# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 04 26_S114
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

114

(Submitted by Dr. Sihler.)

Unionistic-Churchly Views of Professor Ph. Schaff.

Second Article.

As this judgment concerning the papacy, so also, as Herr Schaff further remarks, has that "concerning the other prominent phenomena of the Middle Ages, the Crusades, the monastic orders and their founders, religious art, scholasticism and mysticism, taken a more favorable shape in the same measure as they were drawn to the light of day out of the dust of the past and became known in their whole connection. . . . . . . . In this altered view of the Middle Ages there lies, however, an enormous concession to Catholicism and a deadly blow to the bigoted ultra-Protestantism."

Professor Schaff would certainly have done us no small favor if he had explained himself somewhat more closely concerning this "bigoted ultra-Protestantism," namely, whether he includes under it also the Scriptural view of the Lutheran Church concerning those "prominent phenomena of the Middle Ages," or merely the Puritan-legalistic view of the Reformed; for as to the former, she has a cheerful courage, conscious of her sound ground and good conscience, that the blow will not be quite so "deadly" which she is to suffer through the unionistic view of those phenomena; for this wields indeed no such strong arm and mighty sword, whose powerful strokes would strike down everything hostile and alien, namely the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God; for by this, as rule and plumb-line, as light and lamp, all phenomena of church and world history must after all, in the end, mediately or immediately, be held, and by it be judged.

Rather it is peculiar to the learned gentlemen Unionists — since they have, to be sure, no certain ground of doctrine — also further on not to apply the standard of the divine Word to any great extent, but in their sickly, dallying and humanizing Pietism to show a great respect for everything humanly grand and showy, and in the past and present to erect this and that monument to the human mind with its gifts and powers, yes, even to build here and there little chapels onto the great cathedral of the Church.

But we bigoted and narrow-minded Lutherans are glad to learn from the Unionists, if they can teach us something upright which the touchstone of the divine Word finds to be true. Let them therefore not withhold from us the yield of the more recent researches, and furnish us the proof how, for example, the Crusades and the monastic orders are not something essentially diseased; for until now we can discover in them, judging the matter by the health of evangelical faith and life, only something diseased.

For though this one and that one of the individual crusaders and monks may have been simple and sincere Christians, who by the preservation of the Holy Spirit, amid the corruption of doctrine even then prevailing, stood firm upon the second article of the Christian faith, nevertheless both facts, as historical events, are and remain diseased phenomena, whose origin from within can be understood only from the burying and ignorance of the evangelical doctrine; for if the evangelical doctrine of justification had been in such recognition at that time, as a common light of the Church, possession of the Church, treasure of the Church, as it is now within evangelical Christendom, then hardly would the Crusades, and neither then nor earlier the hermit-, cloister-, monk- and fool-hood, have arisen; for it is undeniable that both owe their accordingly unevangelical origin to a legal self-righteousness through works and to a fanatical delusion, as their inward ground of origin. A sound evangelical Christian, namely, even according to his outward calling, a day laborer or porter, is precisely therein truly a spiritual man and monk, that inwardly, without leaving his outward calling, he continually goes forth from the world and enters into God, which takes place through faith; but on the other hand he is just as much this or that particular man of a calling, in that he goes forth from God and in the world, according to his particular calling, shows himself a Christian, which takes place through love. Likewise a Christian of evangelical knowledge and sound faith cares heartily little whether he also outwardly possesses the Holy Land and the grave of the Redeemer, and does not leave it in the hands of the unbelievers. The main thing is and remains to him that through and in the true and living faith in the LORD Christ he already now lives spiritually in the City of God and in the heavenly Jerusalem, that his conversation is in heaven, and that he is a fellow citizen with the saints and of the household of God, yea, a king and priest before the Lord, whether he live bodily in Palestine or in Greenland. Has he not Christ, yea the triune God, dwelling in him through faith, as in a living temple, and possesses in God already the heavenly Canaan, what can he care so much for the earthly, which must at some time burn up with the earth.

Here also it is necessary to look away from this, and to distinguish from the real nature of these phenomena, what good and salutary things they have incidentally wrought here and there, as for example the evangelizing of our forefathers by Irish and English monks, which these accomplished, however, not as such, but as living and gifted Christians; and what in like manner was done in the better time of the cloisters and cloister-schools in the German Middle Ages toward the Christianizing and civilizing of our forefathers by godly and gifted monks.

With regard to "religious art," it will surely not be unknown to Professor Schaff that the Lutheran Church has never shared the Puritan-legalistic view, and does not share it now; rather she goes here also, by the hand of the divine Word, right between the superstitious abuse, or at least only an indefinite sentimental mysticism, of sacred art, as both occur in the Roman Church, and on the other hand the rationalizing non-use of it among the Reformed, in that she does not despise the ornament and adornment of sacred art where it serves to the glorification of GOD and the edification of the congregation. Of this testify her many-sided, beautiful church services, rich in liturgical furnishing through sacred poetry and music and edifying to the Church, her noble treasury of hymns for church and house, and especially the cultivation of sacred music, not only immediately for the service of the churchly edification of the congregation, but also mediately for the evangelical strengthening of the heart, in which, for example, Handel in his sacred oratorios, and still more the deep and mighty Johann Sebastian Bach, a true son of the Lutheran Church herself, especially in his Passion oratorios, have achieved something so grand that in this they are reached by no Italian.

Just as little, however, does the Lutheran Church despise also the plastic arts, where they are in any way, mediately or immediately, serviceable and helpful to the evangelical-believing contemplation of her children, as she indeed gladly adorns her houses of God with noble paintings and works of pictures, for example from the life and sufferings of the LORD, and where she has received such things earlier together with Roman Catholic churches, by no means raises an iconoclastic war against them, as the over-spiritual flesh of the Reformed has done.

But also with regard to scholasticism and mysticism the Lutheran Church is conscious of having passed a just judgment; for as to the former first, she has not simply thrown it overboard, but only the corruptions through Pelagian and papistical leaven, together with the silly word-wars and school-squabbling of which the common sophistical scholastics are full, as also the Aristotelian school-compulsion and dead formalism; but what in the nobler scholastics of underlying sound truth is sheltered and rescued in particulars, that she acknowledges.

With regard to the mystics further, the Lutheran Church here also separates, according to justice and truth, such products in which the contemplative mind and the spiritual exercise essentially hold fast the Scriptural ground, from such products as let this ground go and therefore dissolve into mere enthusiasm, loose dreams, mist and trifling; it lies through-