Quotations on Confession For “ St. Peter The Confessor” Sunday

Rev. Jack Cascione


Making a full confession about Christ and His Word has hardly been the goal of Atlantic District President David Benke, who worshiped with Moslems at Yankee Stadium, or President Kieschnick, who will not answer questions about the Trinity, or Waldo Werning’s false doctrine about the Trinity in his book, “Health and Healing for the LCMS.”

Sunday, January 18, 2004 is recognized as “The Confession Of St. Peter” in many churches, including the LCMS.

In honor of this occasion, Reclaim News is publishing quotations from Dr. Theodore E. Schmauk and C. Theodore Benze’s book, “The Confessional Principle and the Confessions, as Embodying the Evangelical Confession of the Christian Church,” Philadelphia: General Council Publication Board, 1911”

This 962-page book, with 131 pages of introduction and preface, was photographically reproduced and republished in 1980 by CPH in its Heritage Series.

Schmauk was the President of the old General Council that later became the LCA and then the ELCA.  His own church body rejected his work.  However, the LCMS regarded Schmauk’s book as one of the great confessional writings of the 20th Century.  Pieper quotes him in Vol. 1., page 180, and Vol. II, page 482, of his Christian Dogmatics.

The following are quotations from Schmauk’s: “The Confessional Principle and the Confessions of the Lutheran Church :”

“The word of God, Scripture, is a self-legitimizing authority and testimony of the truth” (Schmauk iii) brought down from heaven.

“The weakness of Protestantism today is its failure to recognize the necessity and value of a common witness . . . .  Religion is thought, even by many ministers, to be a matter of private and personal conviction, in its inner aspect;” (Schmauk page v)

“If we cannot bear witness to Christ and the Church, we cannot, in any other way, teach His doctrine. (Schmauk page iv)

“Hence, while the tyranny of Rome is the supreme authority of the Church over conscience, the tyranny of liberal Protestantism is the supreme authority of every man’s conscience over the Scripture and the Church” (Schmauk page vi)

“The end of Protestantism without the Word of God as the one common and absolute authority is either skepticism or Romanism.” (Schmauk page vii)

Since one of the essential elements of religion, as of all truth is unchangeableness; and since in religion there must be both unchangeableness and finality, even this Twentieth Century should see that, if it is to keep any religion at all, it must not be a religion of individualism, of pietistic values, and speculative outlook, of temperamental trust, but a religion of authority.  (Schmauk page vii)

“The final authority comes from God, through His Word; and not form humanity, through its reason.” (Schmauk page viii)

“Change in itself is not progress; and the right of every individual to think as he pleases is not, in itself the attainment of liberty.” (Schmauk page ix)

“The distinction cannot be drawn between soundness in faith and soundness in doctrine, except in so far as doctrine is not clearly the unchangeable revelation of and unchangeable Word of God.” (Schmauk page x)

“As a believing witness, we are ready to stand and to suffer for the Confession that abides through all the ages, because it corresponds to the Truth that forms, rules, and judges, all the ages.” (Schmauk page x)

“The enemies of the Church’s doctrine and Confession are often her own most brilliant and thoughtful sons.” (Schmauk page x)

Critics say: “The church is blindly bent on upholding obsolete doctrine . . . ” (Schmauk page xi)

“Four expressions of faith in the world

a. Absolute dependence on the church

b. Absolute dependence on the Word.

c. Relative dependence on the Book

d. Mental independence of Book, Word, and church

“Have God’s representatives on earth the option to offer a discount on the terms set by God, in order to meet a given situation?  May we overlook the sola fide in order that our churches on earth be filled with quests, and that Heaven itself be not too utterly empty?” (Schmauk page xviii)

“The faith which believes, and therefore saves; which believes, and therefore confesses; which believes, and therefore examines, which believes, and therefore testifies, and transmits and upholds the testimony dear to it; which believes, and acts because it is lives in its belief: this faith in which heart and voice and work unite, because one and the same Spirit fills them all, is irresistible in the Church, and is the victory that over cometh the world.”  (Schmauk page xxxii)

Creeds are a necessity.  Creeds are the Faith infixed form, and go back as far as the Scripture. (Schmauk page lxxxv)

“The Lutheran Confession is unchangeable.” (Schmauk page lxxxvi)

“. . . the question of The Confessions of the Lutheran Church , and of their relation to a true Lutheranism, has arisen. 

