Although
C. F. W. Walther certainly intended to give a sure, clear and definite “voice
of the Evangelical Lutheran Church on the question of . . . the Ministry,”
it is nevertheless astounding how many contradictory views fly under the banner
of a ‘Waltherian view’ on this topic. On the one hand, Walther has been
accused of being “guilty of exalting the clergy,” in fact, of “giving
every Missouri Synod clergyman justification for being a kingfish”
in a way which might make Walther seem little different from Stephan himself. On
the other hand, Walther is more often accused of being the chief cause of the
worst of contemporary Wichita-like Lay Ministry excesses, which would ultimately
erase any distinction between the Ministry and the Common Priesthood held by all
Christians. Are any of these “Walthers of Missouri Synod faith” in fact,
faithful to the real “C. F. W. of history?” More pointedly, is such
confusion about Walther his own fault, because he did not speak clearly enough,
or the fault of his readers, because they do not listen to him carefully enough?
Thinking
clearly about Walther must begin, of course, by first letting him speak for
himself in his own native tongue. In this way, one cuts through all the various
contemporary translators, interpreters, and ‘spin doctors’ who might seek to
force their biases or prejudices on Walther and make him say something different
from what he actually said. When one listens to Walther speaking for himself,
one cannot fail to see that he wishes to remain faithful to the Scriptures and
to the Confessions, and to be ‘normed’ by them. In fact, Walther constantly
invites his readers to test his works by such norms. In this way, Walther always
points one back to the church’s proper normatas, both normans and
norma, and he wishes all that he says
to be fitted into the context of the Scriptures and the Confessions, and not the
other way around. But even more than this, Walther never wants the reader to
stop testing him against these norms. For the true Waltherian, a quia
subscription to whatever Walther says is not enough; it has to be no less
than quatenus!
In order
to let Walther speak for himself, one must hear him speaking within his own
historical context. During Walther’s lifetime, the Office of the Ministry was
a hotly debated topic throughout the Christian church at large. In the 19th
Century the church was threatened from without by such alien secular and
political forces as rationalism and nationalism, and for many of that day the
only solution seemed to be to strengthen the church’s internal authority.
Therefore, in Roman Catholicism, Ultramontanism stressed the authority of the
Pope, culminating in the declaration of his infallibility at the First Vatican
Council in 1870. Within the Church of England arose the Tractarians who
emphasised the independence of the Bishop from the state through his apostolic
succession.
However,
not everyone with concerns about secular influences in the Church and her
Ministry found a more powerful church hierarchy to be the solution; indeed, for
some, such a thing was precisely part of the problem. Friederich Schleiermacher,
for example, believed just as strongly as Roman Ultramontanists and Anglican
Tractarians that the church must be freed from alien secular and political
domination: “As soon as a prince declared a church to be a community with
special privileges, a distinguished member of the civil world,” wrote
Schleiermacher, “the corruption of that church was begun and almost
irrevocably decided.”
Nevertheless, Schleiermacher strongly criticised a “priestly government”
which “falsely makes its `foundation stone . . . the higher personal religious
worth of the priests.’” Schleiermacher argued that
such a thing runs counter to the key principle of the Reformation, that the
“individual enjoys the privilege of an immediate relationship with Christ
through the Spirit,” and is himself an “able discerner of truth” without
the need for “mediating individuals or institutions.”
For Schleiermacher, therefore, the church is freed from secularism when, as he
states in his Utopia of Church Order,
there is the “free impulse of [the Christian’s] spirit, the feeling of
heart-felt unanimity and completest equality, the common abolition of all first
and last, of all earthly order.”
The Church is a self created community, and it therefore follows that her
Ministry is also of human creation. Though Schleiermacher conceded that there
must be an “ordered public ministry” so that the church’s presence is not
“isolated and sporadic in character,” he nevertheless gives “to every
Christian the right of leadership.”
In order to protect such a right, Schleiermacher appears to stress a form of a
‘transference theory’; no individual or small group can represent Christ;
all the more must we regard this transference of offices as deriving solely from
the whole body. The formation of the clergy into a self-contained and
self-propagating corporation has no Scriptural basis of any kind. Only when the
religious consciousness of the people is left unfettered can the ministry of the
church flourish.
Like
Schleiermacher, the growing confessional Lutheran movement of 19th
Century Germany was deeply concerned with rising secularism and liberalism, and
also highly suspicious of government interference in church affairs. However,
there was much division among confessional Lutherans concerning what the
solution for such a problem should be. On the one hand, T. Kliefoth, A. Vilmar,
and W. Loehe believed, in direct opposition to Schleiermacher, that in the
church ordinary Christians could not be left to rule themselves, but must rather
be ruled by clergy, “the strong princes of the church.”
Like princes, clergy cannot simply grow out from the people, but rather, arise
by succession to the ministerial office “person to person, by reason of
God.”
The Predigtamt was a divinely
instituted, self-perpetuating class essential for the life of the church. “Not
[that] the office originates from the congregation, but it is more accurate to
say the congregation originates from the office.”
Indeed, Loehe believed that “if exclusive clerical control cannot be
allowed—that is, if there must be leadership in the church directly from the
laity—then it is better that the prince rules and not the member of the
church: `a tyrant is easier to endure, indeed one there must be, than the
many.’”
According to Loehe, the Ministry was brought into existence not from the
universal priesthood, but was rather constituted by Christ as a divinely
instituted autonomous order, and maintained by ministerial succession, existing
parallel with the congregation which it served.
Directly
opposed to Loehe were the views of J. C. K von Hofmann of Erlangen and J. W. F.
Höfling. Responding to Loehe’s Aphorisms
concerning New Testament Offices, von Hofmann wrote, “`after a long time
fighting against those who made the office dependent on the congregation, those
who make the church dependent on the office’ must now be debated.”
