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Office of the Ministry: Luther or Luder?
Office of the Ministry: Luther or Luder?
Mark Menacher
Surveying the denominational and non-denominational landscape of ecclesial organizations just in the United States, the phenomenon generally known as “clergy” is decidedly diverse. By nature (sinful and unclean), clergy types come in all sizes, shapes, colors, abilities, disabilities, talents, and nowadays sexual orientations. Depending upon tradition, disposition, and perhaps even indigestion, for which Martin Luther was reportedly known, those in the clerical estate can be known as chaplain, deacon, priest, bishop, auxiliary bishop, archbishop, pastor, lead pastor, associate pastor, parson, vicar, rector, minister, moderator, and district president, to name a few. Generally considered somehow to be elevated above congregational members through “ordination,” either from the perspective of the clergy or by congregational members or by both,1 such clerics (and “religious” leaders) might be addressed as The Reverend (Father and Mother), The Very Reverend, The Right Reverend (as opposed to the wrong reverend?), The Most Reverend, and even the non-reverend for those who look askance at such pomp and circumstance.
The Roman Church
The status, stature, legitimacy, and authority of clergy, and particularly the validity of their ordinations, is not merely an intra-congregational concern but is frequently church- and denominational-defining and correspondingly denominational and church-dividing. For example, the Roman Church defines itself as having a pope who is claimed not only to be the successor of St. Peter but more importantly the vicar (representative) of Christ on earth. Furthermore, the Roman Church teaches that before his death Christ instituted the Roman Church’s priesthood when he celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples on Maundy Thursday. Thus, in the Roman Church a valid Eucharist as an element of salvation is dependent upon a valid ordination to the priesthood which is dependent both upon the succession of St. Peter in the papacy and generally upon ordination to the priesthood at the hands of bishops in communion with the pope.2 Not surprisingly, with the clerical estate being church defining and thus church-dividing, those outside the Roman Church cannot “be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.”3 Maybe that explains why so many “Lutherans” are clamoring after the papacy.
Anglicans
Similarly, though in slightly milder form, according to the Preface to the Ordinal in The Book of Common Prayer, Episcopalians (Anglicans) maintain that their threefold ordering of ministers as deacons, priests (presbyters), and bishops is not only divinely instituted but also that candidates for all three orders must be ordained by bishops in an historic succession, also known as the “historic episcopate.”4 Notably, this Preface is firmly anchored in the 1662 Act of Uniformity, and through this Act the English state and the bishops of the Church of England sought to eradicate all non-episcopalian forms of Christian expression in England and Wales. In that process, about 2000 (or one-fifth) of the clergy in the Church of England were ejected from ministerial office for refusing to submit to episcopal ordination by 24 August 1662.5 In addition, many thousands were persecuted, jailed, and fined, and many hundreds died from such treatment or were killed, all for the simple reason that they aspired not to be episcopalian. Still today, all Anglican churches are bound by the same intolerant principles of this Preface through which Anglicans (Episcopalians) set themselves apart from non-episcopalian Christian traditions.6 Consequently, in order to become acceptable for full communion with the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) through the ecumenical agreement entitled Called to Common Mission (CCM) adopted such Anglican religious intolerance and has exercised it on its clergy since the adoption of CCM in 1999.7 All this has taken place because similar to the Roman Church, Anglicans also hold that a valid ordination is necessary for a valid consecration of the eucharistic elements.
In that process, about 2000 (or one-fifth) of the clergy in the Church of England were ejected from ministerial office for refusing to submit to episcopal ordination by 24 August 1662.
