As Far As the East Is From the West

( A review of two essays delivered at the 2002 Walther Free Conference)

by Clyde Nehrenz

Did Jesus Institute the Pastoral Office? - Rev. Rolf Preus

Church and Ministry - Dr. George Wollenberg
A review of : Church and Ministry

A review of: Did Jesus Institute the Pastoral Office?

All controversy over the doctrine of the church and the ministry can be boiled down to one specific problem: confusion (real or pretended) over the distinction that exists between an office of the ministry that is "entered into" and an office of the ministry that is "conferred." It is what separates episcopalianism from congregationalism. Once the distinction is recognized and understood all else begins to fall into place.

No amount of pushing, pulling, twisting or turning will suffice to blend the two systems together, as so many people are intent on doing. Creative as one might be, when all is said and done all efforts to this end fail because they attempt the impossible: imposing episcopal practices on principles that are at the heart of the congregational system. It cannot be done. It is oil on water.

In his paper delivered at the 2002 Walther Conference Rev. Rolf Preus joins the Lutheran throng that has, generation after generation for the better part of a century, been attempting the impossible. And like so many before him his efforts are doomed from the start because he either cannot or will not acknowledge that the term "church" is defined specifically in Scripture in ways that are not open to private interpretation. Whichever the case, he side-steps any definitive discussion of "church" by declaring that "our topic today....is the pastoral office so let's focus specifically on the ministry."

The official position of the LCMS recognizes that the term "church" is employed in Scripture in only three senses: 1. the "invisible" Church, the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints. 2. the Church Universal, "the visible sum total of all who have been called, that is, to all who profess allegiance to the Word of God that is preached and make use of the holy Sacraments." 3. local congregations, "particular divisions of (the Church Universal)....in which the Word of God is preached and the holy Sacraments are administered."

This position also recognizes that Scripture teaches that every Christian has been granted the power to forgive sins and to withhold the forgiveness of sins, that Jesus provided them with the means by which they are to exercise that power, namely, the Word and the sacraments, and that it is their right and duty to establish local congregations and appoint men to administered the office of the keys publicly in their stead: 1. "The ministry of preaching is conferred by God through the congregation, as holder of all church power, or of the keys, and by its call, as prescribed by God." 2. "The holy ministry is the authority conferred by God through the congregation, as holder of the priesthood and of all church power, to administer in public office the common rights of the spiritual priesthood in behalf of all."

These are the main points of the Missouri Synod's position regarding the church and the ministry. It has held to this position throughout its history notwithstanding the assaults that have been and continue to be waged against it, within and without. It is a position emphatically rejected by Rev. Preus in his essay.

After summarizing this position himself, faulty as his understanding of it is in several particulars, Rev. Preus states, "There is much that argues against this paradigm. The first objection I would like to raise is that it does not follow the pattern of thought set down plainly in the Holy Scriptures. It is not based on the Bible. It is rather based on a theological system." "The paradigm I am proposing adheres more closely to the literal sense of the Scriptures. This is the literal sense of the Augsburg Confession as well." "This debate [divinity of the office,with the WELS] forced Missouri into a rigidity of definition unwarranted by the biblical text or the history of the church." "I believe and I hope to show to you this afternoon that this paradigm [his], rather than the other [Walther/Missouri's], is biblical and confessional."

"The theological debates on the ministry," he begins, "are so cluttered by contradictory definitions as well as a multitude of undefined terms....... that productive conversation is nearly impossible." He then launches his corrective to Luther, Walther and a host of other orthodox Lutheran theologians leaving a trail of his own clutter along the way.

The first thing that we need to do, Rev. Preus tells us, is rid ourselves of the misguided notion that "Jesus was telling every Christian to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments," that is, to exercise the office of the keys, the "peculiar" church power that He gave to his church on earth to forgive or to withhold the forgiveness of sins. "That's not what happened.........(it) cannot be shown from Scriptures."

According to Rev. Preus, neither the passages that speak of going into all the world to preach the gospel nor those in which the keys are given refer to all Christians. Rather those passages are to be understood as Christ instituting the holy office of the ministry of Word and sacraments and granting the power to forgive sins and to withhold the forgiveness of sins exclusively to the apostles. The office, however, He gave to the whole church.

