Christendom, indeed, is the true heart of the en­tire Christian religion, which distinguishes it from all other religions in the world. This teaching is therefore also its most precious jewel. . . ."32 Walther turned to Luther's own sacred history to sketch what it meant to be justified through faith. One must turn to

C. F. W. WALTHER 475

Christ for consolation and peace, for he alone can be the mediator who reconciles God and his people; he alone atoned for the sins of the whole world with the unique sacrifice of the cross. It was this under­standing of the gospel and his concern for parishioners which led Luther to post the Ninty-five Theses against the abuse of the indul­gence trade, and it was this pastoral combination of God's Word and people's need which motivated his entire career.33

For Luther this emphasis on God's grace in Christ could not be separated from its result in daily life, Walther insisted. Luther's teaching of justification produced good works for three reasons, he believed. First, evangelical Lutheran teaching not only demanded that people live the Christian life, but it also laid the proper founda­tion for such a life and showed the correct way to be able to produce the fruits of faith, namely through the motivation of the gospel. Sec­ond, Lutherans do not suggest that false religious works or piety please God, but they instead make clear that good works He in carry­ing out God's commands in daily life. Third, followers of Luther re­ject the notion that Christians can become perfect in this life, and they therefore Uve in repentance and with a constant realization of their own continual need to battle temptation.34 Walther realized that Luther's teaching of justification through faith in Christ embraced the whole Christian life.

That teaching Walther wanted to preserve and to make prosper in his new North American environment. He set as the task of his life the preservation of this heritage in the United States. But Walther did not intend in any way to preserve it as a museum piece. He rejected any view of Lutheran Orthodoxy as dead. True Orthodoxy meant the application of the living Word of God, as law and as gospel, to the lives of people. God had brought his judgment upon those who took the gospel for granted through the Thirty Years War. He praised the proto-pietist Johann Arndt, and the dogmatic theologian, Johann Gerhard, as well as the devotional writers Heinrich Muller (1631-1675) and Christian Scriver (1629-1693).35 Arndt and the latter two could certainly be classed among the Lutheran Pietists and reveal that strain of Pietism in Walther which he had inherited from the circle around Stephan. At the same time he criticized the Pietists who fo­cused on human experience rather than on the Word of God. He re­called for his students his own sad experience with the works of Jo­hann Philip Fresenius (1705-1761), who had directed the young Walther to his own performance rather than to the promise of the gospel for assurance of his salvation. He rejected the self-

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righteousness which too many Lutheran Pietists had cultivated. Al­though they were well-intentioned men, they had subtly and dan­gerously confounded law and gospel and thus kept people away from Christ with their focus on works.36

Walther was under no illusion that the North American continent would be the promised land. The history of the gospel is a history of struggle, of resisting every form of attack which the human imagina­tion can devise against truth and the teaching of God. Conflict and persecution would beset the church in all ages, but it was in just such circumstances that believers must boldly confess the faith.37

Walther's writings reflect his growing knowledge of his new homeland. He was familiar with the positions of various American denominations, and he could use the American Indians as illustra­tions in sketching how to preach the gospel to those who had not heard it.38 On the one hand, he knew enough about the Enlighten­ment roots of the North American mentality to see that the North American environment was hostile to his own faith. At the same time he recognized that religious freedom and the absence of state in­terference in religious life offered a great opportunity. He rejoiced that after all its adversities in Europe "our Evangelical Lutheran church, with the flag of its confession still waving, is sprouting and blossoming [grünt und blüht] again today, in this land far to the West, as in its better days, even though it has been refined to a small rem­nant."39 He called upon his hearers to vow at Luther's grave to "use the glorious freedom of conscience, of confession, and of worship which God has given us here in a faithful manner." He and his church, in other words, would not deviate from the Lutheran confes­sion and would not accept a new way of teaching. But instead they would "return to that teaching which God had brought to light through Luther, and with hearts opened by the Holy Spirit not merely carry the true teaching around in the mind but experience the living power ofthat teaching which works true repentance and living faith, which reveals itself in a new life which is godly and holy."40

The North American situation enabled Walther to pursue with ease, and out of necessity, to establish a free church, with strict confes­sional requirements for membership. It would have been impossible within a state church situation, and the Old Lutherans in Germany were at this point only in the initial stages of attempting to establish a free church.

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He was always aware of the deteriorating situation of the church in Germany and of parallels to it in other Lutheran groups in North America.41 And while he did believe that Luther and his contempo­raries were correct that the gospel flees from place to place as adher­ents in one land die away and their confession with them.42 He be­lieved nonetheless, at least for a time, that the United States could provide a haven for the Lutheran confession.

Walther squarely faced the challenge of representing the Luther he knew in the United States. By the middle of the nineteenth century there were many American "Luthers. " Theodore Bachmann lists the romantic political Luther, who—before he became the father of Na-ziism to the likes of William Shirer—was for many Americans "the champion of those liberties which made the free society possible and the individual a responsible citizen," a view only slightly less off the mark than that of Shirer. There was the popular Protestant hero, claimed by all who opposed Rome. There was the Luther of the vari­ous Lutheran churches, and there was the Luther of the researchers, also divided into their own scholarly denominations.43

Walther's Luther "in no way" began his Reformation in order to "feel the dignity of humanity and his own right to freedom." In­stead, he simply sought salvation, righteousness in God's sight.44

Walther rejected European and American claims that the Enlighten­ment, and its Rationalism, were the fulfillment of Luther's move­ment.45 Walther particularly feared the threat of Protestants of one brand or another who would claim that Luther had set minds free to find their own faith. He combated those "raving sectarian preachers of our new fatherland" and who were setting their nets of deception to catch German immigrants and bind their consciences before they unmasked themselves as people who taught against Luther, not with him.46

How did Walther make his dream of reviving the Lutheran heri­tage and tradition in North America happen? Primarily, he did as Luther had done—he used the Word. However, he was not unaware of the importance of creating a cultural setting, a way of life, in which his faith could be incorporated. Thus, under his leadership his church body created a sub-culture complete with its own churches, schools, hospitals, and other institutions.47 He began the task by providing for effective leadership, to be trained at the two seminaries of the Missouri Synod.48 Through the pastors who sat at his feet and the

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feet of his colleagues he forged the largest single American denomi­nation serving the German Protestant immigrants. His program of acculturation took general German Protestants of many kinds and transformed them into a people with a particular way of life and of looking at the world, the "Missouri Synod Lutheran."

Walther accomplished that not only by a culturally sensitive plan for the institutional embrace of his followers' lives but also by an un­remitting proclamation of Luther's message, of the biblical message, in a way which brought people the comfort of the gospel. He did it orally, in his own pulpit in Saint Louis and in countless speaking en­gagements at other congregations, pastoral conferences, and church conventions. But above all, he did it through publications.

A prime concern for him was that pastors and people of his con­gregations might have Luther to read. He therefore devoted a great deal of energy to the task of providing an American edition of Luther's works. At his instigation the Western District of the Mis­souri Synod resolved in 1879 to urge the creation of a new edition of the popular eighteenth century edition of Luther's writings prepared by Johann Georg Walch, professor of theology at the University of Jena. Walther's enthusiastic support and aid promoted this new edi­tion, and he guided its work, finally bringing Albert Friedrich Hoppe, a pastor in New Orleans who had been trained at the Uni­versity of Rostock, to Saint Louis to work on the project. It took thirty years to complete the project, the "Saint Louis" or "Walch2" edition, 1880-1910; it proceeded slowly until Hoppe came to work full-time on it in 1886. When finally completed, this project put twenty-three volumes of Luther's writings into the hands of parish pastors, at a cost of about $ioo.49

