96. Long Stride from Formula to Fact.—Formal adoption of a correct Lutheran basis does not necessarily imply actual agreement with such basis. To pass a good resolution is easy. All Christian sects protest that they accept the Bible. But they say, and do not. "What you are," said Emerson, "speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say." In a measure this also applies when the actual conditions prevailing in the General Synod before and after 1913 are compared with the doctrinal basis adopted in that year. In 1866, in a letter to Pastor Brunn, Walther wrote with reference to the synods then uniting to form the General Council: "As far as the latter are concerned, it is true that our testimony extending over a period of twenty years has by the grace of God cooperated in causing some synods to speak again of the Confession, and to base and pledge themselves upon it, at least formally; but it is a long stride from the formal acknowledgment of the symbols to a true knowledge of them, and a truly Lutheran spirit, and the consequent discipline of doctrine and life." (Letters, 2, 36.) Now, the General Synod did not adopt its present basis as a result of any doctrinal discussions of, and subsequent agreements in, the Lutheran doctrines. The confessional movement was a formal affair, without any special effort to arrive at a thorough understanding of, and true unity in, the doctrinal content of the Augustana. But what value is there in adopting a confession without a correct knowledge of, and agreement in, its doctrines? Furthermore, the Atchison Amendments were submitted to the District Synods for approval by majority vote, not to the individual ministers and congregations. Adoption, accordingly, did not mean unanimous acknowledgment. Moreover, the liberal party of the General Synod, as represented by the Lutheran Observer, openly denounced the new confessional resolutions. (L. u. W. 1916, 58.) Others who submitted to the new formula, no doubt felt justified, in accordance with the repeated approvals on the part of the General Synod of the basis of 1864, to interpret the former according to the latter.

97. Doctrinal Confusion.—The General Synod has always been a babel of doctrinal confusion. In it unity did not even prevail as to the doctrines which distinguish the Lutheran Church from the Reformed. From 1820 down to 1918 the General Synod, in its periodicals and by its representative men, and in part also as such and officially, defended and supported indifferentism, unionism, synergism, chiliasm, abstinence, the divine obligation of the Sabbath, and other un-Lutheran and distinctively Reformed doctrines. (L. u. W. 1917, 471; 1918, 43.) Doctrinal discipline never has had as much as a shadow of an existence within the General Synod. Nor did the Atchison Amendments effect any apparent and marked change in the spirit and attitude of doctrinal indifferentism. Reformed errorists were tolerated after as well as before 1913. In its issue of September 12, 1918, the Lutheran Church Work and Observer declared: "Our body breathes the free atmosphere of America, and is not so legalistic and Puritanical as to think that every person who offends must be brought before the judgment-bar of the church for discipline." After as well as before 1913 some of the General Synodists continued to indulge in dreams of a millennium and union of all Evangelical denominations in America. (L. u. W. 1918, 87; Luth. Wit. 1918, 373.) The Sabbath-day was declared to be "of perpetual authority," and its observance as "binding on all by divine requirement." In 1918 the Lutheran Church Work asked for state legislation to enforce the Sabbath, because the "Almighty Jehovah is 'the Lord of the Sabbath,' and has given us an indication of the importance which He places on His holy day by having put it even before the commandment in the Decalog which says: 'Honor thy father and thy mother.'" (L. u. W. 1918, 336; cf. 1915, 397; 1911, 510.) The same old Puritanical attitude was maintained by the General Synod also with respect to the prohibition movement. (Proceedings 1917, 140 ff.)

