Denominations in America

"The Right Relation to Denominations in America," in Lutheran Confessional Theology in America, 1840-1880, edited by Theodore G. Tappert (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972):

The struggle of indifferentism was at first against making the doctrines in which "the Evangelical denominations" differ a test. But the struggle at this hour is against making any doctrines a test. Denominationalism with spread sails filling in the gale of unionism, and without pilot or helmsman, is bearing full upon the rock of absolute individualism. When the rock is fairly struck, the vessel will go to the bottom. (p. 113)

A Zwinglian may admit that a Lutheran is not in fundamental error; a Lutheran cannot admit it in regard to a Zwinglian. To claim that what is really but bread and wine is Christ's body and blood may be a great absurdity - but it is the result of too absolute a trust in his word - it is the superstition of faith. But to say that what he really tells us is his body and blood is but bread and wine implies lack of trust in his word - it is the superstition of unbelief. . They have a metaphor to literalize; we accept a verity deep as the incarnation itself, a verity involving the incarnation and involved in it.

It has pleased them sometimes to represent the whole matter as a dispute about mere phrases. We are agreed, they say, about the thing, but the contest is kept up about words. If this be so, and as we believe that our words are necessary to guard the thing, why will they not consent to our words? To us it is no logomachy. If it be so to them, why do they not give up their "mere phrases"? And where did those who attempt to make us odious for insisting on our faith in regard to the Lord's Supper ever engage to be silent in regard to their own? The history of the controversy from the beginning shows how eager and persistent the Zwinglians and Calvinists were in urging their own doctrine and assailing ours. The plea for liberality to be shown on our part meant freedom for themselves to hold and teach error without wholesome moral correction from us. It means all through, We will rob you of your faith if we can, and if we cannot we will insist that you shall at least think it of little account. (pp. 124-25)

Nevertheless, there have been men on both sides of the sea who within our church, accepting its privileges, the honor of its name, perhaps eating its bread, have met the challenge to specification. Some on the broad ground of rationalism have said that the Lutheran Church has failed in the very fundamentals of religion-the doctrine of God, of sin, of salvation, and of the Saviour. It ought to have been Socinian and Universalist. There is no line possible if we accept individualism as the test. If a man can be a Lutheran who thinks our church has failed and whose guide to that in which it has failed is that he thinks so, where can you stop? If we admit that it can be done in one article, who shall settle which one? If with more than one, how many? If with some, why not with all? If with one set this year, why not with another set next year? And this is no logical imagining. This is the exact ground actually taken by the consistent men of the position of which we now speak. There is no firm ground between strict confessionalism and no confessionalism. All between is hopeless inconsistency. (pp. 127-28)

Our church does indeed rest its relations to the denominations around us on its conviction that its system is in all its parts divine, derived from the Word of God and in accordance with it. And there are those who object to this position, not that they charge any specific error on our church - they waive even the consideration of that question - but that in general they assume that we are not prepared to treat any system as throughout divine. A system, they say, may be divine, but we cannot know that it is. We see in part, we know in part. It is not probable that any one denomination has all the truth on the mooted questions. We think we are right. Others think they are right, and they are as much entitled to assert the possession of truth for themselves as we are for ourselves. The church is still seeking: the church of the unknown future may perhaps see things in their true light.

This is bringing into theology what is a pet theory of the philosophy of our day under the title "agnosticism," which presses our ignorance until it makes of it a sort of omniscience of negation. There are no such vices in the world as the affectations of virtue. Sanctimony apes sanctity, prudery apes modesty, masked egotism apes humility - and on the basis of universal ignorance man offers himself as a universal sage and systematizes ignorance in many volumes.

It is true that the church on earth is imperfect and that in its best life, and because of it, it ever grows. But it must have a complete life to have a constant growth. An acorn is not an oak, but the vital force in the acorn is that which makes the oak and abides in it. The question here is, Has the church reached such a clear, binding faith on the great vital questions, not only of individual salvation but of her own highest efficiency and well-being, as justifies it in making them a term of communion and of public teaching? The question is not whether it can reach more truth, or apply more widely the truth it has, but whether what it now holds is truth and whether by seeking more truth by the same methods it can be assured of finding it.

