A strange fact continues to loom over the Confessional Lutheran Church. That is, a countless number of Christians continue to turn from our confession of faith and, in many cases, end up either in the Roman Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Church. As troubling as this trend is when it occurs among the laity, all the more grievous is it when men, ordained to the Office of the Holy Ministry, reject and condemn what they previously confessed as the pure exposition of the Word of God, namely, the doctrine contained in the 1580 Book of Concord, in preference to the so-called ancient faith as expressed either in Rome or the East.
Troubled by the lack of unity they see among their own church bodies, many Confessional Lutherans imagine that both the fulness as well as the unity of faith are better expressed and preserved in Rome or the East. As disconcerting as it is to see the extent to which error is tolerated within various Lutheran church bodies, Lutherans, both pastors and laity alike, need to be fortified against the draw toward the so-called Apostolic churches on the supposition that, in fact and truth, both the fullness as well as the unity of faith are better expressed and preserved in Rome or the East.
It may very well be the case–especially within the Eastern Orthodox Church–that strict canonical prescriptions in externals helps to guarantee uniformity in practice, thus papering over the disunity that exists in Rome and the East, whereas the abuse of adiaphora among Lutheran church bodies exaggerates the disunity of faith among us. In point of fact, all struggle with disunity to one degree or another and so the consideration of those who are tempted to reject the faith confessed in the 1580 Book of Concord must turn not only to the confession of faith as contained in the same, but, likewise, to the very disposition–namely a conservative reformatory disposition–that produced the Lutheran Confessions in the first place. For, not only in the faith confessed by our forebears, but in their very methodology, do we find the guarantor of the faith once for all delivered to the saints.
Both Rome and the East obscure and, therefore, traduce the Gospel of our salvation, whereas it is nowhere more clearly articulated than in the Augustana and the other confessions of our Church. It has been observed that, with the exception of Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms, both of which predate the Augustana, all other confessions within the Book of Concord are commentaries on the Augsburg Confession of 1530. It might also be said, all of the confessions contained within the Book of Concord are commentaries on the Three Ecumenical Creeds, which, outside the prophetic and apostolic Scripture, are the earliest articulations of the faith. The Three Creeds are also confessions of first importance in the Evangelical Lutheran Church, which continues and will forever be not only the preserver of, but, likewise, the guarantor for the ancient faith of the Christian Church. This is owed to the fact that the Evangelical Lutheran Church is the Church of the Conservative Reformation.
In 1871, the Rev. Charles Porterfield Krauth wrote a seminal work titled The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology. In summary, Krauth asserts the necessity of what the Rev. Theodore E. Schmauk called the confessional principle. For his part, Schmauk, in 1911, wrote a book by that very title–The Confessional Principle and the Confessions of the Lutheran Church–and it was his conviction that “the weakness of Protestantism today is its failure to recognize the necessity and the value of a common witness by the connected from generation to generation Church, and, consequently, also the necessity of using and maintaining a common Testimonial authority, or Confessional Doctrine.”1 Both Krauth and Schmauk were firmly convinced that what was the weakness of Protestantism, more broadly considered, did not (or, at least, should not) characterize those committed to the Conservative Reformation.
In the Preface to his work, Krauth defined the characteristics of the Conservative Reformation, but he first identified two other movements within the holy Christian Church that failed to synthesize the two principles of conservatism and reform, preferring either conservatism without reform, on the one hand, or progress without conservatism on the other. “The history of Christianity,” Krauth writes, “in common with all genuine history, moves under the influence of two generic ideas: the conservative, which desires to secure the present by fidelity to the results of the past; the progressive, which looks out, in hope, to a better future.”2
Those who pursue conservatism without reform run headlong into encrustation. The principle of unqualified fidelity to the results of the past fails to recognize that the history of the Christian Church contains both faithful preservation of the faith once for all delivered to the saints (e.g., the theology of St. Athanasius), but, likewise, even in so-called Ecumenical Councils, accretions and errors alongside such faithful preservation (e.g., the so-called 7th Ecumenical Council and the theology of St. Theodore the Studite on icon veneration). Conservatism without reform, according to Krauth, characterizes both the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The others who pursue progress without conservatism run headlong into revolution because the Progressive, as C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton both observed, never stops to ask the question, “Progressing toward what end?” As a consequence, one is committed to progress solely in the name of progress. Such revolutionaries or radicals commit errors both in mistaking wheat for tares (e.g., Zwingli’s rejection of Baptismal regeneration and Real Presence) and, in turn, are “so hasty and violent that even when [revolution] plucks up tares it brings the wheat with them”3 (e.g., the hasty reforms of Carlstadt in regard to “both kinds” in the Sacrament while Luther was hidden away in the Wartburg castle, 1521).
