(!tnurnr~itt
m~tnln!liral :!InutfJlg
Continuing
LEHRE UND VVEHRE
MAGAZIN FUER Ev.-LuTH. HOMILETIK
THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLy-THEOLOGICAL MONTHLY
Vol. XX September, 1949 No.9
CONTENTS
Pap
No Development of Doctrine for Us! Theo. Engelder (Deceased) _ 641
Sermon Study on 2 Kings 14:8-9. Walter R. Roehrs ___ _________ 652
A Series of Sermon Studies for the Church Year __________ 660
Announcement of Sermon Studies for the Next Church Year ___ 672
Miscellanea ________ .. ________________________________ 674
Theological Observer ___________________________________________ 701
Book Review ____ ._. ______________________________________________ 713
Em Prediger muss nlcht alIeln wei.
de7&, also dass er d1e Schafe unter·
weise, wle ale rechte Christen Bollen
seJn. sondem auch daneben den Woel·
fen weh1'en, dass ale d1e Schafe nlcht
angrelfen und mit falscher Lehre ver-
tuehren und Irrtum elnfuehren.
Luther
Es 1st keln Ding, das d1e Leute
mehr bel der Klrche behaelt denn
d1e gute Predigt. - Apologie, Art. 24
If the trumpet g:tve an uneertaln
sound, who shall prepare himself to
the hattie? -1 CM.14:8
Published by
The Lutheran Chareh - MlIIoarl 811lod
CONCOBDIA I'tJBUSIIING BOUSE, St. LoaU 18, M ..
PIIIHftII IN tI'. 8. A.
Concordia
Theological Monthly
Vol. xx SEPTEMBER, 1949 No.9
No Development of Doctrine for Us!
t By THEO. ENG ELDER t
(Continued)
The second reason why we refuse to have anything to do
with developing the doctrine is that the development of the
Christian doctrine simply means the destruction of the Chris-
tian doctrine. "He who sets out to improve the Scriptural doc-
trines is losing the doctrines. 'Progress' is here only a euphe-
mism for retrogression; 'development' is a misnomer for de-
struction." (Froc., Western District, 1897, p.68.) Or, as Dr.
Pieper puts it: "That there can be no development of the
Christian doctrine is evidenced by the patent fact that when-
ever men set out to develop the doctrine, they invariably
pervert and destroy the Christian doctrine" (Christliche Dog-
matik, I, p. 151). If you add anything to the Christian doctrine
or take anything away from it, if you modify it in the least, it
will no longer be what it was. Reconstruction here means
destruction. And "we thank God that Walther did not attempt
to adjust, modify, make over, change, the old doctrine. Do
you know what happens when the modern theologians, in
their youthful itch to go beyond the Fathers, set about develop-
ing the Christian doctrine? Read the series of articles by
Walther in Volumes 21-23 of Lehre und Wehre: 'Was ist es
um den Fortschritt der modernen lutherischen Theologie in der
Lehre?' What these men called development of doctrine re-
sulted in the abridgment or total loss of it. " (Walther and the
Church, p. 20.)
The reconstructionists themselves tell us that they are
offering the Church new doctrines. S . P. Cadman: "I should
41
642 NO DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE FOR US!
welcome a restatement of the New Testament faith made in
the light of advancing learning. . . . What we need is not less,
but better theology, embodying doctrines which ennoble rather
than stultify reason, and which satisfy the universal demands
of the human soul." (Answers to Everyday Questions,
p. 264 f.)1 Let us examine a few of the teachings they offer
and see what a vast difference there is between the old truth
and "the old truth taught in a new way."
Take the doctrine of inspiration. W. A. Brown: "The
Bible, as we have seen, is not a system of doctrine giving us
our creed in final form. It is not a Code of laws defining the
niceties of conduct .... Unique as the Bible is in many respects,
it is a human book. . . . The Fundamentalist contends that the
Modernist's view of the Bible as a book which contains errors
robs its message of authority and certainty. But the Modernist
does not consider that the errors in the Bible affect its purpose
at all" (Beliefs That Matter, pp.230, 219, 225). And: "What
we need in such a textbook is a compendium of simple prin-
ciples capable of indefinite application and therefore needing
continual reinterpretation in the light of expanding experience .
