Yet, it is remarkable what one individual can do when the focus is outward, when the cause is the larger work of the kingdom, and when that individual feels personally the burdens of others in need. The holidays always bring with them human interest stories of individuals or children who rally the rest of us to a noble cause. For the Lutheran Church, we have our own individuals who have stood larger than life. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg for some and for my own church, Johann Konrad Wilhelm Loehe.
Dr. C.F.W. Walther said of Loehe: “Next to God it is Pastor Loehe whom our synod must almost solely thank for the happy increase and rapid strengthening in which it rejoices; it must rightly honor him as its real spiritual father.” Imagine that -- one man who never ever visited America is both the physical and spiritual father of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod!
I borrow a paragraph from Pr Paul McCain.
Although he never left Germany, Johann Konrad Wilhelm Loehe, born in Fuerth in 1808, had a profound impact on the development of Lutheranism in North America. Serving as pastor in the Bavarian village of Neuendettelsau, he recognized the need for workers in developing lands and assisted in training emergency helpers to be sent as missionary pastors to North America, Brazil, and Australia. A number of the men he sent to the United States became founders of The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. Through his financial support, a theological school was established in Fort Wayne, Ind., and a teachers’ institute in Saginaw, Mich. Loehe was known for his confessional integrity and his interest in liturgy and catechetics. His devotion to works of Christian charity led to the establishment of a deaconess training house and homes for the aged. Löhe, through study and reading of the classic sources of Lutheran theology: Scripture, the Confessions, Luther and the orthodox dogmaticians, reclaimed a deep love for the Lutheran Confessions, the liturgy and the chuch’s sacramental life and call to works of mission and charity. He was an ardent advocate of the primary place of the Small Catechism in the life of the Lutheran congregation, school and home and is perhaps most well known among us today as a catechist and founder of the Lutheran deaconess movement. I can only add to this that he produced a liturgy and agenda that has had profound impact upon the way Lutherans worship even to this present day!
My point here is not merely to laud Loehe but to point out what one individual can do. Imagine what he might have been able to accomplish had he the benefit of the technology, communication, and travel resources we take for granted! Do not discount what you can do for the good and noble cause of the Lord and His work! Instead of allowing the culture and trends of society to isolate us, we need to utilize these resources in our day to do the same kind of work that Loehe did a couple of centuries ago. We can make a difference. We do have opportunities. We have resources. The only question is whether or not we have the will and courage to put these into effect!
6 comments:
I have always thought that Johann Konrad Wilhelm Loehe was independently wealthy - a multimillionaire of his time. If so, then the LCMS could use a few more of these good men.
Loehe's efforts produced results! Had LCMS districts already existed, Loehe's money would have gone down a black hole, never to be seen again.
Dr. C.F.W. Walther said of Loehe: "Next to God it is Pastor Loehe whom our synod must almost solely thank for the happy increase and rapid strengthening in which it rejoices; it must rightly honor him as its real spiritual father."
Such an undated and unreferenced quote needs to be put in its own context, rather than having an implication it was Walther's final assessment of Wilhelm Loehe. Walther wrote that statement about Loehe in 1852, followed his 1851 visit with F.C.D. Wyneken to Loehe in Germany in an attempt to work out their doctrinal disagreements, particularly on church and ministry. Loehe issued similar glowing phrases about his two Missouri Synod visitors in his October 24, 1851, report, The Visit Of The Two Presidents Of The Lutheran Synod Of Missouri, Ohio,And Other States--Walther And Wyneken In Germany."
Yet a year after the Walther quote was made, Loehe severed his relationship with Walther, Wyneken, and the Missouri Synod in a letter (edged in black), which he referred to as a “funeral dirge”, following the Missouri Synod’s approval of Walther’s Kirche und Amt.
Loehe did not just reject the doctrine of church and ministry held by the Missouri Synod and Walther in his book. Loehe also stated in a 1853 letter to Georg M. Grossman, "I can pretty well say for certain that Walther in his book has correctly presented the opinion of Luther and those theologians who follow him on this point." And, as for Loehe's view of the doctrine of church and ministry, he states, "The doctrines of the Symbols appears to me not to be finished [fertig]. If it were, I do not conceive how both sides could appeal to them, which has been the case for a long time... Were it otherwise, were the individual-Lutheran [individuell-lutherischen] view fully and purely expressed in the Symbols, only that people like me didn't see it, it is indeed certain that people of my type would not have been tolerated in the Lutheran Church."
In his Preface to The Church and The Office of the Ministry (CPH, 2012), President Harrision states (p. xiv): "Finally, [Wilhelm] Löhe's 1853 letter to G.M. Grossmann has been appended (see below, pp. 439-46) because in it Löhe briefly explains his perception of the strengths and shortcomings of Walther's The Church and The Office of the Ministry. This letter also demonstrates Walther's contension that Löhe held a less than quia view of the Lutheran Confessions and that our great and beloved co-founder of the Missouri Synod--despite his glorious strengths--specifically and knowingly rejected Luther's view of the Office of the Ministry at key points."
