OTHER REPRESENTATIVE THEOLOGIANS.
112. Dr. Wm. Julius Mann (1819—1892) was born at Stuttgart, Wuerttemberg; graduated at Tuebingen, 1841; active as teacher till 1844; came to America in 1845, influenced by his intimate friend Ph. Schaff at Mercersburg, who had left Germany in 1844; 1846 assistant pastor of a German Reformed congregation in Philadelphia; 1850 assistant to Dr. Demme, pastor of Zion Ev. Luth. Congregation, Philadelphia, to which H.M. Muhlenberg had been called in 1742; in 1851 he was received into the Ministerium of Pennsylvania; served as president of this body from 1860 to 1862 and 1880; from 1864 to 1892 he was professor in Philadelphia Seminary. From 1848 to 1859 Dr. Mann cooperated in editing the Deutsche Kirchenzeitung, established by Schaff as "an organ for the common interests of the American German [Reformed and Lutheran] churches." The Kirchenzeitung, of which Mann in 1854 became editor-in-chief, was a paper for theologians, not for laymen. It bore the motto: "In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas." Its object was "to prepare the way for the Lord, and add a few stones to the dome of the Church of the future." It served the Lutheran and Reformed churches by antagonizing revivalism. From 1863 to 1866 Dr. Mann was editorially responsible for Evangelische Zeugnisse, a German homiletic monthly, also established by his friend Ph. Schaff. In 1856 Mann opposed the Definite Platform in his Plea for the Augsburg Confession, and 1857 in his Lutheranism in America. In 1864 he translated the New Testament Commentary of the American Tract Society into German for this society. In 1886 he edited Hallesche Nachrichten (Vol. I); 1887 he published the Life and Times of H.M. Muhlenberg; 1891 the same in German. Apart from quite a number of other books, Dr. Mann wrote articles for various German and English periodicals. "I always prepare myself closely," said Mann in a letter of February 14, 1866, "for the recitations in the seminary, write every week for the Lutheran, more for the Lutherische Zeitschrift of Brobst, continue the translation of the Tract Society's Commentary on the New Testament, keep up some correspondence, and at the same time perform my various and burdensome duties as a pastor and, find yet a little, a very little, time for light reading." Mann, for many years a bosom friend of the arch-unionist Ph. Schaff, whom he admired as "the presiding genius of international theology," gradually became a conservative confessional Lutheran theologian, opposed also to the unionism as practised by the General Synod. On April 7, 1892, Schaff wrote to his friend: "What right had the sixteenth and seventeenth century to prescribe to future generations all theological thinking? We are as near to Christ and to the Bible as the framers of the confessions of faith." Dr. Mann answered: "In the air in which this letter breathes I cannot live…. What right had the framers of the American Constitution to lay down a basis for the administrative side of the life of this nation?" As to the General Synod, Dr. Mann's love for it gradually turned into aversion, because of its utterly un-Lutheran features. He charged the General Synod with living "in a concubinage with the Presbyterians and Methodists." In 1853 he wrote: "I have rejoiced over the union of our Pennsylvania Synod with the General Synod, and now I rejoice still more." (173.) Mann still failed to see that no one can truly love the Lutheran Church who despises, ignores, and denies her doctrines and usages. In 1855 he said of Missouri: "They have no patience with their weaker sister," meaning the General Synod. (176.) But in the immediately following years Mann himself began to attack the Definite Platform and its American Lutheranism. With respect to the doctrines controverted within the Lutheran Church of America, however, Dr. Mann never occupied a clear, firm, and determined Lutheran position. He revealed no interest in the discussions on the Four Points. Of the Missouri Synod Dr. Mann wrote in 1866: "These theological scratchbrushes (Kratzbuersten) of the West do an important work. They discipline thousands of Germans ecclesiastically, as otherwise only Catholic priests are able to do. Most of them lead a rough, self-denying life. They defy effeminate, sentimental, hazy ecclesiastical Americanism. There is a firm character here. They will not always remain as rugged as they are now. The coming generation will be English and milder in many respects. The Missourians are a power in the West, where the Germans generally are becoming a power, the longer the more. They will obtain an ever stronger elementary influence. The German [?] blood will make its influence felt for a long time." (Spaeth, W.J. Mann.)
