Chinese Bluegrass?!!!!

Franz Pieper on Unity - 1888

Herr Professor Francis Pieper from St. Louis, who had been designated essayist by the honorable Herr President [of the Synodical Conference], presented five theses.

The presenter made the following remarks by way of introduction: It is generally granted that there should be unity in the Christian Church. The lament over the divisions of the Church is universal. There have always been efforts to create unity, particularly in recent times. We would rejoice over these efforts and regard our era as particularly blessed in this regard if a closer examination did not show that most efforts toward unity completely lack the understanding of what the essence of Christian unity is. The devil has succeeded in creating general confusion on this issue. All forms of unity are sought except the correct unity willed by God. Therefore, in spite of all the effort, the goal is not achieved, and those who seek the correct, true unity are declared enemies of all unity, while the proper destroyers of correct unity are praised as true advocates of the same.

By God’s grace, we understand the correct, Christian unity desired by God, the unity in the faith. It is the purpose of the following theses to remind us of this and to enliven us toward this unity. The theses are as follows:

I. By “unity in the faith,” we understand the agreement in all articles of Christian doctrine

that is revealed in the Holy Scriptures.

II. This unity in the faith is possible, because all articles of Christian doctrine are clearly

revealed in the Holy Scriptures.

III. This unity in the faith is willed by God, because God commands the complete acceptance of His entire revelation and strictly forbids every departure from the same.

IV. The necessary external testimony to this unity in the faith consists in that those who

stand in the unity of the faith confess one another as brothers in the faith.

V. Those who enjoy this unity of the faith should diligently seek to care for and guard this

unity as a glorious gift granted freely by the grace of God.

At Home in the House of My Fathers, p. 572.

Another Fabulous CPH Product: Marriage By God's Design

I will neither confirm or deny anything I seem to have said in this video....

MH

"Whoever has not given exclusive attention to educating PASTORS is no teacher of theology." Vilmar

Theology must exercise the office of shepherd in such manner that it instructs the coming generation toward becoming a generation of true shepherds, able and ready to gather the sheep, to go after, to seek and find them. It must educate shepherds for whom this never ending and arduous labor of shepherding, pasturing, and seeking the sheep has become second nature, so that their hearts are grieved when they do not tend the entire flock and each individual member of it early and late, shepherds who consume their life in this care, a care extinguished only with the last breath of life.

Whoever has not given exclusive attention to educating PASTORS is no teacher of theology.

August Vilmar

The Theology of Facts Verses The Theology of Rhetoric

"We set out upon the road of suffering and death accompanied by the entire church."

This is the church of the saints, the new creation of God, our brothers and our friends, in whom we see nothing but blessing and nothing but consolation, though not always with the eyes of the flesh (thus they would appear in the corresponding image of evil), but with the eyes of the spirit. Nevertheless, we must not disregard even these visible blessings of theirs, but rather learn that God wants to comfort us with them. Even Psalm 73 [:15] does not venture to condemn all those who acquire riches in this world when it says, “If I had said this, I would have rejected the generation of your children.” That is, if I should consider wicked all those who possess wealth, health, and honor, I should be condemning even your saints, of whom there are so many. The Apostle instructs Timothy to admonish the rich of this world not to be haughty, but he does not forbid them to be rich [I Tim. 6:17]. The Scriptures remind us that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were rich men. Daniel and his companions held places of honor even in Babylon [Dan. 2:48–49]. Moreover, many kings of Judah were saintly men. It is with reference to them that the psalmist says, “If I had said this, I would have rejected the generation of your children.”

I say that God gives an abundance of such blessings even to his people to comfort them and others. Still, these things are not their true blessings, but only shadows and signs of their real blessings, which are faith, hope, love, and other gifts and graces, which are shared with all through love.

This is the communion of saints in which we glory. Whose heart will not be lifted up, even in the midst of great evils, when he believes the very truth, namely, that the blessings of all the saints are his blessings, and his evil is also theirs? That is the very pleasant picture the Apostle paints in his word to the Galatians, “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ” [Gal. 6:2]. Is it not a blessing for us to be in a company where “if one member (as is said in I Corinthians 12 [:26]) suffers, all members suffer together, and if one member is honored, all members rejoice together?” Therefore, when I suffer, I do not suffer alone, but Christ and all Christians suffer with me, for Christ says, “He who touches you, touches the apple of my eye” [Zech. 2:8]. Thus others bear my burden, and their strength is my strength. The faith of the church comes to the aid of my fearfulness; the chastity of others endures the temptation of my flesh; the fastings of others are my gain; the prayer of another pleads for me. In brief, such care do the members show one another that the more honorable members cover, serve, and honor the less respected members, as is so beautifully set forth in I Corinthians 12 [:22–26].

Consequently, I can actually glory in the blessings of others as though they were my very own. They are truly mine when I am grateful and joyful with the others. It may be that I am base and ugly, while those whom I love and admire are fair and beautiful. By my love I make not only their blessings but their very selves my own. By their honor my shame is now made honorable, my want is supplied by their abundance, and my sins are healed by their merits.

Who could then despair in his sins? Who would not rejoice in his sorrows? He no longer bears his sin and punishment—and if he does bear them he does not bear them alone—but is supported by so many holy children of God, yes, by Christ himself. So great a thing is the communion of saints in the church of Christ.

If a person does not believe that this is a fact and that it happens, he is an infidel and has denied Christ and the church. Even if it is not perceived, it is still true. But who could fail to perceive it? After all, why do you not despair and become impatient? Is it due to your strength? By no means. It is because of the communion of saints. Otherwise, you could not even bear a venial sin, or endure what men say against you. So close to you are Christ and the church! It is this that we confess in the Creed: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy, catholic church.” What else is it to believe in the holy church but to believe in the communion of saints? What is it that the saints have in common? Blessings, to be sure, and evils. All things belong to all, as symbolized in the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar, where we are told by the Apostle that we are one body, one bread, one cup. Who can hurt one part of the body without hurting the whole body? What pain can be suffered by the little toe that is not felt by the whole body. We are one body. Whatever another suffers, I also suffer and endure. Whatever good befalls him, befalls me. Thus Christ says that whatever is done unto one of the least of his brethren is done unto him [Matt. 25:40]. When a man receives only the smallest morsel of the bread in the sacrament, is he not said to partake of the bread? And if he despises one crumb of the bread, is he not said to have despised the bread?

Therefore, when we feel pain, when we suffer, when we die, let us turn to this, firmly believing and certain that it is not we alone, but Christ and the church who are in pain and are suffering and dying with us. Christ does not want us to be alone on the road of death, from which all men shrink. Indeed, we set out upon the road of suffering and death accompanied by the entire church. Actually, the church bears it more bravely than we do. Thus we can truthfully apply to ourselves the words Elisha spoke to his fearful servants, “Fear not, for those who are with us are more numerous than those with them. And Elisha prayed and said, ‘Lord, open the eyes of the young man that he may see.’ And the Lord opened his eyes and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire around Elisha” [II Kings 6:16–17].

All that remains for us now is to pray that our eyes, that is, the eyes of our faith, may be opened that we may see the church around us. Then there will be nothing for us to fear, as is also said in Psalm 125 [:2], “As mountains are round about it, so the Lord is round about his people, from this time forth and forever.” Amen.

Martin Luther, AE 42.

A Little Book on Joy - Brian by the Lake

"I'm Using My Bible For A Roadmap"

"When the last trump sounds, he would nominate a committee to consider and report whether it was the last trump or the last but one."

Prof. D. Hermann Sasse Erlangen, Febrary 3, 1949[1]

Rathsberger Str. 4

Very Honored, Dear Brother [Siegried] Hebart!

...You say, as do so many others in American and Germany, that I still had work to do here in the struggle for the Lutheran church. I still believed that in 1937, when Michael Reu called me to America. At that time I still hoped to have the possibility to work and remain here. I see now that I might have been able to effect and save more in Dubuque than in Erlangen. The unionization of German Lutherandom is a process spanning generations, which no one can stop. Elert, the wise man, already saw this in 1933 and therefore greeted DEK. He said to me at that time after a session with Procksch, in which we had formulated the Lutheran demands and I had come out against the German Christians: “Do you realize, Herr Colleague Sasse, where your position leads? Are you prepared to forsake your professorship? Are you prepared to forsake your salary?” I responded: “I do not know. But I hope that God will give me the strength, if it must be so. As for the rest I am convinced that you could too. Your fathers understood this in 1830.”[2] “But that was completely wrong of them,” was his answer. He ever and again admonished me to make a positive confession over against the new [NDSAP] state, until he said to me in 1939: “I can no longer hold you. Go to America. Thus I accepted the call to Philadelphia, which Dr. Knubel had caused to be issued. This was immediately before the war broke out, which rendered all plans naught. …In no man of our church is the entire tragedy of Lutheranism so clear as in him. Lutheranism can no longer say no, as our fathers could still do so over 100 years ago. It says to every exaction “Yes.” It does so in Germany as in Scandinavia, in America as in the ecumenical movement with the intention to “make the best of it.” Therefore it misses all its decisive moments. It does not notice that the train which it awaits, has long left the station. Of him applies what was once said of Randall Davidson, that were Randall Davidson to be at Lambeth when the last trump sounds, he would be sure to nominate a representative committee to consider and report whether it was the last trump or the last but one….[3]

Your faithful, H. Sasse

---

[1] Feuerhahn/Huss, translated by MH. Sasse was ever impatient with Elert. And there is no doubt truth to Sasse criticism of his longtime Erlangen collegue. Green, however, has shown how Elert sheltered Sasse during the Kirchenkampf, and also how Elert in his own manner confessed, also against EKiD. See Green, “Sasse’s Relations to his Erlangen Colleagues” in Hermann Sasse, Man for Our Times? St. Louis CPH.

[2] Elert came from the Old Lutheran Free Church in Prussia (Breslau). MH

[3] Sasse renders this sentence in English in the original.

"Our solemn duty not merely to understand the confession..." Sasse

That the Evangelical Lutheran Church is a confessional church in the strict sense of the word, and that it ceases to be the Church of the Lutheran Reformation as soon as it ceases to be the Church of the Lutheran Confessions, is a matter which admits of no doubt. Here our opponents often see better than we Lutherans when, awed by the constantly repeated charge of “confessionalism,” we try to show that we are not so bad after all. One could fill an entire page with the terms of reproach that have been heaped upon us from the dawn of Pietism down to the days of the German Kirchenkampf (church struggle at the time of Hitler). And we must hear this reproach in an even stronger degree in our day because we are a confessional church, a church that takes seriously the confessions of the Fathers and dares to obligate its pastors to these confessions because (quia) they agree with the Word of God.

