Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church

by F. Bente

The theologians who were first in adopting effective methods and measures to satisfy the general yearning for a real peace in the divine truth were Jacob Andreae and Martin Chemnitz. Andreae was born 1528 in Weiblingen, Wuerttemberg. He studied at Stuttgart and Tuebingen. In 1546 he became pastor in Stuttgart, where, two years later, he was deposed because of his refusal to consent to the Interim. In 1549 he became pastor and later on superintendent in Tuebingen. Since 1562 he was also professor and chancellor of the university. He died 1590. Andreae has been called "the spiritual heir of John Brenz." Hoping against hope, he incessantly labored for the unity and peace of the Lutheran Church. Being a man of great energy and diplomatic skill, he served her at numerous occasions and in various capacities. In his pacification efforts he made more than 120 journeys, visiting nearly all evangelical courts, cities, and universities in Northern and Southern Germany. With the consent of the Duke of Wuerttemberg, Andreae entered the service of Elector August, April 9, 1567, and lived with his family in Saxony till his dismissal in December, 1580. Here he was engaged in directing the affairs of the churches and universities, and in promoting the work of Lutheran pacification and concord at large. During his efforts to unite the Lutherans he was maligned by the Philippists, and severely criticized also by the strict Lutherans. The latter was largely due to the fact that in his first attempts at pacification he allowed himself to be duped by the Wittenberg Philippists, being even blind enough to defend them against the charges of Calvinism in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper made by their opponents in Jena and in Lower Saxony. While thus Andreae was the able and enthusiastic promoter of the pacification which culminated in the adoption of the Formula of Concord, he lacked the theological insight, acumen, and consistency which characterized Martin Chemnitz.

Martin Chemnitz was born November 9, 1522, at Treuenbritzen in Brandenburg. As a boy he attended, for a brief period, the school in Wittenberg, where he "rejoiced to see the renowned men of whom he had heard so much at home, and to hear Luther preach." From 1539 to 1542 he attended the Gymnasium at Magdeburg; from 1543 to 1545 he studied in Frankfort-on-the-Oder; in 1545 he went to Wittenberg, where Melanchthon directed his studies. In 1548 he became rector of the school in Koenigsberg, and 1550 librarian of Duke Albrecht, with a good salary. Owing to his participation in the Osiandrian controversy, Chemnitz lost the favor of Albrecht, and in 1553 he removed to Wittenberg. On June 9, 1554, he began his lectures on Melanchthon's Loci Communes before a large and enthusiastic audience, Melanchthon himself being one of his hearers. In November, 1554, he accepted a position as pastor, and in 1567 as superintendent, in the city of Brunswick. He died April 8, 1586. Chemnitz was the prince of the Lutheran divines of his age and, next to Luther, the greatest theologian of our Church. Referring to Luther and Chemnitz, the Romanists said: "You Lutherans have two Martins; if the second had not appeared, the first would have disappeared (si posterior non fuisset, prior non stetisset)." Besides the two Lutheran classics: Examen Concilii Tridentini, published 1565—1573, and De Duabus Naturis in Christo, 1570, Chemnitz wrote, among other books: Harmonia Evangelica, continued and published 1593 by Leyser and completed by John Gerhard, and Foundations (Die Fundamente) of the Sound Doctrine concerning the Substantial Presence, Tendering, and Eating and Drinking of the Body and Blood of the Lord in the Supper, 1569.

Andreae and Chemnitz became acquainted with each other in 1568, when Duke Julius invited the former to conduct the visitation in Brunswick together with Chemnitz. They jointly also composed the Brunswick Church Order of 1569, which was preceded by the Corpus Doctrinae Iulium, compiled by Chemnitz and containing the Augsburg Confession, the Apology, the Smalcald Articles, the Catechisms of Luther, and a "short [rather long], simple, and necessary treatise on the prevalent corruptions." Andreae and Chemnitz are the theologians to whom more than any other two men our Church owes the Formula of Concord and the unification of our Church in the one true Christian faith as taught by Luther. However, it is Chemnitz who, more than Andreae or any other theologian, must be credited with the theological clarity and the correctness which characterizes the Formula.