113. Passavant, Schmucker, Seiss, etc.—Other names well known beyond the General Council are Drs. Passavant, B.M. Schmucker, Krotel, Seiss, Spaeth, Weidner, etc. Dr. W.A. Passavant (1821—1894) was born of Huguenot ancestry at Zelienople, Pa.; graduated in Gettysburg Seminary; was pastor in Baltimore till 1844 and in Pittsburgh till 1855; published the Missionary in 1845, which in 1861 was merged with The Lutheran, Passavant remaining coeditor. He established The Workman in 1880, which he edited in a conservative, confessional spirit, while in the Missionary he had been a fiery advocate of New-measurism. Cooperating with Pastor Fliedner of Kaiserswerth, Passavant introduced the first deaconesses in America; founded hospitals, orphanages, and academies; presented, in 1868, the ground for the Theological Seminary at Chicago; organized the home missionary work of the Pittsburgh Synod (whose founder he was) and of the General Council. Passavant was preeminently a missionary and philanthropist—the "American Fliedner." Dr. G.W. Sandt, in Lutheran Church Review 1918: "Passavant was educated in a Presbyterian college, where revivals were a fixed part of the curriculum. He prepared for the ministry in a Lutheran seminary at a time when Lutherans were more 'anxious' about the 'bench' than they were about the faith. It is not to be wondered at that his early ministry reflected the fitful and unstable emotionalism of the 'Anxious Bench' religionism, which he later outgrew and disowned." (442.)—Dr. Beale Melanchthon Schmucker (1827—1888), though a son of S.S. Schmucker, did not agree with the Definite Platform. He was secretary of the English Church Book Committee, a member of the German Kirchenbuch and Sonntagsschulbuch Committee, and of the Joint Committee on Common Service. He was regarded as the greatest liturgical scholar of the Lutheran Church in America and admired as a parliamentarian. He was a passionate lover of the Reformation and its literature. The Church Book of the General Council has been said to be "his lasting monument." Through it he laid the foundation also for the Common Service. "Next to Dr. C.P. Krauth," said the Kirchenblatt of the Iowa Synod (1918), "there is no man to whom the General Council owes so much as to Dr. B.M. Schmucker." B.M. Schmucker published articles on liturgical, hymnological, biographical, and other themes, and wrote the preface to the Common Service, first published by the United Synod of the South, 1888.—Dr. G.F. Krotel (1826—1907) studied theology under Dr. Demme; was renowned as pulpit orator; succeeded Krauth in the editorship of the Lutheran; repeatedly served the Pennsylvania Synod and the General Council as president.—Dr. J.A. Seiss was pastor in Philadelphia from 1858 till his death in 1904; he also served as president of the Pennsylvania Synod and the General Council. Seiss was one of the most prolific Lutheran authors in America. "There was a strength, a stateliness, a dignity, and an artistic finish to all his greatest pulpit efforts that compelled a hearing." (Luth. Church Review 1918, 90.) His style is oratorical rather than churchly. His Lectures on the Gospels and Epistles are the fruit of many years of careful sermonizing and study. In his lectures on the Last Times, 1856, and on the The Apocalypse, 1866, Seiss championed the cause of a chiliasm which the General Council refused to reject.—Dr. Adolph Spaeth (1839—1910) graduated at Tuebingen; active in Wuerttemberg, Italy, France, and Scotland till he accepted a call as Dr. Mann's assistant in Philadelphia in 1864; served as professor at the Seminary from 1867 till his death; was president of the General Council from 1880 to 1888, and of the Pennsylvania Synod from 1892 to 1895. He wrote the biographies of W.J. Mann, 1895, and of C.P. Krauth, Vol. I, 1898; Vol. II, 1909.—Dr. R.F. Weidner (1851—1915), president of the Seminary of the General Council at Chicago since its opening in 1891, reproduced in the English language a number of modern German theological works.