"The fact that He gave this concrete office to the whole church is sufficient proof that in this giving He also gave to all Christians individually the same gospel, baptism, absolution, and Supper that He entrusted to the public office." A contradiction? Not for him. He explains: "How does the Christian receive these treasures if not through the public preaching and administration of the sacraments by the called and ordained pastors?" All Christians, in other words, have not been charged by Christ with actively administering the forgiveness of sins by means of the Word and the sacraments. No, the forgiveness of sins conveyed by the means is theirs only passively as they receive it from those who are the exclusive recipients of the power of the keys. Only in this way can it be said that all Christians have been given the keys and the means of grace. Talk about clutter.

We can now understand Rev. Preus' reluctance to discuss in depth the subject of "church". It goes without saying, keeping in mind the three uses Scripture makes of the term, that the office of the ministry can be established only after a congregation is established, which means that if there were no men in the whole world upon whom to confer the office there could be no office but the congregation would remain with all its authority intact. In Rev. Preus' world it is just the opposite. The office of the ministry exists apart from a congregation, which means that if there were no congregations in the whole world there would still be a holy ministry. In fact, even if there were no men in the whole world to fill this office the office would remain, waiting, with all its functions intact. This churchless ministry is part and parcel of all anti-Waltherian arguments. It is not to the advantage of anti-Waltherians to have it highlighted. But highlight it we must before we go on.

The office of the ministry under an episcopal system of church government - and it isan episcopal system that Rev. Preus touts - can be likened to a tool shed that a fully-qualified, union-authorized tradesman enters to take in hand the tools of his trade stored there. The shed is on his customer's property but is owned by the customer's neighbor who has authorized the use of both the shed and its contents by the tradesman. The tradesman is qualified to use all the tools but uses only those tools necessary to perform the work he has been hired to perform . The customer chooses the work to be performed but has no control over the journeyman status of the tradesman and no control over the toolshed and the tools stored there.

Translated into episcopal-speak, a seminary graduate is inducted into a special society or order of clergymen by the rite of ordination performed by members of the society. He is now fully empowered to perform all the functions associated with being a clergyman, including but not limited to publicly administering the forgiveness of sins by preaching the gospel and administering the sacraments. A congregation or any other agency engaged in churchly work of one kind or another chooses men out of this pool of ordination-empowered clergymen to come into their midst to serve them by carrying out the clergy-type functions associated with the work their organization is engaged it. Men so engaged are said to have a Divine Call. The calling agency has authority to designate the work to be done but has no control over the clergyman status of the one employed and no control over the clergyman-type functions he performs.

Not so with the congregational system of church government. Here the office of the ministry is not some entity one enters or is placed into. Rather, office is understood in the sense of a duty performed or an authority exercised, e.g., the office of the medical profession is to heal; the office of the ministry is to forgive sins. God has granted each and every Christian the power of the office of the keys to forgive sins and to withhold the forgiveness of sins, has provided them the means by which this is to be accomplished, the Word and the sacraments, and has charged them with the responsibility of taking the good news of His forgiveness to the whole world.

This charge mandates that Christians join together in congregations specifically for the purpose of administering the power of the office of the keys publicly by means of preaching the gospel and administering the sacraments. A congregation elects a man to discharge this public duty on its behalf and, by its call, confers on him - grants him - the authority to forgive sins, the office of the ministry. This call, issued as it is by a congregation to the end that the duties mandated by God be properly discharged, is truly a Divine Call.

We must now go back and ask, since according to Rev. Preus a congregation has neither keys nor means, how men placed into his office come by their authority to publicly forgive sins? There can be only one answer: either in a world without congregations, or in a world with, say, 6000 congregations, the only means by which men placed into this office can possibly come by their power to forgive sins is - let's shout it - ORDINATION. Ordination by the ordained: the making of a society of ecclesiastics that is apart from and out from under the control of.............well, anybody. Episcopalianism!

Furthermore, since this is an office that exists independent of any congregation, and since it is an office the essence of which is churchly functions, only one of which is administering the Word and the sacraments, then there is no reason why any organization of Christians that is engaged in some kind of churchly work cannot place ordination-empowered men into this office. Since the office is divine it follows that the calling organization's call must be considered a Divine Call.

To sum up, the office of the ministry of Scripture, C. F. W. Walther, and, officially, the LCMS, the office of the ministry of Word and sacraments instituted by Christ when He called the apostles, that office is conferred exclusively by a congregation of believers each member of which has been granted the power of the office of the keys to forgive sins and has been directed to go into the whole world to exercise that power by preaching the gospel and administering the sacraments, telling the world of the wonderful deeds of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.