Von Hofmann objected especially to Loehe’s view that the effectiveness of the
Gospel is made dependent upon the office, making it, in effect,
‘ecclesiastically bound’. According to Von Hoffman, “Loehe confuses gifts
given to the entire church with the institution of the particular office.”
Though the Ministry, to be sure is distinct from the priesthood, and must have
its independence guaranteed from ‘individual congregations’, it is not to be
‘placed over the church’. For J. W. F. Höfling the common priesthood is
divinely instituted, and to it alone belongs iure divino the church’s ministry. “The power of the clergy
cannot be properly understood as being caused by a particular, individualised
power of grace that resides within the office itself,” but rather, resides in
the Word itself. Therefore, for Höfling it is contrary to the essence of the
Gospel to understand a ‘ministry’ which is separately ordained by God apart
from the common institution of the universal priesthood. For Höfling, the
Ministry emerges “by an inner necessity out of the priesthood itself, that is,
by the latter’s delegation (übertragung) of its individual members’
spiritual rights and powers to one of themselves, for the sake of good order.”
However, what is meant by Höfling in his use of the term ‘ministry’ which is
instituted is nothing more than the mere functions of proclaiming the Gospel and
administering the Sacraments. For Höfling, ministers are chosen “for the sake
of order,” by which he meant merely “human ecclesiastical and liturgical
order.”
What is instituted is merely that they be done; there is no institution of an
office of someone who is called to do it.
Even
before the development of this debate over the Ministry in Europe, Walther
confronted forceful expressions of both sides of this issue in America. On the
one hand, in the wake of the Stephan disaster, C. E. Vehse in 1839 anticipated
Höfling’s views on the Ministry. His views have been summed up as follows: 1.
All Christians are priests, by virtue
of baptism and faith. In the New Testament priests are
born, not made. 2. The office of priest belongs to all Christians and all have
the same power. All are to teach the word of God. 3. The office of priest is
given by God to the congregation. 4. To make a certain order a spiritual order
as if it were so instituted by God is to build on the wall of the papacy. 5. It
is a condemnable proposition to claim that a priest is more than a Christian. 6.
The office of the ministry is no more than a public service where something is
enjoined upon a person by the whole congregation.
Later these same arguments were taken up by Adolf Marbach at the Altenburg
debate in April, 1841. On the other hand, on Dec. 1 1840, Grabau issued his
Hirtenbrief where he argued in a vein very close to Loehe. This document was
directed against a group of Lutherans from Wisconsin who wanted to know whether
it was possible for the functions of the ministry to be exercised by a
schoolteacher. Grabau wrote back that no one could exercise the office of the
public ministry unless he had been publicly called, according to the practices
of the old orthodox Kirchenordnungen.
In the
midst of such an already raging controversy, Walther shaped his own views on the
Office of the Ministry. Towards which of the two poles of this question would he
lean? As we shall see, Walther cannot fully be understood from either of these
two extreme positions, but rather, only from a new, careful middle ground
between them. For instance, in the Altenburg Debate, Walther already carefully
steers clear of both positions. One, in fact, would be hard-pressed to say who
Walther considered to be his chief opponent—Stephan, whose heavy-handed
hierarchialism had almost destroyed the demoralised Saxon settlement, or Marbach,
against whom, after all, Walther was debating. Indeed, a careful look at the
debate shows that Walther has two objectives, firstly, to refute Stephan’s
dangerous errors, and secondly, to develop an ‘anti-Stephan’ position of the
Ministry which avoids and defends itself against the ‘functionalism’ of
Marbach and Vehse.
Grabau’s
Hirtenbrief, in which Walther sees a
`second, unrevised edition of Stephan.’
gave Walther the occasion to clearly develop his middle view. The first response
to Grabau in the name of the Saxons, was made by Löber, who wrote:
“it seems to us that, in the first place, with regard
to the old church orders, that you emphasise so much, what is essential gets
confused with what is non-essential, divine with human, so that Christian
freedom is restricted. Secondly, however, it seems that you attribute more to
the office of the ministry than is due, and that thereby the spiritual
priesthood of the congregations is diminished.”
One already notes the careful balance between two
extremes. One the hand, Grabau is roundly criticised for his overemphasis on
human externals and nonessentials; only what is divinely ordained can be
considered essential; therefore, one cannot absolutely insist upon the
traditional Kirchenordnugen. On the other hand, it cannot be overlooked that in
the primary argument of the Hirtenbrief that one is not to preach or to
administer the sacraments if he is not a Prediger, Löber actually expresses full
agreement with Grabau. Löber’s objection is not whether, but rather on how
the Prediger is to be put into his office, and what relationship the Prediger
has with those (the congregation) he is in his office to serve.
Within
the ensuing debate between Walther and Grabau, Loehe issued (in early 1850) his
opinion where he sided largely with Grabau. In response to this, Walther was
commissioned by the 1850 Missouri Synod convention to write a book on Church and
Ministry, directed chiefly against Grabau, but also intended to “counteract
the growing disapproval among the brethren in Germany.” At the following
convention, Walther presented, Die Stimme
unsure Kirche in der Frage von Kirche und Amt, which was the primary work of C. F. W. Walther on this topic.
A look
at Walther’s theses on the Ministry might properly begin where Walther begins:
the phrase of Thesis 1, “Das heilige Predigtamt.”
