A small German man with impeccable anti-Nazi credentials, a teacher of church history at the University of Erlangen, had been chosen by the Allies to head up the university and assist in the “de-Nazification” process. But the pressure, including decades of agony watching his homeland succumb to the ideology of Hitler in every realm of life, including the church, was finally too much.
When I was drafted, the Catholics were separated from the Lutherans by a Silesian officer. There were some left. “What are you?” [the officer asked.] “An atheist” [came the reply]. “So, you believe nothing? Then you’re a Protestant!”
Sasse went on to witness some of the worst fighting of World War I. He discovered in the bloody trenches that My lowest point—one of my lowest—was a collapse a liberal Protestantism (“believing nothing”) that teaches which I experienced after the war at the destroyed that the Bible is a myth and that man is on a wonderful Main Train Station in Munich after a very heavy trajectory of conquering all the world’s problems, doesn’t day of work full of agitation by the [Allied] military really have much to offer. There, in the trenches, Sasse government. I was at that time Prorector [of Erlangen rediscovered his Greek New Testament, and the truth of University]—without eating and without having Martin Luther’s last written words, “We are beggars, this is slept the previous night. I woke up in the mental true.” Everything had changed for him. hospital. . . . [Letter to Leiv Aalen, March 23, 1975]. After the war he served as a pastor to the indigent and homeless in Berlin. These people needed Christ, the real Dr. Hermann Sasse [pronounced ‘ZAH-suh’], was a tiny Christ. Sasse joked that the theologians who taught him man (barely 5’4”) but had lost eighty pounds through the and whose time was passing, looked intensely into the New war years. After he recovered, Sasse continued to champion Testament to see the picture of the “true historical Jesus,” real Lutheranism for the rest of his life (d. 1976), and but only ended up seeing a Jesus who looked just like a became a great friend and supporter of the Missouri Synod. liberal German scholar with wire-rimmed glasses! Sasse was born in 1895, and Very few Germans grew up in very optimistic times recognized Hitler and the Nazi before the horrid devastation party in the beginning for what of World War I. Humanity had they were. But Sasse did. And it been advancing in science, was precisely his penetrating technology, medicine, education, understanding of sin and and transportation. The church in the Gospel that gave him an Europe and in America had turned extraordinary gift for “discerning much of its attention away from the spirits.” the Gospel of a Savior dying on Just before Hitler became the cross for the sins of the world, Chancellor of Germany, Sasse toward humanitarian concerns wrote as the editor of the (the so-called “social gospel”). The church annual for all of the theology taught at the University Protestant churches in Germany. of Berlin, where Sasse attended, He rejected Nazism in no Sasse, his wife Charlotte and two sons, understood the New Testament uncertain terms, especially its arriving from Germany in September 1949. largely as a book of make-believe racism against the Jews and stories that never actually happened. Sasse’s great teacher, gypsies. How he survived the war after publishing such Adolf von Harnack, emphasized the Fatherhood of God and opinions must have been only by the Lord’s grace. the brotherhood of man, believing that the only things in Sasse was a hero—a real Lutheran hero and confessor. the Gospels that Jesus actually said were the Beatitudes, He risked his life and well-being to confess Christ and the the Lord’s Prayer, and some other bits here and there. The truth of the Lutheran confessions. May God give us, and idea of Jesus Christ as God in the flesh, shedding his blood make us, such confessors of truth today. for the sins of the world, was considered to be the result Rev. Matthew Harrison is the 13th President of the Lutheran of a mishmash of Jewish and pagan ideas getting tossed Church–Missouri Synod. Before becoming president, he served together with the message of Jesus, long after the fact. Harnack’s Lutheran father wrote to his son, saying, “I’ve read for nine years as the executive director of LCMS World Relief and Human Care. Rev. Harrison and his wife live your latest book, and I fear I’m not reading the writing of a in Ballwin, Missouri, and are members of Village Christian.” Sasse was a student of the younger Harnack! Lutheran Church in Ladue, Missouri, where he After graduating from the University, Sasse himself also serves as assistant pastor. They have two entered the military to become a chaplain. One incident he sons. He is an avid bluegrass banjo player and recounted almost a half century later, gives an idea of how builder of guitars, banjos and mandolins. weakened the Lutheran Church in Germany was.
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