When the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued Dominus Iesus, on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church on September 5th, 2000, it created quite a stir, particularly among Anglicans. According to DI §17, “Therefore, there exists a single Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the Successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him. ... On the other hand, the ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery, are not Churches in the proper sense; ...”8 This exclusion from being “church” necessarily included the churches of the Anglican Communion. Hypocritically, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Reverend Dr. George Carey, was indignant that the Vatican should treat Anglican churches in the same way that the Anglicans have historically treated non-historic episcopally ordered churches. According to Carey, “Of course, the Church of England, and the world-wide Anglican Communion, does not for one moment accept that its orders of ministry and Eucharist are deficient in any way.”9 Despite Carey’s willingness to “recognise and celebrate ecumenical progress,” when churches and their ministries become “weaponized” against fellow Christians, one should not be surprised, as Jesus reminds, that “all who take the sword will perish by the sword’” (Mt. 26:52).10
Creation of the LCMC and NALC
The dynamic of ecclesial condescension is not confined to the Roman Church and the global communions of ecclesial communities “inferior” to it, which in turn, successively subject their fellow ecclesial communities to the same. On a much smaller scale and in modified form, it also exists in relation to two ecclesial entities pertinent to some of SIMUL’s readership, namely Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) and the North American Lutheran Church (NALC), both of which successively broke away from the ELCA in 2001 and 2010, respectively.
In very crude review, after the Concordat of Agreement between the ELCA and the Episcopal Church in the USA (ECUSA) failed to be ratified at the 1997 ELCA Churchwide Assembly and with a revised ELCA-ECUSA ecumenical accord entitled Called to Common Mission (CCM) on the horizon, the WordAlone Network (WAN) came into being initially as an email listserv movement with the intention of defeating CCM. When CCM was passed on 19 August at the 1999 ELCA Churchwide assembly, WAN set a variety of ecclesial-political strategies into motion either to overturn CCM or to wring concessions from the mandated episcopal succession and ordination of all ELCA bishops and pastors. At the March 2000 WAN convention in Phoenix, Arizona, the WAN board advanced the establishment of LCMC to use as a bargaining chip over against the ELCA to compel the ELCA to grant “exceptions” to CCM’s prescriptions. When WAN only obtained “exceptions” to the episcopal “ordinations” of pastors but not bishops at the 2001 ELCA Churchwide Assembly, LCMC was no longer strategically useful to WAN. Consequently, with all the Lutheran confessional cohesion, definition, and distinction with which one could endow a politically expedient ecclesial entity, the WAN board set LCMC adrift to serve chiefly as an escape hatch for congregations wanting to leave the ELCA with their property.
Having lost the battle against CCM, WAN lost its raison d'être. Fortunately, in its aspiration to be everything Episcopalian, the ELCA lost no time in following its new ecclesial masters down the path of ordinations of non-biblically sanctioned sexual orientations and relations. Soon, WAN was joined by “Solid Rock Lutherans” in a new and valiant effort to save the ELCA from its non-Lutheran dispositions. As the ELCA advanced its non-heterosexual agenda, in hot pursuit WAN, Solid Rock Lutherans, and others coalesced in 2005 into the Lutheran Coalition for Reform or “Lutheran CORE.” In curious contradiction, by forming Lutheran CORE both WAN antiCCMers and ELCA pro-CCMers found themselves in bed together united by homosexuality in the ministry, or at least by their common opposition to it. Not learning from the past, due to sharing much of WAN’s leadership, Lutheran CORE followed WAN’s failed strategy used to oppose CCM. When Lutheran CORE eventually lost the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly votes for inclusion of non-heterosexuality in the ELCA’s ordained ministry, Lutheran CORE, like WAN before it, launched its own ecclesial body. By August of 2010, the North American Lutheran Church (NALC) was born, complete with its own curious form of not-so-historic, tactile, episcopal succession.
Given their common provenance in the ELCA, their emergence directly or indirectly at the hand of the WordAlone Network (or at least former WAN functionaries), and their births from nearly identical ecclesial-political strategies (or machinations) over against the ELCA, why have both LCMC and NALC been separately spawned within nine years of each another, apart from the fact that the NALC churches and clergy do not consider LCMC “churchy” enough as an ecclesial entity to join? In other words, with respect to the Lutheran Confessions, to which both LCMC and NALC supposedly subscribe, is there any confessionally Lutheran reason for both organizations to exist as separate “churches”? If not, then why do they exist, and if so, why should anyone spend the time and effort composing an essay on the Lutheran office of ministry primarily for that audience when even at close proximity such entities do not share the same understanding of the same Lutheran confessions?
