The Lutherans of New York Part 1

The Lutherans of New York.

by George Wenner.

Apology

Lutherans are not foreigners in New York. Most of us it is true are new comers. But with a single exception, that of the Dutch Reformed Church, Lutherans were the first to plant the standard of the cross on Manhattan Island.

The story of our church runs parallel with that of the city. Our problems are bound up with those of New York. Our neighbors ought to be better acquainted with us. We ought to be better acquainted with them.

We have common tasks, and it would be well if we knew more of each other's ways and aims.

New York is a cosmopolitan city. It is the gateway through which the nations are sending their children into the new world.

Lutherans are a cosmopolitan church. Our pastors minister to their flocks in fifteen languages. No church has a greater obligation to "seek the peace of the city" than the Lutherans of New York. No church has a deeper interest in the problems that come to us with the growth and ever changing conditions of the metropolis.

In their earlier history our churches had a checkered career. In recent years they have made remarkable progress. In Greater New York we enroll this year 160 churches. The Metropolitan District numbers 260 congregations holding the Lutheran confession. But the extraordinary conditions of a rapidly expanding metropolis, with its nomadic population, together with our special drawback of congregations divided among various races and languages as well as conflicting schools of theological definition, make our tasks heavy and confront us with problems of grave difficulty.

On the background of a historical sketch a study of some of these problems is attempted by the author. After spending what seemed but a span of years in the pastorate on the East Side, he awoke one day to find that half a century had been charged to his account. While it is a distinction, there is no special merit in being the senior pastor of New York. As Edward Judson once said to him: "All that you have had to do was to outlive your contemporaries."

These fifty years have been eventful ones in the history of our church in New York. All of this period the author "has seen and part of it he was." But having also known, with four exceptions all the Lutheran pastors of the preceding fifty years, he has come into an almost personal touch with the events of a century of Lutheran history on this island. He has breathed its spirit and sympathized with its aspirations.

This unique experience served as a pretext for putting into print some reflections that seemed fitting at a time when our churches were celebrating the quadricentennial of the Reformation and were inquiring as to the place which they might take in the new century upon which they were entering. The ma.n.u.script was begun during the celebration, but parochial duties intervened and frequent interruptions delayed the completion of the book.

Lutherans have their place in Church History. Our doctrinal principles differ in certain respects from those of other churches. We believe that these principles are an expression of historical, evangelical Christianity, worthy of being promulgated, not in a spirit of arrogant denominationalism, but in a spirit of toleration and catholicity. Yet few in this city, outside of our own kith and kin, understand the meaning of our system. We have made but little progress in commending it to others or in extending our denominational lines.

We do not even hold the ground that belongs to us. The descendants of the Lutherans of the first two centuries are not enrolled in our church books. Although of late years we have increased a hundredfold (literally a hundredfold within the memory of men still living), we are far from caring effectively for our flocks. The number of lapsed Lutherans is larger than that of the enrolled members of our churches. In the language of our Palatine forefathers: _Doh is ebbes letz_.

While therefore recent progress affords ground for encouragement, it is not a time for boastfulness. It is rather a time for self-examination, for an inquiry into our preparedness for new tasks and impending opportunities.

We are living in an imperial city. What we plan and what we do here in New York projects itself far beyond the walls of our city. Nowhere are the questions of the community more complicated and the needs of the time more urgent than here. We should therefore ask ourselves whether the disjointed sections of our church, arrayed during the Quadricentennial as one, for the purposes of a spectacular celebration, but each exalting some particularism of secondary value, adequately represent the religious ideas which four centuries ago gave a new impulse to the life of the world. If not, where does the trouble lie?

Is it a question of doctrine, of language, of organization or of spirit?

The emphasis we place upon doctrine has given us a reputation for exclusiveness. The author believes that the spirit of Lutheranism is that of catholicity. He holds that, in our relations with the people of this city and with other churches we ought to emphasize the essential and outstanding features of the Lutheran Church rather than the minute distinctions which only the trained dogmatician can comprehend. He is in sympathy with the well known plea of Rupertus Meldenius, an otherwise unknown Lutheran theologian of the seventeenth century (about 1623), to observe "in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity."

Introduction

For the sake of non-Lutheran readers it may be well, in a sketch of the story and problems of our churches, to present a short statement of their principles and to indicate in what respect these differ from the general att.i.tude and beliefs of other churches. In doing so however the author does not presume to encroach upon the field belonging to the scholars of the church. He is not an expert theologian. What he has to say upon this subject can only be taken as the opinion of a workaday pastor who, in practical experience, has obtained an acquaintance with the teachings of the church which it is his privilege to serve. For a clearer understanding of disputed points the reader is referred to the books of reference named in the Bibliography.