Rev. Preus' office of the ministry of churchly functions, instituted by Christ when He invested the apostles with the power to forgive sins and sent them out into the world armed with the means of exercising that power, the office filled by an organization's Divine Call to one empowered by ordination, that office of the ministry is a figment of the imagination. No such office exists.

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A review of : Church and Ministry

Any church government or polity that removes the power of the office of the keys and the means by which that power is administered from those to whom Christ gave it, namely, all Christians, is a polity that by its very nature assails the doctrine of Justification. It therefore "cannot be tolerated in the Church of God." Polity matters. It is not an adiaphoron. Any old polity will not do.

Dr. Walther was not just stating a personal opinion when he warned regarding the struggle over the doctrine of the church and the ministry, "We are not fighting for a particular constituted division which calls itself Lutheran....The object of our struggle is nothing else than the true faith, the pure truth, the unfalsified Gospel, the pure foundation of the apostles and prophets." ( Concordia Theological Monthly; Oct., 1961, pp. 601, 605)

Under the heading, "Present Day Aberrations," Dr. Wollenberg cites several examples that bear witness to what results when warnings like that offered by Dr. Walther go unheeded. On the one hand there is the Church Growth movement and the Pastoral Leadership Institute both of which promote the everyone-a-minister and facilitator-minister/pastor fads. Dr. Wollenberg doesn't say it but no one should be fooled into thinking that these movements promote the laity lording it over pastors. In all cases, for facilitator-minister/pastor, read "dictator." The laity in these movements know nothing about the power of the office of the keys to forgive sins that has been given to them by Christ Himself or the authority He has granted them to exercise that power by administering the means of grace. To make matters worse, their pastors seldom if ever pronounce (declare) the forgiveness of sins, they merely announce it. There's a big difference.

Flipping the coin, Dr. Wollenberg relates how one writer opines that "without Christ's presence through the office of the ministry (at Holy Communion) his command and institution simply cannot be observed." He quotes from a letter he received from a young pastor who claims that "To say that clergy speak in the stead of the church which speaks in the stead of Christ is wrong.... It is not given to all Christians to speak in the stead and by the command of Christ to one another...." Others pastors are insisting "that only the ordained pastor is to distribute the bread and the wine, since everyone is to receive the sacred species from the hand of Jesus, that is, the hand of the pastor."

Erroneous opinions like these are all based on misinterpretations of Scripture similar to those highlighted by another quoted writer: "...it is from Jesus as high priest that the New Testament officers in charge of public worship receive their commission. The administration of the sacraments especially is presented as having been given directly to those who would administer them and not to the community of the believers (Matt. 28:16-20; Luke 22:14-20; John 20:2124).... the Brief Statement made a similar error when it asserted that in Matthew 28:19-20 Christ's commission (is given) to all believers to preach the Gospel and to administer the sacraments."

Things in Missouri have deteriorated to such a degree that a student at Ft. Wayne can now feel safe telling a district president like Dr. Wollenberg directly that "no parent could absolve or forgive the sins of their children on behalf of God, only the pastor can absolve. Parents may extend personal forgiveness, but in order for their child to receive God's forgiveness, they must bring the child to the pastor." And this from a layman's exchange with his pastor: "(He) told me that only through him could I receive absolution. I specifically asked, `You are saying that if I kneel in prayer beside my bed, sorrowfully, and ask God to forgive me, He will not forgive me?' `That's exactly right. You must receive absolution from me before your sins are forgiven!,' he answered."

All of this follows Dr. Wollenberg's summary of the history of the controversies surrounding matters of church and ministry in the LCMS. The summary begins with the year 1838 and the group of Saxons that left Germany under the leadership of Rev. Martin Stephan to settle in Missouri. The leader was deposed and in short order (1841) the church and ministry controversy began with a letter written to the Saxons by Rev. J. A. H. Grabau, the leader of a group recently arrived from Prussia and organizer of what came to be known as the Buffalo Synod. The Saxons organized the Missouri Synod in 1847 choosing Dr. C. F. W. Walther as President. Another pastor, Rev. Wilhelm Loehe of Bavaria, who was responsible for training and sending many pastors to aid the Missourians, was drawn into the controversy but in the end broke with the Missourians (1853) and organized the Iowa Synod. His position on the issues was similar in many respects to that of Rev. Grabau.

Attached as an addendum to Dr. Wollenberg's paper distributed at the conference is an outline of the positions held by each of the participants. It becomes immediately clear on reading the outline that all the present day aberrations Dr. Wollenberg cites earlier are aberrations that embrace the Grabau/Loehe position. It also becomes clear on remembering Rev. Rolf Preus' stated position that it likewise conforms nicely with Grabau/Loehe.