If one surveys this unending contumely, if one seeks to understand the passionate nature of the polemics that are directed against this Lutheran confessionalism and which equal the bitterness with which the several confessions fought with each other in the Era of Orthodoxy, then one begins to ask whether these are not more than human forces which are here assailing the Lutheran Church. This is comparable to the attacks launched against the Church of the Augsburg Confession in the sixteenth century, which are not to be explained as the result of merely human passions and human opinions. So much the more it now becomes our solemn duty not merely to understand the confession which we are called to defend, but increasingly and more deeply to comprehend just what is the nature of a true confession and what are its functions in the Church.

Herman Sasse

Letters to Lutheran Pastors 2

"The authority of the confessions is nothing else than the authority of the Holy Scripture." Sasse

When pastors are pledged to the Holy Scripture alone, as is done in many Reformed churches, and it is left to them whether their teaching will be Unitarian or Trinitarian, is this a return to the reverence which we owe to Scripture? Should we not on the basis of our experience in Germany—for instance in the completely non‑confessional Church of Bremen—realize that it is only the norma normata [norm which is normed] of the confessions which shows due respect to the norma normans [norming norm] of the Holy Scriptures? The entire experience of modern church history shows that as soon as the authority of the confessions as the true interpretation of Scripture is weakened, the norma normans of the Holy Scriptures is also overthrown. Therefore in the Lutheran Church the authority of the confessions is nothing else than the authority of the Holy Scripture which is sui ipsius interpres [its own interpreter]. Here lies the basic reason why the Lutheran Church pledges its ministers upon the confession because [quia] “it has been taken from God’s Word and is founded firmly and well therein” (FC Sol. Decl. Comprehensive Summary, III.) and not only in so far [quatenus] they agree with Scripture, as is customary in Reformed churches. The “quia” presupposes a firm faith in the Holy Scripture and its perspicuity.

Hermann Sasse

Letters to Lutheran Pastors 2

"This treasure grows while it is spent. It becomes our most cherished possession if we give it away."

The Reformation began with the discovery, expressed in No. 62 of Luther's 95 Theses, that the true treasure of the church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God. In thesis 60 the gospel is identified with the exercise of the Office of the keys. In other words: the gospel, the treasure entrusted to the church, is essentially the forgiveness of sins announced by the ministers of the church to penitent believing sinners in Word and Sacrament in the stead and by the command of Christ.

It is the most sacred duty of the church at all times and in all places, of every church body and of each local church (congregation), of every Christian and especially of "the ministers of the Word as the leaders of the church of God" (FC SD 10.10; cf. Rom. 12:8; Heb. 13:17), to preserve the gospel. Christ, it is true, has promised that His words shall not pass away, even if heaven and earth shall pass away, and that He will be with His church always, even unto the end of the world, and that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. However, this does not means that the preservation of the gospel is a matter of course, and that whole churches cannot apostasize and perish. God can take away His Word (Amos 8:11f.). He can harden the hearts (Is. 6:9f., cf. Mark 4:12; John 12:37-40; Acts 28:25-27). the Lord of the church can shut doors, remove the candlestick of a church, "spew it out" from His mouth (Rev. 2-3). Luther has constantly warned the church of the Reformation to remember what has happened to the church in the Orient [i.e. under Islam]. Knowing that only God's grace can keep a church, as also the individual Christian, faithful to the gospel, the old Lutheran Church sang hymns like "Lord keep us steadfast in Thy Word" and "Lord Jesus Christ, with us abide." That God may preserve His church in the faith and give her faithful ministers is a petition which we always make in the prayer of the church.

What can we do to preserve the gospel? This treasure grows while it is spent. It becomes our most cherished possession if we give it away. It cannot be "laid away in a napkin" (Lk. 19:20). the gospel cannot be kept in a cupboard like an old family Bible. He who tries to keep it in this way loses it most certainly. The "living and active" Word (Heb. 4:12) cannot be shut in. A church keeps the gospel only if it constantly proclaims it in the administration of the means of grace. for according to Luther ("This sacrament is the gospel") and St. Paul ("As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes," 1 Cor. 11:26), the saving gospel of Christ, the announcement of the forgiveness of sins, comes to us in various ways: in the sermon which faithfully explains Holy Scripture; in Baptism, in Absolution, in the mutual consolation of brethren, in the Sacrament of altar. Here are the essential functions of the church. we usually think of them together and speak of the administration of the means of grace, or the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. These are the functions which constitute the church. The church comes into existence through these functions. It continues to exist through them. It ceases to exist where these functions are no longer carried out. They are the mans through which Christ builds His church, the marks by which it is recognized.

Hermann Sasse, Church Government and Theology, LTJ August 1972, p. 37-38.

How does the Lutheran Church understand itself?

