 |
This chapter needs some more organization,
but this draft contains the quoted material needed to understand Walther, Pietism, and UOJ. |
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Samuel Huber,
Post-Concord Universalist
Universalism
is the teaching that all people have been forgiven and saved because of the
grace of God. That simple definition lacks any mention of the Means of Grace,
which is appropriate. Enthusiasm—the platform for all false doctrine—divorces
the Holy Spirit from the Word. When God’s actions are separated from His Word,
any error can be justified. These errors have a certain harmony, one with
another, although they may not agree in all details. Universalism and Unitarianism in America are different in details
and even in their culture, but they are close enough to have merged in the
Unitarian Universalist Association in 1961. Samuel Huber, the first Lutheran
Universalist, is claimed as a pioneer in the history of Universalism. Although
he was removed for false doctrine from Wittenberg University and his opinions
repudiated, they emerged in the Missouri Synod in teaching of Bishop Martin
Stephan and his disciple C. F. W. Walther.
Lutherans
bewitched by UOJ do not want to associate Huber with their opinions or
Universalism with their doctrine, but many can see the parallels, especially
since those parallels have created such comfortable relationships with the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Samuel Huber is part of the history of
Universalism, a pioneer worthy of note in many different sources. A history of
Universalism mentions Samuel Huber as a representative in the 16th
Century.
Huber was born in 1547 and died in
1624. He was originally a Calvinist. His name is associated with discussions of
UOJ. Marquart named him in one essay.
The Wisconsin Synod mentioned him in its journal. Tom Hardt discussed him at
some length in an essay, which was included in a Festschrift volume published
in honor of Robert Preues.
The essay is “Justification and Easter, A Study in Subjective and Objective
Justification in Lutheran Theology.” The title gives away the
double-justification terminology of George Christian Knapp, Halle University.
While the librarians of theology like to classify each variation in doctrine
according to the Library of Congress system, with extremely fine distinctions
made for each sub-category, the agreements should be examined foremost.
Hardt is pivotal in the Synodical
Conference—a favorite among certain LCMS professors and ELS leaders—an object
of scorn for WELS. The conflict involves the consecration of the elements of
Holy Communion, with Hardt representing the consecration of the Word, WELS on
the side of receptionism. This may seem to be an annoying digression, but it is
not. The issue of consecration versus receptionism is directly related
to the efficacy of the Word, just as justification is. Many readers might
wonder how Lutheran leaders can comprehend the importance of the Word in
consecration but not in justification. The same leaders supposedly hate Pietism
and the Church Growth Movement but embrace the Pietism and Enthusiasm of UOJ.
The reason is their slighting of the efficacy of the Word in the Means of
Grace. Hardt is quite comfortable with this contradiction, as his essay shows.
Hardt wrote about the first
Lutheran Universalist, although he denies the title “Universalist” for Huber:
The first doctrinal controversy
within the Lutheran church concerning the relationship between Christ’s universal
righteousness and its bestowal on the believer is connected with the name of
Samuel Huber (c. 1547-1624), a Swiss convert from Calvinism to Lutheranism, who
got into conflict with leading Lutheran theologians on the universality of
predestination and justification.
The statements of Huber are eerily familiar to anyone who
has studied the arguments in favor of UOJ, especially since they erupted during
the WELS Kokomo episode. The benefit of that conflict was to unearth many more
quotations in favor of that odd amalgamation of universal absolution without
faith and making a decision for Christ.
The shock of reading what UOJ really taught has brought some to their senses
but has hardened the rest in their folly.
Hardt wrote
this about Huber’s opponents:
Huber’s attempt to argue for the
notion of a universal justification with reference to certain Scripture
passages and to God’s universal will to save all men was met by firm opposition
from men such as Egidius Hunnius, Polycarp Leyser and Samuel Gesner. They
referred to the fact that the Lutheran confessions did not know of any such
concept.
