# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1844 09 01_S3
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

3

...at once to give an answer to those who might ask us what this name means, and why we wish to bear it.

For, as we know quite well, not a few have from the earliest times taken offense at the fact that the Lutheran Church is named after Luther, that is, after a human being. What? people exclaim, does this not clearly show that this church cannot be the true Church of Christ, but must be the contrivance of a man, a sect? Ah, they say, you Lutherans do read, after all, what St. Paul says about such human names. In 1 Corinthians 1 and 3 it says: "It hath been declared unto me that there is contention among you; and this I say, that one of you says: I am of Paul; another: I am of Apollos; a third: I am of Cephas; a fourth: I am of Christ. What? Is Christ then divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? — If one says: I am of Paul; another: I am of Apollos; are you not then carnal? Who then is Paul? Who is Apollos? They are servants through whom you came to believe." — Do you hear that, you Lutherans? people call out to us; are you not doing the very thing for which the holy Apostle here rebukes the Corinthians, when you call yourselves Lutheran? You yourselves always say that one should follow the letter of Scripture exactly — why then do you not do so here?

There are not a few upright Lutherans who fall into no small embarrassment when adversaries press this objection upon them. But plausible as this reproach appears, it will show itself to be utterly groundless as soon as we look at the matter somewhat more closely. In the first place, it is a mistake to suppose that the Lutherans gave themselves their own name; history tells us, rather, that they were first so named by their enemies, who meant thereby to disparage them. Dr. Eck, who held that well-known disputation with Luther in Leipzig, was the first to call those who at that time held to Luther's teaching "the Lutherans." How Luther himself felt in this regard we see clearly in a work published in 1522, "Admonition to Guard against Insurrection," in which he writes, among other things: "I ask that my name be passed over in silence, and that people call themselves not Lutheran but Christian. What is Luther? The teaching, after all, is not mine. Nor was I crucified for anyone. St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 3:4–5, would not suffer that Christians should call themselves Pauline or Petrine, but Christian. How then should I, a poor, stinking sack of maggots, come to have the children of Christ called by my wretched name? Not so, dear friends; let us abolish these partisan names, and be called Christians, whose teaching we hold. The Papists rightly bear a partisan name, since they are not content with Christ's teaching and name, but wish also to be papal, after him who is their master. I am, and wish to be, master of no one. I hold, together with the congregation, the one common teaching of Christ, who alone is our master. Matthew 23:8." This judgment of Luther's proves as clear as sunlight that he himself seriously did not desire the church to be named after him, still less that he should have wished it out of a craving for honor.

One must not imagine, however, that it is in and of itself wrong for Christians to be named after a man; this follows undeniably from the fact that the Church of the Old Testament was likewise named by God himself after a man. For what was it called? — The Israelite Church. Does not Christ himself, accordingly, say of Nathanael: "Behold, a true Israelite, in whom there is no guile"? But what was Israel? A man.

It is thus clear that everything depends on the sense in which the children of God name themselves after a man; the sinfulness, if any, can lie only there. In what sense, then, and for what reason did the Corinthians at that time call themselves now Pauline, now Apollonian, now Cephan, now Christian? By this, as we read, they wished to separate themselves from one another. Although Paul, Apollos, and Peter (or Cephas) taught one and the same thing, the Corinthian Christians, when they took up the one, rejected the other; through these designations they renounced one another and thereby set up parties. The sin for which Paul rebukes the Corinthians did not, therefore, actually consist in their naming themselves after men, but in their wishing thereby to make divisions among those who held one and the same orthodox doctrine. Hence the Apostle himself rejects even the name "Christian" — which some also wished to bear — as a sectarian name, since they aimed at the same thing by it; although this latter name was taken not from a man, but from Christ, the Son of God himself. Now, in that reprehensible sense, true Lutherans have never named themselves after Luther; by this name of theirs they have never wished to distinguish themselves from, or renounce, any other orthodox teacher; as Lutherans they confess themselves to an Athanasius and to all the pure preachers of the Gospel of every age and land, just as much as to Luther. Luther himself was far from wishing to be regarded as the only true teacher. Among other things, he writes publicly of his contemporary, the Württemberg theologian Brentius, as follows: "I think so highly of your writings that my own books stink altogether by comparison, when I hold them against yours and those of your like; and in this I do not flatter you; nor do I invent anything, nor do I speak anything disparaging; so neither am I deceived in my judgment, for I do not praise Brentius, but the Spirit, who in you is far more friendly, loving, and peaceable than my spirit." Thus, truly, no man speaks who strives to be the head of a sect; thus spoke a Luther who wished to be nothing more than a witness to the truth.

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We therefore do not call ourselves Lutherans after him in the way that we are called Christians after Christ; we are not so named because we believed in Luther. However highly we esteem this great instrument of God, not a single word is accepted in our church in matters of faith because Luther said it, but solely and only because and when it can be clearly proven from the written Word of God; we hold him to be no apostle or prophet, but know that, however highly enlightened he was, he was, like other men, likewise subject to error and to sin. He is not the head of our church, not our pope. Whoever accepts everything in blind faith merely because Luther taught it so is as far removed from true Lutheranism as the earth is from heaven and night from day. Thus Luther wrote in 1530 to Melanchthon, when the latter was at the Diet of Augsburg: "It displeases me greatly in your letter that you write that you have followed me, as the head in this matter, for the sake of my reputation; I wish to be called nothing, to command nothing, and do not wish to be named author (originator) either. And even if one could readily find some convenient interpretation of this, I still do not want the word. If the matter is not equally yours, and does not concern you just as much as it does me, then it should not be said to be mine." But just as Luther thus disclaims any such immoderate authority in the church, so too has our church never granted him any such thing; for it is stated at once, at the very beginning of the Formula of Concord — which is one of the most important public confessions of the orthodox Lutherans: "We believe, teach, and confess that the only rule and standard according to which all doctrines and teachers alike are to be judged and evaluated are the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments alone. Other writings, however, of ancient and modern teachers, whatever names they bear, are not to be held equal to Holy Scripture, but are all alike to be subjected to it, and are to be accepted in no other or further way than as witnesses of how, and in what places, since the time of the apostles, such teaching of the apostles and prophets has been preserved."

So the question finally arises: do we perhaps call ourselves Lutherans in order to indicate that we adhere to a new doctrine which Luther first brought forth a mere 300 years ago, and that we wished to belong to a new church founded by him? Far be it from us! We are not so named as the Arians are named after Arius, or the Dominicans after Dominic. Luther preached no new doctrines, but the age-old teaching of the eternal Gospel. Nor did he separate himself from the original true church, which is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the cornerstone; he had only broken fellowship with those; indeed, he was rather, of tho…