A Most Detestable Confusion of Law and Gospel
My Dear Friends: —
During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Rationalism rushed in upon the so-called Protestant Church with the force of a spring-tide, In the lecture halls of universities it was held up as a new and great light to young theologians, who afterwards preached it to the common people as true Christianity — Christianity purified. Thus Rationalism gradually became the dominant type of religion. The inevitable consequence was that the conviction that it is not a matter of indifference whether a person is a Lutheran or a Reformed or a Catholic vanished completely. The small remnant of sincere Christians who still believed and confessed with their mouths that the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God, that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God, that man is justified before God by faith in Christ alone, — these few Christians extended to each other the right hand of brotherly fellowship, like persons saved from a great shipwreck, who, having seen most of their fellow-passengers go down to a watery grave, now embrace each other with tears of joy though they had been perfect Strangers before. In this state of affairs the thought had to arise in all hearts that the time had come for putting an end to the abominable church quarrels (that is what doctrinal controversies were called) and to let down the bars that divided the churches from one another. Especially the confessions, it was held, must be removed, because, like toll-gates along a highway, they hindered progress, and, to sum up, a great universal union of the churches, at least of the Protestant churches, must at last be instituted.
But, lo! what happened? In the year 1817, when this plan was to be executed, Claus Harms, in whom there was still some Lutheran blood flowing, wrote ninety-five theses against Rationalism and the union of churches, which he intended as a counterpart to the Ninety-five Theses of Luther. In these theses he said to the advocates of church union: “You purpose to make the poor hand-maid, the Lutheran Church, rich by a marriage. Do not perform the act over Luther’s grave. Life will come into his bones, and then — woe to you!” This glorious prediction was fulfilled. When the union of churches was actually put into effect in Prussia, multitudes of Lutherans suddenly awoke from their spiritual sleep, remembered that they belonged to the Lutheran Church, and declared that they would never forsake the faith of their fathers. In fact, they chose to see themselves evicted from their homes, imprisoned, and expatriated rather than consent to a union of truth with error, of the Word of God with man’s word, of the true Church with a false Church.
Those were glorious days in the dark period about the middle of the nineteenth century. It is a pity that from the glorious conflict of those trying times there did not emerge the old, pure, genuine Lutheran Church. The reason was that the very men who wished to “hold that fast which they had that no man take their crown,” Rev. 3, 11, did not possess a clear and pure knowledge of the truth; and so it happened that they went from one extreme to the other: from Rationalism and religions and ecclesiastical indifferentism to particularism and a hierarchical tendency that was anti-Lutheran. The men, namely, who in those days led others in their determined opposition to the union of churches and strenuously insisted on being Lutherans, proceeded to prove their claim by asserting that the true visible Lutheran Church is the Church mentioned in the Third Article of the Creed, in these words: “I believe a holy Christian Church, the communion of saints.” They held that the Lutheran Church is the Church par excellence (κατ᾽ ἑξοχήν), the Church in the most exalted and proper sense, the ecclesia, extra quam nulla est salus, the Church outside of which there is no salvation, possibly with this limitation: “except that God in a miraculous and extraordinary manner may save a person also outside of this Church and lead him to eternal life.” It was a pathetic and fatal error, which placed these men in direct contradiction to the Holy Scriptures and, moreover, overthrew the cardinal doctrine of Christianity, the doctrine that a poor sinner is made righteous in the sight of God for Christ’s sake, by faith alone. This error plainly involved a most detestable confusion and commingling of Law and Gospel. This error is still in vogue in the Separate Lutheran Church of Prussia.
- from C.F.W. Walther, ‘Law and Gospel, Thirty Second Evening Lecture.’ (June 19, 1885)