How does the Lutheran Church understand itself? What do we mean, when we call a church “Lutheran”? We mean that it is a Church of the Lutheran confession. That distinguishes Lutheranism from other confessions [of the faith]. One could not label the Orthodox Church of the east simply as “the church of the Nicene Creed.” The Roman Church is not simply “the church of the Tridentinum” [Denzinger 994-1000] or one of the other confessions collected in Denzinger’s Enchiridion or other private collections. It is very telling that there is in no Catholic Church a book, which would correspond to our Book of Concord, which in the nineteenth century was also called “The Symbolic Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.” This is true also of the Reformed Churches. They are not “Churches of the Heidelberg Catechism,” of the Helvetic Confession, of the Gallicana, or of the Thirty-nine Articles. Yet the Lutheran Church of all times and places is the “Church of the Augsburg Confession.” Whence this comes, and upon what this distinction rests, which is here between Lutheranism and other denominations, we will not take up here, as we have spoken about this in letter 2 (“Concerning the Nature of Confession in the Church”) and letter 3 (“On the Problem of the Relation Between the Reformed and Lutheran Church”). We will only recall that for the Lutheran Church, as for the church of the New Testament, the confession of faith is indissoluably bound to the confession of sins and the praise of God. Further, that the confession of faith is not the formulation of a human world-view or religion. It is rather the answer of faith, affected by the Holy Spirit, to the question of Jesus, contained in the Gospel, about who He is. It is the answer of the individual believer as well as the answer of the entire church; and this answer distinguishes the proper church from heresy. The deep pathos, with which the Lutheran speaks of the confession, is not the pathos of a ecclesiastical patriotism, which absolutizes its formulation of faith. It is rather the passion of the faith in the Gospel, the passionate “Yes!” to the pure Gospel. Every article of the Augsburg Confession or of the Formula of Concord is intended to be nothing else than an unfolding of the original profession of the church of Jesus the Christ and Lord. “You are the Messiah,” the savior of His people, the Lamb of God which bears the sin of the world, the Son of Man who will come with the clouds of heaven: this is the topic of all articles about God, about justification, about salvation. And when mention is made of the saints, of the sanctification of Christians, of the communion of saints, then the basic topic of all these articles is the “You alone are holy” [Tu solus sanctus]. Whoever does not understand the Lutheran confessions as the great “Yes!” of faith to the beatific message of Jesus Christ as the only hope of sinners, has never understood them. Only from this is it also to be understood, that the confession in the Lutheran Church is taken so seriously. A confession which wants to be, and is, nothing more than the careful formulation of a theology, the expression of an understanding of Scripture attained in serious searching for the truth, will always bear the character of the more-or-less unbinding and tentative. The last degree of seriousness will be missing from it, which the confession in the sense of the New Testament and of the Lutheran Reformation has. Just as the confession in the New Testament is made with a view toward death and Judgment Day, so also the confessing Christian and the confessing church stands, in the sense of Lutheranism, on the edge of eternity:

Therefore, in the presence of God and of all Christendom among both our contemporaries and our posterity, we wish to have testified that the present explanation of all the foregoing controverted articles here explained, and none other, is our teaching, belief, and confession in which by God’s grace we shall appear with intrepid hearts before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ and for which we shall give account, [F.C. S.D. XII].

Hermann Sasse, Letters to Lutheran Pastors 19

"No missionary has the right to make his own theology or lack of theology the rule and standard of doctrine on the mission field." Sasse

Dr. Carl E. Lundquist

Lutheran World Federation

Geneva

Dear Dr. Lundquist,

…No missionary has the right to make his own theology or lack of theology the rule and standard of doctrine on the mission field. The task of the [LWF] Theological Commission can never be to make a new confession or to assist churches in making that but only to interpret the Confessions…

With kind regards,

Yours in Christ,

Hermann Sasse

There is one thing to preach, the wisdom of the cross!

“Unum praedica, sapientiam crucis!” [There is one thing to preach, the wisdom of the cross!] That is the answer (in a sermon-fragment of 1515; WA 1, 52) which Luther gives to the vital question of the ministry [Predigtamt] of all ages: “What shall I preach?” The wisdom of the cross, the word of the cross, a great stumbling block to the world, is the proper content of Christian preaching, is the Gospel itself. So thinks Luther and the Lutheran Church with him. The Christian world regards that as a great onesidedness. The cross is just one part, among others, of the Christian message. The Second Article is not the whole Creed, and even in the Second Article the cross stands in the midst of other facts of salvation. What a narrowing of the Christian truth Luther is guilty of (so we are told by some Lutherans today) by his limiting real Christian theology to the theology of the cross. Is not there also a theology of incarnation and a theology of resurrection? Must not the theology of the Second Article be supplemented by a theology of the Third Article, a theology of the Holy Ghost and His activity in the church? Luther had, indeed, very much to say about these things also, e.g., in his doctrine on incarnation and in his theology of the sacraments. Besides, he had a more profound understanding of the article of creation than most theologians who preceded him.

Thus the question arises what that alleged narrowing, that much criticized onesidedness of Luther’s theologia crucis, means. The theology of the cross obviously does not mean that for the theologian the whole church year shrinks to Good Friday. It rather means that one cannot understand Christmas, Easter, or Pentecost without Good Friday. Luther was, alongside of Irenaeus and Athanasius, one of the great theologians of the incarnation. He was that because he saw the cross behind the manger. He understood the victory of Easter as well as any theologian of the Eastern Church. But he understood it because he understood it as the victory of the Crucified. The same can be said of his understanding of the activity of the Holy Ghost. It is always the cross which illuminates all chapters of theology because the deepest nature of revelation is hidden in the cross. This being so, Luther’s theologia crucis wants to be more than one of the many theological theories which have appeared in the course of the history of the Church. It claims to be, in contrast to another theology, which now prevails in Christendom and which Luther calls the theologia gloriae, the correct, the scriptural theology with which the Church of Christ stands and falls. Only of the preaching of this theology, Luther thinks, can it be said that it is the preaching of the Gospel.