The Old Testament has been teaching for thousands of years, the New Testament has taught for two thousand years, and yet it is pretended by those who profess to hold [to] the clearness and sufficiency of Holy Scripture that no part of the church of Christ, not even that part which they declare they hold in highest esteem, has reached a witness which can commend itself to human trust or can tell whether it has failed or not. . If the divine truth has no self-asserting power, sufficient to dispel doubt, how shall we reach any sure ground? Shall we say that all nominally Christian systems are alike in value, or that if they differ in this no one can find it out? This on its face seems self-confuting, but if we had to confute it, we could only do so by showing that God's Word is clear on the points on which churches differ. If we do not believe that we are scriptural over against Rome, we have no right to be separate from Rome. If the churches divided from us do not believe that they are scriptural, they have no right to be divided from us, and if we have no assured conviction that we have the truth, we have no right to exist. This agnosticism is at heart unbelief, or despair, or indolence, or evasion of cogent argument.

Of all Romanizing tendencies the most absolute is that which puts the dishonor on God's Word and on the fundamental principles of the Reformation implied in this view. It may be safely asserted that ecclesiastical bodies will not claim less for themselves than they are entitled to, and when it shall be said that no part of the churches of which the Reformation was the cause or occasion even pretends to have an assurance of the whole faith it confesses, then will men regard Protestantism as self-convicted and, if they do not swing off to infidelity, will say: Rome at least claims to have the truth, and if truth is to be found on earth it is more likely to be found with those who claim to have it than with those who admit they have it not. To sum up, we say Rome is fallible, the denominations are fallible, and the Lutheran Church is fallible: but the Romish Church has failed in articles of faith, so have the denominations; the Lutheran Church has not. (pp. 129-31)

There is no body of Christians on earth more remote from all the pretenses of Donatism, in its letter or its spirit, than the Lutheran Church. There is none which is so large and liberal in all things which are really in the sphere of the liberty of the church. Contrast its largeness of view in things indifferent with the pitiful littleness of ultra-Puritanism on the one side and Puseyistic ritualism on the other. Mark her scriptural candor in regard to special forms of church government as one example of a spirit illustrated in manifold forms. Our church is inflexible in nothing but in the pure Word and pure sacraments and in what they involve. (p. 132)

When the Lutheran Church acts in the spirit of the current denominationalism it abandons its own spirit. It is a house divided against itself. Some even then will stand firm, and with the choosing of new gods on the part of others there will be war in the gates. No seeming success could compensate our church for the forsaking of principles which gave her her being, for the loss of internal peace, for the destruction of her proper dignity, for the lack of self-respect which would follow it. The Lutheran Church can never have real moral dignity, real self-respect, a real claim on the reverence and loyalty of its children while it allows the fear of the denominations around it, or the desire of their approval, in any respect to shape its principles or control its actions. It is a fatal thing to ask not, What is right? What is consistent? but, What will be thought of us? How will the sectarian and secular papers talk about us? How will our neighbors of the different communions regard this or that course? Better to die than to prolong a miserable life by such compromise of all that gives life its value. . We have among us a sort of charity which not only does not begin at home but never gets there. It is soaring and gasping for the unity of Lutherans with all the rest of the world but not with each other. It can forgive all the sects for assailing the truth but has no mercy for the Lutherans who defend it.

When there is official fellowship between those who hold the higher and positive position and those who hold a lower and negative one, the communion is always to the benefit of the lower at the expense of the higher. For however the holders of the higher view may protest as to their personal convictions, the act of communion is regarded as a concession that the convictions, if held at all, are not held as articles of faith but only as opinions. If a Socinian and a Trinitarian commune, each avowing his own opinion as neither changed nor involved, which cause is hurt and which benefited? It looks equal, but Socinianism, whose interest is laxity, is advantaged; Trinitarianism is wounded. It gives fresh life to error; it stabs truth to the heart. Contact imparts disease but does not impart health. We catch smallpox by contact with one who has it, but we do not catch recovery from one who is free from it. The process which tends to the pollution of the unpolluted will not tend to the purification of the evil. (pp. 135-36)