98. Tolerating Modern Liberalism.—The General Synod never did, nor intended to, exercise church-discipline with respect to Reformed aberrations. Nor is there a single case of church-discipline against any form of liberalism recorded. Yet practically from its very beginning the General Synod declared herself against Socinianism. And in 1909 the Lutheran Quarterly stated that the General Synod, though not exercising church-discipline with respect to Reformed errors, does exclude Unitarians, Universalists, and Christian Scientists. (15.) In 1917 the Lutheran asserted: The Lutheran Church in America "stands as a unit in protest against the creed of Reason, known as the ever-variable 'New Theology,' and presents an unbroken front in loyalty to the Gospel." (L. u. W. 1917, 562.) But is this claim really borne out by the facts? The theory of evolution, which vitiates every Christian doctrine when applied to theology, has been defended again and again in the Lutheran Observer, the Lutheran Quarterly, the Lutheran Church Work, and other publications of the General Synod. Endorsing the evolution doctrine, the Observer wrote in 1909: "That a law of development runs through all nature, life, and history, is one of the ruling postulates in present-day investigations. That the continuity of nature, life, and history which this implies is not inconsistent with theistic and Christian belief is also clearly recognized, and consequently the impression of a panicky feeling which pervaded so much of the discussion of evolution which immediately followed the publication of the Origin of Species [of Darwin], is to-day conspicuous by its absence." (L. u. W. 1909, 279.) In 1901: "Originally, all was soft and plastic. The granite foundations were mortar and ashes or cinders and water. Cosmic forces have since been crystallizing rocks out of the same elements which exist in the soil, or float in the streams and exhale in the atmosphere." (L. u. W. 1901, 185.) In 1917 the Lutheran Quarterly declared that the doctrine of evolution can be accepted "in so far as it is descriptive of God's method with the world." (96.) Dr. L.S. Keyser, of Wittenberg Seminary, philosophizes: "God created the primordial material. Without losing His transcendence, He became immanent in His creation, developing it through secondary causes for, doubtless, long eras; at certain crucial steps, as was necessary, He added new creations and injected new forces; such epochs were the introduction of life, sentiency, and man. This world-view should be called 'creation and evolution,' with as marked an emphasis on the former as on the latter." (Syst. of Nat. Theol., 114.) Furthermore, in 1891 the Lutheran Observer editorially defended Dr. Briggs, whom the Presbyterians expelled because of his liberalism, as an innocently persecuted man. (L. u. W. 1901, 214.) In 1901 the Lutheran Quarterly said of Harnack that in his Essence of Christianity he assigns a position to Christ "which must have made a deep impression on his hearers." (L. u. W. 1901, 370.) In 1909: "Even if we should in the end have to acknowledge that Jesus had a human father as well as a human mother, that would simply teach us what we are confessing and believing even now: Jesus is not alone true God, but likewise true man. His divinity would not be affected thereby." (L. u. W. 1909, 228.) In 1918 the Lutheran Church Work and Observer recommended Dr. James Denney's book, The Atonement and the Modern Mind, in which Denney practically rejects the authority of the Scriptures and departs from the Christian doctrine of satisfaction made by Christ. (L. u. W. 1918, 482.) In the Lutheran Church Work and Observer, April 4, 1918, Rev. W.R. Goff maintained: "The writer cannot find one passage in Scripture that definitely and positively asserts a visible return of the Lord." (L. u. W. 1918, 423.)

99. A Second Edition of Quitman.—For quite a number of years Dr. E.H. Delk, a prominent member of the General Synod, has been an ardent advocate of modern rationalism and evolutionism. He denies the verbal inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, rejects the Lutheran doctrine of the union of the divine and human natures in Christ, attacks the dogma that the death of Christ was a ransom and a substitutional sacrifice for the sins of the world, corrupts every Christian doctrine, and demands that all of them be restated in order to bring them into harmony with modern evolutionistic science and philosophy. "The Bible and our Confession do not ask man to throw away his reason in the reception of truth and in the judgment of the theological problems," Delk declared in 1903. (L. u. W. 1903, 185.) A number of years ago, Dr. Delk was permitted to present his radical views to the students of Gettysburg Seminary; and the Lutheran Quarterly published the lecture without a word of criticism. At Atchison, 1913, when resolutions were offered rejecting the doctrines of Delk, the General Synod refused to take definite action. The Lutheran Observer boasted that Synod was not ready to sacrifice liberty of thought and speech. (L. u. W. 1901, 370; 1902, 136; 1903, 185; 1913, 145; 1916, 67.) In 1916 the Lutheran Church Work and Observer, the official organ of the General Synod, opened its columns to Delk and his theology. In 1917 Delk continued his propaganda by publishing his views in a booklet, The Need of a Restatement of Theology. In 1918 the Lutheran Church Work and Observer endorsed and advertised the book. Identifying himself with some of the views of modern German liberalism on Luther and his theology, Delk wrote in the Lutheran Church Work and Observer of November 1, 1917: "We see now in the light of a fuller history of the man [Luther] that he was a child of his age and carried over into his Protestant thinking traits of medieval thinking…. Luther was not the end, but the beginning of new advances in the political and religious ideals of the world…. We are separated by a millennium of thought from the critical thought-standpoint of Luther." (L. u. W. 1918, 43.) Also by Drs. Keyser and Voigt, Delk has been charged with substituting the teachings of philosophy and science for Christianity, and with propagating heretical doctrine concerning the inspiration of the Bible and the deity and atonement of Christ. The advocacy of evolutionistic theology, as tolerated by the General Synod, however, cannot but be regarded as a return to the rationalism of Quitman and Velthusen.

UNLUTHERAN PRACTISE.