Sasse, Letters to Lutheran Pastors 18

"Those who want to anticipate the perfection – make the invisible visible – are chiliasts." Sasse

“King of awful might and splendor, Free salvation thou dost render.., With sweet Mary of the garden, With the Thief sin failed to harden, From thee I, too, hope for pardon” , says the Dies irae – Day of Wrath - of the Catholic Requiem Mass. Even the Canon of the Mass is not without the ‘sola gratia’, when God is addressed as the one who does not count merit, but rather grants forgiveness (non aestimator meriti, sed veniae largitor). The same holds true for our doctrine of the sacraments. That baptism is necessary for salvation as the bath of regeneration is Biblical and Catholic teaching, as much as the doctrine of the real presence. Our protest against Ecumenical enthusiasm is centered exclusively on the word of God, which the enthusiasts – just as in the days of the Reformation - do not want to accept. We are speaking solely of the Church of Christ, about which our confession speaks, which - born out of the pure Word and the pure Gospel – is a reality in this world, even though we can only recognize her by these means of grace, “the Church is people scattered throughout the whole world. They agree regarding the Gospel and have the same Christ, the same Holy Spirit and the same Sacraments” (Apology of the Augsburg Confession VII/VIII.11).

This is the “Una Sancta” and not the dream image of a church composed of all denominations that unionizes these groups into a giant church as ecumenical Chiliasm is want to project it. The glory of the true church “is hidden under the cross” [Ap.VII/VIII.18], until with the glory of Christ on the Day of Judgment will become manifest the glory of the Church as his spiritual body. With the one shepherd the one flock will become visible. Those who want to anticipate the perfection – make the invisible visible – are chiliasts. May God gracefully protect us and our congregations from such enthusiasm and keep us by his Word.

Let us, dear Brothers in Office, stand where we are, in faithful service to the Word and the Sacraments, which will build the ‘Una Sancta’ where and when it pleases God [A.C. V].

In the bonds of the faith, I greet you, Your

Hermann Sasse

63 Clifton Street

Prospect, South Australia

October 16, 1961

Sasse on the Failure of 20th Century European Lutheranism

Sasse carried on personal correspondence with Peter Brunner, and even when returning from a visit to the U.S. in the mid 60’s, met Brunner in Rome and the two visited the Catechombs. Note what Sasse has to say about Brunner and the demise of European Lutheranism and its practical results. He wrote to J.A.O. Preus on April 7, 1962. "I met Bornkamm (Heinrich, the ch[urch]. Historian) and had a most moving meeting with Peter Brunner with whom I was connected in the church struggle in Hitler's time. He is now an old man and quite disappointed with Lutheranism in the EkiD. He told me he looked back at a frustrated life because all his attempts to restore the right of the Lutheran Chruch within the union had proved futile. In case his church would accept the ordination of women he would withdraw from all activities in the church. He was disgusted with the new Biblical theology which destroys all doctrine. To my question why he did not write against these men he replied he was too tired for further fights. It is an enigma how this theology which destroys the historic character of almost the whole 'Heilsgeschichte' and is satisfied with the 'kerygma' which it finds behind the 'legends' could get hold of the youth of German Protestantism. Why is it that the old men in the high seventies carry away the youth of our churches, even in America, like Bultmann and Tillich? It is probably a return to the theology of the time before 1914, a revival of that historicity which has lost the ability to think in terms of dogmatics. The practical result is that the generation of the younger pastors can hardly be accustomed to practical work. [...] And how can it be otherwise if I preach the resurrection of Christ with the conviction that the Easter Gospel is a legend. [...] The type of professor who at the same time was a Seelsorger has died out. Where such professors still exist, they are mocked at, as Prof. Trillhaas in Göttingen has lately pointed out." Sasse - J.A.O Preus Corresp., Ft. Wayne.

Excerpt from the upcoming volumes 3 & 4 of "The Lonely Way", CPH.

You Are Cordially Invited to a SERVICE OF INSTALLATION for Rev. Matthew Carl Harrison, President The Vice Presidents, and Other Officers, Boards and Commissions of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod Saturday, September 11, 2010 | 10 a.m. (CT) The Chapel of Saint Timothy and Saint Titus on the campus of Concordia Seminary 801 Seminary Place St. Louis, Missouri 63105 Lunch and festivities immediately following on the seminary campus. LCMS clergy are invited to process. Please bring vestments (red stole) and RSVP by September 1 to burresonk@csl.edu. Additional Information The installation service and reception are open to everyone. Pastors, please feel free to share this invitation with your congregation. For those who are unable to be present, the installation service also will be streamed live at www.lcms.org/live. If you have questions or need additional information, contact the LCMS Church Information Center at 888-843-5267 or infocenter@lcms.org. © Copyright 2003 - 2010 The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. All rights reserved.

