Wielding the Sword of the Spirit. Volume Two: The Doctrine & Practice of Church Fellowship in the Synodical Conference (1868–1877) by Peter M. Prange

Abstract

Reviewed by: Wielding the Sword of the Spirit. Volume Two: The Doctrine & Practice of Church Fellowship in the Synodical Conference (1868–1877) by Peter M. Prange Mark Mattes Wielding the Sword of the Spirit. Volume Two: The Doctrine & Practice of Church Fellowship in the Synodical Conference (1868–1877). By Peter M. Prange. Wauwatosa, Wisconsin: Joh. Ph. Koehler Press, 2022. 286 pp. This book is the second installment of a multi-volume project that examines how leaders in the Synodical Conference, a nineteenth-and early twentieth-century coalition of six confessional Lutheran synods, determined how to practice church fellowship so as not to promote unionism, that is, the feigning of fellowship with non-Lutherans when, on the basis of sound doctrine, no such fellowship exists. "Wielding the Sword of the Spirit" is a metaphor for determining when to say no to "unionistic" tendencies. In his first volume, Prange, a Wisconsin Synod pastor, presented the rise of C. F. W. Walther as the leader who emerged after the downfall of Martin Stephan, the head of the Saxon immigration of anti-unionistic Lutherans to Perry County, Missouri. Stephan had advocated a kind of episcopal leadership, and, with his dethronement, Walther proposed a congregationalist approach to church governance. In both volumes, Walther emerges as adamantly anti-unionist, but never in a legalistic way. In fact, Walther's tone was ever pastoral. "Generally [End Page 118] speaking, he [Walther] judged cases individually and resisted the temptation of painting with too broad a brush. He was especially careful about not drawing conclusions based solely on a person's church affiliation. He treasured Spirit-worked Christian fellowship above every other association" (41). Walther ever acknowledged that true Christians were present in non-Lutheran bodies and that our understanding of doctrine was "piecemeal" (55). Prange's second volume continues the saga of Walther's influence on those synods which would join forces for mutual support and accountability as the Synodical Conference. The Synodical Conference came about due to the conviction that while the General Council's confessional stance, in opposition to the unionistic General Synod, was sound, it was unable to consistently practice its ideal of Lutheran pulpits for Lutheran clergy only and Lutheran altars for Lutheran communicants only. This second volume focuses on the origin and doctrinal stance of the Wisconsin Synod whose roots were in the unionistic mission societies in Prussia but which within its first quarter century embraced a more conservative confessional stance. Indeed, the Wisconsin Synod terminated its membership in the General Council in 1869. Prange is helpful in showing the extent of communication between the heirs of the Mühlenberg tradition in the General Synod and the General Council with the more recent German and Norwegian immigrants in the upper Midwest. He also shows how problematic and troubling the theory of "open questions," advocated by the Bavarian missional pastor Wilhelm Löhe and the Iowa Synod, was for those synods which formed the Synodical Conference. While Wisconsin leaders saw merit in Iowa's ability to avoid theological extremism, Walther's wholesale rejection of "open questions" would carry the day for Wisconsin and other groups in the Synodical Conference. Clearly, for Walther, "open questions" built more theological pluralism into a confessional tradition than is warranted by the scriptures and the confessions. Prange notes that the debates over the doctrine of election and objective justification, the view that the entire world is justified, at least objectively, in Christ's death and resurrection, which led to the departure of the Joint Synod of Ohio from the Synodical [End Page 119] Conference, had less to do with doctrine and more to do with leaders' fear of losing positions of leadership (267). Prange covers material well-known to North American Lutheran historians. His work merits attention because he allows the personalities of the leaders to emerge and provides details that give us a sense for what congregational life was like in this era. The image he portrays of Walther is a much kinder and gentler hero than what extreme conservatives among North American Lutherans advocate. Mark Mattes Grand View University Des Moines, Iowa Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.