In 1887, shortly before his death, as the American version of Walch's Luther edition was moving forward, Walther published a guide for reading Luther in volume thirty-three of the periodical which he edited, Lehre und Wehrer® He wanted to cultivate an appre­ciation for Luther in the pastoral practice of his readers which would integrate their use of Luther and his ideas into their preaching, teach­ing, and care of souls. Walther advised that Luther be read themati-cally, not chronologically, since beginning with Luther's earliest works would bog the reader down in that period when Luther was still struggling to free himself of medieval papal error. He also ad­vised that it is best to read what Luther himself wrote, not those works which reflect student notes since they were often written in

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haste. He further advised against beginning with those works which had been composed in Latin and then later translated into German, since no translation can ever capture fully the original. In fact, the Saint Louis edition did contain, for instance, the Genesis lectures, based on student notes and translated into German from Latin. Fur­thermore, Walther preferred republishing the Walch edition rather than simply importing the new and more scholarly Erlangen edition, because he feared that its rendition of Luther's original German and Latin would be harder for his pastors to understand than the eigh­teenth century German rendering of both sixteenth-century lan­guages by Walch.

Walther believed that Luther might best be understood by begin­ning with his polemical works against both Roman Catholics and Calvinists. First read That These Words of Christ, "This Is My Body, etc. " Still Stand (i 527), the great Confession on the Lord's Supper (1528), On the Papacy at Rome (1520), and Against Hans Wurst (1541), he ad­vised. "The polemical writings of Luther are, to be sure, held in great contempt, but they are the greatest thing that was ever written down by human hand. . . . There you see Luther's heroic faith and his spir­itual joy. . . . You cannot heal all illnesses with buttermilk and honey, but you also have to use bitter medicine. "51 Walther next sug­gested the "so-called Reformation-historical writings, . . . where Luther laid the basis for his work of reformation." These included On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), To the Christian No­bility of the German Nation (1520), and others. Following certain "doctrinal writings," such as On the Office of the Keys (1530), the reader should begin to pursue Luther's biblical interpretation. Walther pointed particularly to Luther's comments on the Sermon on the Mount, on the Last Words of David, and on Psalms 2, 37, 45, 82, no , i n , 117, and 118. Luther's sermons also would provide great help for the preacher as he prepared his own sermons, Walther believed and suggested that all preachers should have read Luther's Short Sermons Given to a Friend as Models, which could be found in the Saint Louis edition.52 Finally, Walther also urged the reading of Luther's letters. He liked those written at the time of the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 the best: "More beautiful letters have never been written. Such courage of faith, such joy and confidence of victory, is never to be found. "

Walther discouraged pastors from writing out their own collec­tions of gems from Luther's writings, apparently a common practice

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among his clerical brothers. "Excerpting Luther in detail is not par­ticularly fruitful, for Luther does not operate in such a manner that he proceeds straight ahead in a strict order of thoughts; he rather storms full charge ahead." Better than excerpting is the compilation of an index of suitable readings for use in preaching on specific themes or texts. In using Luther, one should also remember, Walther coun­seled, that Luther's speech is simple, for he was called to reform not the learned world but rather the people of Christendom. Nor should the reader think that he has come upon a contradiction as he reads Luther. "The much criticized contradictions are only contradictory in appearance, or they may be explained by recognizing that Luther did not receive the full truth all at once as if through a stroke of magic." Walther had some sense of Luther's development, but the word "paradox" had obviously not been added to the jargon of Luther's interpreters by 1887.

Luther was, in Walther's view, the pastor's friend. He advised making "it a rule to read something in Luther's writings every day, and find refuge in them particularly when you feel dry, tired, dis­couraged, sad, without any way out, miserable. Then select above all his letters for something to pick you up, strengthen you, give you a new lease on life. Make yourself so familiar with your edition of Luther that you can find each writing without having to page around, for that steals precious time." Walther believed that God's people would be best served when their pastors' minds and hearts were tuned in to Luther. They would fulfill their vocation most ef­fectively when Luther was not only their teacher but also their com­panion and consoler, their pastor.

