LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2004, Page 422

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422 THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

C. F. W. Walther and The Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod

The Commission’s Report provides a respectable overview of
C. F. W. Walther’s teachings on the theology of the Divine Call.
However, some conclusions extrapolated from selective Walther
quotations are likely to provoke controversy.”!

The most surprising turn occurs within the section on “Length
of a Call,” which cites a single 1898 Lehre und Wehre article by
Franz Pieper to propose a distinction between a temporary call
(condemned by both Walther and Pieper) and “a call for temporary
assistance” (which, it is said, Pieper might not immediately reject
based upon the motivation behind such a call and the extenuating
circumstances). This seems like thin support for reconfiguring the
open-ended nature of the Cail.

Pieper’s approval of “temporary assistance” seems to empha-
size, not the arbitrary limits of time, but the special case of neces-
sity determined by the imposition of God’s will upon a congrega-
tion. In describing cases where God has burdened a congregation
with a sick or weak pastor, or given its pastor additional tasks, the
congregation believes this condition is temporary but does not
know when it will end. They can expect their pastor to return to
full-time service after God lifts this burden from him, but he (and
they) require temporary assistance in the meantime. Nowhere in
this discussion does Pieper portray the office as vacant, or the as-
sistant as a replacement.

The Commission’s Report does not depict the full force of
Walther’s arguments against the temporary call. Consider the fol-
lowing extended quotation from Walther’s Pastorale:

Here in America many congregations have the custom of calling the
preachers only temporarily. But a congregation is not justified in ex-
tending such a call, and a preacher is not authorized to accept such a
call. It is an abuse. It fights against the divinity of a correct call to a

preaching office in the church, which is clearly testified to in God's
Word (Acts 20:28; Eph. 4:11; 1 Cor. 12:28; Ps. 68:12; Is. 41:27)

For if God is really the One Who calls preachers, the congregations
are only the instruments for separating the persons for the work which
the Lord has called them (Acts 13:1). The preacher stands in God's ser-
vice and office, and no creature can dismiss God’s servant from God’s
office unless it can be proven that God Himself has dismissed him from
office (see Hos. 4:6), in which case the congregation is not really dis-
missing the preacher but is only carrying out God's clear dismissal. If
the congregation does it otherwise, the instrument is making itself the
mistress of the office (Matt. 23:8; see 2 Tim. 4:2-3) and is interfering in
God’s government.

The preacher who gives the congregation the right to call him in this
way and to dismiss him arbitrarily, is making himself a hireling and ser-
vant of men. Such a call is not what God has ordained for the holy
preaching office but something quite different that has nothing to do
with it. It is not an indirect call from God through the church but rather
a human contract. It is not a life-long call but a temporary function out-
side of the divine ordinance, a human ordinance made against God’s
ordinance, or rather an atrocious disorder. So it is null and void, without
any validity. One called in this way is not to be considered a minister of
Christ or the church.

Such a call fights against the relationship in which congregation and
preacher stand with each other according to God’s Word. For it fights
against the respect and obedience which the listeners should show to-
ward those who administer the divine office according to God's Word
(Luke 10:16; 1 Tim. 5:17; 1 Thess. 5:12-13; 1 Cor. 16:15-16; Heb.
13:17). For if the listeners really had that alleged authority, it would
stand completely in their power to withdraw that respect and obedience.

Every kind of temporary call is against the faithfulness and con-
stancy until death which God requires of preachers (1 Peter 5:1-4;
1 Tim. 4:16; 1 Cor. 4:1ff.). It is against the accounting which the
preachers will have to give as a watchman offer their souls (Heb.
13:17). Finally a temporary call is against the practice which the Lord
commanded and which the apostles followed. It is against the practice
of the church at all times in which corruption in doctrine, life, order,
and discipline had not entered.

2004 Convention Workbook

It needs no proof that, when that kind of call exists, the church could
never be properly provided for, have correct discipline practiced, be
grounded in faith and godly living, or be extended. Such a call opens
the gate and the door for all disorder, confusion, and harm by the gain-
sayers and by the men-pleasing, men-fearing belly-servants [see Rom.
16:17-18].*

Other American church bodies regularly employed their pastors
on a temporary basis. Walther considered this “an abuse,” “inter-
fering in God’s government,” “‘an atrocious disorder,” and foresaw
a host of damaging effects.

The temporary call actually “fights against” the congregation,
its pastor, and the divine Word that relates them to one another. It
undercuts the congregation’s respect and obedience to for their pas-
tor, dilutes his accountability to them, and deflates his own respect
for the office he occupies. The maintenance of proper discipline in
the congregation also suffers greatly. In short, says Walther, no
good can come from anything resembling a temporary call.

Deposing the Pastor

Walther’s 1879 essay to the Iowa District on the “Duties of an
Evangelical Lutheran Synod” has been cited in support of deposing
the pastor. Other statements from that essay, however, reveal a
more full and balanced position on the subject. First, Walther notes
that some weaknesses in a pastor must be tolerated, quoting John
Gerhard to that effect. No man is without sin, and no pastor has all
the gifts desired in one who serves in the office of the ministry.
Second, Walther charges the congregation to exercise discernment
and discretion: they should ask for assistance only from an ortho-
dox synod and an orthodox District President. He explains that if
the congregation asks for help with its erring pastor from a hetero-
dox synod or District President, it is like “jumping out of the frying
pan into the fire” or like “inviting the fox into the henhouse” or like
inviting “a bunch of popes.” Third, Walther notes that the synod
should support an orthodox pastor against an erring congrega-
tion—and an orthodox congregation against an erring pastor. It is
misleading, therefore, to cite this essay in support of deposing a
pastor without presenting the countervailing obligation to support.
Throughout the essay Walther’s clear intent is to defend orthodox
teaching and practice and oppose heterodoxy.

This more holistic understanding provides a different perspec-
tive from that presented in the Commission’s Report, which offers
the following conjecture a few lines after citing Walther’s essay:
“The question may be asked, does Walther’s reference here to “dis-
arming’ those who support an ‘unfaithful, wicked pastor’ imply
that a congregation has the right to remove a pastor who is guilty of
any of those listed behaviors and attitudes?”™

A rhetorical question about a possible implication hardly serves
as a solid basis for further conclusions, yet the Report proceeds to
use it in this manner. Further historical research about Walther’s
actual practice at the time can certainly serve to document whether
this implication can be substantiated.** Perhaps the District Presi-
dent, after visiting the congregation, may support those who simply
want to admonish their pastor in order to change his conduct, rather
than deposing him.

The language of “rights” commonly employed in our American
culture may be employed only with great caution. Often it comes
bound up with Enlightenment concepts such as the presumption of
personal autonomy. Christian people (and congregations) should
understand their “rights” not as autonomous liberties to choose or
do whatever they please, but as God’s free gift enabling them to
love God and neighbor.

Just as a surveyor checks the straightness of a road, a compari-
son of recent history with older history can prove helpful to detect
small but significant changes in theological direction. Three hun-
dred years before Walther, this question of “deposing a pastor” was
briefly and soundly addressed by Chemnitz in his Enchiridion: