BASIS INTERPRETED.
26. Authentic Explanation of Doctrinal Basis.—In his Popular Theology, published for the first time in 1834, S. S. Schmucker wrote: "The General Synod of the Lutheran Church has adopted only the twenty-one doctrinal articles, omitting even the condemnatory clauses of these, and also the entire catalog of Abuses corrected. No minister, however, considers himself bound to believe every sentiment contained in these twenty-one articles, but only the fundamental doctrines. Accordingly, the pledge of adoption required at licensure and ordination is couched in the following terms . . .: 'Do you believe that the fundamental doctrines of the Word of God are taught in a manner substantially correct in the doctrinal articles of the Augsburg Confession?' The Lutheran divines of this country are not willing to bind either themselves or others to anything more than the fundamental doctrines of the Christian revelation, believing that an immense mass of evil has resulted to the Church of God from the rigid requisition of extensive and detailed creeds. . . . We can see no sufficient warrant for any Christian Church to require as a term of admission or communion greater conformity of view than is requisite to harmony of feeling and successful cooperation in extending the kingdom of Christ. . . . Had the early Protestants endeavored to select the principal and fundamental doctrines of Christianity, required a belief of them from all applicants for admission into their ranks, and agreed among themselves that discrepance of views on matters of non-fundamental nature should neither be a bar to ecclesiastical communion nor fraternal affection, they would have saved the Church from the curse of those dissensions by which piety was in a great degree destroyed and on several occasions the very foundations of Protestantism shaken." (Edition of 1848, 50 ff.) In 1850, attacking Reynolds in the Lutheran Observer on account of his defection from American Lutheranism, Schmucker stated: From the very outset the General Synod had abandoned the distinctive Lutheran doctrines, and nevertheless retained the Lutheran name; in spite of his deviations from the Lutheran symbols he, with perfect right, could call himself a faithful Lutheran. (L., 6, 139.) Schmucker, "the most authentic interpreter of the Constitution of the General Synod and that of its theological seminary," never identified the "fundamental doctrines of the Bible" with the twenty-one articles of the Augsburg Confession. According to him the fundamentals are obtained by striking from the Augustana everything that is objectionable to any Evangelical Church and retaining the remainder as the substance of Protestantism. All of the fundamental doctrines, Schmucker declared, are contained in the ecumenical creeds; everything else is trans-fundamental, not required by the General Synod for Christian union and communion. In his sermon at the convention in Winchester, 1853, Schmucker maintained that the essential, fundamental doctrines in which the General Synod demands agreement, are "the cardinal doctrines of the Reformation, the points of agreement between the different creeds of the sixteenth century," distinctive doctrines being points of non-essential, non-fundamental difference. According to Schmucker the General Synod's motto, "Uniformity in fundamentals and charity or liberty in non-fundamentals," never meant anything else than uniformity in the doctrines in which the evangelical denominations agree, and liberty with respect to distinctive tenets, also those of Lutheranism. In his Lutheran Manual of 1855 Schmucker wrote: "The founders of the General Synod were men of enlarged, liberal, and Scriptural views of the kingdom of Christ. Convinced of the gradual abandonment of the whole mass of symbolical books in Germany, as well as from the personal examination of them, of their want of adaptedness to the age, they regarded it as the grand vocation of the American Church, released by Providence from civil servitude, to reconstruct her framework, assuming a more friendly attitude toward sister churches, and so organizing as to promote Scriptural union among Protestants, and to bring up our church-institutions to the increased light of Biblical study and Providential development. This enlightened, this millennial attitude of the founders of the General Synod, the writer can confidently affirm, from personal knowledge, having been well acquainted with the greater part of them, and having been present at Baltimore in 1819, when the formation of the Synod was, after ample discussion, resolved on; and at Hagerstown, in 1820, when the Constitution was formed. But the Constitution speaks for itself; for it invested the General Synod with power to form a new Confession of Faith, and new catechisms, suited to the progress of Biblical light and the developed views of the