276. First Peace Efforts of Andreae Fail.

In his first attempts to unify the Lutheran Church, Andreae endeavored to reconcile all parties, including the Wittenberg Philippists, who then were contemplating an agreement with the Calvinists. In 1567, at the instance of Landgrave William of Hesse-Cassel and Duke Christopher of Wuerttemberg, Andreae composed his "Confession and Brief Explanation of Several Controverted Articles, according to which a Christian unity might be effected in the churches adhering to the Augsburg Confession, and the offensive and wearisome dissension might be settled." In five articles he treated: 1. Justification, 2. Good Works, 3. Free Will, 4. The Adiaphora, 5. The Lord's Supper. The second article maintains that we are neither justified nor saved by good works, since Christ has earned for us both salvation and righteousness by His innocent obedience, suffering, and death alone, which is imputed as righteousness to all believers solely by faith. It rejects all those who teach otherwise, but not directly and expressly the statement: Good works are necessary to salvation. The third article maintains that, also after the Fall, man is not a block, but a rational creature having a free, though weak, will in external things; but that in divine and spiritual matters his intellect is utterly blind and his will is dead; and that hence, unless God creates a new volition in him, man is unable of himself, of his own powers, to accept the grace of God offered in Christ. It rejects all who teach otherwise. The fourth article states that ceremonies are no longer free, but must be abandoned, when their adoption is connected with a denial of the Christian religion, doctrine, and confession. It rejects all those who teach otherwise. The fifth article emphasizes that also the wicked when they partake of the Lord's Supper, receive the body of Christ, but to their damnation. It furthermore declares: Since it is objected that the body and blood cannot be present in the Holy Supper because Christ ascended to heaven with His body, it is necessary "to explain the article of the incarnation of the Son of God, and to indicate, in as simple a way as possible, the manner in which both natures, divine and human, are united in Christ, wherefrom it appears to what height the human nature in Christ has been exalted by the personal union." (Hutter, Concordia Concors, 110ff.)

In 1568, at the Brunswick Visitation, referred to above, Andreae submitted, his five articles to Duke Julius, and succeeded in winning him for his plan. In the same interest he came to Wittenberg, January 9, 1569. Furnished with letters of commendation from Duke Julius and Landgrave William of Hesse, he obtained an interview also with Elector August, who referred him to his theologians. On August 18, 1569, Andreae held a conference with the Wittenbergers. They insisted that the basis of the contemplated agreement must be the Corpus Misnicum (Philippicum). When Andreae, unsophisticated as he still was with respect to the real character of Philippism, publicly declared that the Wittenbergers were orthodox teachers, and that the Corpus Misnicum contained no false doctrine he was supplied with a testimonial in which the Wittenbergers refer to their Corpus, but not to Andreae's articles, to which also they had not fully consented. The result was that the Jena theologians, in particular Tilemann Hesshusius, denounced Andreae's efforts as a unionistic scheme and a betrayal of true Lutheranism in the interest of Crypto-Calvinism. They rejected Andreae's articles because they were incomplete, and contained no specific rejection of the errors of the Philippists.