Many otherwise well-read people, while admitting that Lutherans are Protestants, suspect that their system is still imbued with the leaven of Romanism. In their cla.s.sification of churches they are disposed to place us among Ritualists, Sacerdotalists and Crypto-Romanists.

We do not expect to reverse at once the preference of most American Protestants in favor of the Reformed system. But since we have had no inconsiderable share in the shaping of modern history, we are confident that our principles will in due time receive the consideration to which any historical development is ent.i.tled. We would like to be understood, or at least not to be misunderstood, by our fellow Christians.

But our chief desire is to inspire our own young people with an intelligent devotion to the faith of their fathers and to persuade them of its conformity with historical, believing Christianity.

What is Lutheranism? How does it differ from Catholicism? How does it differ from other forms of Protestantism?

The origin of Lutheranism we are accustomed to a.s.sign to the sixteenth century. We a.s.sociate it with the nailing of the 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg, or with Luther's defence at the Diet of Worms, or with the Confession of the Evangelicals at Augsburg in 1530.

These events were indeed dramatic indications of a great change, but they were only the culmination of a process that had been going on for ages. It was a re-formation of the ancient Catholic Church and a return to the original principles of the Gospel.

"The Church had become an enormous labyrinthine structure which included all sorts of heterogeneous matters, the Gospel and holy water, the universal priesthood and the pope on his throne, the Redeemer and Saint Anna, and called it religion. Over against this vast acc.u.mulation of the ages, against which many times ineffective protest had been made, the Lutheran Reformation insisted on reducing religion to its simplest terms, faith and the word of G.o.d."*

*Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums.

The traditional conception of the Church with all its apparatus and claims of authority it repudiated, and in the few and simple statements of the seventh article of the Augustana, it set forth its doctrine of the Church:

"Also they teach, that One holy Church is to continue forever. The Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments rightly administered. And to the true unity of the Church, it is enough to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments."

This was the Lutheran position as against Rome.

But properly to understand our history we must also take account of another movement with which our churches had to contend at the same time that they were making their protest against Rome. This was a more radical form of Protestantism which found its expression among what are known as the Reformed Churches. It had its home in Switzerland, and made its way along the Rhine to Germany, France and Holland. Through John Knox it came to Scotland, and subsequently superseded Lutheranism in Holland and in England. It was from these countries that the earliest colonists came to America, and thus American Christianity early received the impress of the Reformed system. The few and scattered Lutheran churches which were established here in the early history of our country were brought into contact with a form of Protestantism at variance with their own theological principles. The history of our Church in America must be studied with this fact in mind, otherwise many of its developments will not be understood.

It would lead too far to explain the historical and philosophical differences between these two forms of Protestantism. A phrase first used by Julius Stahl aptly describes the difference. The Lutheran Reformation was the "Conservative Reformation." Its general principle was to maintain the historical continuity of the Church, rejecting only that which was contrary to the word of G.o.d. The irenic character of the Augsburg Confession was owing to this principle. The Reformed Churches, on the other hand, made a _tabula rasa_ of history, and, ignoring even the legitimate contributions of the Christian centuries, professed to return to apostolical simplicity, and to accept for their church-life only that which was explicitly prescribed by the Holy Scriptures.

Thus the Lutherans retained the churches as they were, with their altars and their pictures, the Liturgy and other products of art and of history, provided they were not contrary to the word of G.o.d. The Reformed, on the other hand, would have none of these things because they were not prescribed in the Bible. They wors.h.i.+pped in churches with bare walls, and dispensed with organs and music, in the interest of a return to Scriptural simplicity.

There were other differences, but these indicate the general character of the two movements.

History thus placed our Church between two fires, and the training she received explains in part the polemical character for which she has been distinguished. Sharp theological distinctions had to be made. The emphasis which she was compelled to place upon distinctive doctrine as a bond of fellows.h.i.+p accounts for the maintenance of standards which were not required in the early history of our Church when the seventh article of the Augustana was presented.

Those were famous battles which were fought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in defence of the Lutheran position. Our Church had to contend with two vigorous foes in the statement of her doctrines, Rome and Reform. The antinomian and synergistic controversies, Osiander, Major and Flacius, the Philippists and the Crypto-Calvinists are names that still remind us of the theological carnage of the sixteenth century.

In the seventeenth century came the reign of the dogmaticians. The eighteenth century was the age of Pietism and this was followed by Rationalism. The scope of this Introduction does not require us to explain the significance of these movements. Students of Church History are familiar with them.