Church. Subsequently it was believed that the necessities of the case would be best met by the retention of the Augsburg Confession, on account of its importance as a link in the chain of historical Christianity, and by prescribing its qualified adoption, viz., as to the fundamental aspects of Scripture doctrine. . . . It is an incontestable fact, which can easily be established, that the original standpoint of the General Synod, whilst controlled by the Pennsylvania Synod, was rejection of the binding authority of the old confessions. This is undeniably proved by their not even naming the Augsburg Confession in their Constitution, by their declining even a qualified recognition of it, and by their inserting a clause expressly giving authority to the General Synod to form a confession of faith; yea, even going further, and giving the same authority to each District Synod also. (See the original Constitution, Article III, Section 2.) It seems to me no intelligent and unprejudiced mind can resist this conclusion as to their doctrinal standpoint, whilst I and others who were present know it to have been as above stated." In his manuscript notes Schmucker says: "It is worthy of constant remembrance that during the first four centuries, under the immediate pupils of the inspired apostles and their successors, the voice of the universal Church under the whole heaven was that nothing more than fundamental agreement should be required for communion in the Christian Church and Christian ministry. Not a single orthodox church practised differently. All required assent only to the several ecumenical confessions, the so-called Apostles' and the Nicene Creeds. . . . No, the practise of binding the conscience of ministers and members to extended creeds, containing minor points, on which men in all churches and all ages have differed and ever will differ, and thus splitting up the Body of Christ without His authority, is, and must be, highly criminal. The fathers who founded the General Synod all considered the recognition of fundamentals as sufficient, and here, in this free country, determined to return to the practise of the earlier and purer centuries of the Church. These fathers were Drs. J. G. Schmucker, George Lochmann, C. Endress, F. W. Geissenhainer, Daniel Kurtz, H. A. Muhlenberg, P. F. Mayer, H. Schaeffer, and D. F. Schaeffer, Rev. Gottl. Shober, and Rev. Peter Schmucker, with their younger colaborers, Drs. Benjamin Kurtz, S. S. Schmucker [Charles Philip Krauth?]. [tr. note: sic] Holding this opinion, they did not introduce any recognition, even of the Augsburg Confession, into their original Constitution in 1820. But at the third meeting, in 1825, they adopted certain resolutions for the foundation of the theological seminary and statutes for its government, and bound its professors to the fundamental doctrines of Scripture as taught in the Augsburg Confession. They thus returned to the principles and practise of the earlier and purer centuries of the Church, when the influence of the Savior and His inspired apostles was more sensibly felt in the Church." (Spaeth, 1, 342. 337. 354.)
27. "Lutheran Observer" Interpreting Basis.—Apart from its coarseness and fanaticism, especially during the thirty years' editorship of Dr. B. Kurtz, the Lutheran Observer has throughout its existence, from 1831 to 1916, always been an essentially correct exponent of the original doctrinal and confessional attitude of the General Synod. Consistently a General Synodist cannot disown the Observer without renouncing the General Synod itself. Now, according to the Observer, the General Synod has always stood for unity in essentials, or fundamentals, and liberty in non-fundamentals, understanding by fundamentals those doctrines only in which Evangelical Christendom is agreed, and by non-fundamentals distinctive tenets, also those of Lutheranism. Quoting from Dr. S. Sprecher's inaugural address at Wittenberg College, Springfield, O., the Lutheran Observer, October 26, 1849, declared that Lutherans [of the General Synod], in adopting the confessions, "do not bind their conscience to more than what all evangelical Christians [denominations] regard as fundamental doctrines of the Bible. We are bound to believe only that the sublime plan of the Gospel is taught in the Augsburg Confession. This is the position held by the General Synod and by the American Lutheran Church in general, and this seems to have been the position also of the Church in the earlier and purer days of the Reformation." (L., 6, 57.) In 1860 the Observer declared that the General Synod was organized on the basis of a compromise with respect to doctrines of minor import, such as the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, of the power of Baptism and of absolution. Observer, April 8, 1864: "We ought to be one in the doctrine of faith which embraces