The best way to judge the UOJ-Huber-Walther parallels is to
quote the Calvinist turned Lutheran, Samuel Huber. The following quotations are
from the Hardt essay:
His opponents charged this, which is right out of the UOJ
playbook:
1) He affirms a universal
justification, whereby all men are equally justified by God because of Christ’s
merit, regardless of faith.
2) He denies faith’s or the
believer’s individual justification to be by God or a special action of God,
whereby He justifies only believers.
3) He states faith’s individual
justification to be only men’s action, whereby they apply to themselves by
faith the righteousness of Christ.
This charge against Huber is identical to what Walther
affirmed, and the ELS lovingly quoted, in the famous Easter absolution sermon.
Former WELS
Synod President Carl Mischke liked to defend the double-justification of Knapp
(Objective Justification and Subjective Justification) as “two sides of the
same coin,” an argument repeated recently by ELS Pastor Jay Webber. Both of
them channeled Huber:
Huber does not conceal his
disagreement with the Wittenberg theologians. Huber himself does not uphold his
own difference between general and special justification: “Answer: they are not
two.”
Although the Synodical Conference is hotter than Georgia
asphalt for Huber’s strange opinions, Hardt admitted the defects:
Although Huber repeatedly refers to
Luther for support of his theology, it is much too evident that he distorts
what Luther says. It is also striking that Christ’s resurrection is not even
mentioned. Certainly Huber presupposes Christ’s atonement as the necessary
condition of the universal justification, but faith is directed toward God “in
Himself,” not toward the deed of the Father in raising His Son.
Hardt expressed some wonder that Huber ignored Easter and
did not use Easter as part of his justification innovations. However, that is
also modeled in the current Synodical Conference presentations. Many of them
stipulate world absolution taking place at the moment of Christ’s death,
because He said, “It is finished.” Since the entire world was absolved from
that moment on, without the Word, without the Means of Grace, without faith,
not much can be said about the resurrection of Christ and justification.
However, others follow Walther and declare the moment of universal absolution
to have been the moment Christ rose from the dead, since He was “raised for our
justification, Romans 4:25,” studiously ignoring Romans 4:24.
For some it is too obvious that having one Moment of Absolution on Friday and
another Moment of Absolution on Sunday is pure chaos when affirming the purity
of UOJ. If this opinion were so clear, so Biblical, and so much in harmony with
the Book of Concord, it would not contradict itself so easily.
Walther and Huberism
Hardt
observed this about C. F. W. Walther’s unchanging doctrinal perspective,
showing that Martin Stephan’s understudy did not deviate from the Lutheran
Pietism he brought over from the Dresden cell groups, the Halle philobiblicum:
In the 19th century C. F. W.
Walther (1811-1887), founder of the Missouri Synod, is especially connected
with the theological issue under treatment in this article. Our investigation
of Walther will be based on his Easter sermons (sermons on Easter Day, 2nd and
3rd Easter Day, 1st Sunday after Easter) and also on pertinent material in
Walther’s theological periodical, Lehre und Wehre, as well as
other documents of relevance to our topic. As a first observation it should be
said that Walther’s homiletic treatment of the relationship between Easter and
justification shows no sign of a gradual development. Our material covers the
period 1840-1886, and all the sermons seem to possess the same degree of
dogmatic clarity. If there ever was a “young Walther” like the “young Luther”
in his pre-Reformation time, he has left no traces.
This lack of development is not complimentary when
considering that Walther gladly followed a known adulterer to America, pledging
his obedience to Stephan as a bishop for life. Walther was no more than a
university graduate from Leipzig, a rationalistic school, a cell group follower
in a Pietistic cult, not the greatest and most orthodox Lutheran theologian in
America.
The dates of his early life are
instructive, because he was the youngest of the clergy to come over with Stephan.
Born October 25, 1811.
Graduated from Leipzig University,
1833.
Ordained and called, January 15,
1837.