Walther's pastors had the Lutheran confessions available, both in a new German edition and in English translations.53 But Walther also wanted the laity to understand their heritage and to be able to defend biblical teaching against its enemies. Therefore, in connection with the three hundredth anniversary of the Formula of Concord in 1877 he prepared a pocket edition of the Epitome of the Formula with an extensive historical introduction, based on a good deal of personal re­search in the sources of the sixteenth century and in the historical works on that period from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He wanted the readers of his little volume, Heart and Star [Kern und Stern], as he called the Epitome of the Formula, to study it thor­oughly. Walther did not write it "for entertainment. Quickly leafing through this material will bring very little benefit. It demands thor-

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ough study, as the means of testing [what is taught] on the basis of the Word of God. " Walther rejected the idea that this was more than lay people should attempt. On the basis of Ephesians 4:14, "that we may no longer be children, tossed to and for and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles," and Hebrews 5:12-14, "For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need some one to teach you again the first principles of God's Word. You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil," he presumed that all Christians should not remain at the level of chil­dren in their understanding but should become "masters" through the practice of distinguishing what is good and what is evil. Only in this way will they no longer be tossed about by every wind of teach­ing through the cunning and craftiness of false teachers.54 Through­out his treatment of the period and the controversies which led to the Formula of Concord, Walther reflects the standard interpretation of his time. He also drew comparisons between the era of the Formula and his own, using its arguments against contemporary teachers who denied salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone or the Lutheran understanding of the real presence of Christ's body and blood in the Lord's Supper.55

Walther also tried to reinforce the Lutheran heritage by republish­ing one of the later dogmatic textbooks of the Orthodox period, the Compendium of Positive Theology of Johann Wilhelm Baier (1647-1695). Walther extensively revised and expanded Baier's work, so that his edition was in many ways his own dogmatics. It reveals his dependence on the tradition of Lutheran theology, and many of his additions reveal his dependence on Luther himself.56

Beyond the publication of the works of Luther or Baier and the Epitome, Walther used most of the opportunities he had to publish— largely in periodical articles, in his own professional journal, Lehre und Wehre, and in his popular journal, Der Lutheraner—as occasions for sharpening his readers' appreciation and understanding of Luther's teaching and the Lutheran heritage. He found larger theo­logical treatises of less use in supporting the proclamation of the gos­pel and wrote only on topics of ecclesiology in such longer works. His other book-length publications are, as noted above, for the most part sermon books and perhaps his most influential single work, the

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collection of notes on his informal evening lectures to seminary stu­dents on The Proper Distinction of Law and Gospel.

If Walther's ministry could be summed up in one phrase it would be the title of his lectures on the proper distinction of law and gospel. His understanding of Luther was shaped fundamentally by the inter­pretation of the Reformer's thought transmitted by seventeenth-century theologians. Although he disavowed mere repristination of those theologians and although he substantially altered significant parts of their ecclesiology and bypassed the understanding of the doctrine of election held by many of them,57 he nevertheless did re­ceive the faith of Luther as it had been handed down through the im­mediate generation. His knowledge of Luther came from his own reading of the sources, but that reading has been poured into forms and categories dictated by later generations. Walther digested Luther before the Luther Renaissance of the early twentieth century began to introduce the new categories with which Luther's thought is inter­preted today. Walther's younger contemporary, Theodosius Harnack, was only a morning star of the Luther Renaissance. And Walther in the later years of his life, did not use his work, if indeed he even had access to it.