In other words, with respect to the Lutheran Confessions, to which both LCMC and NALC supposedly subscribe, is there any confessionally Lutheran reason for both organizations to exist as separate “churches”?
Confessionally speaking, at first glance LCMC would seem to have the upper hand. WAN fought its battles against the ELCA’s adoption of CCM by referencing Article VII of the Confessio Augustana (CA) that the church “is the assembly of all believers in which the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel” and that it “is enough (ist genug / satis est) for the true unity of the Christian churches that the gospel is hence preached harmoniously according to a pure understanding and the sacraments are administered in accordance with the divine word.”11 Furthermore, according to CA Article V (On the Office of Preaching / On Ecclesiastical Ministry) note 1, “Luther did not understand the office of preaching (Predigtamt) clerically.”12 Finally, the entirety of much cited Article X of the Formula of Concord clearly denounces the ELCA’s assertions that CCM’s required adoption of the ECUSA’s ordination structure and practices is an adiaphoron. 13 On the basis of CA VIII, in contrast, it could be argued (against the existence and activities of Lutheran CORE) that “in this life many false Christians and hypocrites, even public sinners, remain among the pious, but that the sacraments remain nonetheless effective, although the [publicly non-heterosexual] priests through whom they are administered, are not pious.”14
That all said, are WAN and Lutheran CORE either predictive of or responsible for the confessional integrity of the ecclesial entities which they have produced? As “[t]oday LCMC consists of over 900 congregations in countries across the globe,”15 while the NALC boasts “uniting more than 142,500 Lutherans in more than 430 congregations across North America,”16 perhaps the numbers speak for themselves. If numbers, however, were indicative of Lutheran confessional integrity and identity, then in the USA the ELCA would still hold pole position. So, why do Lutherans have such diverse manifestations of the office of ministry, or phrased negatively, why do Lutherans individually and collectively seem so disinclined to let the Lutheran Confessions, particularly the Confessio Augustana, guide the practices of their churches’ offices of ministry?
The Lutheran Confessions
CA V and associated Articles VII (On the Church), VIII (What is the church?), IX (On Baptism), X (On the Lord’s Supper), and XIV (On Church Order) could not be more simple, but they are perhaps too simple for sinners, for “all born naturally after Adam’s fall are conceived and born in sin; ...” (CA II).17 If sinners are justified by faith (CA IV), then “[t]o obtain such faith, God has instituted the office of preaching (Predigtamt), [has] given the gospel and sacraments, through which he as through means gives the Holy Spirit who effects the faith where and when he wills in those so hearing the gospel ...” (CA V).18 Often ignored in discussions on the office of ministry are the rest of the Lutheran Confessions. For example, Luther in the Large Catechism reminds,
"Accordingly, we further believe that in Christendom we have the forgiveness of sin which happens through the holy sacraments and absolution and through all manner of comforting words of the whole gospel. Therefore, it is fitting at this point to discuss what one should preach concerning the sacraments and in summary the whole gospel and all offices of Christendom, for it is necessary that this take place unceasingly. For even though God’s grace is acquired through Christ, and through the Holy Spirit holiness is effected through God’s word in the unity of the Christian churches, we are nonetheless never without sin due to our flesh with which we are still encumbered. Therefore, everything in Christendom is so ordered that daily one there gets the pure forgiveness of sins through word and sign, to comfort and to uphold our conscience, as long as we live here."19
So, where in Christendom is everything “so ordered that daily one there gets the pure forgiveness of sins through word and sign”? Likewise, where in Christendom is it “enough (ist genug / satis est) for the true unity of the Christian churches that the gospel is hence preached harmoniously according to a pure understanding and the sacraments are administered in accordance with the divine word?” In comparison to the pure proclamation of the gospel in word and sacrament and to the true unity which Christ alone thereby creates in his own body, the church, what do humanly constituted ecclesial contrivances have to offer? For whose benefit are they created, especially when such contrivances prove “churchdividing” in so many ways? Everyone in the church knows the answer but too few acknowledge it.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1), and “God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good” (Gen. 1:3-4).