At the instance of Andreae, May 7, 1570, a conference met at Zerbst in Anhalt, at which twenty theologians represented Electoral Saxony, Brunswick, Hesse, Brandenburg, Anhalt, and Lower Saxony (the Ducal Saxon theologians declining to participate). The conference decided that a new confession was not needed, and unanimously recognized the Augsburg Confession, its Apology, the Smalcald Articles, and the Catechisms of Luther. Andreae was elated. In his "Report" to the Emperor and the princes he gloried in "the Christian unity" attained at Zerbst. But also this apparent victory for peace and true Lutheranism was illusory rather than real, for the Wittenberg theologians qualified their subscription by formally declaring that they interpreted and received the confessions enumerated only in as far as they agreed with the Corpus Philippicum. And before long the Crypto-Calvinistic publications, referred to in the chapter on the Crypto-Calvinistic Controversy, began to make their appearance. The only result of these first peace efforts of Andreae, which lacked in single-minded devotion to the truth, and did not sufficiently exclude every form of indifferentism and unionism, was that he himself was regarded with increasing suspicion by the opponents of the Philippists. As for Andreae, however, the dealings which he had with the dishonest Wittenbergers opened his eyes and convinced him that it was impossible to win Electoral Saxony for a truly Lutheran union as long as the Crypto-Calvinists were firmly seated in the saddle.

277. Andreae's Sermons and the Swabian Concordia.

Abandoning his original scheme, which had merely served to increase the animosity among the Lutherans and to discredit himself, Andreae resolved henceforth to confine his peace efforts to true Lutherans, especially those of Swabia and Lower Saxony, and to unite them in opposition to the Zwinglians, Calvinists, and Philippists, who, outside of Electoral Saxony, were by this time generally regarded as traitors to the cause of Lutheranism. In 1573 he made his first move to carry out this new plan of his by publishing sermons which he had delivered 1572 on the doctrines controverted within the Lutheran Church. The title ran: "Six Christian Sermons concerning the dissensions which from the year 1548 to this 1573d year have gradually arisen among the theologians of the Augsburg Confession, as to what attitude a plain pastor and a common Christian layman who may have been offended thereby should assume toward them according to his Catechism." These sermons treat of justification, good works, original sin, free will, the adiaphora, Law and Gospel, and the person of Christ. As the title indicates, Andreae appealed not so much to the theologians as to the pastors and the people of the Lutheran Church, concerning whom he was convinced that, adhering as they did, to Luther's Catechism, they in reality, at least in their hearts, were even then, and always had been, agreed. Andreae sent these sermons to Chemnitz, Chytraeus, Hesshusius, Wigand, and other theologians with the request that they be accepted as a basis of agreement. In the preface, dated February 17, 1573, he dedicated them to Duke Julius of Brunswick whose good will and consent in the matter he had won in 1568, when he assisted in introducing the Reformation in his territories. Before this Nicholas Selneccer, then superintendent of Wolfenbuettel, in order to cultivate the friendly relations between Swabia and Lower Saxony, had dedicated his Instruction in the Christian Religion (Institutio Religionis Christianae) to the Duke of Wuerttemberg, praising the writings of Brenz, and lauding the services rendered by Andreae to the duchy of Brunswick.

The sermons of Andreae were welcomed by Chemnitz, Westphal in Hamburg, David Chytraeus in Rostock, and others. They also endeavored to obtain recognition for them from various ecclesiastical ministries of Lower Saxony. But having convinced themselves that the sermonic form was not adapted for a confession, they, led by Chemnitz, advised that their contents be reduced to articles in "thesis and antithesis," and that this be done "with the assistance of other theologians." Andreae immediately acted on this suggestion and the result was what is known as the Swabian Concordia (Schwaebische Konkordie)—the first draft of the Formula of Concord. This document, also called the Tuebingen Book, was submitted to, and approved by, the theologians of Tuebingen and by the Stuttgart Consistory. In substance it was an elaboration of the Six Sermons with the addition of the last two articles. It contains eleven articles, treating 1. Original Sin; 2. Free Will; 3. The Righteousness of Faith before God; 4. Good Works; 5. Law and Gospel; 6. The Third Use of the Law; 7. The Church Usages Called Adiaphora; 8. The Lord's Supper; 9. The Person of Christ: 10. Eternal Election; 11. Other Factions and Sects. In the introduction Andreae also emphasizes the necessity of adopting those symbols which were afterwards received into the Book of Concord.