Walther however did anticipate one aspect of what was to come. Much of the contemporary view of Luther's theology focuses not on individual doctrines but rather on the central framework, on ele­ments such as the "theology of the cross," the "two governments," the "two kinds of righteousness," and the proper distinction of law and gospel. Even though he still regarded the distinction of law and gospel as a doctrine akin to justification through faith, by pointing out that this distinction is the key element in interpreting all of the biblical message, Walther presented his students with a different way of reading Luther, emphasizing in a fresh fashion what he believed was the heart of Luther's message and the corner stone of the biblical message. Inadequate as his treatment is from the standpoint of the modern Luther research, in this vital regard Walther did foreshadow an important part of the movement that was to come.58

Before he left Europe's shores for North America C. F. W. Walther had experienced his own inner emigration from sloughs of Rationalism. Because ofthat, he was able to make the outer migra­tion without regret, in the hope of having new opportunities to plant the gospel and practice it in a strange land. To a remarkable extent he succeeded. His guide was Doctor Martin Luther, for Walther, a

C. F. W. WALTHER 483

unique instrument of God. His ministry brought to thousands of German immigrants in North America Luther's insights, the mes­sage of God's forgiveness in Christ in a form suited for their life on the American frontier.

NOTES

The subject of the essay is also treated by Eugene F. Klug, "Walther and Luther, " in C. F. W. Walther: The American Luther, edited by Arthur H. Drevlow (Marion, SD: private printing, 1987).

1. Interpreters of Luther, Essays in Honor of Wilhelm Pauck, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (Phila­delphia: Fortress, 1968), 6.

2. Adolph Spaeth, "Walther, Ferdinand," Realencyklopaedia fur protestantische The­ologie und Kirche 3rd. ed. (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1896-1913), 20:848.

3. The mixed motives of emigrants similar to the Saxons are effectively analyzed by Lieselotte Clemens, Old Lutheran Emigration from Pomerania to the U.S.A.: History and Motivation 1839-1843, translated by James Laming (Kiel: Pomeranian Foundation, 1976).

4. Walter O. Forster, Zion on the Mississippi, The Settlement of the Saxon Lutherans in Missouri 183c-1841 (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1953), 1.

5. Spaeth, "Walther, Ferdinand," Realencyklopaedia fur protestantische Theologie und Kirche, 20:844-848.

6. E.g., see C. F. W. Walther, Casual-Predigten und -Reden (Saint Louis: Lutheris­cher Concordia-Verlag, 1889), 586-593, a sermon on Revelation 14:6, 7.

7. C. F. W. Walther, The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel, translated by W. H. T. Dau (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1928), 37-41, 56, 86, 119-20, 246, 262, 2 7 1 -74, 287, 330, 332, 399, 401.

8. Ibid., 269, 359-360. 9. Ibid., 401. 10. Emanuel Hirsch, Geschichte der neueren evangelischen Theologie, 5 vols., 4th ed.

(Gütersloh: Mohn, 1968) ,4:171. 11. Casual-Predigten, 121-22. 12. Law and Gospel, 258-59; cf. 234, 268, 275-76. 13. Ibid., 25, 333. 14. Casual-Predigten, 88. 15. Der Concordienformel Kern und Stern. Mit einer geschichtlichen Einleitung und mit

kurzen erklärenden Anmerkungen versehen, 2nd ed. (Saint Louis: Barthel, 1877), III. 16. Lehre und Wehre 21 (i875):67. 17. "Dr. C. F. W. Walther als Theologe," Lehre und Wehre 34 (i888):267. 18. Robert Kolb, For All the Saints, Changing Perceptions of Martyrdom and Sainthood

in the Lutheran Reformation (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1987), 103-38. 19. Casual-Predigten, i n .

484 L U T H E R A N Q U A R T E R L Y

20. On the twentieth century discussion of the "tower experience" see W. D. J. Cargill Thompson, "The Problem of Luther's 'Tower Experience' and its Place in his Intellectual Development," Studies in the Reformation, Luther to Hooker, C. W. Dugmore, ed. (London: Athlone, 1980), 60-80.

21. Casual-Predigten, 42-43 , 84-88. 22. On Cochlaeus, see Remigius Bäumer, Johannes Cochlaeus (1479-1552), Leben

und Werk in Dienst der Katholischen Reformation (Münster: Aschendorff, 1980), esp. 101-112.