. . . The theologians have made it a dogmatic textbook, search-
ing its pages for proof texts which could be made a test of
orthodoxy." (A Creed for Free Men, p.230.) The Modernist
has found, in the light of expanding experience, that the old
view of the Bible as the infallible Word of God, given by in-
spiration, is no longer tenable. H. F. RaIl: "We cannot say of
every word in the Bible that it is the word of God." The Bible
is "not the final authority for our faith." "The Church itself
never remained the same in any two generations. . . . Chris-
tianity has been a religion of freedom and change and ad-
1 The radicals openly declare that Christendom needs an entirely
new set of doctrines. Bertrand Russell alleges that "religious men
and women, in the present day, have come to feel that most of the
creed of Christendom, as it existed in the middle ages, is unnecessary,
and indeed a mere hindrance to the religious life." (See C. S. Mac-
farland, Trends of Christian Thinking, p.59.) The "con;servative"
reconstructionists pretend that they are not depriving the Church of
the old doctrine, but that they are only casting the old truth into
"new intellectual molds" and setting the Gospel free from "certain
archaic wrappings" (Edwin Lewis, The Faith We Declare, pp.182, 224).
However, they admit that they are thereby adding something new to
the old doctrine, that they aim "to teach the old truth in a new way
and, following the guidance of the Spirit of God, to augment it" (Von
Hofmann).
NO DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE FOR US! 643
vance. . . . We do not stop with Christ, but He gives us the
line of advance." "Men faced certain facts that made impos-
sible the old theory of a book verbally inspired and infallible"
(A Faith for Today, pp. 38, 50, 221, 232). The development of
doctrine gradually did away with Verbal Inspiration. Geo. A.
Buttrick: "In retrospect it seems incredible that the theory of
literal inspiration could ever have been held. Literal infal-
libility of Scripture 'is a fortress impossible to defend. Prob-
ably few people who claim to 'believe every word of the Bible'
really mean it. That avowal, held to its last logic, would risk
a trip to the insane asylum. Meanwhile we should frankly
admit the bankruptcy of 'literal infallibility, and, under guid-
ance of the facts, set out on the long, hard quest for truth.' "
(The Christian Fact and Modern Doubt; see CONe. THEOL.
MTHLY., 1941, p. 223.) And sometimes the change from teaching
Verbal Inspiration to whatever the "long, hard quest for truth"
will find to replace it takes place very rapidly. It may take
only fifty years to accomplish such a development. The Lu-
theran E. H. Delk tells the sad story: "When I came to the
seminary years ago, I fully believed in the verbal inspiration
of every book in the Bible. To think of myth or legend in
connection with the Bible seemed destructive and morally
reprehensible. . .. The Bible was to me an infallible authority
in its statements concerning astronomy, geolo~J, anthropology,
history, ethics, and religion. . . . What a change has been
wrought in the sphere of New Testament scholarship during
the last fifty years! ... In a word, theology is a progressive
accomplishment in Christian truth, ever rejuvenated by a fresh
study of the Christian facts, the history of the Church, and
Christian experience." (See Theol. Monthly, 1927, p.172.)
If you go in for the development of the Christian doctrine,
you will have to quit teaching that the Bible is given by in- .
spiration of God. Are you ready to make common cause with
the reconstructionists?
What about the doctrine of the total depravity of natural
man? That old-fashioned teaching has gone by the board. To
quote but one of the reconstructionists, A. E. Garvil says:
"Such phrases as natural corruption, total depravity, original
sin, have for me become anachronisms." (The Fatherly Rule
of God, p. 28.) After you have pressed the statements of Jesus
and Paul and Moses (Matt. 15: 19; Rom. 7: 18; Gen. 8: 21) into
644 NO DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE FOR US!
the "new intellectual molds" and made them to conform to the
"dignity of man," they get an entirely different meaning; they
mean the very opposite of what the words say. Oh, yes, the
majority of the reconstructionists will still speak of sinful acts
committed by man, but even such a conception will sooner or
later be treated as an anachronism. The more advanced class
of the reconstructionists declares: "A criminal is basically a
sick person."