CONSTITUTION.
114. Fundamental Articles of Faith.—At the preliminary meeting at Reading, 1866, "Fundamental Principles," embracing nine Articles of Faith and Church Polity and eleven Articles of Ecclesiastical Power and Church Government, were adopted as a necessary condition of the contemplated union. The first Article of Faith states that, "to the true unity of the Church, it is sufficient that there be agreement touching the doctrine of the Gospel," etc. The second declares: "The true unity of a particular church, in virtue of which men are truly members of one and the same church, and by which any church abides in real identity, and is entitled to a continuation of her name, is unity in doctrine and faith and in the Sacraments, to wit, that she continues to teach and to set forth, and that her true members embrace from the heart, and use, the articles of faith and the Sacraments as they were held and administered when the Church came into distinctive being and received a distinctive name." The third article distinguishes general and particular symbols. The fourth emphasizes that these confessions are a testimony of unity and a bond of union only when "accepted in their own true, native, original, and only sense." Those who "subscribe them must not only agree to use the same words, but must use and understand those words in one and the same sense." According to the fifth article the unity of the Lutheran Church "depends upon her abiding in one and the same faith." Article six reads: "The Unaltered Augsburg Confession is by preeminence the Confession of that faith. The acceptance of its doctrines and the avowal of them without equivocation or mental reservation make, mark, and identify that Church, which alone, in the true, original, historical, and honest sense of the term, is the Evangelical Lutheran Church." According to the seventh article the only churches "entitled to the name Evangelical Lutheran are those which sincerely hold and truthfully confess the doctrines of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession." The next article reads: "We accept and acknowledge the doctrines of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession in its original sense as throughout in conformity with the pure truth of which God's Word is the only rule. We accept its statements of truth as in perfect accordance with the canonical Scriptures: We reject the errors it condemns, and believe that all which it commits to the liberty of the Church of right belongs to that liberty." The ninth article declares "that the other Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, inasmuch as they set forth none other than its system of doctrine and articles of faith, are of necessity pure and Scriptural," and that all of them "are, with the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, in the perfect harmony of one and the same Scriptural faith." (Ochsenford, Documentary History, 178 f.) According to the By-laws of the Constitution "the first two morning sessions after the opening of the convention shall be devoted to the discussion of doctrinal points and important practical questions."
115. Articles on Church Polity.—According to the second of the eleven articles of Ecclesiastical Power and Church Government, the church "has no power to bind the conscience, except as she truly teaches what her Lord teaches, and faithfully commands what He has charged her to command." The third reads: "The absolute directory of the will of Christ is the Word of God, the canonical Scriptures, interpreted in accordance with the 'mind of the Spirit,' by which Scriptures the Church is to be guided in every decision. She may set forth no article of faith which is not taught by the very letter of God's Word, or derived by just and necessary inference from it, and her liberty concerns those things only which are left free by the letter and spirit of God's Word." The fourth continues: "The primary bodies through which the power is normally exercised, which Christ commits derivatively and ministerially to His Church on earth, are the congregations. The congregation, in the normal state, is neither the pastor without the people, nor the people without the pastor." This paragraph permits of an interpretation that opens a loophole for Romanism. According to the sixth article "a free, Scriptural General Council, or Synod, chosen by the Church, is, within the metes and bounds fixed by the Church which chooses it, representatively that Church itself; and in this case is applicable the language of the Appendix to the Smalcald Articles: 'The judgments of synods are the judgments of the Church.'" This seems to imply that the judgments of synods are as such correct and binding. The tenth article reads: "In the formation of a General Body the synods may know, and deal with, each other only as synods. In such case the official record is to be accepted as evidence of the doctrinal position of each synod, and of the principles for which alone the other synods become responsible by connection with it." This paragraph, which was embodied also in the constitution of the United Lutheran Church, opened the door to indifferentism inasmuch as it made the General Council responsible, not for the actual conditions within, but only for the official attitude and deliverances of its district synods.
116. A Legislative Body.—The seventh article of "Ecclesiastical Power and Church Government" reads: "The congregations representatively constituting the various district synods may elect delegates through these synods to represent themselves in a more general body, all decisions of which, when made in conformity with the solemn compact of the constitution, bind so far as the terms of mutual agreement make them binding on those congregations which consent, and continue to consent, to be represented in that General Body." According to the ninth article, "the obligation under which congregations consent to place themselves, to conform to the decisions of synods, does not rest on any assumption that synods are infallible, but on the supposition that the decisions have been so guarded by wise constitutional provisions as to create a higher moral probability of their being true and rightful than the decisions in conflict with them, which may be made by single congregations or individuals." In keeping herewith Article I, Section 4 of the General Council's constitution provides: "No liturgy or hymn-book should be used in public worship except by its [the General Council's] advice or consent, which consent shall be presumed in regard to all such books now used, until the General Council shall have formally acted upon them." That the General Council was not a mere advisory, but a legislative body, was brought out in the Lima Church Case in which the judge decided that, according to the constitution and the expert testimony of members of the General Council, Synod had jurisdiction over its pastors and congregations, and that hence he could not adjudge the property to that part of the congregation which had refused to submit to Synod. Dr. Seiss testified (April 6, 1876) that, according to the constitution of the General Council, congregations are obliged and bound to respect and obey all constitutional resolutions of Synod. In its issue of September 26, 1901, the Lutheran maintained that Christian liberty did not prohibit the Church from making prescriptions to individual congregations in the adiaphora; that pastors and congregations, by joining the Pennsylvania Ministerium, yielded the right to decide and act for themselves, and agreed to submit to the regulations of Synod in the points enumerated; that it was not an infringement of the rights of a congregation to make this a condition of synodical membership. (L. u. W. 1901, 305.) In 1915 the Augustana Synod adopted a resolution recommending a change in the constitution of the General Council in order to make the body "both in principle and practise a deliberative and advisory body only."
117. Conforming to Decisions a Moral Obligation.—In 1866 Dr. Krauth, defending the polity of the General Council, wrote in the Lutheran and Missionary: "We entirely agree with our friend in the Lutheraner that the strength of the Church does not depend upon a 'strong government,' but on the unity of faith, doctrine, and confession. But 'strong' and 'weak' are relative terms. We want a real government; something which shall hold in a genuine outward bond, however mild, the true confessors of our Church's faith, and enable them to work in harmony, and if we understand the principles which control the government of the Synod of Missouri, we are sure that we desire nothing stronger nor better in the government of our whole Church in this country than these principles would give us. We only ask a church government which shall bind us by the gentle laws of love and peace, which shall take offenses out of the way, which shall be an aid in causing all things to be done decently and in order in the Church—which shall be a safeguard to conscience, and shall not lay, nor attempt to lay, burdens on it. The decisions of a synod which shall be such a government representatively will indeed be merely human, as the decisions of all earthly governments are merely human—nay, often manifestly wrong; nevertheless, we hold that the generic governmental principles and the right of representation are as really of God in the Church as in the State. The obligation to conform to the decisions of such a [representative] synod is the obligation of peace, love, and order; and where violation of them (except on the ground of conscience) creates scandal and offense, there is a moral obligation to conform to them." (Spaeth, 2, 172 f.) However, the constitution of the General Council does not contain the limitation: "where violation creates scandal and offense"; and Missouri holds that a congregation may ignore a resolution of synod, not only on the ground of conscience, but also whenever it finds a resolution unsuitable for her conditions.
SUBTILE UNIONISM.
118. Missouri's Attitude toward the General Council.—Originally Dr. Walther and Dr. Sihler were optimistic with respect to the movements which resulted in the organization of the new general body. Walther wrote: "Scarcely any event within the bounds of the Lutheran Church of North America has ever afforded us greater joy than the withdrawal of the Synod of Pennsylvania from the unionistic so-called General Synod. This is a step which will undoubtedly lead to consequences of the utmost importance and of the most salutary character. The plan to give prominence and supremacy in this land, by means of the 'General Synod,' to a so-called American Lutheranism which ignores the distinctive doctrines of the Lutheran Church, and to compel the truly Lutheran synods to occupy a separatistic, isolated, and powerless position, is completely frustrated by this step." (Spaeth, 2, 162.) But the hopes of Walther and his friends were doomed to disappointment, at least in part. In spite of its irreproachable confessional basis the General Council was imbued with a spirit of indifferentism and unionism, though of a finer grade and quality than that prevailing in the General Synod. In accordance with its principle that fraternal cooperation and union of necessity presupposes unity in doctrine and practise, Missouri, instead of participating in the hasty organization of the General Council, insisted on Free Conferences in order first to bring about real doctrinal agreement, the prerequisite of every God-pleasing external union. In Reading, 1866, however, this request was disregarded, union being the paramount, true and real unity a secondary consideration. Nor was there a change effected in this attitude by the subsequent correspondence between the General Council and the Missouri Synod. At Reading the delegates passed the resolution: "That the synods represented in this convention which prefer a Free Conference to an immediate organization be and hereby are invited to send representatives to the next meeting, with the understanding that they have in it all the privileges of debate and a fraternal comparison of views." To this Missouri responded at its convention in Chicago, in May, 1867: "In view of the relations we sustain toward different members of the Church Council, in reference to doctrine and churchly practise, we must be apprehensive that the consideration and discussion of differences still existing in the convention of the Church Council might give rise to the reflection that we intended to interrupt the bringing about of a unity, and are therefore fearful lest our participation, instead of leading to an agreement, might be productive of greater alienation. Even at the risk of appearing capricious in the eyes of the Reverend Body, and less diligent in our efforts for churchly unity, we beg leave to declare it again as our conviction that Free Conferences, such as are separated from officially organized conventions of ecclesiastical bodies, on the basis of the symbols of our Church, as contained in the Book of Concord of 1580, are the only proper means for an exchange of such convictions as are still divergent, and which, by the grace of God, may lead to a unity on the basis of our beloved Confession." At Fort Wayne, in November, 1867, the General Council renewed the resolution "that we sincerely respect the honest preferences of our brethren [Missouri] in regard to the best means of uniting our Church, and that we are willing to set apart a time, during the future sessions of this body, when it will meet them simply as a Free Conference." And, no answer having been received, the Council, at Pittsburgh, 1868, instructed its secretaries to bring the Fort Wayne action again to the attention of the Missouri Synod. In the following year Missouri answered that it was not its desire to deal with the General Council as such and during the sessions of the same; that by such a side-dealing justice could not be done the matter; that they desired and regarded Free Conferences as the proper means to reach the end contemplated. (Ochsenford, Doc. History, 152 ff.) Thus, from the very beginning, Missouri, in the interest of real unity as a prerequisite of union, urged free conferences and doctrinal discussions, while the General Council offered discussions "in regard to the best means of uniting our Church," at the same time insisting on a mode which involved a recognition of the unionistic procedure adopted in organizing the General Council. Considering the facts that some of the synods, uniting in 1866 and 1867 with the General Council, had several months before belonged to the General Synod; that ostensibly they had severed their connection on technical grounds; that all along they had been committed, more or less, not only to a false confessional basis, but also to Reformed doctrines and un-Lutheran practise, etc., the Missouri Synod, without sacrificing its anti-unionistic principles, could hardly have taken a different course of action than it did. Moreover, the subsequent history of the General Council, down to the Merger in 1918, has proved conclusively that Missouri's original evaluation of the General Council's confessionalism was certainly not very far from the mark. It was, then, the persistent refusal, on the part of the General Council, of free conferences, such as Missouri could have attended without an a priori violation of her convictions, that brought about and prolonged the deadlock obtaining between the two bodies. As late as 1904, at the time of the Inter-synodical Conferences, Dr. Jacobs declared that he would not meet Missouri in a free conference without a preceding joint service of prayer; and to this the Lutheran assented. (L. u. W. 1904, 224. 370.)