23. Casual-Predigten, 107-111. 24. Ibid., 105. 25. Ibid., 581. 26. Ibid., 46. 27. Ibid., 98-101. 28. Ibid., i n - 1 1 2 . 29. Ibid., 51-53. 30. Ibid., 59· 31. Ibid., 587, 592. 32. Kern und Stern, 26. 33. Casual-Predigten, 32-35. 34. Ibid., 62-65. 35. Ibid., 121. 36. LawandGospel, 140-150; cf. 95, 153, 362-3. 37. Kern und Stern, 5, 13, 19-25. 38. Law andGospel, 127, 261. 39. Casual-Predigten, 92. 40. Ibid., 123-24. 41. E.g., see his editorials on the three hundredth anniversary of the Formula of

Concord in Lehre und Wehre 23 (1877), 1-5, 33-54, 65-76, translated in Editorials from "Lehre und Wehre/' Selected Writings ofC. F. W. Walther, translated by Herbert J. A. Bouman, edited by August R. Suelflow (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1981), see esp. 162-3. See also Law and Gospel, 100, 125, 333; and Casual-Predigten, 50-51.

42. Kern und Stern, 5. 43. E. Theodore Bachmann, "Walther, Schaff, and Krauth on Luther," in Inter­

preters of Luther, 187-230, esp. 188-92. 44. Casual-Predigten, 31-32. 45. Ibid., 88-91; cf. 574-5. 46. Ibid., 29. 47. See, e.g., F. DeanLueking, A Century of Caring, 1868-1968, The Welfare Minis­

try among Missouri Synod Lutherans (Saint Louis: Board of Social Ministry, the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, 1968), 1-8. See also Lueking, Mission in the Making, The Missionary Enterprise Among Missouri Synod Lutherans, 1846—1863 (Saint Louis: Con­cordia, 1964), 51-67, on the Synod's outreach to German immigrants.

48. Carl S. Meyer, Log Cabin to Luther Tower, Concordia Seminary During One Hun­dred and Twenty-five Years Toward a More Excellent Ministry 1839-1964 (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1965), 1-88, describes Concordia, Saint Louis, under Walther's leader­ship.

49. Robert Kolb, "Luther for German Americans, The Saint Louis Edition of Luther's Works, 1880-1910," Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly 56 (1983): 98-110.

50. Lehre und Wehre, 33 (1887): 305-14. 51. Ibid. 52. Dr. Martin Luthers Sämmtliche Schriften, herausgegeben von Dr.Joh. Georg Walch

12 (Saint Louis: Concordia, ι883):ι858-6ι.

C. F. W. WALTHER 485

53. E.g., the standard edition of the Book of Concord after 1871 was Das evangelis­che Concordienbuch, edited by J. T. Mueller (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1871), but several editions had been published earlier in the century, e.g. Die symobolische Bücher der ev.-luth. Kirche deutsch, edited by Joseph Wilhelm Schopff (Dresden: Wagner, 1826). In En­glish, see The Book of Concord: or The Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Translated from the Original Languages with Notes, ed. Henry Eyster Jacobs, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Frederick, 1882/3) replaced earlier translations.

54. Kern und Stern, VI-VII. 55. Ibid., e.g. 70-74. 56. Joh. Guilelmi Baieri Compendium theologiae positivae, adjectis notis amplioribus, ed.

C. F. W. Walther, 3 vols, in 4 (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1879); see Henry W. Reimann, "C. F. W. Walther's 1879 Edition of Baier's Compendium," in The Symposium on Seven­teenth Century Lutheranism, Selected Papers, Volume I (Saint Louis: The Symposium on Seventeenth Century Lutheranism, 1962), 106-117.

57. See Rune Söderlund, Expraevisafide, Zum Verständnis der Praedestinationslehre in der lutherischen Orthodoxie (Arbeiten zur Geschichte und Theologie des Luthertums 3; Han­nover: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1983), 161-174.

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