We may first inquire why Walther uses such a term rather than the other terms
very close to it in meaning, especially ‘Pfarrer.’ Walther refers to himself
as Pfarrer on the title page of Kirche und Amt, and while he uses both
Predigtamt and Pfarramt as parallel terms in the first two theses on Ministry,
in Thesis 7, Predigtamt is used alone. We may assume that Walther viewed the two
terms as virtual synonyms, although it is evident that there are slightly, yet
significantly different shades of meaning between the two. Pfarramt refers
specifically to a particular person in the Amt with the heavy nuance on “its
specific located reference (Pfarre, parish).” Predigtamt, however, refers to
one in the Amt, with heavy stress on what he does (Predigt, preach).
Therefore, in Thesis 1, what Walther does by referring to “Das heilige
Predigtamt” is to lay less stress on the particular man in the Office and more
on the duties which such Office has him doing (preaching).
Are such
“duties’ referred to with “Predigtamt” in Walther’s theses nothing
more than mere abstract functions which are without concrete doers doing them?
In the witnesses of Thesis 2, Walther cites with approval a distinction between
office in abstactio and in concreto by the 17th Century theologian
Ludwig Hartmann. Like Hartmann, Walther holds that AC V “does not speak of
Predigtamt in concreto or of Pfarramt but of the Predigtamt in abstracto.”
In this way, Walther lays himself open to the charge that what is instituted by
God in AC V and in Thesis 2 are nothing more than mere functions to be done.
Furthermore, he also creates “a tension between his Thesis Two, which
identifies Predigtamt and Pffaramt, and his supporting argument, which divides
Predigtamt and Pfaramt.”
Such
tension, however can be resolved by pointing out that what Walther refers to in
this way are not two Predigtamts but rather one Predigtamt considered from two
perspectives, concretely, focusing upon its incumbents, (the preaching Officer)
and abstractly (the preaching office). The Predigtamt in abstracto therefore
does not refer merely to the Means of Grace, as an activity, alone, but rather
to ‘the preaching office’ by which the activity of the Means of Grace is
carried out. Walther clearly understood Predigtamt ‘in Abstracto’ in this
way when he says that it is “when the state or the office itself is being
considered.” Therefore, even when
Walther views the Predigtamt in abstraction, he is referring to the position by
which the functions are being carried out. Reading on in the witnesses of Thesis
2 one discovers why Walther was compelled to emphasise that Predigtamt must at
times be considered abstractly, rather than concretely: “because of those who
desire to make the Pastoral Office a Means of Grace and co-ordinate it with the
Word and Sacraments, as they assert that it is absolutely necessary for
salvation.”
While, of course, for Walther, the gifts of Word and Sacrament cannot save
unless there is a giver to give them, and the Predigtamt (‘in concreto’,
actual concrete giver!) is the divinely ordained office to do just that,
nevertheless, such means of grace do not derive their power nor efficacy from
the Predigtamt.
Thus,
for Walther, the duties of the Predigtamt are therefore tied to the Amt which
performs them. The term ‘Amt’ has been noted to “embrace both functions of
service to the people appropriate to each of society’s many offices, and the
official positions that take shape in institutional form to ensure the proper
carrying out of those functions.”
Here we see Amt also referring to ‘activity’ and ‘position’. Sometimes,
in fact, the meaning of Amt can strongly imply activity, such as the ‘Amt der
Predigt’ and ‘distribution of the sacraments’. Emphasised here are such
activities which are done. Nevertheless, there is no Amt of preaching going on
unless the mouth of the preacher does so, and no sacraments can distribute
themselves, but only as there is a concrete one distributing them. Therefore,
the term Amt, even when stressing activities, never does so without also
implying the position of the one who is carrying out such activities of the Amt.
Bearing
this in mind, we are now ready more fully to see what Walther says about the
Predigtamt. One can be very clear what Walther intends to mean with this term,
for indeed, each one of Walther’s theses in Kirche und Amt begins with the
phrase “Das Predigtamt” (or some direct reference to it) and then goes on to
say something about it. In thesis one Walther begins by noting that the
Predigtamt is not merely synonymous with the “Priesteramt, welches alle
Glaubige haben,” but is rather “verscheidenes Amt.”
Then Walther says that the Predigtamt, so distinguished from the Priesteramt, is
“keine menschliche Ordnung,” but is rather “von Gott selbst gestiftetes
Amt.”
The Office of the Ministry is distinctly ordained by God and is to be
distinguished from the Common Priesthood of all Christians. By saying this
Walther places himself squarely behind AC XIV, and sets himself clearly apart
from the views of Höfling.
It is
therefore somewhat perplexing to see some scholars placing Walther within the
same category as Höfling simply because of their common opposition to Loehe.
Green, for example, views Walther, along with Höfling, to have an
‘anthropocentric’ doctrine of the Church and the Ministry “in which the
church is the sum total of people who have come together to constitute a church
and who themselves call a pastor from their midst,”
against which is a ‘theocentric’ view, in which the church “originates
with Christ, Who Himself founds it and calls its pastors and preachers.”
Such distinctions, however, fail to identify the real differences between Loehe
and Walther. In fact, according to these definitions, the views of both Walther
and Loehe are at the same time both anthropocentric and theocentric. Loehe, of
course, would agree that pastors do not become pastors by an immediate call from
God but rather mediately through the
instrument of some “people who have come together to constitute a church,”
and “who themselves” then “call a pastor into their midst.” Is not Loehe
therefore, ‘anthropocentric’ in the same way as Walther? Walther explicitly
states in Thesis 1, that “Die Kirche . . ist . . . “vom hl. Geiste
herausgerufen,” and what is more, in Thesis 7 of “Das Heilige Predigtamt”
that it is “von Gott. . . übertagene gewalt.” In other words, Walther also
agrees that “the Church originates with Christ, who Himself founds it and
calls its pastors and preachers.” Would it not follow that Walther is as every
bit theocentric as Loehe?