the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, while we should practise love with respect to other things. By fundamental doctrines we understand such and such only as are necessary to make a man a true child of God. . . . Who can be a Christian and deny the essence and existence of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, the atonement, the doctrines of repentance and faith in Christ, the necessity of justification before God and of sanctification of the heart, or the moral law as the rule of life, the doctrine of immortality and our future destination? These doctrines, which are essential to faith and Christian life, are fundamental and ought to be received by the heart and practised, while all other doctrines may be necessary more or less in order to perfect the Christian character and render it more symmetrical, but do not strike the heart of true religion." (L. u. W., 1864, 154.) Observer, March 12 and 19, 1869: "The doctrinal basis of the General Synod demands adoption of the fundamental doctrines of the Word of God as taught in the Augsburg Confession, but she has never determined which doctrines she regards as fundamental and which not. Formerly she was satisfied with the general judgment of the Protestant world with respect to the fundamental articles of Christianity . . ., but during the last decade the question was extensively discussed: What is fundamental? We see no reason why the General Synod could not and should not supplement her basis by a definition and enumeration of the fundamental doctrines. . . . According to the universal judgment of the Church the doctrinal opinions in which the orthodox Protestant Churches differ are not fundamental, but non-fundamental doctrines. Whether God's decree of election is absolute or conditional; whether the corruption of the fallen nature of Adam was propagated or only the guilt of his sin was imputed to his descendants; whether the atonement is universal or limited to the elect; whether justification occurs by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to believers or by the imputation of faith; whether the presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper is bodily or spiritual; whether the receiving of body and blood is by faith or by the mouth, is limited to believers or extends also to unbelievers; whether the church government is participated in by laymen or limited to the ministers; whether the Scriptural principles on this matter establish an hierarchy or democracy—these and many other questions are differently answered by different Protestant denominations, but without objectively destroying the ground of faith or subjectively the essence of faith. . . . In short, the doctrinal views which still separate the Protestant churches are not fundamental." (L. u. W., 1869, 121.)
28. Krauth on "Fundamentals Substantially Correct."—The essential correctness of Schmucker's and the Observer's interpretation of the General Synod's doctrinal basis was acknowledged also by Charles Porterfield Krauth. "The very life," said he, "the very existence of the General Synod depends upon the distinction between fundamentals, in which agreement is required, and non-fundamentals, in which liberty is granted." And while his father had condemned the confessional basis of the General Synod as a "solemn farce," Krauth, Jr., in 1857, declared: "Let the old Formula stand and let it be defined." In the Missionary, April 30, 1857, Dr. Krauth explained: "The doctrinal basis of the General Synod, then, was designed to be one on which, without sacrifice of conscience, brethren differing in non-fundamentals might meet. It is a basis which, on the one hand, neither by expression nor by implication charges error upon any part of the doctrinal articles of the Confession, but as far as it touches the question at all, expresses or implies the very opposite; a basis, therefore, on which brethren who receive the Confession without reservation can rest, but which, at the same time, on the other hand, defines its position only as to what is fundamental, leaving entirely untouched the questions whether non-fundamental doctrines are taught in the Confession, and whether, if taught, they are taught in a manner substantially correct. Furthermore, in using the word 'substantially' to qualify the term 'correct,' in the affirmation as to fundamentals, the General Synod meant not to decide, but to leave untouched the question whether, as to its very letter as well as in its essentials, the Confession is a correct exhibition of Scripture doctrine. The position, in effect, implied this: Brethren may differ as to whether the non-fundamental doctrines as well as the fundamental doctrines are correctly stated in the Confession. Let them differ. We make no decision whatever as to that point. Both agree as to fundamentals; therefore fundamentals only shall be the object in this