LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Concordia Lutheran Seminary

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54 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XII the “Reformed irenicists”, theologians in the Elector’s pay who were prepared to deal gently with such enlightened Lutherans as were prepared to give up the Real Presence in the Eucharist and the Christology of the genus majestaticum. 14 All the way from John Sigismund to the Prussian Union of the early 19 th century, the sentence once declared by pagan Rome, the judgement spoken against Luther by Charles V, was repeated against the loyal children of the Lutheran Reformation: Non licet esse vos, You have no right to exist! Most of nominal Lutheranism on the European continent has long since been swallowed up hook, line and sinker into what Kurt Marquart describes as the black hole of union with the Reformed. The Lutherans of North Germany could at least plead in mitigation the brutal persecuting efforts of the Hohenzollern State, but the nominal Lutherans of North America can offer no such excuse. Two distinct models for being Lutheran have been available since the early decades of the 19 th century. On the one hand, the Hohenzollern paradigm was advocated with democratic wrappings by S. S. Schmucker with his programme of “American Lutheranism”. Alas, the great majority of North American Lutherans now unblushingly walk the path signposted by Schmucker, which involves the wholesale surrender of the second pattern of reformation in favour of some conflation of the third and fifth patterns that emerged five centuries ago. On the other hand, the heirs of Krauth and Walther and of Löhe’s Sendlinge find themselves at odds with the prevailing religious culture as they confess Christ in partibus infidelium. Even within the conservative Lutheran synods powerful forces would join with the Hohenzollerns and Schmucker in hacking down the venerable ecclesial tree with fivefold root. Our only justification for seeking the conservation and flourishing of this tree is the conviction that the young professor who issued his 95 Theses 483 years ago was faithful to Christ and His Word as he sought to reconfigure the inter-relation of Scripture, office, and rule/confession in the life of the Church. On this anniversary night we may not indulge in cheap triumphalism, for all Western Christendom, including our own, is currently gripped in deep crisis, engulfed in dreadful desolation. Five centuries ago those who advocated all six patterns of reformation were agreed that Almighty God is all-holy and His wrath to be feared. As we now enter the fourth century of so-called Enlightenment, this consensus has broken down so that even the religious forces active within 14 See the closing chapters of Nischan’s Prince, People, and Confession, and the same writer’s Lutherans and Calvinists in the Age of Confessionalism (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 1999) chapters 12 and 13. These meticulously researched volumes, containing a wealth of otherwise inaccessible data and written from a bitterly anti-Lutheran perspective, are must reading for all seminarians and clergy who care a fig for confessional integrity!
STEPHENSON: THE ROOTS OF THE REFORMATION 55 our culture are hard at work to silence the Law which would convict us all of sin. Apart from the holiness of God and the severity of His wrath as wrought through the Law, the bottom line of the Lutheran Reformation degenerates into the bland announcement of the wimpiness of God. Thus, to allude to the closing theses of the 95, many an imparting of the general Absolution each Sunday morning may in fact be the proclamation of “Peace, peace, where there is no peace.” The future of the Lutheran Reformation does not stand in human hands, but in the scarred hands of Him who suffered for us. In His all-wise providence He has entrusted treasures to us which are meant for His own people. Thus the conservation and flourishing of the ecclesial tree with fivefold root depends now on His work through Law and Gospel to bring about a state of affairs envisaged by Dr. Luther, who steps forth from the great cloud of witnesses to testify that, “When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said ‘Repent’, He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” John R. Stephenson, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Historical Theology at Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary, St. Catharines, Ontario.
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LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Concordia Lutheran Seminary

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