For this
reason, “general agreement seems to exist that the 19th Century debate in
Europe and America concerning the doctrine of the ministry” is best
characterised not by a two, but rather a “threefold perspective.”
Walther represents a via media, a
mediating position which is significantly different from the positions of both
Loehe and Höfling. In Theses 4 and 5, Walther develops this carefully weighed
mediating position. In Thesis 4 Walther differs from Loehe by declining to
consider the Predigtamt as “ein besonderer. . .heiligerer Stand.” One might
ask what Walther sees to be the difference between “besonderer . . .
heiligerer Stand” which the Prediger is not,
and ‘Amt’ which he is. It obviously does not mean that Walther is
opposed to distinctions between clergy and laity—indeed, he has already
defended such distinctions in Thesis 1. Clearly, for Walther, just because the
Predigtamt is not a ‘Stand’ does not mean that “everyone’s a
minister”; they are to be distinguished. Nevertheless, such distinctions are
made between those in the Predigtamt and those who are Laity within the totality
of the universal priesthood in which both are together and to which Walther
refers as ‘Christenstand.’ The pastor, for Walther,
does not stand outside of this Stand as pastor, but rather within it. The pastor
is a member of one Stand, and therefore cannot belong to another Stand without
himself being outside the Christenstand!
Only
within the common Stand of all Christians does the Prediger have an Amt, and
only when that Amt is clear and distinct do all Christians have a Predigtamt.
Ironically, this careful distinction between Predigtamt and Laity in one
Christenstand is jeopardised by both Loehe and Höfling in two opposite, yet
similar ways. Höfling eutychianises the Predigtamt and the Laity by dissolving
all distinctions between them. Without such a distinction, there is no divinely
ordained “Amt des Dienstes” within
the Christenstand. When however, the clergy are set above and outside the
Christenstand in a separate Stand, there is the danger that they and the laity
are nestorianised, so that without such close ‘intercommunion’ between them,
the clergy cannot be an ‘Amt des Dienstes’
for the laity. Between such extremes, Walther keeps a careful ‘Chalcedonian’
balance between the Predigtamt and the laity, so that the two ‘without
confusion, without change, without division, and without separation” exist
together within one Christenstand.
For Walther,
the Christenstand consists necessarily of a divinely ordained distinction of
Predigtamt and Laity; it is “wenn gehorig geordnet, aus Predigern und Zuhorern
besteht”
“when properly organised, consists as both preachers and hearers.”
This is very critical, for it means that whenever Walther speaks of ‘Kirche’
or `Gemeinde’, he is always speaking of both Predigtamt and Laity together,
each in their proper callings and vocation, and never one without the other.
While both Clergy and Laity have the keys, they do not have them in one
undifferentiated way. In the same way that the Gemeinde is divinely
differentiated between Clergy and Laity, there is also a distinction between two
different ways in which the laity and clergy have the church’s authority of
the keys.
Such a distinction can be seen spelled out more clearly when one sees how
Walther describes the position of both Clergy and Laity with respect to the
Office of the Keys. Walther notes that the Catechism teaches “the Keys” to
be “that special authority which Christ has given to His Church.” Since
‘Church’ refers to both Laity and Clergy together, this cannot mean for
Walther that the Keys are given exclusively to the Clergy and not to the laity.
Thus, Walther would criticise Loehe’s belief that the giving and receiving of
the Keys are essentially a clerical affair, not one of the whole Gemeinde
together. The Gemeinde is “Inhaberin aller Kirchengewalt oder der Schlussel.”
The clergy have the Keys only along with and never separate from the Laity.
However, for Walther, neither does Gemeinde, (which holds all churchly
authority), refer to “all the laity of the church minus the clergy.”
Walther’s Kirche und Amt cannot be construed as some Lay Charter of Rights or
Magna Carta, or worse, as a statement that makes the laity in charge of the
church without the clergy. The laity do not have the keys to the exclusion of
the clergy, but only along with them within the Gemeinde.
Walther
describes the Keys as ‘Gewalt/power’. ‘Gewalt’ is used for the first
time in Thesis 5 where he says that “Das Predigtamt hat die Gewalt das
evangelium zu predigt and die heiligen Sacramente zu verwalten,” The
Predigtamt, thus, has a power, and that power is to preach and to administer the
sacraments. Also, the Predigtamt has a second power, “die gewalt eines
geistlichen gerichts” the power to judge doctrine/teaching. Nevertheless,
following immediately in Thesis 6, Walther connects the term ‘Gewalt to
‘Kirchen’ and says:
Das Predigtamt wird von Gott durche die Gemeinde, als
Inhaberin aller Kirchengewalt oder Schlussel, und durch deren von Gott
vorgeschriebenen Beruf Übertragen.”
It is clear that ‘Kirchengewalt’ is synonymous with
the Keys, and that the Keys, for Walther, must be considered not just with
respect to the clergy alone but also with respect to the whole church together.
In order to press home this point even further, Walther says that the whole
church together, or rather, “die Gemeinde” is “Inhaberin aller
Kirchengewalt.” In this way Walther argues precisely in step with Luther in
the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope:
“In addition it must be acknowledged that the keys
belong and are given not merely to one man, but to the whole church. . . For
just as the promise of the Gospel belongs definitely and immediately (“ohne
Mittel”) to the whole church.”
With the term ‘Inhaberin’ Walther stresses that the
church by its innermost nature and essence carries within her the Keys; unlike
absent minded pastors with their car keys, it is not possible for the Holy
Church to lose her Keys.
Furthermore,
according to Luther, such keys “are nothing other than the Office (Amt)
through which the promise is imparted.”
The church can never lose, nor be left without the Office through which the
promise is imparted. Therefore, it follows in Thesis 2 that:
“das Predigtamt ist kein willkurliches Amt, sondern
ein solches Amt, dessen Aufrichtung der Kirche geboten, und an das die Kirche
bis an das Ende der tage ordentlicher Weise, gebunded ist.”
In other
words, what Thesis 6 refers to by the “Kirchenwalt oder der Schlussel” which
is ‘Inhaberin’ within ‘die Gemeinde’ is not merely the Keys but also the
Predigtamt through which the Keys are concretely given. Given originally to the
church by God are Keys not just abstractly considered, but Keys which actually
open and close, absolve and retain, and therefore a Predigtamt which is
instituted so that such things may be done. To say that ‘Kirche’ and
‘Gemeinde’ have the ‘Gwent’ of the Keys is for Walther to say that there
is also a ‘Predigtamt’, who has them to exercise. Therefore, according to
Thesis 5, “Das Predigtamt hat die Gewalt . . .”
Indeed, in Thesis 7, Walther binds the two together even more closely: “Die
Predigtamt ist die. . . Gewalt”
For Walther, not only were the Keys given originally to the Church but also the
Predigtamt instituted by God in her midst.
For
Walther, it is divinely ordained for the Predigtamt to have and to exercise such
power, and the Predigtamt itself is divinely ordained for the church to have so
that they are concretely exercised. When Walther speaks of the Keys as
originally and inherently within the church, he is also speaking of the
Predigtamt as originally and inherently instituted within the church for
the Keys to be exercised. The Predigtamt is not a human institution; it
is established by God Himself. What Walther says is ‘conferred’ in Thesis 6
are the Keys upon particular individuals as they are put into the Predigtamt; he
is not saying that the Office itself has the Keys conferred upon it. To the
contrary, when Walther says the Keys are originally given and immediately to the
Gemeinde, he is, at the same time, saying that they are given originally and
immediately to the Predigtamt within the Gemeinde to exercise, for the church
cannot exist with Keys apart from the Predigtamt ordained to use them. The
Predigtamt will only be exercising the Keys when there are concrete persons
within the Amt doing so. There must be real flesh and blood persons in the
office, and they cannot put themselves there, they must be placed there by
another. In this way Walther says “Die Predigtamt wird bei Gott durch die
Gemeinde . . . und durch deren Gott vorgeschriehenen Beruf übertragen.”
It was
Walther’s so-called ‘übertrangunglehre’ that led to his eventual
separation from Loehe, and many today find it to be the decisive expression of
Walther’s entire theology of the Ministry. In fact, ‘Übertragen’ is,
perhaps, the single most contentious word in all of Walther’s ‘Kirche und
Amt’. But it is quite strange that it should be so. Since, understandably,
only the most bizarre cultic leaders would claim that God personally and
immediately chooses them as He did His original Apostles, Walther’s view that
there must be some human instrument of mediation found within the church by
which such a conferral and bestowal of office can take place, is one which
should be quite uncontroversial. For instance, the position of both Höfling and
Loehe on the conferral of the office of the Ministry has been described as
‘übertragung’
and even contemporary Roman Catholic scholars can be found to espouse a
“Theologie der Amtsübertragung.”
The term ‘übertragung’ itself does not have any one uniform meaning, and the
term by itself not does not even indicate any particular theology of the
Ministry. “There is clearly nothing in the word ‘übertragung’ itself
therefore to warrant any jumping to conclusion about a particular ‘theory,’
A word is not yet a theory.”
What is
critical here is not just that the term ‘übertragung’ is used but rather
more precisely, who is doing the übertragung, what is being ‘übertragt,’
and what therefore, is meant by the term. Höfling used the terms ‘Priesteramt’,
‘Gemeinde’ ‘Kirche’ and ‘Laien’, all with virtually the same
meaning, to refer, without distinctions, to the totality of all the believers,
who together and individually possess originally the power of the Keys by divine
right. A specific Ministry of Word and Sacrament can only exist because it is
created by the priesthood, and one can only hold such a position when the
priesthood delegates the rights of the individual members and powers to one
among themselves, for the sake of good order. According to Höfling, the
übertragung involves the individual priests actively transferring their
spiritual powers to another, and in that very act, brings the Predigtamt itself
(in which the Prediger serves) into existence and shapes it into whatever is
thought best. For Höfling, therefore ,the übertragung is the creation of a
ministry by an act of the priesthood, which ‘transfers’ their powers of
priesthood to one priest in particular, who acts for them, on their behalf, and
at their pleasure.
Walter,
however, uses the term ‘übertragung’ in a quite different way. Since, for
Walther, the Predigtamt exists ‘ready made’
within the church by divine institution, no act of übertragen by anyone within
the church needs to occur in order for it to be brought into existence. The Amt
already exists within the church with the mandate to exercise the Keys; Walther
did not teach that the Predigtamt as
an Amt is without the authority, power or mandate to exercise the Keys until by
some act of übertragen the church decides to deliver such powers to the Amt. The
Predigtamt has such inherent power by virtue of its institution from God. The
church has no Predigtamt except that which it already has from God Himself in he
mandate to exercise the Keys. What the Church does übertragen are not powers to
the Predigtamt, but rather the Predigtamt with such powers to individual
incumbents, and such individuals to the Predigtamt.
Walther
expresses the ‘übertragen’ of ‘Das Predigtamt’ with the most careful
precision; it is done “bei Gott durch Gemeinde.” ‘Bei’ clearly makes God
the active agent in the übertragung,. God is the One Who confers the Predigtamt
upon the one to be a Prediger so that he has an Amt to exercise. For Walther,
“the principle efficient cause of the ministry of the Word of God is the
Sovereign Lord Himself”. As “an institution of
the Triune God” a minister “has been placed at the head of the congregation
by God Himself.”