Krauth asserts that the Conservative Reformation is opposed to both extremes. Characterized by moderation and sober judgment as it is,
Reformation is the means by which Conservatism of the good that is, and progress to the good yet to be won, is secured. Over against the stagnation of an isolated Conservatism, the Church is to hold Reformation as the instrument of progress. Over against the abuses of a separatistic and one-sided progressiveness, she is to see to it that her Reformation maintains that due reverence for history, that sobriety of tone, that patience of spirit, and that moderation of manner, which are involved in Conservatism.4
Krauth identifies two possible church bodies and their confessions that are in keeping with the goal of Conservative Reformation, namely, the Anglican Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Of course, he ultimately asserts that the Evangelical Lutheran Church upholds both the disposition of and goal toward which Conservative Reformation aims.
Anglicanism fails to be a truly conservative reformatory church body, as Krauth sees it, because like all movements within the Reformed Church, it relies upon doctrinal indeterminateness.5 “While the Church of England stated doctrines so that men understood its utterances in different ways, the Lutheran Church tried so to state them that men could accept them in but one sense.”6 This accounts for why, within the one communion of the Anglican Church, two priests can hold disparate views regarding Real Presence in the Lord’s Supper and, nevertheless, receive communion from one another. Whereas Martin Luther and the Lutheran Reformers are blamed for what Schmauk says is Protestantism’s greatest weakness, it is really the doctrinal indetermination of the Anglican Church and other Reformed groups, as well as the unrestrained revolutionaries like Ulrich Zwingli, that caused the rejection of “the necessity of using and maintaining a common Testimonial authority, or Confessional Doctrine.”
In view of these things, the Evangelical Lutheran Church is the guarantor of the ancient faith. She recognizes the necessity of maintaining a common Testimonial Authority, or Confessional Doctrine, and so acknowledges that she has her Creeds from an historic Church, which she also confesses as the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. This guards against harboring unrestrained revolutionaries who progress beyond what is written, as opposed to standing guard in front of the deposit of faith while also “recognizing the value of a common witness by the connected from generation to generation Church.”
On the other hand, and most importantly, the Evangelical Lutheran Church most earnestly upholds and asserts that phrase in the Third Article of the Nicene Creed, namely, that the Holy Spirit “spoke by the prophets.” It is easy to overlook this short phrase, which contains within it the true sense of sola Scriptura. The Holy Spirit “spoke by the prophets” precedes the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, not only in the arrangement of the Creed, but in point of fact. It is the Word of God that both gives rise to and governs the Church, and she can only be the dispenser of the ancient faith so long as Sacred Scripture is maintained as the highest authority and court of appeal that the Lord has given to her. When such a conviction is maintained the Church is guarded against the modus operandi of trying to secure the present by an encrusted fidelity to the results of the past.
That the Evangelical Lutheran Church remains the guarantor of the ancient faith is true, despite the fact that very many revolutionaries (e.g., the Lutheran World Federation) continue to find refuge under the moniker “Lutheran.” It remains true despite the fact that, even within Confessional synods, much error and disunity is plain for all to see. Who among all the representative Church bodies does not have these very problems, which even the Apostles endured and of which they warned? The Evangelical Lutheran Church remains the guarantor of the ancient faith, not because she is yet perfected. Rather, it is because, in the Formula of Concord we uphold two principles: Namely, the inspiration and authority of the Word of God as the sole rule and norm for theology and life, thus eschewing the encrustation of Rome and the East. In addition, we assert the necessity of symbols and confessions that, in agreement with God’s sufficient and perspicuous Scripture, aim to set forth the chief articles of Christian doctrine, to be understood in one sense, and thus reject the unrestrained impulse of progressives. Ours is the faith and methodology of the ancient Church. Ours is the faith and methodology of our fathers. The Evangelical Lutheran Church will forever be and remain the place where the faith once for all delivered to the saints is believed and confessed.
Endnotes
1. Theodore E. Schmauk, The Confessional Principle and the Confessions of the Lutheran Church As Embodying the Evangelical Confession of the Christian Church, (Philadelphia: The General Council Press, 1911), iv–v.
2. Charles Porterfield Krauth, The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology, (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co, 1871), vii. One might consider the work of economist Thomas Sowell, The Conflict of Visions in which he asserts that all conflicts, whatever their specific nature, can be boiled down to the conflict of two visions; what Sowell refers to as the constrained and unconstrained visions.
3. Ibid., viii.
4. Ibid., viii.
5. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the newest Reformed denomination, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), which are altogether governed by one Constitution and Book of Procedures, nevertheless permits each local congregation to be governed by one of ten different ranging from the 39 Articles to the 1689 London Baptist Confession. Some within the CREC are even advocating that the 1580 Book of Concord be included on such a list. The CREC is what Krauth would have identified with what he called the “eclectic reformation.”
6. Ibid., ix–x.