100. Unionism Unabated.—In 1917 Dr. Neve wrote in the Lutheran Church Review: "The different Protestant Churches, that is, the leading ones, are not arbitrary developments with no right to exist, but they represent the historical endeavors to bring to an expression within the Church of Christ the truth of Scripture." (167.) This view was at the bottom of the pulpit, altar, and church-work fellowship indulged in by the General Synod throughout the course of its history from 1820 down to its exit in 1918. This attitude of indifferentism naturally led to the exchange of fraternal delegates with the Reformed and other Churches. It resulted in a cooperation of the General Synod with the Federal Council, the Home Missions Council, the Foreign Mission Conference, the International Sunday-school Association, the Sunday-school Council of Evangelical Denominations, the Inter-Church Federation, the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A., the W.C.T.U., The Anti-Saloon League, etc. And the new confessional resolutions brought no change in this practise. With respect to the action of the Wartburg Synod, excluding other than Lutheran ministers from its pulpits and other than Lutherans from its altars, Dr. J.A. Singmaster, at the convention in Richmond, 1909, offered the resolution "that the General Synod, while allowing all congregations and individuals connected with it the fullest Christian liberty, does not approve of synodical enactments which in any way narrow its confessional basis or abridge intersynodical fellowship and transfers." (Proceedings 1909, 128; Neve, Gesch., 73.) The Lutheran Observer remained the same enthusiast for "interdenominational fraternal cooperation and work in the Federation of Churches," etc. (L. u. W. 1916, 63.) The ministers of the General Synod continued to exchange pulpits and to arrange for joint celebrations with sectarian preachers. (Witness 1918, 404; 1919, 14.) Despite the new basis of 1913, the General Synod remained a member of the Federal Council, which Dr. Delk in 1912 extolled as the "Twentieth Century Ecumenical Council." In 1909 the report of the delegates to the Federal Council was adopted, stating: "We heartily endorse the work of the Council, and we welcome the opportunity of cooperating with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in promoting the work of His kingdom…. We recommend that nine delegates be sent, and that an annual contribution of $450 be paid out of the treasury of the General Synod for the support of the Federal Council." (115.) Again, in 1917, a report of the delegates to the Third Quadrennial Meeting of the Federal Council was adopted, which said, in part: "The Federal Council is mobilizing the forces of Protestantism against any and every foe of evangelical principles and practises. A committee has been appointed to arrange a Pan-Protestant Reformation celebration for 1917…. It was a great privilege to have participated in this historic council. As the federation idea originated in the United States in the mind and heart of a learned and devout Lutheran, Dr. Samuel S. Schmucker, it was a great joy and satisfaction to see and participate in this consummation of Dr. Schmucker's hope of all Protestant bodies in council and cooperation in the one common task of propagating the kingdom of God in society and throughout the world." (27.) Dr. MacFarland, the General Secretary of the Federal Council, was introduced, and addressed the General Synod. (131.) In the same year the General Synod appointed Dr. Delk, Dr. Wolford, Rev. Russell, and three laymen as "delegates to the Federal Council," and Dr. Bell as "representative to General Assembly of Presbyterian Church." (372.)

101. Fellowshiping [tr. note: sic] Jews and Unitarians.—Universally General Synodists, down to the Merger in 1918, have defended and practised church-fellowship with the Evangelical denominations. Regarding religious communion with Jews and Unitarians, however, Dr. Neve wrote in 1909: "Such is a rare occurrence and always would meet with the disapproval of nearly all members of the General Synod." (Lutheran Quarterly 1909, 12. 19.) According to Neve, then, there are members of the General Synod who do approve of church-fellowship even with Jews and Unitarians. Commenting in the Lutheran Church Work and Observer, of October 31, 1918, on a Communion service in which Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Reformed, Unitarians, etc., united, Dr. L.E. Keyser declared: "Such a conglomeration of beliefs and creeds would be impossible in the Lutheran Church. To stand or kneel at the altar with people who even deny the deity of Christ, the doctrine of the Trinity, and the need of atonement for sin, is impossible with Lutherans who are serious in their convictions." But what of the facts? In 1903 the Lutheran Observer declared: "When, at the great Parliament of Religions in Chicago, men of all beliefs united in the Lord's Prayer, who shall say that they had no right to do it, even though it was not with full understanding of its meaning? God is the All-Father. All men are His children." (L. u. W. 1903, 184.) At the World's Fair in St. Louis, 1904, Dr. Rhodes of the General Synod celebrated a union Thanksgiving Service in Festival Hall with Archbishop Glennon, Rabbi Harrison, etc. (L. u. W. 1904, 565.) In 1909 Dr. Delk indulged in religious fellowship with the Reformed Jews in a Jewish temple. (L. u. W. 1909, 558 f.) On November 28, 1918, Rev. A. Homrighaus united in a Thanksgiving service, in which a Jewish rabbi and a Unitarian participated, etc. (Luth. Witness 1919, 14.)

