Fathers of the Church

"It is always a sign of deep spiritual sickness when a church forgets its fathers."

From Fathers of the Church, German original in Lutherische Blaetter 6:36 (May 10, 1954) pp58-69.

Compiler's Note - I've often heard this statement misquoted as "it is always a sign of deep spritual sickness when a church forgets the Fathers." Actually, in context, Sasse's sentence refers to more than just the Fathers, although it doubtless includes them in as much as they were orthodox teachers (thus Sasse mentions the Catalogue of Testimonies, the Patristic Christological quotes appended to early editions of the Book of Concord). His main concern, however, is the fathers of the "free" Lutheran churches of Germany and abroad (Harms, Scheibel, Walther, Wyneken, Kavel and others are mentioned by name), those churchmen who, though much maligned in their day, humanly speaking rescued confessional Lutheranism from unionism. When they are forgotten by the churches they fathered, it is a sign that those churches have succumbed to a "deep spiritual sickness".

No 'Hero Worship' in the Church

There's no room for the worship of men in the church of Christ. Let the world have its heroes and live by the worship of them; in the church there is no hero worship! Paul, that remarkable genius who inspired the spiritual life of church in the early imperial age, was on the same level as Apollos and the other apostles - who were probably not geniuses. That hero of faith, Luther, is to be regarded as no higher than a man of doubt who folds his hands together and prays 'Lord, I believe; help my unbelief'.

From 'Mysteries of God', a sermon on 1 Corinthians 4:1-5 preached in Erlangen on Advent 3, December 15, 1940.

Luther's Legacy to Christianity

'In the early morning hours of the 18th of February, 1546, on a cold winter’s night in Eisleben, Martin Luther closed his eyes for ever. “I won’t live to see Easter” he had said on his sixty-third birthday. Concerned for his life, his friends and relatives saw him undertake, toward the end of January, the last journey of his life. Accompanied by his sons and Justus Jonas, he traveled to the city of his birth where he was to mediate a quarrel between the brothers who were the Counts of Mansfeld. The letters which he wrote to his “gracious dear lady of the house” during this journey, are the most stirringly human testimony to his mature, and yet childlike faith. “I fear that were you to cease your concern, the earth might finally swallow us up and destroy everything. Are you also studying the Catechism and the Creed? Pray and let God worry. For you and I are not commanded to worry for me or you. It says: ‘Cast your anxiety upon Him, for He cares for you’, Ps. 55 and many other texts.” He wrote this on the 10th of February. Four days later he preached his last sermon. On the 16th and 17th the agreement between the counts was signed and his task of peace-making was finished. Luther no longer took part in the negotiations on the last day and remained in his room. Toward evening he complained of chest pains, which then passed and returned and worsened. Toward 10:00 in the evening, after he had rested, he went to his bedroom. He took leave of his company with the words, “Pray for our Lord God and His Gospel, that things go well with Him. For the Council at Trent and the miserable Pope have a terrible grudge against Him.” Toward 1:00 am he awoke short of breath and raised his voice: “Oh, Lord God, I’m in so much pain! Oh, dear Doctor Jonas, it appears as though I shall remain here.” He still had been able to proceed to his room, and there began his last brief hour. In the presence of his son, his friends and a doctor who had been hastily summoned, at a moment of pause in his struggle with death, he spoke his last prayers, recited to himself Bible passages such as John 3:16, and Psalm 68:21, and answered the question put by Justus Jonas: “Reverend father, will you remain steadfast in Christ and the doctrine which you have preached?” He responded with an audible “Yes!” Then his soul passed into the peace of God. But in Eisleben, in the villages and cities through which his remains were carried, and especially in Wittenberg, at this burial in the Castle Church, and the funeral celebration of the University, there was a mourning which was more than the mourning of a people over the loss of one of its great men. Indeed, the man who died while the pope convened in Trent the council for the “eradication of heresy”, that is, for the elimination of the Lutheran Reformation, and while the Emperor mobilized the forces of a world power for war against the Evangelical estates, was more than a great German. He was more than a faithful guardian of the souls of his people, a man of whom one gets the impression that through his powerful prayers had averted the catastrophe which for many years had been sweeping toward Germany. As the rediscoverer of the Gospel of the grace of God, he was the Reformer of the Church, and not only the church of one land, rather the entire, the one church of God on earth.'

Trans. by Pr Matthew Harrison. This essay first appeared in the Jahrbuch des Martin Luther Bundes, 1946, pp. 38-42. It was written for the 400th anniversary of the Reformer’s death. The essay was republished in Lutherische Blätter, vol. 19, no. 90 (August 1967).