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’” (Gen. 1:26). “And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so” (Gen 1:29-30), and it was more than enough. Then, the serpent, which “was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made,” said to humanity’s first parents in so many words, “Yes, but is all that bountiful creation of God’s word really enough?” (Gen. 3:1-13).
The Desire and Manifestation of Human Sin
The desire and manifestation of human sin to have a “Petrine succession” in the papacy or to demand an historicepiscopal succession with various “orders” of clerics or to divide the “laity” from the “clergy” or to have “pastor emeritus” status or so to order the church in any way “that daily one” does not “get there the pure forgiveness of sins through word and sign” proclaims that the gospel of Jesus Christ properly differentiated from the law is not enough.20 It is a manifestation of the indelible character of fleshly human sin with which everyone in the priesthood of all believers is still encumbered, perhaps especially those in the “office of ministry.” Luther writes,
"Into this holy, magnificent, joyous, gracious priesthood the sow of the devil, the pope, has fallen with his snout, which he not only defiles but wholly destroys and suppresses, and he has erected another, his own priesthood, cobbled together from all pagan priesthoods, as a stew of all abominations. First, he divides the priestly people of Christ into clerics and laity. The clerics he calls his pastorate (geistlichen), among whom he wants to be the highest priest and prince, which he alone thereby makes spiritual (geistlich) by shearing [tonsuring], smearing [anointing] their fingers with oil, and requiring them to wear long garments, and purports to imprint an indelible character on their souls, which is nothing other than the character of the Beast in Revelation 13... This institution one calls holy orders or holy ordination (heilige Weihung), one of the seven sacraments, much holier and better than baptism itself."21
In Luther’s view, following Paul, the ministry is not an estate, order, or dignity, but is an office or function which the word “ministry” itself denotes, “a ‘stewardship’ or ‘household,’ ‘ministry,’ ‘minister,’ ‘servant,’ ‘one serving the gospel,’ in which the fictitious notion of “indelible character” vanishes;22 if only the sinners occupying that office believed this to be true.
Unfortunately, most discussions on the Lutheran understanding of the “office of ministry,” including all that presented above, pertain to the What thereof rather than the Why. Because sinful humanity finds itself in bondage to sin, it is also held captive to an ontology of substances wherein “the church” and the “office of ministry” become given things,23 vaguely described in the Confessio Augustana, with which self-designated Lutherans deem themselves free to tinker. Such “Lutherans” are rightly called remodelers24 who in recent decades seem all too keen to retrofit the Lutheran understanding of church and its office of ministry with the predilections of discarded pagan priesthoods.
If, however, Luther and his polemical writings “provide the true understanding and meaning of the CA” and if Luther developed clear understandings regarding the church and the office of ministry well before the CA was drafted, then what guided, or more correctly, what drove Luther to do so? Here the question turns from What to Why.
From Luder to Luther
The Augustinian friar and university professor, Martin Luder, was not inclined to tinker with the institution of the church, to remodel it, as was Jan Hus (AD 1369-1415). In the course of 1517-1518, however, Martin Luder began to change the spelling of his surname to Luther to reflect the letter theta (θ = th) in the Greek word έλεύθερος (eleutheros) meaning “free.”25 Due to regional dialect differences in Germany, this spelling change was not particularly remarkable, similar to the way that most Americans pronounce the word “water” as “wader.” This
linguistic variance from Luder to Luther, however, reflected an existential and theological change of reality for Brother Martin which would alter the course of Christendom.
In the course of 1517-1518, however, Martin Luder began to change the spelling of his surname to Luther to reflect the letter theta (θ = th) in the Greek word έλεύθερος (eleutheros) meaning “free.”
According to John’s gospel, the one who is “the way and the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6) taught that if “you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (ἐλευθερώσει = eleutherosei). ... So if the Son sets you free (ἐλευθερώσῃ = eleutherose), you will be free (ἐλεύθεροι = eleutheroi) indeed” (Jn 8:31-32,36).26 By the truth of the gospel (Gal 2) and those truths congruent with the gospel, Luther was liberated in his conscience by Christ himself from the powers of the law, sin, death, the devil, and hell and reconciled to his heavenly Father to live in theological and spiritual freedom.27 Consequently, those who have been set free by the truth of the gospel are either implicitly or explicitly “Lutheran.”
For Luther, the Reformation did not entail tinkering or remodeling an entity called “the church” but instead necessitated engaging all sinful human reality on every front with the proclamation of God’s word, namely the gospel properly differentiated from the law. Liberated from the powers of sin, death, and the devil by the truth of the gospel, Luther readily and willingly came into conflict with everyone and everything which contradicted this truth, both in the ecclesial and secular realms. Because this truth was none other than Jesus Christ himself, Luther was driven to rebuild the church and its office of ministry solely to proclaim, in word and sacrament, the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ. Any- and everything which contradicted Christ alone and his gospel was not the church and did not belong to the church.
Unfortunately, in the course of time Lutherans seem to have lost faith in the liberating power of the truth of this gospel. In order to save their ever-new churches, the gospel and even Christ himself needed and still need to be augmented or enhanced. So, the remodeling began and continues. Consequently, it seems hard not to conclude that today most Lutheran ecclesial entities and their offices of ministry have fallen behind the Reformation28 and firmly into the hands of remodeling Luders with all the corresponding consequences.
Mark D. Menacher, PhD serves as pastor of St. Luke's Lutheran Church, in La Mesa, California.
Notes:
1 P. Drews comments in his introduction to Luther’s Ordinationsformular (ordination agenda) that when the Lutheran Reformers began “ordaining” (calling and confirming) pastors regularly in 1535, without some sort of “ordination” ceremony some of those called to the pastoral office or their respective congregations, or both, harbored doubts about the legitimacy of the pastor to exercise the duties of his office; see D. Martin Luthers Werke - Kritische Gesammtausgabe (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883), 38:406 [hereafter as WA]. In notable contrast, the Lutheran Church in Württemberg first introduced ordination in 1855; see Georg Rietschel, Luther und die Ordination (Wittenberg: Verlag von R. Herrosé, 1889), 79.
2See Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd edition (Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 231-237, 337, 383-399.
3Ibid., 224.
4See “Preface to the Ordination Rites” in The Book of Common Prayer ... According to the use of the Episcopal Church, (New York: The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1979), 510, and therein the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral (1886/1888), 876-878.
5David Ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II, 2nd edition, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 201–202.
6Generally, Episcopalians consider non-historic episcopally ordered churches, like the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) prior to its “episcopalianization” as required by Called to Common Mission (CCM), to be inferior to their own. According to Arthur Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury 1961-1974, Protestant churches without an historic episcopate are incomplete. “(1) With the lack of the historical structure, the sense of worship as the act of the one historic society has been lost. ... (2) With the defective sense of worship as the act of the historic society, there grows easily a false emphasis on the place of human feelings in worship and in religion generally. ... (3) With defect in life and worship there is defect in the presentation of truth. By its attempt to make a ‘nude’ appeal to Scripture, Protestantism has failed to find a centre of unity and authority in doctrine,” see Arthur Michael Ramsey, The Gospel and the Catholic Church (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1936), 197–200. Thus, without the “historic episcopate” non-historic episcopally ordered churches are considered in classic episcopalian thought to be defective and not fully part of the body of Christ.