The doctrine of the Lord's Supper before and after the
development-treatment. We rejoice in the Real Presence, as
taught by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul, and we declare
with Werner Elert: "The doctrine of the Lord's Supper is per-
fectly presented in the First Letter to the Corinthians; it is not
subject to further growth, and it needs no further develop-
ment." (Mm·phologie des Luthertums, I, p.280.) No, no, ex-
claim the reconstructionists, you cannot know what the real
doctrine of the Lord's Supper is before it has gone through the
process of development. H. Wheeler Robinson: "Can we think
of the Sacraments on grounds of modern experience and
modern thought in quite the same way as did the earliest be-
lievers? Probably not; for no generation thinks quite in the
same way as that before it, and the difference is apt to be in-
creased the further back we go. . . . Religious experience is to
be taken as the starting point of theological reconstruction."
(The Christian Experience of the Holy Spirit, p. VIII; p. 195.)
Oliver Chase Quick: "Just as the full truth of the Incarnation
and the Atonement were not formulated once for all by the
lips of the Incarnate Himself, but gradually emerged in the
process of Christian experience and are still capable of further
explication; so the doctrine and even the form and matter of
the sacraments need not have been laid down in any precise
terms by Jesus Himself, but may have been evolved, and still
be in process of evolution, as the Church under His Spirit's
guidance has learned and learns to fulfill His mission upon the
earth. . . . The construction of Eucharistic doctrine demands
something other than a meticulous adherence to the letter of
our Lord's speech .... We need not be concerned to maintain
that the whole significance and application of His own words
must in every detail have been explicit in the consciousness of
Jesus at the time when they were uttered." (The Christian
Sacraments, pp. 119, 188, 193.) W. A. Brown: "It is just be-
NO DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE FOR US! 645
cause the sacrament is capable of so many and such varying
meanings that it retains its perennial vitality." (Beliefs That
Matter, p.275.) And there are many Lutherans who sub-
scribe to the words of V. Ferm: "Much water has passed under
the bridge since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. . . .
We might well question whether or not the Christological doc-
trines of the ubiquity of Christ's body ... and communicatio
idiomatum are satisfactory even from a biblical point of view.
Even the position which Luther himself took on the interpreta-
tion of the Eucharist may fairly be challenged as a necessarily
true biblical exegesis" (What Is Lutheranism? P. 279 f.). We
are asked to give up the certain, the consoling doctrine of
the Real Presence, and, engaging in the "long, hard quest for
truth," attempt to find which of the dozens and dozens of
substitutes offered best fits the need of the present generation;
and the following generation may choose a different substitute.
And we will have to give up much more. The reconstruc-
tionists ask us to quit preaching about the vicarious satisfac-
tion. The change of social experience changes the doctrine,
and so, as Shailer Mathews tells us, "by the end of the revolu-
tionary period of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
the political and social presuppositions which underlay the
orthodox doctrines of salvation were replaced by newer pre-
suppositions born of the rise of democracy" (The Church and
the Christian, p. 70). The old doctrine of the vicarious satisfac-
tion is out of date. H. F. RaIl: The Atonement must not be
made "a courtroom affair, a plan by which a debt can be paid
or a penalty remitted." (A Faith for Today, p. 188.) When
S. P. Cadman was asked to express his view of Henry Ward
Beecher's statement that he had come to the conclusion that
the doctrine of "vicarious atonement" was a gigantic lie, he
said: "Mr. Beecher repudiated what many Christians likewise
repudiate, that God punished Jesus in our stead and with the
severity befitting our transgressions and that because of this
substitution of the Innocent for the guilty we escape the
penalty due to our offences. So crude and impossible a con-
ception of the 'Vicarious Atonement' has no sanction from the
New Testament." (See the Lutheran Witness, 1929, p. 6.)
