Aphorisms on Church and Office Old and New by Wilhelm Löhe (review)

Reviewed by: Aphorisms on Church and Office Old and New by Wilhelm Löhe Craig L. Nessan Aphorisms on Church and Office Old and New. By Wilhelm Löhe. Trans. by John R. Stephenson. St. Catherines, Ontario: Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary, 2022. 183 pp. This book is a translation of two treatises by Pastor Wilhelm Löhe of Neuendettelsau, Germany: 1) Aphorisms on the New Testament Offices and their Relationship to the Congregation: On the Question of the Church's Polity, published at Nuremberg in 1849 and 2) Church and Office: New Aphorisms, published at Erlangen in 1851. Both volumes originated in the context of a twofold controversy. The first involved [End Page 242] the battles of Löhe with the German territorial churches over the understanding of the office of ministry. The second involved conflicts in North America between the leaders of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, chiefly C.F.W. Walther; the leader of the Buffalo Synod, Johannes Grabau; and those seeking to represent the views of Löhe in what would become the Iowa Synod, Georg Grossmann and Johannes Deindörfer, and later Sigmund and Gottfried Fritschel. The 1849 Aphorisms were previously published by Repristination Press in a Stephenson translation in 2008, which here has been updated (see my Lutheran Quarterly review, Summer 2010, pages 238–240). In twelve sections, Löhe drew primarily from New Testament sources, particularly Acts, to explain the circumscribed role of the congregation in relation to the office of ministry bestowed on the pastor at ordination: "The office does not derive from the congregation, but it is much more correct to say that the congregation derives from the office" (10). Löhe documents at length that this practice originated with the Apostles; furthermore, the terms "bishop" and "presbyter" were interchangeable in the early church (37–38). He argues explicitly against the view of the LCMS that the office of ministry "is simply a transferal of congregational rights and authority" (48). In discussing the calling of deacons, Löhe presciently concluded: "The big need of our own time is resurrection of the sacred diakonia of Christians" (56). It is diakonia that aligns with the ministry of congregations, not their authority over the pastoral office. Ordination, taken up at greater length in the second treatise, is authorized by God in Christ through the laying on of hands. The 1851 New Aphorisms was written as a supplement to address opposition to his previous book, and especially to mediate "the points of difference between Pastor Grabau in Buffalo and the Saxon pastors in Missouri" (97). In twenty-one sections, Löhe provided an orderly argument about the nature of the church, the order of salvation, church order, the means of grace, and the pastoral office. He brought many arguments from the New Testament, church fathers, and Lutheran church orders to draw his central conclusions about pastoral authority. The pastoral office was instituted by God in Christ (134–135). A pastoral candidate is examined by the church [End Page 243] and called by a congregation, but the office is bestowed at ordination by the laying on of hands as a permanent calling for life based on the divine call. Now these are the four features that pertain to a church servant, that he be apt to teach and qualified, that he be above reproach and have a good testimony, that he be Christianly called, and that he be ordained and consecrated in the power of God's keys according to the manner of the ancient Church through the laying on of the elders' hands. (174). Löhe concluded the second treatise with appendices that provide ancient and Reformation witnesses to this conclusion. Given the lack of consensus on the office of ministry that remains within Lutheranism both in America and globally, this book not only has historical but also theological significance. The Stephenson translation is excellent, clear in meaning and with an apparatus for understanding the historical context. The cover photo of an icon of Wilhelm Löhe by Harrison Avery Prozenko is stunningly beautiful. Craig L. Nessan Wartburg Theological Seminary Dubuque, Iowa Copyright © 2024 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.

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