by the Rev. Dr. Burnell Eckardt

I simply taught, preached, and wrote God's Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything. (AE, vol. 51, p. 77)

Having drunk Wittenberg beer, I must admit that the outstanding flavor of it might be partly responsible for the appeal to me of Luther's approach.  But mostly, he just makes good theological sense.  Not only does his stance provide reason never to force the bringing about of churchly reform, which is the context of Luther's remarks here.  It's also helpful, I believe, as a general rejoinder against the mounting constraint placed upon confessional Lutherans to do something drastic about their own residence in some increasingly naughty church bodies which they insist that they cannot endure much longer. This is not to say that the answer to all qualms of conscience is to go drink some Wittenberg beer, for that would be antinomianism at its worst.  It is, rather, to seek to temper the pressures brought to bear by one's principles, especially in cases where instinct—for lack of a better word—would advise against the making of wholesale changes.

The latest celebrated jump from one church body to another has been that of the Reverend Leonard Klein, of Forum Letter fame, who decided to resign as pastor of his Lutheran parish in New York to enter the church of Rome.  He therefore continues to follow in the steps of the Reverend Richard John Neuhaus: both went to the Missouri Synod seminary in St. Louis, both lived through the tempestuous Missouri Synod '70s, both wound up in the ELCA, both were associated with Forum Letter, and now both have gone to Rome.  Both broke the old wry rule I had firmly fixed in my mind some time ago, that you are  really permitted only one change of church bodies once in your life, which is the easy answer I can give to people who ask how I can stay in the Missouri Synod after all the shenanigans it has pulled of late.  I already jumped into the Missouri Synod, in my earlier days; I already used my ticket.

Questions are now being asked routinely, across the boards.  Where does one draw the line?  What must a church body do before I cannot in good conscience stay with it?  Or, before I cannot even in bad conscience stay with it?  The ELCA is openly pondering the ordination of practicing homosexuals.  So is the Episcopal Church, now that the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire has elected an openly homosexual man, the Reverend Gene Robinson, as its bishop coadjutor.  And maybe the Missouri Synod isn't as far along as that yet, but it seems to be steering the same direction.  My advice, for the little it's worth, remains the same: drink some Wittenberg beer with your friends, and let the Word do its work.  And be naïve about this: believe that it will.

Heaven knows the situation does not look good.  In my own Missouri Synod, in case anyone hasn't noticed, a cantankerous crowd has decided that it's OK to pray publicly with just about anybody (as if Elijah was wrong).  In the process of getting a synodical imprimatur for this, they have elicited a couple of remarkable contortions in the language of the bureaucrats in St. Louis.  First, there's this notion spun by the constitutional commission that exonerates a man for any official actions he takes with the support of his ecclesiastical supervisor.  Too bad the commission wasn't around to tell that to Martin Luther when he had to appear before the emperor at the Diet of Worms.  But I still can't imagine him saying, "To act against conscience is neither safe nor right, unless my ecclesiastical supervisor approves; so in this case, here I recant!"

Conscience is a precious thing, to be sure.  I have been hearing not a few rumblings of taking to the lifeboats, to save conscience from fellowship with idols.  What a Christian conscience really desires is purity in doctrine and practice.  Trouble arises when we come to expect to see it.  What if we cannot find it?    CPH's 1943 Catechism, "A Short Explanation of Dr. Martin Luther's Small Catechism" assumes we can, with its severe announcement that we use the doctrine of the Church properly "when we adhere to the Church which teaches the Word of God in all its purity [and] . . . when we avoid all false churches and all other organizations that profess a religion that is false" (pp. 136-137, emphasis original).  The 1986 version, "Luther's Small Catechism with Explanation,"  does not differ: "We should be faithful to that visible church, or denomination, which professes and teaches all of the Bible's doctrine purely and administers the sacraments according to Christ's institution [and] . . . we should avoid false teachers, false churches, and all organizations that promote a religion that is contrary to God's Word" (pp. 158-159).  But what if there is no such denomination left?  This is so troubling a question that it finds some of us scrambling for identity.  But Jesus' promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church was not a promise that somewhere she would remain visibly pure.

Where is purity?  If the Missouri Synod was once thought the bastion of purity, it certainly is no more.  In the Missouri Synod, the very definition of purity has become so laughable that it would be difficult even to parody.  Purity evidently has come to mean 51% or more of the voters in convention, since in recent days we've been hearing routinely about what is and what is not the Synod's official position on any given matter.  Not only so, but it has become rather baldly and frequently stated by some of our bureaucrats that when the official position is contrary to your own position, then you are obligated to subject your own position to the official process of making your dissent known, in hopes of getting that 51% or more officially to agree with you, so as to change the official position in your favor.  The reason you are supposed to do things this way is—can you guess?—that it is the official position of the Synod that you do so.  I'm half expecting a new Reformation slogan: Sola Synoda!  Or the singing of "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Synod tells me so."  How far off can the day be when seminarians' examinations are made to include all the official synodical declarations ever made, lest anyone teach something that isn't official?  Already synodical personnel dazzle us with the extent to which they can quote the Synod's constitution and bylaws, while it seems the only Bible passage they cite with any regularity is the Great Commission.  And speaking of the Great Commission, they never get around to quoting the whole thing.  No wonder, for then they might have to answer some unsettling questions: To whom has all authority been given in heaven and on earth?  To Synod?  Should we teach all things whatsoever Jesus commanded?  Or only whatsoever things Synod has officially adopted?

But the official position of Synod might well agree with Scripture, depending on which way that 51% or more votes.  If it does agree, I reply: Well and good, and sometimes the devil does too, but that certainly does not make him your authority.  But what if it does not agree?  What if 51% goes the wrong way?  Can the official position save you then?  Presumably the jury would be out on that until the official process of dissent has taken its course, and the last vote is taken, by which all truth is at last determined.

When I hear people try to defend this madness, I can't help but think of the similar paltry attempts of Johannes Eck to silence Luther's insistence, at the famous Leipzig Debate of 1519, that the Bible is clear in itself.  Thank heaven most of our laymen still know that the Bible is itself the sole norm and standard by which all other writings are to be judged.  Let all official positions be forever damned who presume to arrive at purity by their loathsome and spectral authority.  Listen, every highly positioned synodical official promoting official synodical positions highly: how do you plan to make your case before the refiner's fire of God's judgment seat?  I can hear your sniveling already: But it was the Synod's official position!  And with the raising of one divine eyebrow you will be forever gone, for so offending the Divine Majesty.

Eck and his theological offspring like to answer with the tired argument that somebody has to interpret the Bible; so whose interpretation counts?  This is why, their reasoning goes, you must rely on councils, popes, and official positions; otherwise there is chaos.  The Lutheran fathers knew how to answer such foolishness: Scriptura per scripturam explicanda: The Bible interprets itself.  The Bible is clear and authoritative all by itself.   Indeed we must and do confess what we believe, and our confession must clearly reflect what Scripture says, but we must never call our—or anyone's—confession, or creed, or official position, necessary for the interpretation of Scripture.  Not even the Lutheran Confessions or the ecumenical creeds can rise to that honor, even though they agree with Scripture, for the honor goes to Scripture alone, in the same way that, as Luther told Eck, Christ alone is the Head of His Church.  Certainly somebody has to interpret the Bible, but the only interpretation which counts is the Bible's own.  It is the prophets and apostles who must in the end interpret the prophets and apostles.  Chaos results in the Church when this is not understood.

Which, no doubt, is why chaos seems to reign everywhere; and which is also why purity has become such a rare thing.  Far from assuming it can always be found, we are left to wonder if it can anywhere be found, so bankrupt are the churches in our day.

Failing to get purity, some have sought at least a certain amount of authenticity.  Klein and Neuhaus went to Rome, surely knowing full well they would not find purity there, but evidently having talked themselves into a greater perceived need for the sense of legitimacy which comes from linear apostolic succession (from Jesus to Peter to popes to bishops to pastors to churches).  Others have found some solace among the Orthodox, who also have a linear legitimacy, and who, it is argued, have not strayed at all from what is truly catholic in that they have not inserted the filioque into the Nicene Creed as we have (in the West, we say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque), but in the East, they do not).  The attraction of being part of a body that can trace its institutional roots to the apostles is a very powerful one indeed.  Talk about official positions!  Anyone who longs for the security of official positions ought to check out Rome or the East, for that's where you'll really find happiness, in official positions than which none can be greater.  At least then you'll have the weight of tradition behind your position.  Those who rely on official Lutheran synodical positions remind me of the vagabond Jews of Acts 19 who tried to exorcize a demon, to whom the evil spirit replied: "Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?" Whereupon he overcame them and drove them from the house naked and wounded.

But the kind of security which can be gained by jumping from the little Missouri Synod tugboat (sorry, President Kieschnick, but that's really all it is), or any other, to the Roman or Orthodox ocean liners is really only a security of the same kind as the shelter sought by those seeking refuge in official synodical positions, though the former are grander in appearance.  Any claim of denominational legitimacy hoped for even among the ecclesiastical giants must of necessity be  tempered by the fact that each has excluded the other since the Great Schism of 1054.  In addition, even within their respective traditions there have been (and are) errors and disagreements, as Luther himself attested with regularity.  You might well have tradition on your side, therefore, but wherever you are, you may also count on having tradition against you.

The search for legitimacy through lineage, be it natural or ecclesiastical, is in truth from the outset theologically bankrupt.  Jesus indeed built His Church beginning with Peter, which is at the heart of the notion of apostolic succession, but even Peter becomes Satan as soon as he abandons his confession (St. Matthew 16:23).  Here is the great mystery attending Jesus' transferral of the keys to Peter in St. Matthew 16:18.  They remain in Jesus' own hand at the same time as in Peter's.  These are not, after all, the keys to the car.  When the heavenly keys are transferred, Jesus also keeps them, which of course is why He remains substantially present in the ministry of Peter.  Thus Peter and every one of his successors, including all pastors of the Church, may indeed lay claim to the title Vicar Christi, but only insofar as they faithfully carry out the office.  Any unjust excommunications, such as the excommunication of Martin Luther, are devoid of the presence of Christ, and therefore void.  Hence any apostolic succession which looks for an unbroken chain of lineage through popes or patriarchs to the Apostles and Christ can never know if it is truly legitimate, since any bishops in the line who have been appointed by graft or treachery are no true bishops.  May the ordination of, say, a simoniac bishop by another simoniac bishop, such as there were an abundance of in medieval Europe, be counted as valid?  History is replete with pure knaves who purchased their clerical status for no other purpose than income or personal benefit.  They had no intention of preaching the Gospel, nor did they know how.  In fact they were often absentees; they did not even live in the sees they had purchased.  Rightly, the Lutheran Confessions do not regard such ordinations as legitimate acts.  But who can say if the line of succession upon which one stakes his claim might not have somewhere in its history a simoniac or two?  Even Jesus' own lineage was full of scoundrels; who among us can truly expect any of ours to be better?

Some can on occasion be seen fleeing to their own new synods or independent churches.  This ought never be done, however, without an acute awareness of the evil of sectarianism.  Unfortunately that kind of awareness is as scarce as a preference among Lutherans for the term catholic.  The American Lutheran church bodies have in most respects already become sects, and it doesn't even seem to bother them.  We all live from our own frames of reference, it is true, but at the very least we ought to be aware that it is true.

Legitimacy can come only from the Word of God itself.  My own ordination was legitimate because in it I was examined according to the Word of God, I heard the Word of God, and I received the laying on of hands according to the Word of God.  The sheep simply know the voice of the Shepherd.  Even Christ's legitimacy lies ultimately in the divine voice alone.  Christ's presence depends neither on the preachers of the Gospel nor on the people to whom the Gospel is preached, but on the Gospel itself.  This, once again, is why we insist that the Divine Liturgy does matter, and that how one behaves liturgically reflects his own understanding, or the lack thereof, of this very thing. If someone believed that Christ's presence depends on the preachers, we might expect him to preach frequently about himself.  If someone else believed that Christ's presence depends on the hearers, we might expect long-windedness about the priesthood of all believers.  But if we believe that the presence of Christ, and the legitimacy of His Church, depends on the Gospel, then we surely ought to expect to see a liturgical exaltation of the Gospel.  Who really believes in the power of the Word to do its work?  An examination of liturgical dignity is always a telltale sign.

In these troubled times, it turns out that we are left with the Gospel alone, when, as the hymnist puts it, every earthly prop gives way.  The frustration among confessional Lutherans with regard to the course of events in the churches of our day is not unlike that of Luther, who wrote in 1520,  "Farewell, unhappy, hopeless, blasphemous Rome. The wrath of God has come upon thee as thou deservest.  We have cared for Babylon and she is not healed. Let us then leave her that she may become a habitation of dragons, specters, and witches" (WA, vol. 6, p. 329; cf. AE, vol. 41, p. xv).  Yet, as is well known, Luther finally wrote Rome off because Rome had first written him off.  The pope burned his books so he burned the pope's books.  The pope excommunicated him, and his invective against Rome was largely the result of Rome's declaration that he was a heretic.  In so doing, Rome was forbidding the Gospel.  Times were certainly more troubled in Luther's day than they are in ours.  But perhaps there will come a day when some synodical hyena will declare that the official position of the synod is to brand us confessional Lutherans as heretics, in which case we can happily burn their decrees.

In the meantime I woolgatheringly wonder: Why can't American beer be as good as Wittenberg's?  Maybe the answer is best attempted allegorically: We produce weaker beer much as we practice weaker liturgy than the Wittenberg Reformer and his friends.  We drink weaker beer much as we take in weaker theology than we'd get from reading him.  And if we drink in too much of the senseless prating of bureaucrats, we'll be missing out on the better beer.  But if, as Luther was eager to exhort, we imbibe in the Word of God more abundantly, if we learn to trust it implicitly in the face of mounting fears—and this implicit trust will be told by the way we worship—perhaps we won't find ourselves getting so desperate about our state of  affairs.  So in short, it's best to be discerning about what you drink.  Wittenberg beer is definitely better.