7The English Parliament eventually came to the realization that enforced conformity to Episcopalianism was not civil. In 1689, it passed the Act of Toleration which ameliorated but did not repeal the 1662 Act of Uniformity or the penal laws used to enforce it. Thus, the 1689 Act of Toleration serves as an “act of admission” by the English Parliament that the 1662 Act of Uniformity was an act of religious intolerance; see John T. Wilkinson, 1662 – And After: Three Centuries of English Nonconformity (London: The Epworth Press, 1962), 98.
8See Joseph Card. Ratzinger, Prefect, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus, on the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church at (last checked 14 November 2023): https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_c faith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html
9George Carey, “Statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury concerning the Roman Catholic Document ‘Dominus Iesus’” ACNS (Anglican Communion News Service) 05 September 2000 at (last checked 14 November 2023): https://www.anglicannews.org/news/2000/09/statement-by-the-archbishop-ofcanterbury-concerning-the-roman-catholic-document-dominus-iesus.aspx
10Unless otherwise stated, all Bible quotations are according to the English Standard Version (ESV).
11Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, 12th edition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 61 (hereafter as BSLK). Unless otherwise stated, all translations are the author’s. Corresponding references are provided for The Book of Concord, translated and edited by Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 31 [hereafter as Tappert].
12BSLK, 58 = Tappert, 31.
13BSLK, 1053-1059 = Tappert, 610-616.
14BSLK, 62 = Tappert, 33.
15“LCMC History”: https://www.lcmc.net/history (last checked 14 November 2023).
16“History”: https://thenalc.org/history/ (last checked 14 November 2023).
17BSLK, 53 = Tappert, 29.
18BSLK, 58 = Tappert, 31.
19BSLK, 658.54 = Tappert, 417-418.54.
20Luther writes, “Understanding this subject, the discernment of law and gospel, is of the highest necessity for it contains the whole summary of Christian doctrine. Therefore, everyone should learn to discern the law from the gospel, not just in word but also in one's emotions and experience. In other words, one should distinguish well between the two in one's heart and conscience” (WA 40,1:209, 16-19 = LW 26:117). “Therefore, whoever knows well how to discern the gospel from the law should give thanks to God and know himself to be a theologian” (WA 40,1:207, 17-18 = LW 26:115).
21WA 8: 540, 5-20 = LW 36:201. For those latter-day Lutherans who have outgrown Luther, one should recall that according to the Formula of Concord, Luther is not only the foremost teacher (doctor) in the churches of the Augsburg Confession, but also his doctrinal and polemical writings provide the true understanding and meaning of the CA (BSLK, 983, 34; 984, 41 = Tappert, 575.34; 576.41), which Lutherans confess to be founded on God’s word (holy scripture) as a pure, Christian symbol (BSLK, 45.8; 830.4 = Tappert, 25.8; 502.4). As Luther states, “Whoever has crawled out of the water of baptism can boast, that he has been consecrated a priest, bishop, and pope, although not everyone is suited to exercise such an office” (WA 6:408,11-13 = LW 44:129).
22WA 12:190, 19-25 = LW 40:35.
23BSLK, 656.48 = Tappert, 416-417.48.
24The author is grateful to Pastor John Fahning for the simple but highly descriptive ecclesial, hermeneutical categories of remodeling and rebuilding when applied to so-called reform movements within the ELCA.
25See Bernd Moeller and Karl Stackmann, “Luder–Luther–Eleutherius: Erwägungen zu Luthers Namen,” in Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, I. Philologisch- Historische Klasse, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981).
26See WA 33:645-674 = LW 23:396-413.
27WA 40, 2:2,17-6,9 = LW 27:5-6
28See Gerhard Ebeling, Wort und Glaube IV - Theologie in den Gegensätzen des Lebens (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1995), 282.