So much for a publisher's fairy tale claim, "Loehe was known for his confessional integrity and his interest in liturgy and catechetics."
As for President Harrison's reference to Loehe as our "co-founder of the Missouri Synod" (which Loehe had referred to as "amerikanische Poebelherrschaft" [American mob-rule]), that is simply another fairy tale. And this fairy tale originated from someone who was never a member of the Missouri Synod, James L. Schaaf (1932-1996), in his doctoral thesis, "Wilhelm Löhe's Relation to the American Church" (Ruprecht-Karl University, Heidelberg, 1961), as well as in Schaaf's article, "Löhe and the Missouri Synod" (Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, 45, May, 1972, 59).
In his At Home in the House of My Fathers, Harrison notes, "Almost all of Loehe's men who came to America before 1852 joined the Missouri Synod and became its strong proponents." As for Georg M. Grossmann, he and another Sendlinge, Johannes Deindoerfer, formed the Iowa Synod in 1854. Using Schaaf's methodology, there is far more evidence that Wilhelm Loehe could best be considered as the "co-founder" and "father" of the church body that became the apostate XXXA.
After the Loehe/Missouri Synod split in 1853, there were a number of articles in Der Lutheraner against Loehe as well as disagreements with the Iowa Synod and the Ohio Synod, both associated with Loehe. For example, in the November 13, 1869, edition of Der Lutheraner C.F.W. Walther wrote (p.49) the following in regard to Loehe’s heterodoxy regarding the office of public ministry:
"From this one can see how grievously and dangerously the Buffalo Synod, Pastor Loehe, the Synod of Iowa, and all those err from the truth who together with them assert that the church or the Christians do not have the keys originally and immediately but through the pastors!... For when Pastor Loehe had in his heart fallen away from the symbols of our church, then he also confessed honestly and publicly with mouth and pen that he could no longer subscribe to the symbolical books of our church unconditionally because he had found errors in them."
Dr. Strickert,
Regardless of the later conflict, are you really going to deny that the work of Loehe was, indeed, one of the most profound factors in the establishment and growth of the Missouri Synod? You seem willing to go a lot further than Walther himself. He never detracted from the work of Loehe even after their divergence. No one but a fool ignores everything else to focus only on disagreement.
Dr. Strickert,
Regardless of the later conflict, are you really going to deny that the work of Loehe was, indeed, one of the most profound factors in the establishment and growth of the Missouri Synod? You seem willing to go a lot further than Walther himself. He never detracted from the work of Loehe even after their divergence. No one but a fool ignores everything else to focus only on disagreement.
Anonymous poster (repeatedly) asks: "Regardless of the later conflict, are you really going to deny that the work of Loehe was, indeed, one of the most profound factors in the establishment and growth of the Missouri Synod?"
No one has denied the recognition of the work of Loehe stated in the 2nd paragraph of the February 1, 2013, 11:23 AM post. As noted there, the work of Pastor Loehe was sending preachers (82 of them) to America, most of whom helped found or later joined the Missouri Synod. These men also came to agree with Walther, not Loehe, on the Lutheran Confessions, including the doctrine of church and ministry. (Loehe had also transferred the ownership of the Fort Wayne seminary to the Missouri Synod shortly after it was founded in 1847.)
And in giving recognition to Loehe for this contribution of Lutheran men, one might also give some recognition to Johann Grabau and the Buffalo Synod, from whom a number of pastors and congregations eventually left to join the Missouri Synod.
One should also give at least double recognition to Friedrich Brunn, a pastor in Steeden, Germany, who also sided with Walther, not Loehe. Pastor Brunn began a preseminary school in Germany, and after Brunn met with Walther in 1860, his school eventually contributed over 230 young men to Missouri Synod seminaries, to become pastors, teachers, and leaders throughout the Missouri Synod. Brunn was also an important leader in the Lutheran Free Church in Germany.
Anonymous poster also demonstrates confusion in his misphrased, "the later conflict." The conflict actually began with Loehe's (amerikanische Poebelherrschaft) view of the newly formed Missouri Synod and its polity based on the principles C.F.W. Walther (with the assistance of Dr. Carl Eduard Vehse's 1839 Protestation document) had gathered from Scripture, the Lutheran Confessions, and the writings of Martin Luther. The conflict continued through the 1851 visit of Walther and Wyneken to Loehe, the mutual flowery reports (and Walther's less flowery private reports to his wife) regarding that visit, Loehe's 1853 break with Walther and the Missouri Synod, Loehe's 1859 admission that, not his, but Walther's position was the confessional Lutheran position, and the Missouri Synod's subsequent doctrinal disagreements with Loehe's Ohio and Iowa Synods.
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