Wielding the Sword of the Spirit. Volume One: The Doctrine & Practice of Church Fellowship in the Missouri Synod (1838–1867) by Peter M. Prange

Abstract

Reviewed by: Wielding the Sword of the Spirit. Volume One: The Doctrine & Practice of Church Fellowship in the Missouri Synod (1838–1867) by Peter M. Prange Mark Mattes Wielding the Sword of the Spirit. Volume One: The Doctrine & Practice of Church Fellowship in the Missouri Synod (1838–1867). By Peter M. Prange. Wauwatosa, Wisconsin: Joh. Ph. Koehler Press, 2021. 425 pp. Numerous books and articles have examined the early history of the Missouri Synod in relation to the Buffalo, Iowa, and Norwegian Synods. The strength of this book is the thoroughness and judiciousness of its assessment of C.F.W. Walther and his interlocutors, as well as its tendency to draw out explicitly the pastoral dimension in Walther's reasoning about church fellowship. If you are at all interested in the relationships between upper Midwest Lutheran immigrant synods in the nineteenth century, this is a satisfying book. It appreciates Walther without denigrating those with whom he disagreed. "Wielding the Sword of the Spirit" is a metaphor for discerning the conditions in which to say no to unionistic tendencies. The Prussian Union, which sought to unite the Lutheran and Reformed traditions in the kingdom of Prussia in the early nineteenth century, was opposed by Pastor Martin Stephan, J. J. Grabau, and others. Prange, a Wisconsin Synod pastor, begins his narrative with a description of the Stephanite movement, centered around Martin Stephan's ministry in Dresden; he opposed government intrusion into confessional matters, and saw those clergy who aligned with the Union church as invalidly administering sacraments. Emigrating with hundreds of parishioners and sympathizers, including Walther, Stephan was discredited soon after arriving in Missouri for alleged sexual improprieties and administrative heavy-handedness. In response to the exposure of Stephan, Walther resigned his pastoral call since he had been a devoted disciple of Stephan, now viewed as a false prophet. Even so, his congregation declined to suspend him (44). In response to Stephanism, Walther [End Page 338] proposed that the true church was "invisible" (52) and should be organized congregationally, not organically constituted by means of a ministerium independent of congregations. Even though Stephan himself proved to be "heterodox," the pastoral calls and administration of the sacraments in the Saxon communities in Missouri were still valid (53). Developing a congregationalist form of governance, Walther would soon butt heads with Grabau, whose anti-Prussian Union emigration had settled in Buffalo, New York, and Milwaukee. Walther consented that the preaching office was a divine institution. But Grabau would not concede that a pastor haphazardly called by a congregation could genuinely absolve or give communion (101). For the Missourians, Grabau represented an attempt to impose the old European order upon the new world. Similar to this conflict with Grabau, the Missourians were soon in conflict with the Bavarian missional pastor Wilhelm Loehe who had been financially supportive of the infant Missouri Synod. Walther even met with Loehe in Germany, but he would not be able to endorse Loehe's conviction that there were "open questions." For example, could faithful Lutherans disagree over how ministry is legitimated, whether through an established ministerium which calls its own or instead via congregational acknowledgement of those set aside for ordination? For Walther, such a question had been settled for good in the Lutheran confessions. Loehe's followers in the United States became the nucleus of the Iowa Synod and, with Loehe, did not believe that confessional truth remained "frozen" from the sixteenth century (297) but instead that it allowed fresh readings of the scriptures to help achieve greater clarity about truth. By bringing up numerous exchanges between Walther and his parishioners, Prange shows Walther to be not a fanatic in matters dealing with fellowship, but instead a man of wisdom and compassion. All in all, Prange provides a delightful read that explains the differences between the various synods and does so in a fair and winsome way. This is must reading for those interested in North American Lutheran history. [End Page 339] Mark Mattes Grand View University Des Moines, Iowa Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.