The whole essay has kindly been made available on-line at Pr Harrison's blog: http://mercyjourney.blogspot.com/2011/11/luthers-legacy-to-christianity.html

Reprise: Sasse on Walther's Churchmanship, in honour of the 200th anniversary of the latter's birth

'It was the context in which Lutherans found themselves in the American Midwest - where a land quickly opened up for settlement was subsequently swamped by immigrants from all the European nations and churches - which made the Lutheran Church there a missionary church. In this context, the church had to gain her members through missionary outreach, and her congregations were, like all churches in the US, gatherings, assemblies or societies of individuals who had consciously decided to belong to the church of their choice. This is the distinctly American trait in the character of the Missouri Synod, which derives from the history of that nation, and the same trait is found in all the other Lutheran synods of western America. However, it is given its strongest expression in the Missouri Synod, for this version of Lutheranism possessed that which in a mission situation really makes a church a missionary church: the awareness of a particular calling and a firm conviction about what is to be believed (dogma), which alone makes missionary preaching possible. The self-understanding of the early Missourians of being a remnant of pure Lutheranism was refined through catastrophe and by Walther's preaching and pastoral care into a truly Lutheran consciousness of being church - an assembly standing on the foundation of justifying grace and drawing its life from the means of grace. This explains the Missouri Synod's awareness of a particular calling and the dogmatic conviction that is inseparably bound up with it - which is tied to Lutheran Orthodoxy.'


From Confession and Theology in the Missouri Synod, Letters to Lutheran Pastors No. 20, July 1951.

(Sasse begins this section of his essay by noting the profound influence of Lutheran Orthodoxy on the founder of the Missouri Synod, Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther.)

The Disintegration of Christendom and the Crisis of the Ministry

'In Germany a candidate who refused to be ordained declared to his bishop, ‘I could perhaps preach on ordinary Sundays, but I cannot preach at Christmas and Easter; I cannot preach on myths.’ He was quite right. One cannot preach on myths. It was only logical that one of the enlightened professors of theology in Germany seriously suggested abolishing the Christmas festival altogether. In these cases, the deepest reason for the crisis of the ministry becomes evident: the loss of a living faith, the decay of the doctrinal substance which can be observed in all denominations of Christendom. One has often the impression that the same spiritual disease which the Greeks went through in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, and which began in India a little earlier, is now going through the ‘Christian’ nations in the world. The faith of the fathers is dying and is being replaced by philosophical speculations of socio-political ideologies. The ‘God is dead’ theology in America, the agnosticism which is openly confessed by Anglican priests in Australia, the transformation of the sola fide (by faith alone) and the theologia crucis (theology of the cross) into a lifeless speculation in Lutheran circles, the new hermeneutics which destroys the Word of God (‘We have lost the Word of God and cannot find it again’, as the leader of a Congregational college said) – all this is indicative of a process of disintegration that is going on in all Christendom and leads not only to numberless personal tragedies, mental breakdowns and moral conflicts but also to the dissolution of the churches. Like the great tragedies in the history of mankind, it is accompanied by a strange euphoria which accompanies certain lethal diseases. What actually may be the ruin of the church is regarded as a wonderful renewal, an unheard of resurgence of the church and its mission to the world.'

From ‘The Crisis of the Christian Ministry’, Lutheran Theological Journal (Adelaide) May 1968, pp34-46.

The 'Permanent Crisis' of the Christian Ministry

'The impossible task, a commission which goes on without limitations in space and time, became possible, like the task of the prophets, only through the 'I am with you' (Matt 28:20). So they [i.e. the Apostles -MH] obeyed the call, leaving it to him how he would see to it that the Great Commission was carried out, even after the last of the eyewitnesses of the Risen Christ would have died. They were 'afflicted in ever way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in...our mortal flesh', thus showing 'that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us' (2 Cor 4:7-11). This ministry, this office which preaches the Word of God and administers the Sacraments of Christ, goes on in the history of the church until the end of all history. We ministers of Christ are not apostles - none of us is an eyewitness of the incarnate and risen Son of God. Nor are we prophets. We should be careful to avoid the great mistake often made by us ministers of comparing ourselves with the great men of God in the Bible. The task of our office is to preach the Word of God which is given to us once and for all in the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testament. It is this constant tension between a divine commission that must be carried out and the inability of man to carry it out that creates the permanent crisis of the ministry.'

From 'The Crisis of the Christian Ministry', in the Lutheran Theological Journal (Adelaide, SA) 2.1, May 1968, pp34-46.

The Burden of the Ministry of the Word

'No one can understand the ministry of the Word who has not understood why the OT prophets call the 'word' a 'burden'. No one can understand it unless he knows what Jeremiah and Paul have understood:'Necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel' (1 Cor 9:16).'

From 'The Crisis of the Christian Ministry', in Lutheran Theological Journal (Adelaide, SA) 2.1 (May 1968), pp34-46.