LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 333

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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS

The Office of Government Information’s work has been limited both
by its mandate and its funding. Most of its attention has been devoted to
the Missouri Synod’s major concerns in the areas of abortion, family, and
education. Its principal task has been acquiring information in these areas
and sharing it with synodical leaders and congregations.

D. Is There Really
a Lutheran Perspective?

At the conclusion of this survey of Luther and Lutherans, the reader
might credibly ask whether there really is a Lutheran view of church and
state. Clearly, if such a perspective requires widespread agreement
among Lutherans, it is currently lacking. On the other hand, it is also clear
from the Lutheran Confessions (and the analysis of theologians such as
Niebuhzs) that there is a distinctively Lutheran emphasis.

The Lutheran perspective is grounded finally in that radical distinc-
tion between Law and Gospel that both establishes and affirms the dis-
tinction between church and state. While there is unity in the Lutheran
view—-since God rules in both kingdoms, both church and state—it is also
true that this unity is and always will be visible only to the eyes of faith.
Christians cannot, and must not attempt to, force this world to become
what it can never be, since force will only create the appearance of Christ’s
kingdom and never the substance.

The Lutheran model is, admittedly, complex. Thus, even Lutherans
have often succumbed to the simplicity of other models—models that
resolve the tension either by pursuing a more this-worldly kingdom of
Christ or by ignoring this world’s problems. Yet, the difficulty with which
Lutherans hold to their perspective does not invalidate it. Indeed, the
Scripture provides ample support for the contention that authentic Chris-
tianity is a hard teaching, difficult to bear (John 6:60). The issue is not
whether Lutheran teaching is easy to understand; the issue is whether it
properly reflects what the Bible says.

The Lutheran perspective is also, admittedly, difficult to apply. Even
when agreeing, for instance, that the church does not have a Gospel-based
responsibility to promote the transformation of the civil realm, Lutheran
theologians and church bodies have disagreed about whether the corpo-
rate church (and not just the individual Christian) has a Law-based duty
to teach the state ethical principles. Theologians and church bodies have
also disagreed about the most prudent and effective means by which the
church might actually teach those ethical principles in a pluralistic and
democratic society. The paradoxical tensions of the Lutheran perspective,

Ill. Practicing What We Preach

While Lutherans have often agreed on the theological fundamentals that
underlie their approach to the state, they also have disagreed frequently on
what those fundamentals mean in practice. Asa result, for Lutherans today,
there is not only confusion because of different theological models in use
among Christians generally but there is confusion also because of different
ideas about how to implement a Lutheran two-kingdom model.

A. The Failure of Two Extremes

Critical to the debates among Lutherans, as we have seen, are ques-
tions about how directly and how substantially Lutheran churches should
become involved in addressing the state. Two diametrically opposed
approaches have been evidenced in the 20th century, with largely negative
results: uncritical acceptance of the state and political lobbying.

The German Church Struggle against Naziism

After the unification of Germany in 1871, the state Protestant church-
es saw themselves as helping the state build and maintain German society
(Niebuhr’s “Christ of Culture” model). When Imperial Germany was
defeated in 1918, it was therefore a crisis of major proportions also for the
church.""! Americans may look upon the creation of the democratic
Weimar Republic in Germany after World War | as a good thing, but many
Germans did not. In fact, given the close association in their minds

The opening speech by President D. Moeller at the Dresden Kirchentag captured the
spirit of this crisis: “We can do nothing else here but bear solemn witness to what rich bless-
ings have issued from the previous close relations between state and church upon both state
and church, and through both of these upon the people and the fatherland. Moreover, we
can do nothing else here but in deep grief bear solemn witness how the churches of our
fatherland owe a deep debt of gratitude to the rulers who have been their patrons.” See Ver-
handluagen des Deutschen Evangelischen Kirchentags 1919 (Berlin: Deutscher Evangelischer
Kirchenausschuss, 1920), 57-58. Quoted in Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich,
vol. 1, Preliminary History and the Time of Hlusions 1918-1934, trans. John Bowden (Philadei-
phia: Fortress Press, [1977] 1988), 4

55

therefore, make its practical application in diverse cultural and political
systems a challenging task.

As we turn now to the problems of practical application, it is impor-
tant to keep in mind that there is in fact a Lutheran perspective—and that
the Lutheran theological model can and will make a practical difference.
Puritan-Reformed Christians really do have a different social agenda than
do confessignal Lutherans, and Lutheran Christians need to be careful of
uncritical atliances with politically active Reformed Christians.

On the other hand, the reader should also be cautioned to understand
that American Lutherans are still struggling to apply their theology—cre-
ated and nurtured in a culture of emperors and princes—to the challenges
of the modern American democratic “experiment.” It is not surprising that
there should be changes in thinking as this application progresses,
although not all such changes finally can be viewed favorably.

between religion and culture, Christianity and morality,''? German Protes-
tants saw the creation of a “secular” Weimar Republic as opening the flood-
gates of immorality in the 1920s. German Protestants “faced a crisis in Ger-
many in the 1920s and 1930s in which they felt personally vulnerable and in
which they believed the future of their nation might hang in the balance.”

Many German Protestants supported the re-establishment of a more
traditional German state, a state organized in submission to a sovereign
leader (Fuehrer). Even eminent German theologians such as Gerhard Kittel
and Paul Althaus supported the rise of Adolf Hitler. They did not see in
Hitler what we, with 20/20 hindsight, see now in terms of the war and the
Holocaust. These bright and talented German intellectuals saw in Hitler
the restoration of German culture:

The theology that Althaus developed contains no single unacceptable
element, but in retrospect it is apparent that one of his emphases proved
very suitable for National Socialism. In his ‘orders of creation’ theology, he
concerned himself with law more than gospel. This focused his attention
on morality, order and stability and allowed him to view the Weimar
Republic as a breakdown of God’s intended order. By equating the tradi-
tional, pre-Weimar order of society with God's will, Althaus opposed pro-
gressive and revolutionary ideologies of the left which hoped to remake
society in a new and better form, and he affirmed the authoritarian and
paternalistic emphases of National Socialism."

Althaus realized too late the evils of Naziism because he valued social sta-
bility more highly than political and religious liberty. “The crucial ele-
ment” in Althaus’ support for Hitler was “the crisis of modernity, which
produced in him fear of an unstable, modem, secular world.”""5

When Hitler came to power on Jan. 30, 1933, he moved immediately to
consolidate the various Protestant state churches into one Reich church.
The so-called “German Christians” who spearheaded this drive pro-
claimed weakly Christianized Nazi mythologies. They also proclaimed a
perversion of Lutheran two-kingdom theology:

The totalitarian state controls all law, all morality. The church has all that

concems the kingdom of heaven. ... Law and order in the church are sub-

na,

Scholder, 37: “The solemnity of this view, which has become alien to us today, should
not cause us to overlook the fact that at the time it represented a vital claim—of undoubted
truth and seriousness. The connection between religion and morality formed the centre of
this common Protestant world-view. The conviction was that the meaning of individual
human existence and of humanity as a whole lay in the development of an ever higher, ever
More perfect morality; and that the Christian religion was the goal as well as the instrument
of this development.”

Robert P. Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanwet
Hirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 26.

"Did, 117-119.
“"Teid., 119

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