Resigned call to go to America,
September 30, 1838.
Kidnapped his niece and nephew,
with the help of his brother.
Pledged obedience to Bishop
Stephan, January 14, 1839.
Led the mob action against Stephan,
May, 1839.
Altenburg debates, April, 1841.
Accepted call to Trinity, St.
Louis, after the death of his brother, late April, 1841.
Walther was ordained at the age of
26 and served a congregation for only 20 months. He resigned from that call to
come to America, yet he still described himself as the pastor of that
congregation. Nevertheless, he seized control of the Perry County settlement,
leading a mob to threaten, rob, and kidnap Martin Stephan. At the age of 30 he
was the leader of the Stephanite group and the pastor of Trinity in St. Louis. Walther
exerted the same kind of control as Stephan, but without the title of bishop. More
disturbing is the imprint of his doctrine and practice upon the Synodical
Conference, which grew around his energy, hard work, and domineering spirit.
Walther wrote this bizarre statement:
“As we were co-punished in Christ’s death, we are again co-absolved from our
sins in His resurrection.”
Hardt observed:
In a sermon from 1843 on Romans
4:25 (“Who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our
justification”) he makes this text the basis for the interpretation of Christ’s
resurrection as our absolution, a quotation that frequently recurs in
succeeding sermons.
Walther has many statements like the following, treating the
resurrection of Christ as the absolution for the entire world:
Whereas the passion and death of
Jesus Christ was the penitence and confession of the Son of God for the entire
apostate humanity, His resurrection was, on the contrary, the heavenly Father’s
absolution, subsequently solemnly and factually delivered in Christ to all men,
publicly before heaven and earth.
This is often offered as pastoral counseling in the Synodical
Conference today:
For now man should not first do
something in order that his sins may be forgiven, but he is only to believe
that it has already happened, that in the resurrection of Christ his sins have
been forgiven unto him, that the grace of God and salvation have been assured
to him. As often now as the Gospel is preached, baptism, absolution and the
Lord’s Supper are administered and the benediction pronounced over him in
church, so often the preacher only repeats what God has already done to all men
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Hardt noted: “During
the discussions a reference was made to the fact that within the Missouri Synod
it had always been preached that:”
Through the resurrection from the dead God has absolved all
the world, i.e., set it free from sin; if now the world already is absolved and set free
from sin, what is then the absolution or preaching of the Gospel in the church? Is it, too, a setting free, or merely a proclamation of the setting free
that has already occurred? Answer: … precisely through the Gospel occurs the
conveying of what is in God’s heart... a proclamation that really brings and
gives the forgiveness… The absolution in the Gospel
is nothing else than a repetition of the factual absolution which has already
happened through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
The Missouri Synod material was translated into Norwegian,
which led to conflict between the Norwegian and Swedish Lutherans. Thus the Augustana
Synod’s rebuke of the Norwegians became the fourth of the Kokomo Statements,
the other three coming from J. P. Meyer.
Hardt found
significant differences between Huber and Walther, but really served to highlight
their similarities.
A second point of divergence is the
fact that to Huber justification of the world is connected merely with a change
within the Godhead, effected by the atonement, but to Walther with an external
act of God, the Father raising His Son, turning it toward the world. To Huber
atonement and universal justification are one; to Walther they are two
different acts.
The merging of atonement and justification are the features
of Calvinism that Pietism borrowed without attribution. However, the evidence
has to erupt, even when the obvious is denied. UOJ comes from the influence of
Calvinism, transformed through Pietism. Huber, Spener, Knapp, and Stephan are
the immediate influences upon Walther, with Luther being a minor and secondary
influence. Walther never grasped the theology of Luther because he never developed
past the rationalist and Pietistic training he received in Europe. Hardt, so
clever in playing to his American sponsors, gave it away when he connected
Rambach the Halle Pietist to UOJ:
Johann Jakob Rambach: “that in His
person all mankind was justified and absolved from sin and curse.”