102. Encouraging Lodgery.—The General Synod has never taken a stand against Freemasonry or any other secret society. To join a lodge was always viewed as a purely private affair and of no concern to the Church. Neither laymen nor ministers were forbidden to unite with lodges. Indeed, for a minister to attain a higher degree in a lodge was occasionally referred to as a special honor and regarded as a recommendation. In 1902 the Pennsylvania Freemason said of Dr. Stock, a pastor of the General Synod: "The Doctor is in possession of the highest honors of Freemasonry, and enjoys the love and respect of all his brothers. As indicating his good influence for Freemasonry we mention of his writings: What Freemasonry Owes to Luther, The Knight Templar and the Holy Week." Copying this, the Lutheran Evangelist commented that everybody has a right to join a lodge as long as he gives the first place in his heart to the Church. (L. u. W. 1902, 115.) The Observer, March 14, 1902, reported with satisfaction that the prominent Lutheran Mr. Dewey had become Grand Master of the Freemasons in Kansas, and appointed his pastor, the Rev. Fuller Bergstresser, Grand Chaplain of the lodge. (L. u. W. 1902, 115.) Lodge-membership, said the Observer of January 17, 1913, is a non-essential, permitted by the Augsburg Confession. Reviewing a sermon of Rev. Bowers in which he defended and recommended the lodges, the Lutheran Observer, in 1909, remarked: "It is a fair and unprejudiced presentation." (L. u. W. 1909, 227.) In the same year a committee of the General Synod declared with respect to a resolution of the Wartburg and Nebraska synods, forbidding their ministers to hold membership in lodges: "The General Synod as a body has never taken any action, so far as we know, upon the so-called lodge-question. We deem its position sound and wise, and especially in view of the fact that the Lutheran bodies in this country which have indulged in such legislation have by no means escaped trouble…. We deem it their [Wartburg and Nebraska synods'] synodical right so to judge and affirm so long as they do not ask other synods of this body to accept their judgment and affirm their action…. A synod has a right to voluntarily restrict itself if it so chooses, and impose upon itself such limitations as it may elect." (Proceedings 1909, 126 f.) Also with respect to this attitude of the General Synod toward the lodges the Atchison Amendments brought about no marked change whatever. After as well as before 1913 prominent lodge-men, without protest, were elected to, or continued to hold, some of the most important offices of Synod. In 1917 Dr. George Tressler, a 32d degree Scotch Rite Mason and a Knight Templar, was chosen president of the General Synod. Prof. C.G. Heckert, president of the Theological Seminary at Springfield, 0., is a Freemason. Mr. J.L. Zimmerman, president of the Lutheran Brotherhood of the General Synod, who took a leading part in the Lutheran Merger movement, also is, and was publicly declared to be, a Mason. Nor did the practise cease of arranging for special lodge-services and entertainments of lodges. September 17, 1918, the Masonic Lodge of Camp Hill, N.J., held its anniversary dinner at the General Synod church, the women of the church serving the dinner, etc. (Luth. Witness 1918, 386.)

103. New Formula Dead Letter.—Though one will readily admit that the Atchison Amendments signified a stride forward officially and formally, the actual conditions prevailing within the General Synod till the Merger in 1918 (the official indifferentistic and unionistic attitude of the General Synod as such, as well as the teaching and practise of District Synods, ministers, and congregations) were not in agreement, but in open conflict with the formula of 1913. In its issue of June 18, 1915, the Observer stated: "The acceptance of this basis, they [the opponents of the new basis] further maintain, involves certain corollaries, such as the rule of 'Lutheran pulpits for Lutheran ministers only, and Lutheran altars for Lutheran communicants only'; the withdrawal of fellowship with other Christian bodies in general religious and moral movements, such as the Federation of the Churches, the International Sunday-school Lesson Series, and evangelistic campaigns, in which the congregations of a community unite their efforts to reach the multitudes of the unchurched and the unsaved. It includes also condemnation of secret orders, such as Masonry and Odd-Fellowship." (L. u. W. 1916, 58.) Such, indeed, was the price of the new doctrinal basis. The General Synod as a whole, however, was evidently neither possessed of the power nor even of the earnest will to draw the consequences of her new articles practically. The fact certainly is, as shown in the preceding paragraphs, that neither the General Synod as such nor its constituency did make any serious effort at paying the price required by an unqualified subscription to the Augustana as professed at Atchison. However, as long as a religious body contents itself with having a correct Lutheran basis merely incorporated in the constitution; as long as it shows no determination in reducing the principles of such basis to actual practise; as long as it objects to the discipline which this basis calls for; as long as it declines responsibility for contrary teaching and practise on the part of its ministers and congregations; as long as it adheres to the principle of agreeing to disagree on doctrines plainly taught in the Lutheran Confessions, and never to settle disputed points, but to omit them and declare them free,—just so long even the very best Lutheran basis embodied in a constitution will remain, in more than one respect, a scrap of paper and its formal recognition "a solemn farce and empty show."

The General Council