451 - Theology Of the Lutheran Confessions

Theology Of the Lutheran Confessions
By Edmund Schlink
Translated by Paul F. Koehneke and Herbert J. A. Bouman
353 pp. Philadelphia, Muhlenberg Press, 1961. $5.00.

For the corruption that confuses, and for the confusion that further corrupts individuals and institutions, the Reformers saw and acted upon confession as the Scriptural way to renewal and wholeness in the Church. The divisions arising in the sixteenth century became formalized within the Church catholic in terms of confessions. In fact, this continental term is a good step removed from what emerged later in America in terms of denominations, although the kinship must be acknowledged. As everyone knows, the distinctiveness of Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and even Roman Catholic became differentiated down to our own day by a variety of factors, among which confessions at times played a very prominent part. Nowhere has this confessional emphasis persisted more durably than in Lutheranism. More than usual interest attaches, even now, to the appearance of a penetrating study of those official statements of evangelical faith to which Lutheran Churches throughout the world-some surely to a greater degree than others- still officially must subscribe.

What prompted Edmund Schlink to write a Theology of the Lutheran Confessions is seemingly not far to seek. The genesis of his effort lies in the German Kirchenkampf which raged under the Nazis. Today, as professor of systematic theology at the University of Heidelberg, he is recognized as one of Germany's top theologians, a leader in the ecumenical movement, and a most astute observer at the Second Vatican Council. Thirty years ago, however, with the rise of the church struggle in Germany, he, like many another who had made the decision, saw in the Scriptures the redemptive truth which, in classic manner, the Lutheran confessions endeavored to communicate. In 1934, the same year that brought forth the unprecedented Barmen Declaration--of Lutheran, Reformed and United churchmen-in behalf of a relevant Christian testimony before the modern world, Schlink addressed the students at the University of Bonn (where Barth was at his height) on the "Duty and Temptation of Confessing" (Das christliche Deutschland, 1933-1945, Evang. Reihe, 10).

Besides, in that momentous year there also appeared, as signs of the time, the twin confessionally explicative monographs: Wilhelm Niesel's Was heisst reformiert? and Hermann Sasse's Was heisst lutherisch? (enlarged and published in English in 1938 as Here We Stand). It was Schlink's address, however, that seemed to catch more vividly than most others the nature of Lutheranism in the Reformation era as essentially a Scriptural confession of faith within and in behalf of the whole Church, and thus a confessing of that faith before the world. Out of his lectures

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in the Theological School at the famed Bethel Institutions, near Bielefeld, and also at the University of Giessen, the first edition of his book appeared in 1940.

Entitled Theologie der lutherischen Bekenntnisschriften, the book was incisive and dispassionate, actually an introduction to the discipline of dogmatics. The task he set himself was "in all humility of hearing and learning to summarize and reproduce the statements of the confessions in systematic order" (p. xxiii). This he achieved with admirable clarity. Basic to his treatment is the understanding that "in the Confessions it is precisely not an individual, but the Church which expounds Scripture." No one, moreover, will take the confessions in their proper sense seriously "until they are taken seriously as an exposition of the Scriptures." Therefore the confessions "confront every man with the same comprehensive claim even today." In light of the church conflict against Nazism, Schlink further premises his study on the fact that it is not enough simply to take note of the claim of the confessions; one must also take a definite stand with respect to that claim. A living Church is not only a confessional Church but also a confessing Church, let Lutherans note!

The Lutheran confessions not only presuppose Scripture but also the doctrinal consensus of the Church. Thus the three ecumenical creeds stand first in the Book of Concord (1580). There follow the Augsburg Confession and its Apology, as initially prepared by Melanchthon (1530, 1531); the Small and Large Catechisms (1529) of Luther, as well as his Smalcald Articles (1536), plus the second-generation consensus, the Formula of Concord (1577). In seeking to achieve a synthesis of these diverse documents, and to let their Biblical basis shine through, the author concentrates his effort on eight chapters. Each chapter has its thetical subdivisions. All is very neat, sometimes perhaps too neat for the average reader to appreciate what condensation of thought and expression has gone into the presentation. True to the Reformers, the persisting emphasis is on justification by grace through faith. The total effect of this book is, in some respects, more powerful than a reading of the separate confessions. The latter were written for a specific day and in relation to specific situations. Schlink does us the favor of providing generalizations and insights which relate these confessions subtly but clearly to the Church today.

Beginning with a chapter on Scriptures and confession, with inferences for dogmatics, he moves on to a discussion of the revelation of God the Creator. Two ensuing chapters on Law and Gospel treat in depth of this hermeneutical polarity so characteristic of Lutheran thought. The

453 - Theology Of the Lutheran Confessions

last four chapters deal successively with the two sacraments, the Church, civil and ecclesiastical government, and eschatology. An appended set of guidelines for dogmatics, plus an introduction to the literature on the subject, rounds out the content of the book.

Much could be said about each chapter, especially as it opens doors for ecumenical dialogue far more than for partisan diatribe. An excerpt from Chapter 5, "Baptism and the Lord's Supper," typifies the prevailing climate of thought and ethical implication of Scriptural doctrine in an ecclesiastical context. "What does it mean," asks Schlink somewhat catechetically, "to live between the sacraments?" In a mode that suggests Luther's theologia crucis, he explains:

It means to return daily to the once-for-all Baptism and to go forward daily to the Lord's Table, which is prepared for us again and again. . . . In Baptism we receive Christ's eternal life, and in the Lord's Supper we receive Christ's vicarious death, his given body and his shed blood. Again, in Baptism we receive the death of our old man, and in the Lord's Supper we receive Christ's body and blood as the bread of life. In the believing reception of both sacraments the Christian's life on earth-his present life and even the remainder of his life on earth-proves to be so completely encircled and encompassed by Christ's first and second Advent that the present and still prospective interval loses the power to lead him astray. In the reception of the two sacraments the believer is translated out of the problem area of his visible existence into the eternal life which will become visible at Christ's return (p. 183).

What is thus said about the divine "sign language" of a sacramentally equipped life has many equally cogent sections on preaching and many other areas of the daily life of the confessing Christian and the corporately confessing Church. The translators, one a late and the other a present member of the Concordia Seminary faculty at St. Louis, have done a generally felicitous job. Based on the third German edition (1948), a work of this sort would have been welcome much earlier. Its usefulness may now, however, be further enhanced by the appearance in English translation of Professor Werner Elert's noteworthy Morphologie des Luthertums (1931), which the latter completed just before assuming his chair in systematics at the University of Erlangen. Elert's Structure of Lutheranism (English tr., 1962) provides a balanced historical, sociological as well as theological exposition, and shows how Lutheranism, as a communion, has been shaped by a good deal more than its confessions. This Schlink freely admits, and this gives point and purpose to a recovery of the the-

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ology of the Lutheran confessions, for every generation, as a recovery of the meaning of Word of God for the life of men.

E. Theodore Bachmann
Lutheran Church House
New York 16, New York