When the Intrepid Lutherans were discussing whether UOJ came
from Pietism, ELS Pastor Jay Webber stepped in defend Rambach’s exegesis rather
Martin Chemnitz’ work, knowingly preferring a Pietist to the senior editor of
the Book of Concord.
Book of Concord Aftermath
Given the
long-standing Norwegian investment in Pietism and the Missouri Synod, Robert
Preus’ support of UOJ was not surprising. That is why his final book, Justification
and Rome, left behind a mystery to be solved. Two of his sons, Rolf and Daniel,
were listed as the editors, and they have been UOJ advocates. However, the book
clearly repudiated the old UOJ boilerplate, with quotations coming from the
field Preus knew better than any contemporary – the post-Concord era. The
statements he quoted seemed to be answering a conflict of today, but it had to
be one of that era. The answer is clear now. The quotations were aimed at Samuel
Huber’s peculiar Calvinistic ideas, which emerged again during the 19th
century from the unionism, rationalism, Calvinism, and Pietism of Germany and
Prussia. All of the quotations answer this question: If Christ died for the
sins of the world, is every single person now declared forgiven of his sins by
God?
When does the imputation of Christ’s righteousness take place? It did
not take place when Christ, by doing and suffering, finished the work of
atonement and reconciled the world to God. Then and there, when the sins of the
world were imputed to Him and He took them, Christ became our righteousness and
procured for us remission of sin, justification, and eternal life. “By thus
making satisfaction He procured and merited (acquisivit et promeruit)
for each and every man remission of all sins, exemption from all punishments of
sin, grace and peace with God, eternal righteousness and salvation.”
[Quenstedt]
Preus:
But the imputation of Christ's
righteousness to the sinner takes place when the Holy Spirit brings him to
faith through Baptism and the Word of the Gospel. Our sins were imputed to
Christ at His suffering and death, imputed objectively after He, by His active
and passive obedience, fulfilled and procured all righteousness for us.
But the imputation of His righteousness to us takes place when we are brought
to faith.
Quenstedt: It is not the same thing to say, “Christ’s
righteousness is imputed to us” and to say “Christ is our righteousness.” For
the imputation did not take place when Christ became our righteousness. The
righteousness of Christ is the effect of His office. The imputation is the
application of the effect of His office. The one, however, does not do away
with the other. Christ is our
righteousness effectively when He justifies us. His righteousness is ours
objectively because our faith rests in Him. His righteousness is ours formally
in that His righteousness is imputed to us.
In the
Synodical Conference literature, Calov is often mentioned as an advocate of UOJ
– perhaps an oral tradition. Preus quoted Calov with approval:
Although Christ has acquired for us the remission of sins, justification,
and sonship, God just the same does not justify us prior to our faith. Nor do
we become God's children in Christ in such a way that justification in the mind
of God takes place before we believe.
These theologians,
including Johann Gerhard, were post-Concord leaders.
Polycarp Leyser lived and worked
among the Concordists. Although overshadowed by Martin Chemnitz, Leyser was
also an editor of the Book of Concord and the biographer of Chemnitz. As the
nephew of Andreae and the student of Chemnitz, he understood justification by
faith. Huber still defines Leyser’s work today, because the two names are
linked together.
And to make his opinion plain enough to us, he then asked us, how we
would deal with people, if we came to a place, where nothing had been taught
about Christ before. Then we answered him that we would start with the Law;
make it clear to them that they were poor sinners and under the wrath of God,
which they should recognize with penitent hearts. If they now were sorry for
their sins, God offers through the Gospel His grace and remission of sins in Christ,
wishing to make them righteous and saved, as far as they would accept it in
true faith. To this Dr. Huber responded: No, this would not be the true way to
preach to the unbelievers, but he would begin by saying this: You have the
grace of God, you have the righteousness of Christ, you have salvation.