The revival of spiritual life at the beginning of the nineteenth century brought with it also a revival of church consciousness and a restoration of the confession of the church. Both in Europe and in America the attempt has been made to secure the unity of the church on the basis of subscription to the various Symbols included in the Book of Concord.

These Symbols, besides the Ec.u.menical Creeds and the Augsburg Confession, are Melanchthon's Apology, that is Defence of the Augsburg Confession, Luther's two Catechisms, the Smalcald Articles and the Formula of Concord. The later Confessions supplement and explain the statements of the Augsburg Confession. As such they are valuable exponents of Lutheran teaching. Many of our churches in Europe as well as in America require of their ministers subscription to these Confessions. At the same time it is also true that many churches, whose Lutheranism cannot be impugned, find in the Augsburg Confession an adequate expression of their doctrinal position.

According to the Confessors of Augsburg: "For the true unity of the church it is sufficient to agree concerning the doctrines of the Gospel."

It would seem, therefore, to be in harmony with the spirit of Lutheranism to make "the confession of the churches" rather than "the Confessions of the Church" the bond of union. Underneath the Confessions there are distinctive principles differentiating us from the sacerdotal churches on the one hand and from the Reformed churches on the other hand.

The soul of the Confessions is the confession, and this soul we may recognize amid all the changes that take place in the course of time and the progress of thought. It reveals itself in innumerable forms, in sermons and in sacred song, and above all in the sanctified lives of those who confess the faith.

In conversation with an eminent teacher in one of our most conservative schools, the author not long ago requested a definition of Lutheranism from the standpoint of the school which the Professor represented. Of course, it was suggested, the acceptance of the Symbolical books must be presumed, _sine qua non_.

The reply was: "The Symbolical Books are valuable, but their obligatory acceptance is not essential: The same is true even of the Augsburg Confession. Any one who accepts the teachings of Luther's Small Catechism is a Lutheran. The heart of the Lutheran faith may be expressed in the following words: "Man is a sinner who can be saved by grace alone."

In view of this statement it would seem to be a legitimate inference that even in the straitest sect of Lutherans in America the ultimate doctrine of Lutheranism, reduced to a single word, is GRACE.

Churches, however, have their distinguis.h.i.+ng marks. In the Lutheran Church these are more difficult to find because of her catholic origin and spirit. While forms and ceremonies are retained, they play only a minor part in the expression of her churchliness. Bishops and presbyters, robes and chasubles, liturgies and orders, "helps, governments and divers kinds of tongues," in the providence of G.o.d all of these things have been "set in the church." Lutherans in many lands make use of them. An inexperienced observer, taking note only of crucifixes and candles sometimes fails to distinguish between Lutherans and Catholics. Yet none of these heirlooms of our ancient family belong to the essential marks of the church. Their observance or non-observance has nothing to do with the substance of Lutheranism.

Lutheranism aimed at reformation and not at revolution. Its initial purpose was to bring back the Church to the common faith of Christendom.

Hence the Lutheran Confession is in its large outlines that of universal Christendom. Nevertheless, it received a distinctive trend from the problems of soteriology. The ancient Church had developed the doctrines of G.o.d and of Christ. A beginning, too, had been made in the doctrines of sin and grace and the way of salvation. But the development had been hindered by hierarchical traditionalism and by the spirit of legalism.

These were the obstacles that stood in the way. The cry that went up to G.o.d from the hearts of the people in the days of the Reformation was "What must I do to be saved?" This cry found a voice in the experience of Luther himself. This is what drove him into the monastery, and this was the underlying quest of his life as a monk and as a teacher in the university, through monasticism to get to heaven. It was only when he had found Christ, and realized that his sins had been taken away through the atoning work of the Son of G.o.d, that he found peace. It is His person and work upon which the doctrine of our Church primarily rests.*

*"Luther, when he said that justification by faith was the article of a standing or falling Church, stated the exact truth. He meant to say, in the terms of the New Testament, especially of Paul, that G.o.d in Christ is the sole and sufficient Saviour. He affirmed what was in him no abstract doctrine, but the most concrete of all realities, Incarnated in the person and pa.s.sion of Jesus Christ, drawing from Him its eternal and universal significance."--Fairbairn, "The Place of Christ in Modern Theology," page 159.

In the words of the Small Catechism, Luther still teaches our children this foundation doctrine of our Church:

"I believe that Jesus Christ, true G.o.d, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, secured and delivered me from all sins, from death and from the power of the devil; not with silver and gold, but with His holy and precious blood, and with His innocent sufferings and death, in order that I might be His, live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness."