Walther, Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm b. October 25, 1811; Langenschursdorf, Saxony d. May 7, 1887; St. Louis, Missouri
Formative theologian and leader of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Walther served as the first president of the synod (1847-1850, 1864-1878). He initiated the synod’s major nineteenth-century publications: Der Lutheraner (The Lutheran) in 1844, a periodical for the faithful, and Lehre und Wehre (Doctrine and Defense) in 1855, a theological journal.
From 1854 until his death in 1887, he was the president and the dominant influence of the synod’s main seminary, Concordia, in St. Louis.Walther’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been Lutheran pastors, and his parents oversaw the young boy’s developing knowledge of the Bible.
When Walther noted in his journal at age eighteen that he enjoyed his family more than his friends, he attested to his unease both with worldly acquaintances and with the spirit of rationalism that infused his early schooling. When he matriculated in theology at the University of Leipzig (1829—1833), he noted that only two of the nine members of the department accepted the truth of scripture as superior to the precepts of reason. Self-conscious about his sins and sense of isolation, Walther joined a pietist club at the university that engaged in fasts and other exercises of holy living.
The onerous standards of the club made Walther more lonely and perplexed than before. When he heard of a Dresden preacher who attracted large crowds with a pure Lutheran perspective, the young scholar sent the pastor a letter. The reply that Walther received from the Reverend Martin Stephan helped to quiet the anxiety that was immobilizing him. When Walther later received his first call to Braunsdorf, Saxony, he maintained his contacts with Stephan. Such guidance became all the more necessary as Walther confronted a rationalist schoolteacher at his church school and preached to overcome resistance to the doctrine of the Lutheran confessions.
When Stephan claimed that the rationalistic schools of Saxony were endangering the souls of Lutheran children, Walther joined his mentor’s Auswanderungsge- sellschaft (emigration society), and supported his plan to immigrate to America. In November 1838 Walther and nearly 700 other followers of Stephan left Germany, and by the end of January 1839 they had arrived in St. Louis, Missouri. By this time, Stephan also claimed the powers of a bishop. Walther and the other ministers in the exodus supported this presumption and signed a document that stated that the members of the emigration society were to treat their “Primate” with a reverence due his high office.
Walther might well have remained a parish pastor for the rest of his life if Stephan had continued in his role as an inspired theologian and leader. Instead, Stephan, who emigrated without his wife, made sexual advances to women in the Gesellschaft, and began to treat one as his mistress. As Stephan led the bulk of the group to a 4,500-acre tract of land in Perry County, Missouri, rumors reached the villages of Dresden and Johannesburg where Walther preached. With the support of Reverend G.H. Loeber of Attenburg village who had heard the confessions of two women, Walther interviewed the bishop’s acquaintances. Without accusing Stephan directly, Walther let the already suspicious Lutherans in Perry County know that a scandal of epic proportions was developing. During the final week of May 1839, Walther confronted Stephan and with other leaders arranged for his deposition and banishment. The Gesellschaft even excommunicated Stephan, but as it did so, it experienced a crisis about its own future and the nature of its mission.
Questions lingered and eroded the confidence of the group. Had they been following a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Were they a church in the New World? Was their emigration a product of unbelief? It was Walther’s answers to these questions in a debate with Adolph Marbach in Altenburg in April 1841 that quieted the uproar and made Walther the leader of the Gesellschaft.
Walther professed that churches such asthose described in Revelation 2:3 may well have apostates in their midst, but that they perform their function as churches precisely in retaining the sins of defiant members like Stephan, and loosening the sins of those who repent (Matthew 16:19). The church, regardless of its errant members, always exists when the word of God is rightly preached, and the sacraments rightly bestowed. Even flawed churches— that only alluded to the Gospel—could possess the power of the church to confer forgiveness to repentant believers.
The inevitable conclusion—that the Old Lutherans now constituted very viable churches in America—inspired Walther to organize and unite these churches. With a high proportion of ministers compared to other communities of German Protestants, and the Concordia Seminary that began in 1843, Walther’s church was poised to expand. In 1847 Walther served as the key organizer of the body that became the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. The emphasis of the synod, on churches “walking together” in unity of doctrine, appealed to many confessional Lutheran congregations across the nation. Walther’s Lehre und Wehre helped shape the uncompromising theology that stood behind this organizational appeal. Though Philip Schaff in 1864 argued that it would be easier to make the Mississippi flow to Bavaria than to build a confessional Lutheran Church in America (Spitz 1968, 132). Walther continued to support a very positive reappraisal of Luther and of the chorale theology of the Reformation era. In the early eighteenth century, a concerted attempt to maintain Lutheran orthodoxy in the New York Ministerium had failed, but now, over a century later, Walther’s synod flourished.
As a theologian, Walther endeavored to make what Saint Paul had made essential to Christianity: the Doctrine of Justification, quintessential to the church. This was the teaching found most succinctly in Romans 3:28 and Ephesians 2:8 that one is saved by unmerited, God-given faith, and not by human effort.
For Walther, the Gospel or good news of Christianity was essentially this, that Christ’s atoning death destroyed sin but preserved the sinner. The Law of God, on the other hand, could only kill the sinner, but not the sin, since no one could even impress God with their righteousness. Walther refused to support the teachings of the Buffalo Synod Lutheran leader, Johannes Grabau, because the latter appeared to have established Lutheran orthodoxy itself as a standard one must follow to be saved. He refused to embrace the more Americanized Lutheran bodies because of their doctrinal tolerance for the idea of human merit and subsequent outreach to rationalists and to American revivalists who stressed human initiative. As American culture tended to stress the importance of individual performance, the Lutheran church would have to remain as scripture driven as possible, preserve its own schools, and maintain its consciousness of theological purity.Walther’s synod by 1900 had over a million members throughout the United States and Canada and the largest Protestant school system in the United States. Unlike in South America where leaders of confessional Lutheranism supported the course of assimilation, Walther helped direct the Missouri Synod against the established, more American synods, making the confessional church in America a bulwark of German ways through World War I. Though Walther’s influence has receded somewhat as
the synod has lost its German character, the most influential Lutheran leader of the era after World War II, Jack Preus, called Walther’s book Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel the most important work ever published by an American theologian. It remains to be seen whether Walther’s emphasis on the Doctrine of Justification will continue to have the centrality it has achieved in the teachings of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
Andrew Yox
See also Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod;
Schaff, Philip
References and Further Reading
Forster, Walter. Zion on the Mississippi: The Settlement of the Saxon Lutherans in Missouri 1839—1841. St. Louis: Concordia, 1953.
Spitz, Lewis W The Life of Dr. C. F W
Walther. St. Louis: Concordia, 1961.
------. Life in Two Worlds: Biography of William Sihler. St. Louis: Concordia, 1968.
Suelflow, August R. Servant of the Word: The
Life and Ministry of C. F W. Walther. St.
Louis: Concordia, 2000.