Nevertheless,
for Walther the Gemeinde is not without a role in the übertragung of the
Predigtamt. The übertragung of the Predigtamt which occurs “bei Gott” only
does so “durch Gemeinde.” ‘Durch Gemeinde’ clearly puts the
‘Gemeinde’ in a purely instrumental role in the übertragung. The Gemeinde
can never initiate it nor cause it to happen—such, only God can do. On the
other hand, neither does God’s übertragung of the Keys and Amt to the Prediger
occur except through the human instrumentality of those in the church. No one in
Walther’s time, therefore, doubted that an übertragung is necessary.
Controversial in 19th Century Lutheranism, however, was precisely who
within the church may participate in such an übertragung. Loehe claimed that
only the Predigtamt could do so. Höfling responded by saying only the
Priesteramt, understanding the term to be synonymous with ‘Laity,’ since,
indeed, there is no other divinely ordained category within Gemeinde than
Priesteramt. Walther responded to both by saying “Die Gemeinde” understanding this term
to refer exclusively to neither laity nor clergy alone, but rather to all the
Priesteramt together, Predigtamt and Laity.
Walther
argues this quite forcefully in ‘Scripture Proof’ of Thesis 6. First, noting
that Acts 6 specifically states “die ganzen Menge”
(“the entire multitude”)
participated in the selection of deacons, and that “the apostle Matthias was
chosen for his high office not merely by the eleven”
but by “der ganzen Schaar der versammelten Glaubigen.”
(the whole band of gathered believers) Walther argues that the Gemeinde through
which the Keys are given can never have anyone within the church excluded. With
the word ‘ganzen’ Walther repeatedly includes all the laity to be within the
term Gemeinde which is the instrument through which God’s übertragung takes
place. However, immediately following this, Walther goes on to say just as
forcefully that the Predigtamt cannot also be left out of the Gemeinde as
instruments of the übertragung. Indeed “if ministers who already administer
the office belong to the calling congregation, they also of course belong to
those calling; indeed, according to the office that they administer in the
church, they above all.”
What Walther states here is that the Gemeinde which calls and serves as the
instrument of the übertragen is not to be considered by definition as merely
synonymous with ‘laity’ alone. In fact, Walther quite clearly states that if
the laity in a Gemeinde with an incumbent clergyman makes a call without him,
such call is null and void. “When their co-operation which behooves them on
account of their office, is denied, there is no longer any call of the
‘multitude’” In Thesis 6, Walther did
not intend to refer to specific inherent ‘rights’ for laity alone.
Walther’s übertragung is not intended to place all authority with the Laity
alone, which only they alone may confer. Rather, it is the guarantee that the
Gemeinde always has the inherent rights of the Keys, which can never be taken
from her by anyone outside of her. No matter who she may lack in her midst, she
may never lose the capability of being an instrumentality of an übertragung; for
“even without them [ministers]” such a thing “is valid.”
Moreover,
not only do both Clergy and Laity participate as the one ‘Gemeinde’ in the
übertragung, but according to Walther, they do so in two different and specific
ways. In the calling of pastors, and the übertragung, the clergy lead the laity,
and the laity allow themselves to be lead by them. Walther notes that if there
are no officiating ministers in a particular congregation, the laity of such a
“vacant congregation should not act alone and according to its own opinion.”
They are to “seek the counsel of ministers in office , and “listen to their
advice and instruction.”
In this way, the laity are to “concede to them [the Predigern] especially
“die Prufung und ordentliche offentliche feierliche Einsetzung des Gewahlten
überlasse.” (“the examination and
the proper, public, solemn installation of the called (pastor) ”)
Does the
übertragen of the Predigtamt “bei Gott durch Gemeinde” put the Predigtamt in
authority over the Gemeinde, or the Gemeinde in authority over the Predigtamt?
Before answering such a question, one must first point out that Walther’s
understanding of the relationship between clergy and laity cannot but be
misunderstood when one attempts to use him to answer the law orientated
question, “Who’s in charge?” In both Loehe and Höfling one does sense a
framing of the question in such a way. Höfling fears for the church if it were
to be under the authority of the clergy. Loehe argues quite strongly for the
church to be under “exclusive clerical control.”
Walther, to be sure, would completely agree with Loehe that the clergy are to
exercise a definite position of leadership over the church. In fact, Walther
notes in Thesis 5 that the clergy have a certain power of spiritual judgement
(die gewalt eines geistlichen gerichts).
The terms which Walther uses here is obviously directly taken from the Apology,
the “geistlichem gerichtszwang”
(spiritual authority/jurisdiction) which “every bishop has” to “exclude
from the Christian congregation those who are found guilty of open crimes and
again to receive and absolve them when they are converted.”
Such spiritual authority, therefore, refers to nothing more and nothing less
than the power of the Office of the Keys. Walther follows the Apology quite
closely and faithfully when he links together “the power of jurisdiction” in
Thesis 5 with the “power to preach the Gospel to administer the Holy
Sacraments.” (gewalt das Evangelium zu predigt undo die heiligen Sacramente zu
verhalten). This is the exact
explanation which the Apology gives to the “potestate oridinis.”
As with the Apology, these are the two ‘powers’ which for Walther define the
Office of the Predigtamt. Therefore, for the Confessions and for Walther, the
Gewalt and power exercised by the Minister always has reference neither to
matters of church polity or control of external administrative structures, nor
to the ability to coerce the behaviour of others, but rather to the Means of
Grace, and such means, of necessity, always involve Gospel-giving, rather than
the compulsion of the law.