What the New Testament says on this point must be inter-
preted by our reason. E. Grubb: "Suppose we are in doubt
about the doctrine of Atonement and we wish to know what
646 NO DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE FOR US!
the Bible teaches on the subject." Find out how much of this
teaching "answers the deepest demands of our own reason
and conscience." (The Bible, Its Nature and Inspiration,
p. 240 ff.) The late Professor Hobart: "I cannot see anything
understandable or acceptable in the theory that my guilt and
my penalty were placed upon Christ, or that Christ's holiness
is imputed to me in any way that involves a substitution of
His holiness for mine or of His suffering for what was due to
me. That view of the theory of the atonement finds no foot-
hold in my consciousness or my reason." (Transplanted Truths
from Romans, p.29.) Our Christian self-consciousness (or
reason) tells us that "of man, too, it is true that Atonement
is primarily not something done for him from without, but
something that happens within him." Thus W. A. Brown, in
Beliefs That Matter, p. 135.
And von Hofmann, a past master in the art of developing
the Christian doctrine (it is the business of the theologian "to
teach the old truth in a new way and, following the guidance
of the Spirit of God, to augment it") , following Schleiermacher,
played a prominent part in the rejection of the old doctrine
of the atonement and gained a large following among the Lu-
theran theologians of Germany. He openly declared: "Christ
did not suffer in place of man .... Atonement does not consist
in this, that Christ expiated for our sins in His suffering, but
in this, that the communion between God and Jesus Christ
proved itself by Christ's enduring to the end the consequences
of sin. . . . The Epistle to the Hebrews does not find the need
of Christ's death in this, that God's punitive justice had to be
satisfied, but in this that it was demanded by Christ's union
with mankind, entered into for the purpose of redemption."
(Der Schriftbeweis, Second Half of First Section, p. 320 sqq.)
"My doctrine differs essentially from it [the doctrine of the
old Church] in that the Son was not subjected to the wrath of
the Father, not even in a vicarious way .... The Son did not
suffer the punishment of mankind, but He suffered what His
entrance into the Adamitic race carried with it." (Schutz-
schriften fuer eine neue Weise, alte Wahrheit zu lehren. See
Baier-Walther, III, p.117.) "Von Hofmann and those that fol-
low him teach Christ saves not through any vicarious satis-
faction but by being the head of a new, sanctified humanity"
(Pieper, Christliche Dogmatik, II, p. 431), and there is no dif-
NO DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE FOR US! 647
ference between his teaching on this point and that of the
radical theologians who say that Atonement is primarily not
something done for man but something that happens with-
in man.2
Is there a Christian who will accept what von Hofmann
and W. A. Brown and H. W. Beecher have found in developing
the Biblical doctrine of the atonement? Theodor Kliefoth
characterizes Hofmann's teaching as "a theological system
which does violence to the Scriptures, disfiguring the doctrine
of salvation by means of ingenious, but untrue combinations,
and destroying the structure of Christian doctrine both by the
admixture of philosophical elements to the more theoretical
doctrines of God, the Trinity, creation, man, the person, na-
tures and states of Christ, and by weakening throughout the
practical dogmas of sin, redemption, atonement, the works of
grace, and the appropriation of salvation. . . . Von Hofmann
insists that he conforms to the doctrine of the Church, yes,
that he is developing and improving the doctrine of the Church
through his theology .... The only result of such dishonesty
will be utter confusion in the minds of particularly the younger
generation, and if the theology of the Lutheran Church is no
longer willing or able to dissipate such mists, it is no longer
worthy of its name, and the last hour of the Lutheran Church
has come." (Der Schriftbeweis v. Hofmanns, p. 559 f.)
If man is not saved through the Vicarious Satisfaction, he
must procure his salvation through his own endeavors. And
the final outcome of the development of doctrine is salvation
by works. "These theologians are willing to pay the price of
their rejection of the vicarious satisfaction. The price is noth-
ing less than the rejection of the Christian doctrine of justifica-
tion. . . . Kirn is willing to pay this price: 'Weare compelled
to make the transformation of man a factor in the work of the
atonement.''' (Pieper, op cit., II, p.430.) Ed. Baker is ready
to pay the price. He wrote in the Christian Century of Jan. 19,
1944: "God does not demand of us any hocus-pocus or blood
offering for sin, but rather that we do justly, love mercy, and
walk humbly with Him." Other voices: Shailer Mathews:
"What the world requires of the churches is not a revival of
2 Hofmann (and Schleiermacher) also denies original sin. His
"independent" faith - consciousness knew nothing of such a thing. (See
Pieper, op. cit., I, p.74.)
648 NO DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE FOR US!
fourth-century Christology, but the impregnation of economic
and political processes with love. . . . The churches must make
theology secondary to morality embodying the spirit of Jesus."
(Op. cit., p.105.) James D. Smart: "In relation to the God
and Father who rules over all our days, forgiveness is the
overcoming of our rebelliousness and the reconciling of our
will to His will for us." (What a Man Can Believe, p.193.)
Henry J. Golding, a leader of the New York Ethical Society,
in an address delivered in St. Louis on Feb. 21,1927, described
Dr. H. E. Fosdick as "the man who has liberalized Liberal
Christianity" and quotes him to this effect: "There are two
types of Christianity. One is the religion which Jesus Christ
Himself possessed and by which He lived. His filial fellow-
ship with God, His purity, unselfishness, sincerity, sacrifice,
His exaltation of spiritual values, and His love for men - the
religion of Jesus. The other consists of things said of, and be-
lieved concerning, Jesus, theories to account for Him, accumu-
lated explanations and interpretations of Him - the religion
about Jesus." And, says Golding, "it is Fosdick's business to
substitute the former for the latter." Dr. F. H. Quitman, the
Lutheran rationalist, said in a jubilee sermon, delivered in
New York in 1817: "Es sei eben Zeit und Erfahrung von
noeten, die Dinge zur Vollkommenheit gedeihen zu lassen;
so sei auch die lutherische Lehre nach und nach und unver-
merkt 'verbessert und vervollkommnet' worden; die Reforma-
toren haetten die Wahrheit nicht gleich in vollem Glanze und
ganzer Ausdehnung schauen koennen," and that, after the
doctrine had been developed and put in its final shape, we now
know that what the Reformers meant to teach was justification
by works: "Der wahre Sinn jedoch, welchen die Reformatoren
mit dem Wort 'Glaube' verbanden, geht noch deutlicher hervor
aus dem XX. Artikel der Augsburgischen Confession, wo sie
ausdruecklich erklaeren, dass der Glaube, welcher gute Werke
hervorbringt" (italicized by Quitman) "den Menschen vor
Gott rechtfertigt." (See A. L. Graebner, Geschichte der Lu-
therischen Kirche in Amerika, p. 653 f.) And the "conserva-
tive" Hofmann has developed and augmented the doctrine to
make it say that the reconciliation with God depends, finally,
on the work of man. "Hofmann and those that follow him
teach that Christ saves, not through any vicarious satisfaction,
but by being the head of a new, sanctified humanity ....
NO DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE FOR US! 649
Dorner correctly evaluates Hofmann's theory thus: 'It is sanc-
tification which at bottom effects our reconciliation'" (Pieper,
op. cit., II, p. 431 £.).
We say with William Blake: "If Christianity were morals,
Socrates is the Savior." (The Living Church, Jan. 14, 1933.)
We say with Schmauck-Benze: "Our modern religious thought,
especially that which considers the old confessions to be
antiquated, makes man himself the central and most important
figure in religion, and, in this connection, permits the in-
troduction of all kinds of Pelagian and rationalistic error."
(The Confessional Principl'e, p. 137 f.)
We have shown that developing and amending the Chris-
tian doctrine means falsification of the doctrine. Walther was
certainly right in declaring that the theory that the doctrine
can be improved is "the :rq;,>w't'Ov