subscription. We affirm of them that they are taught correctly in the Confession. Of the non-fundamentals we affirm nothing and deny nothing. Neither their reception nor rejection has anything to do with this basis. But brethren differ on another point. Some receive the very letter of the Confession on all points of doctrine; others, who receive it to the letter on most points, receive it only as to its main drift on a few. Let, then, that which is apart from the substance be left out of view, and be the subject neither of affirmation nor of denial. Let us make the affirmation simply on the substantial correctness of the Confession, for on that all are agreed. Here, too, shall be the same absolute freedom to receive what is apart from the substance as to reject it." Dr. Krauth proceeds: "The basis of the General Synod, then, does not imply that non-fundamentals are falsely taught, or that the correctness of the Confession on fundamentals is merely substantial. The questions which touch non-fundamentals, or matters apart from the substance, are simply waived and left undetermined. Thus interpreted, the most devoted friend of the Confession, in all its parts, as well as he who is compelled to make a reservation as to some portions, can freely use the Formula. It was the best basis possible, under all the circumstances, and we are therefore satisfied with it." "If, when the General Synod affirmed that the fundamentals were correctly taught, she had declared or implied that the non-fundamentals were incorrectly taught, no Lutheran who believed that the Augsburg Confession is sound on all the doctrinal points it touches, or who believed that none but fundamental doctrines are set forth in the Confession, could have received the Formula. She satisfied herself, therefore, with an affirmative about fundamentals, making neither an affirmation nor denial in regard to non-fundamentals. She left the synods in absolute freedom in non-fundamentals, freedom to doubt, to reject, or to receive them." "So also when she declared that the fundamentals of Scripture-doctrine are taught in a manner substantially correct, she neither declared nor implied that they were not taught in a manner absolutely correct, but … as all who believe that they are set forth in a manner absolutely correct, believe, necessarily, that they are taught in a manner substantially correct; for that which is absolute embraces that which is substantial and something more; she simply makes an affirmation, so far as two classes (if thinkers are agreed, affirming nothing and denying nothing as regards that in which they differ, but having absolute freedom to doubt, reject, or receive that which goes beyond the substance, and embraces the minutiae of the form. The man who has a quarrel with this position of the General Synod has a quarrel not against something incidental to her, but against her very life. For on this position, expressed or implied, rested, and continues to rest, the ability of our General Synod to have a being." (Spaeth, 1, 402. 399. 401. 395 f.) According to Krauth, then, there was constitutional room in the General Synod for Schmucker and Kurtz as well as for Walther and Wyneken; room for all who accept the fundamental doctrines in which evangelical Christians agree, but deny the distinctively Lutheran doctrines, and room also for men who confess all doctrines of the Lutheran Symbols. As late as October 29, 1863, Krauth declared in the Lutheran and Missionary that there was nothing in the Basis of the General Synod to bar even the Missouri Synod from entering it with the whole mass of confessions in her arms. (L. u. W., 1863, 378.) Dr. Krauth overlooked the fact that a Lutheran who adopts the symbols ex animo, and does not merely carry them in his arms, is serious also with respect to the confessional damnamuses with which a unionism and indifferentism, as required by the General Synod, is absolutely incompatible. In 1901 the Lutheran Quarterly said: "The damnamuses at the conclusion of several of the articles of the Augsburg Confession are inconsistencies . . . fundamental contradictions with the positive sense of the Confession." (359.) The Quarterly could have said, and probably wanted to say, that these damnamuses are fundamental contradictions with the doctrinal basis of the General Synod. In complete agreement with Krauth, the Observer wrote September 11, 1903: "The General Synod affirms and emphasizes what is universal in Lutheranism, and leaves the individual at liberty, within this generic unity, to receive and hold for himself whatever particularities of Lutheran statement may commend themselves to his acceptance. The only liberty denied him is that of forcing the particular upon his brethren who are content to rest in the full acceptance of what is universal in Lutheranism. It allows the same liberty in practise." (L. u. W., 1903, 305.)