"Strictly speaking, there is no special teaching of the Lutheran Church." Sasse

All of this raises the question whether there still remains in Lutheranism a stronghold of resistance against an enthusiasm that is destroying the dogma of the Church. Such resistance can not be offered from within the World Council [of Churches] and the [Lutheran] World Federation. For even if a Church that still stands by the Formula Concord’s “We believe, teach and confess” could – in good conscience - belong to these organizations, it would be but a hopeless minority. And even if its witness could amount to a true testimony after having joined, would it not be quickly pushed aside as a mere minority position?. If the Missouri Synod (LC-MS) were to join the [Lutheran] World Federation – something that folks in Geneva have been awaiting for years – nothing would change in the World Federation, but everything would give way in LC-MS. This important church body would cease being a confessional church. Who would benefit? Maybe the players on the stage of global church politics, but no one else: neither congregations nor pastors. The ecumene does not worry about the likely damage: a church fractured , thousands of consciences violated, hearts broken and souls lost. It is quite possible that the lethal illness of ecumenical Schwaermertum takes a hold of this or another church. But with God’s help - somewhere and somehow – there must be and will be testimony to the living Lutheran witness of word and deed. It does not all revolve around the word “Lutheran”. Maybe one day we confessional Lutherans will have to come up with a new name, if the current trend prevails that every Protestant of German and Northern European provenance continues to use the designation “Lutheran,” unless he is of a decidedly Reformed persuasion. Neither should it be a matter of churchly patriotism. The pride that arises from membership in the large “family” of Lutheran Churches which includes in the tally the atheists and sectarians of entire countries, is best left to other folk. It isn’t even a matter of the Confessional documents per se. The key lies solely with faith that they confess; the faith of the Apostles and of the one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, to which they attest. Strictly speaking, there is no special teaching of the Lutheran Church. The ‘sola gratia,’‘sola fide’ is not Luther’s invention; it is the Gospel which has always nourished Christendom, ever since the Lord Jesus Christ called sinners to himself. All of medieval Christendom has lived in this manner. I know of not one single Christian of the medieval era, who died while invoking his own merit, as was later the case of the enlightened illuminati of Protestantism.

Hermann Sasse, Letters to Lutheran Pastors 51

The "Holy Spirit remains hidden from us unless we find Him in the Word and in the sacraments." Sasse

As God outside of Christ always remains the hidden God, so His Holy Spirit remains hidden from us unless we find Him in the Word and in the sacraments. And just as the revelation of God in Christ is at the same time God's hiding in the human nature of Christ, so the Holy Spirit of God is deeply hidden in the means of grace. He is always an object of faith, not of sight. "I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him; but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts ... " [Small Catechism II, 6]. Similarly we cannot believe in the Holy Spirit except by the witness He gives of Himself in God's Word. There both are found, the Son and the Spirit. There the Spirit witnesses to the Son of God (1 Cor. 12:3). There the Son bears witness to the Holy Spirit (see the words of the Lord about the Paraclete in John 14-16). Without the Gospel, without the apostolic witness about Christ, we would be like those disciples in Acts 19:1-7 who had only received John's baptism and did not know "that there is a Holy Spirit." We might then know of the Holy Spirit as a force, a divine power that comes upon certain people, but we would not know that He is God. Only he who confesses in the Second Article that the Son is "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father ... " [Nicene (Niceo-Constantinopolitan) Creed; Denzinger 86] can go on to confess the faith of the Third Article: I believe "in the Holy Spirit, the lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son: who together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified: who spoke by the prophets" [Tappert, p. 18, 19].

"We must always ask ourselves whether what we preach is in fact God's Word." Sasse

We seek the Holy Spirit where He is not to be found when we take it as self-.evident that He has to come with every sermon we preach. God's Word indeed has the promise: "It shall not return to Me empty" [Isaiah 55:11]. But we must always ask ourselves whether what we preach is in fact God's Word. When the sermon is a true exposition of the Scriptural text, then, in spite of all our weakness, God's Word is preached. But how many sermons are preached, also in Lutheran churches, where the Gospel is not taught fully and clearly! We seem to suppose that it is enough to train young men for four or five years. They pass their examinations more or less adequately. They are ordained and sent to some field of service. They may gather some people who do not belong to any church, but who are interested in religious questions. These then form a congregation that receives the rights of a Lutheran congregation without understanding the Catechism or the Augsburg Confession. The same thing happens in the European churches. Young candidates equipped with Bultmann's theology are sent to the sprawling suburbs of our large cities. Or they are sent into the country, where the farmers and laborers may be fortunate enough not to understand what the young man believes, or does not believe. Do we really suppose the Holy Spirit will all by Himself build a church and congregation there? He can of course make use of such instruments too. "The Word of God is not fettered" (2 Timothy 2:9), and many a pastor has been brought to the Gospel by his congregation.[1] Many who did not understand the Gospel and the sacraments have learned in the desert of their own theological existence what the university did not teach them. But that such things happen in the mercy of God does not relieve us of having to be quite clear about what kind of a proclamation it is to which the promise has been given that through it the Holy Spirit comes to the souls of men.

Sasse, Letters to Lutherans Pastors 51

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[1] We cannot recommend highly enough Bo Giertz’ The Hammer of God, published in revised form (Minneapolis: Augsburg Books 2005).