Dr. Wollenberg examines at length only four of Dr. Walther's 19 theses, Thesis IV on the Church and VI A & B and IX A, B & C on the Ministry. This proves more than sufficient to support the main theme of his essay: "The Missouri position was [is] that the doctrine presented in Walther's theses on Church and Ministry, together with the testimony and witness of the scriptures, the confessions, and the testimony of the orthodox teachers of the Lutheran church and the ancient church, is the true and correct teaching of Holy Scripture, `das reine Lehre'."

The main points of the quoted theses are these: Christ gave the keys to all true believers in Christ; the local congregation is the possessor of the power of the keys to forgive sins; the office [authority] of the ministry is conferred by God through the congregation by means of its divinely-established call; ordination is not a divine institution but merely a public confirmation of the call; the pastor is due respect and unconditional obedience when he uses God's Word; he "has no authority to arbitrarily introduce new laws or establish adiaphora or ceremonies"; he has no right to excommunicate without the consent of the congregation. (Emphasis added).

Aware of the amount of time, thought and research that went into the preparation of such an enlightening essay it seems almost ungrateful to point out two comments made by Dr. Wollenberg that speak against everything that has gone before. At one place he writes, "The right to call into the ministry of the word belongs primarily to the congregation." In another place he writes, "Such a baptism (by a woman in an emergency) is not done by the individual on the basis of a personal authority, but on behalf of the church." (Emphasis added). It appears, in the first instance, that he's claiming that an entity other than a local congregation has been given the authority to publicly administer the forgiveness of sins. In the second instance, it appears that he's claiming that all Christians as individuals have not been granted the authority to administer the means of grace.

This leads to another even more disappointing matter. Toward the end of his examination of Theses VI B dealing with ordination, he writes, "The constitution of the Synod contained the following by-law until 1962; `Ordination shall be accorded only to him who has received a regular call from and to a particular congregation.' In 1962 [Cleveland Resolution 6-35] this requirement was amended. The words, `...a call extended through the proper channels' was substituted. In 1969 the present wording, `... shall have received and accepted a call, through an assignment by the Board of Assignments....' was adopted. The principal reason for the 1969 amendment was the Herman Otten case."

That whole episode is dealt with in another place but suffice it to say here that the 1962 action referred to so offhandedly by Dr. Wollenberg had a dramatic negative impact on the Missouri Synod and is arguably the main factor responsible for most of the ills we suffer under today. The action of the 1962 convention in allowing that men other than those who have a call from a congregation are eligible to be ordained effectively set aside Walther's Church and Ministry as Synod's official position. The result after 40 years is that Grabau/Loehe has, in practice,displaced Walther and is thoroughly ensconced in the polity of Missouri.

The Walther Free Conferences are supposedly aimed at "reclaiming" Walther. They have been effective in working toward that goal by providing a forum for discussing the issues involved, a platform for speakers familiar with the problems associated with those issues and even a venue for launching programs of action. But somehow this year the conference lost it's bearings. Dr. Wollenberg was a good choice to follow up on the success that he himself engineered at the 2001 convention. His learned essay was a necessary next step in the process leading to the final "reclaiming" of Walther.

Rev. Preus, on the other hand, was not a good choice. There is absolutely no reason why anyone should any longer waste time disputing the doctrine of the church and the ministry with the Grabau/Loehe/ WELS/ELS/Sasse/New (post-1962)Missouri episcopalian factions that Rev. Preus associates himself with. We have emphatically reaffirmed our Waltherian position, namely, the congregational system of church government, and Dr. Wollenberg has provided us with a comprehensive if not exhaustive review of the Scriptural position on church and ministry upon which that system, alone among all other systems, rests. The stage is now set for the final act: rescinding Cleveland Resolution 6-35. That is what the next conference should concern itself with.

If future conferences are, like this one, going to provide a platform for anti-Waltherian spokesmen, I can see no reason why anyone would want give up three days and travel many miles to attend. The conferences will then turn out to be nothing more than an excuse to get away from the family for a few days together with others looking to do the same. Might just as well go hunting.

January 2, 2003

Coming next: A review of an essay posted on the CAT41 website by Rev. Timothy D. Schellenbach, a 1996 graduate of the Ft. Wayne seminary. This will provide us some insight into what is being taught in our classrooms there regarding the church and the ministry.

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