But
would Walther agree with Loehe that such ‘spiritual judgement’ is
‘exclusive’ to the clergy? In Theses 10 Walther writes that “ judging
doctrine” (lehre zu urteilen) which the Predigtamt do by divine right is
something which the laity also have the right to do. Walther goes on to say
that “the right to judge doctrine has not been taken away from the laymen by
the establishment of the ministry,” and indeed, such a right they still have
as a “sacred duty”.
Therefore, according to Walther, “in the ecclesiastical courts and councils
they (the laity) are accorded both a seat and vote together with the clergy.”
One must
pay special attention to what Walther is saying here. Firstly, Walther is not
saying that with the right to ‘judge doctrine’ and a ‘seat and vote’
that the laity therefore have control over the clergy. To the contrary, all
rights given to the laity are carefully expressed as “with the clergy” and
not over them. Secondly, neither would it be accurate to say that Walther is
making a direct response to Loehe’s ‘exclusive clerical control’ by saying
‘no, clergy and laity control together’ for the simple reason that law
oriented ‘control’ is never Walther’s concern when he discusses the
ministry and laity of the church. For Walther, not even Christ ‘controls’
the church, any more than any Bridegroom would his Bride, He is rather her self
sacrificing and serving Lord, and her gracious Life-giving and protecting Head.
As representatives of Christ, it is the vocation of the clergy to bring such a
Christ to the laity. They have a divinely ordained position of authority over
the laity in the same way which Christ does, in order to serve them. In
their service to the laity the clergy have the solemn call to judge doctrine in
the same way that a doctor judges the medicine which he gives to the patient. He
must judge and distinguish between poison and the good medicine which he is to
dispense. In order to be served by his doctor, the patient must listen to him ,
do what he says, and indeed, obey his instructions. So likewise, the pastor, as
a physician of souls, serves the laity. But in order to do so, the laity must
listen to their pastor, do what he says, and, indeed obey him in the teaching
that he gives to them—only in this way can the pastor be their servant. The
pastor serves the laity by faithfully exercising his fatherly authority over
them. The laity lets the pastor serve them by submitting to this authority and
obeying him.
Thus, in
the church, Walther quite explicitly says that “dem Predigtamt gehuhrt
Ehrfurcht undo unbedingter gehorsam, wenn der Prediger Gottes Wort fuhrt.”
(“to the Ministry there is due respect as well as unconditional obedience when
the pastor comes with God’s Word.”)
By saying this, Walther faithfully follows the Scriptures: (“Obey those who
rule over you” (Heb. 13:17) , and the Confessions (“congregations owe the
bishops obedience.”).
For Walther, the pastor has a solemn and divinely ordained role to serve his
congregation and he does so by being her head, having authority and in fact,
ruling over her. The congregation, in turn, receives the service of the pastor
by gladly submitting to their pastor’s headship. They do so by hearing the
Word which he preaches, and rendering him ‘unconditional obedience’ when he
does. In this way, they are hearing and obeying God Himself. What Walther says
about the obedience, dignity and esteem due to the Pastoral Office, “the
highest office in the church” quite simply equals and
outdoes anything that can be found said by Grabau, Loehe and in fact by any
other 19th Century Lutheran.
Walther
dramatically distances himself from Loehe and Höfling, both of whom at times can
describe ‘power’ in the church apart from the Means of Grace as a matter of
administrative control. Walther especially differed from Höfling, who attempted
to thwart power hungry clerics by setting them under the firm control of a lay
dominated church polity. To be sure, Walther believed strongly that the laity,
and not just the clergy, “also possess [the] right . . . to judge doctrine.”
and “therefore in the ecclesiastical courts and councils they are accorded
both a seat and vote together with the clergy.”
Even so, it is crucial to recognise that Walther did not regard this ‘right’
of the laity to focus primarily on matters of polity in the outward structures
of the church. Walther is not saying that the Laity have power over the Clergy!
Rather, with Thesis 10, Walther is speaking of things far more essential than
mere adiaphoristic matters of church polity; he speaks, indeed, of the church
liturgically, the hearing and confessing of the proclaimed Word of God. For
instance, in his Scripture Proof, when Walther goes on to explain what he means
by ‘judge doctrine’, he appeals first to Paul’s reference to the Lord’s
Supper, in Cor. 10:15-16 which the lay would hear and receive in the Church’s
liturgy, asking them to judge for themselves about its meaning. Four things are
to be noticed here: first, Walther, along with St. Paul, defines ‘judge
doctrine’ not simply according to anything the laity may think, but rather to
what they concretely hear in the proclaimed Word of God. Secondly, by ‘judge
doctrine’ the laity are called upon to hear this word and to discern what it
means. Thirdly, by “testing the spirits, whether they are from God” the
laity ,when they judge doctrine, are to distinguish what is true in the word of
God and distinguish it from what is from false prophets (Matt. 7;15-16, John
10:5).
In every way, Walther’s purpose in Thesis 10 is to point the laity away from
their own thoughts to the Scriptures. (Acts 17:l1) And fourthly, ‘judge
doctrine’ enjoins them to confess this openly before others in the church.
Therefore, when Walther expresses the right of laity to ‘judge doctrine’, he
is putting the Laity under the Word of God, and thus under pastors through whom
the Word is faithfully preached. Walther is underscoring the laity’s right to
make sure they are under the preached Word of God, as opposed to being under the
influence of false teachers. Therefore, layman and pastor , united together in
one Christenstand, in their respective vocations as hearers and proclaimers of
God’s Word, are both servants of the Word of God. Walther’s greatness was
that he always declined to discuss the Gewalt and Rechte of the Gemeinde, Kirche
and the Predigtamt with regard to external matters of Law, but rather only in
terms of Gospel matters of the Means of Grace and the proclaiming and hearing of
the Word of God. The power of the Predigtamt is to preach the Gospel and to
administer the sacraments, and its authority is nothing but the mandate from God
Himself to give such gifts, while the Rechte of the Gemeinde is nothing but to
receive and hear it.
Just
as God uses the instrumentality of the Means of Grace, (audible word, water,
bread and wine), to convey forgiveness and life (one does not give them to
oneself!), so also He uses the instrumentality of the Predigtamt in order to do
the distributing of Predigt, preaching, and the means of grace, so that the
laity may receive them extra nos.
Likewise, the Prediger cannot give the Predigtamt to himself, but also must
receive it through an instrumentality. Therefore, the Gemeinde, through its call
is the instrument through which the Keys are conferred to the particular
Prediger. The calling and vocation of the Priesteramt is to hear, and the
calling of the Predigtamt is to serve the Priesteramt by preaching to them, for
they can only hear when they have something to hear. In each of these ways, the
instrument is the divinely appointed extra
nos place through which and where God does what He does. The vocation of the
Predigtamt is to be an instrument through which God gives His gifts, and the
vocation of the Gemeinde is to receive them from the Prediger as from God
Himself.
For Walther,
the “Predigtamt . . .Amt des Dienstes ist”—a
Ministry of service,
both of God and the Gemeinde, but not in one and the same way. The differences
between the two can be hinted at by the fact that while the Pastor is called
‘by’ God, he is called ‘through’, ‘to’ and ‘for’ the
congregation. Firstly, the pastor is a ’Diener Gottes’ (‘servant of
God’) because he is sent by Him and acts as a “bottschafter an Christus
Statt.”
(‘ambassador of Christ’).
What he is to do is defined by God Himself in the Divine institution of the
Predigtamt. Only from God can a specific Prediger receive the authority to act
with the powers of the Predigtamt. It cannot be enough that the pastor is merely
sent by a congregation; he must be sent by God Himself, and it must be none
other than God Himself Who puts Prediger into the Predigtamt, for only then can
he speak on His behalf. The pastor speaks and acts on behalf of God, and in fact
Walther can say that “when a ‘Prediger’ uses God’s Word in his Gemeinde,
whether by teaching, admonishing, reproving, , or comforting, either publicly or
privately,
“so hort die Gemeinde aus seinem Munde Jesum Christum selbst.”
(“so the congregation hears from his mouth Jesus Christ Himself.”) ,
Secondly,
Walther explicitly calls the ‘Eingesetzte’ (the ‘installed one’) a
‘Diener des Gemeinde’ (‘servant of the congregation’). Since what God
does on behalf of the congregation is to serve them, it follows that as an
instrument of the Lord, the pastor also serves the church. However, the pastor
is not the servant of their desires, wants, nor will but rather of God’s
desire, wants and will for them which is expressed in the Word of God which the
pastor is called to faithfully preach and proclaim.
Giving
the pastor such a authority to speak as a servant of God in His behalf actually
keeps ultimate authority with God Himself, and keeps the pastor as His stewards.
Ministers are not “proprietors of the salvific treasures of the church but are
rather stewards of them.”
They can only exercise the power given to them by God to be His instruments. The
Gewalt of the Predigtamt is strictly circumvented by the Word of God; he is
authorised to speak God’s Word, no more, and no less. For this reason, the
Prediger has “no authority to introduce new laws or arbitrarily to establish
adiaphora or ceremonies,”
and therefore to “demand absolute obedience to what merely appears to him to
be best.”
But
neither do the laity, in turn, have the right to “demand absolute obedience”
from the clergy “to what merely appears to them to be best.” With this
statement from the Scripture Proof of Thesis 9-B, it is not Walther’s
intention to grant the laity unbridled freedom from the clergy to do whatever
they want, much less to lord it over the clergy. Rather, Walther is again
chiefly concerned with ‘der ganzen Gemeinde,’
and that ‘des Predigers mit den Zuhorern’
indeed to act harmoniously ‘with’ one another without law orientated
compulsion. In fact, the laity can only
exercise their freedom with regard to adiaphora, as Thesis 9-B describes it,
when they are under the pastor’s
teaching authority, and therefore under the Word of God. It is the whole church
together which is to “decide on what should be accepted or rejected” on
matters adiaphora, and the laity do, indeed, have full participation in such
deliberations, but only according to their vocation within the church as
‘hearers’ under the pastor’s
vocation as “Lehr, Aussichts, und Wachteramt,”
(“teacher, supervisor, and watchman.”)
In such a vocation, the pastor is to “direct the deliberations” of the whole
church, and he:
“must instruct the congregation (‘die Gemeinde zu
unterrichten’) and see to it that also in the determination of adiaphora and
the establishment of ecclesiastical regulations and ceremonies the congregation
does not act frivolously or establish something that is hurtful.”
In this way the vocations of both Pastor and laity in
the Gemeinde are centred and defined by the Word of God; it is what the Prediger
preaches and what the hearer hears, and in this way they are “des Predigers
mit den Zuhorern”.,
where matters adiaphora are established evangelically “by way of advice [from
the pastors] and with the consent of the whole congregation.”
The
greatness of Walther’s view on Church and Ministry was to order both Pastor
and Laity harmoniously together in the church around the Means of Grace under
the Word of God. Both Höfling and Loehe, in opposite yet similar ways, inclined
toward defining the place of clergy and laity in terms of how they oppose each
other and how each is to be free to act unfettered from the other. Contrary to
both, Walther defined clergy and laity liturgically, by the mutual God-given
vocations which bind each to one another around the on-going Means of Grace,
pastors preaching God’s Word to their hearers in the one Gemeinde,
‘Predigern mit den Zuhorern.’