Sasse on Seeking the Holy Spirit Where He Cannot Be Found

We modern Christians seek the Holy Spirit where He is not to be found. In doing this we are, however, certainly not the first. This is a danger which has always been there since the days of the apostles, and ever and again there have been Christians, indeed whole churches, that have fallen victim to it. In the second century there was Montanism. The question which then deeply troubled Christianity and divided it was whether it was actually the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who was re­vealing Himself in the new prophesyings. We may recall the spiritualistic Franciscans in the Middle Ages, the Enthusiast movements of the Schwarmer against whom Luther had to battle, and in our day the various Pentecostal movements. Earnest Christians have often felt com­pelled to admit what leading men in the Fellowship Movement, who once acknowledged the Pentecostal Movement's speaking in tongues, which had gone on since 1905, came to recognize: It was not the Holy Spirit.

We are now not speaking of this danger, but of the frivolous manner in which we in the modern world speak of the experience of the Holy Spirit. The roots of this are in the English Enthusiasm of the 17th century and in the Pietism and Methodism of the 18th century. When at the Berlin Kirchentag of 1853, in a profoundly untruthful declaration, the participants declared themselves loyal to the Augsburg Confession "with heart and mouth," but also with the reservation that the unity of the confession they were making was not to be injured by the differing views on its Article X [on the Sacrament of the Altar] that were held by the Lutherans, the Reformed, and those from Union churches, this uniting of Evangelical Germany was regarded by many as a work of the Holy Spirit. It has become almost customary at great church gatherings, and also at the big ecu­menical gatherings, to perceive and solemnly proclaim the blowing of the Holy Spirit. A sort of new Pentecost is experienced in the singing of great hymns in many languages. We need to consider the mass psy­chology which is going on in such big gatherings, especially at a time when the world's techniques for manipulating a crowd and its modern communications media are penetrating the church.

What is said here is not spoken against getting things organized as such, nor against the way news can now go round the world, nor against the means of communication provided by modern technology. Of such things Vilmar already observed that they are there not only for the children of this world, but are also to be brought into the service of Christ's church. But we are asking whether we are always aware that there can be mass psychoses also in the church. When the church does take for its use the techniques which can control or lead a crowd of people, then there is the most urgent need to pray for that great gift of grace, the discerning and the testing of the spirits.

We seek the Holy Spirit where He is not to be found when we take it as self-evident that the way our church is developing is altogether due to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This is not only Rome's great error; it is an error found also in other churches. The "Message" of the Lambeth Conference of 1958 begins with the statement that the bishops there assembled wished to share with all members of their church in the world the experience "which has come to us, in a fresh and wonderful way, by the power of God's Spirit among us." "We ourselves have been knit together by the Holy Spirit in mutual understanding and trust." "Because we ourselves have been thus drawn together, God has given us a message of reconciliation for the Church and the world." This mes­sage then begins with the statement: "A divided Church cannot heal the wounds of a divided world." Then God is thanked "that in Asia and Africa, as well as in Britain and America, Christian Churches are ac­tively moving towards a greater measure of unity" (Report, pp. 1, 29). There is then nothing to wonder at in the answer given at a press conference by an Anglican bishop. He was asked why the Lambeth Conference, which had previously rejected birth control, had now ap­proved it. He answered that it was by the guidance of the Holy Spirit! At Lambeth, then, the Holy Spirit is said to have confirmed the Anglican understanding of the church as well as the unionism in India and Amer­ica. What has happened here to the Biblical: "It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us ..." [Acts 15:28]? The same miracle is said to have occurred at the Barmen synod in 1934, where Karl Barth's Be­kenntnisunion was approved, and the Lutherans, the Reformed, and those of the Union churches declared that "they sought a common mes­sage for the need and temptation of the church in our day. With gratitude to God they surely believe that a common message has been put into their mouth" (Schmidt II, 92; Cochrane, The Church's Confession Under Hitler, p. 237).[1] What has happened here to "Behold, I have put My words in your mouth" (Jeremiah 1:9; cf. Deuteronomy 18:18)?

What Luther has to say about all this may be found in the Smalcald Articles: All this is the old devil and the old serpent who made enthusiasts of Adam and Eve. He led them from the external Word of God to spiritualizing and to their own imaginations, and he did this through other external words.... In short, enthusiasm clings to Adam and his des­cendants from the beginning to the end of the world. It is a poison implanted and inoculated in man by the old dragon, and it is the source, strength,. and power of all heresy, including that of the papacy and Mohammedanism" (SA III, VIII, 5 and 9).

Hermann Sasse, Letters to Lutheran Pastors 51

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[1] Sasse upbraied Bonhoeffer on just this point. “Here Bonhoeffer was as imprudent as Asmussen… And he did this by openingly declaring that the Barmen Confession is God’s Word: ‘If we take this message of the synod [Barmen] with absolute earnestness, we must then confess that God the Lord himself is responsible for this message.’ Then he asks: ‘What has God said regarding his church and the direction it is to go if he has spoken through Barmen and Dahlem?’ This is pure Schwaermertum, when ends in blasphemy.” “Against Fanaticism” in The Lonely Way I, p. 309. MH

"You must always keep in mind that Missouri is no longer that intolerant church it was supposed to be." Sasse

Prospect, April 20, 1960[1]

My dear Tom [Hardt],

…I hope you had good holidays. On Good Friday afternoon I gave the Sacrament to a congregation of “migrants” as the immigrants are called here (very significantly) and my wife was able to accompany me. She is definitely better now… Thank you furthermore for the clippings from the papers which show how deeply the whole affair must have moved the Swedish people. I shall pass on the clippings to Dr. Behnken who just wrote me about the events after the American papers had reported. He will write to Bishop Giertz, trying to encourage him to go on with his fight though he and the whole presidium of Missouri sees clearly that this problem canot be solved in th frame work of the Church of Sweden. They see that a Free Church only can bring a solution. You must always keep in mind that Missouri is no longer that intolerant church it was supposed to be. The leading men there are dissatisfied with the merely negative attitude towards other Lutherans of former times. On the other hand they are very sober and see that a national church can no longer be a confessional church. Hence they are doubtful whether Bishop Giertz will succeed, or that they are not doubtful of the result. I am encouraging them to think of a free church in Sweden. They would not interfere with other churches, but if there are people who can no longer accept the scandal of eternal compromise, they would certainly be prepared to consider possible relationships. Missouri itself is, as you know, in a crisis…

Yours in the fellowship of tribulation and patience and faith,

Hermann Sasse

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[1] Sasse carried on correspondence with his dear younger friend in Christ, Rev. Tom Hardt, at nearly a letter a week for some 20 years. MH

Theology and Church Governance

We are all aware of the demands and pressures laid on our office. In churches nowadays the pastor has to do so many things which do not really belong to his office, that he scarcely has time for his real office, "the ministry of teaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments" [Augsburg Confession V; Tappert, p. 31]. In Germany I knew super­intendents and deans who were so frazzled by the work of the week that only on Saturday evening did they finally come to sermon prepa­ration. We hear something of this already in an article by August Vilmar[1] in 1849, entitled "Power over the Spirits." He spoke of where all this would lead, all this external business, all the meetings of church groups, all this having to get the money together. Deacons are to have the responsibility for such things. They are not to draw a pastor away from what he is called to do as a pastor. Vilmar preached to deaf ears, this great pastor of pastors, for whom a consistorialized church had no place. The process of the secularization of the holy ministry was not halted by all the rethinking of the nature ofthe office after World War I, nor even by the Church Struggle (Kirchenkampf) in Germany. In pondering all this we may catch a glimpse of what a church still knows of the activity of the Holy Spirit. What is happening with the holy ministry shows what is wrong with us. We seek the Holy Spirit where He is not to be found. We no longer find Him where He would be found. We speak of Him, but our faith in Him, in His deity, in His divine Person, has grown weak, or has even been lost. If things continue to go on like this, the outcome for our church is only too clear.

Hermann Sasse

Letters to Lutheran Pastors 51

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"We do not exist in order to justify every move of a church government after the fact."

We must never forget that Lutheran theology arose from the exegesis of Holy Scripture. It lives by the correct understanding of Scripture. It dies when it is no longer a living explication of Scripture.

A series of other questions arise regarding related matters. Why, for instance, does Lutheran theology today no longer play the role in the life of the church which it did in the nineteenth century? Men involved in church government—one thinks of Harless, Kliefoth, Vilmar, Walther—were still learned theologians. Since then this has become a luxury which the modern church leader can no longer realize. But there is one thing we theologians must never forget. We do not exist in order to justify every move of a church government after the fact. We do not exist in order to provide every church government which comes along with the famous theology “with which a person can get started at something” (Dibelius[1]). In our office, where ever it may be, we bear the responsibility for maintaining the Lutheran church and her doctrine. But we can only do this if we confess this doctrine ourselves. May God grant us all the strength and fortitude for such confessing, without which no true theology exists.

I greet you in the bond of the faith,

Your Hermann Sasse

Letters to Lutheran pastors xxi

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[1] Otto Dibelius, Bishop of Berlin and consistent supporter of the Union, is a persistent target for Sasse’s jibes. MH

"Aversion to Facts and Action"?

Before all, theology is life, designed for real life, and should determine it. It must be harmonious and constant, must not allow itself to be shoved and pushed, shaped and reshaped by the life it is designed to govern... Everything designed to influence real life or to govern it has great difficulty tolerating, or cannot at all tolerate, novelties whose content is stable. And it has real difficulty tolerating purely formal novelties. So it is with theology and jurisprudence... Consequently, instructors in theology and jurisprudence "are not in position" each week to surprise their hearers, if not with new discoveries, then with new attempts or experiments. But this disadvantage is balanced out by the fact that from these disciplines proceeds an ordering and establishing of actual life, inner as well as outer, private as well as public.

Even this is hardest for rhetorical theology to grasp. It does not want to MAKE an impact, it wants to TALK, talk for its own pleasure, and awaken in others a similar pleasure. Meanwhile, it eagerly plants in others its aversion to facts and action. The pastoral office is supposed to talk as the rhetoricians do, and only talk. This is the full-fledged idea of the theological rhetors, often nourished only in secret, but often unabashedly proclaimed.

A.F.C. Vilmar, The Theology of Facts Verses The Theology of Rhetoric, pp. 43-44.

"This is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith."

5:1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

6 This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.9 If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son.10 Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son. 11 And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. 14 And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.

I John 5