It is a question which will never be settle until it is settled right, on the basis of the real character of the original foundation, and in recognition of the light thrown upon it by four centuries of history,--unless it be settled, as Schaff intimates, by the absorption of the Lutherans of this land in and under the Reformed principle.” (Schmauk Page 4)

“Scripture itself will not serve either as a form of public Confession or as a form of public worship, for the simple reason that Scripture has been give to us in historical and not in doctrinal or liturgical form.” (Schmauk Page 13)

“Thus we see how Common Principles of Faith and a common expression of Faith in a common Order of Worship are the finished product and express the reaction of the preceding Christian generations of the Church . . .”  (Schmauk page 14)

The use of Confessions, . . . They bring us into agreement in the one true interpretation, and thus set a public standard, which become a guard against false doctrine and practice;”(Schmauk page 21)

“. . . creeds are no more a, obstruction to the Church or the man than are the guns and armor of a battleship and obstruction to the engines or the mariners who have the battle to fight.” (Schmauk Page 24)

Schmauck asks: “Will the world know what I believe, if I say the Bible is my creed? (Schmauk Page 28)

“The religious fanatics, the narrow-minded legalists, as well as the most liberal and the most loose communions, have claimed to make the Bible their creed.” (Schmauk Page 29)

“Dr. C. P. Krauth was right when he said, ‘Faith makes men Christians; but Confession alone marks them as Christians.’” (Schmauk Page 30)

“Not only is the creed the Word of God condensed, but it is the Word of God pointed to defense, confession and judgment.” (Schmauk Page 31)

“. . . the Bible is the rule of faith not the confession of it; the Creed is not the rule of faith, but the confession of it.” (Schmauk Page 32)

“The symbols are public confessions, and the preacher is a public confessor; but only then an official confessor in the Church, when he confesses himself in harmony with the confession of the church by whose servants he is ordained a fellow-servant.  And where the preacher does not consent to the confessions of the church, by whose servants he has been ordained, he is no fellow-confessor, and certainly cannot be a preacher of a confession, which he does not acknowledge.” (Schmauk Page 86)

“After a thorough understanding of the general relations between Faith and Truth, between Freedom and Loyalty, between Liberty and Standing Order, between Criticism and Service, between a Call and an Acceptance, only those could dispute the propriety of such an obligation who find themselves outside the Confession, but who desire to remain in the service [of the church] from other than the highest motives; or by those who, influenced by a false ideal of the abstract rights of truth, desire to be unfettered in making their own confession effective.  But, as v. Burger observes, to ask freedom from the Church itself to do this, is not any longer a right of her servants, but a violation of the same.”  (Schmauk, page 92)

“As faith without works is dead, so it may be said also that faith without confession is dead” (Schmauk Page 96)

“The Apostles’ Creed is the very spinal column of our faith, in fact and doctrine, and rightly takes its place in our order of service as the fit liturgical medium for the regular, ordinary and united confession, or testimony, of faith of the worshipping congregation.” (Schmauk Page 104-105)

“It has already been point out that the New Testament intimately connects Confession and Faith.  The two go together naturally and necessarily.  Confession is the counterpart of faith--it is faith come to utterance.” (Schmauk Page 144)

“. . . the word [symbol] nevertheless occurs in Cyprian about the middle of the Third Century, and thenceforward it seems to have been used, at least occasionally, as a title given to the Apostle’s Creed.” (Schmauk Page 156)

“The ministry of the Church presupposes the fellowship of a Confession or a Symbol.”(Schmauk Page 162)

[Selnecker, who wrote "Ach bleib bei uns" (TLH #292) was bitterly attacked and severely persecuted by the Reformed, deposed when Augustus died, reduced to poverty, and not allowed to remain in Leipzig as a private citizen.]  (Schmauk p. 310ff)

"The modern radical spirit which would sweep away the Formula of Concord as a Confession of the Church, will not, in the end, be curbed, until it has swept away the Augsburg Confession, and the ancient Confessions of the Church--yea, not until it has crossed the borders of Scripture itself, and swept out of the Word whatsoever is not in accord with its own critical mode of thinking.  The far-sighted rationalist theologian and Dresden court preacher, Ammon, grasped the logic of a mere spirit of progress, when he said: 'Experience teaches us that those who reject a Creed, will speedily reject the Scriptures themselves.'"  (Schmauk p. 685)

“Luther ever insisted that he accepted - only the ancient Church doctrine on the Person of Christ. ‘No one can deny’, he says, ‘that we hold, believe, sing, and confess all thing in correspondence with the Apostles’ Creed, that we make nothing new therein, nor add anything thereto, and in this way we belong to the old Church, and are one with it.’” (Schmauk Page 776)

“Then too it was important from this question, as well as for all subscription to symbols, that in the Wittenberg doctor’s vow, which dates from Melanchthon, those to be promoted were obligated to defend the Apostolic, Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, and that since 1535 this was extended to all ordained in Wittenberg.”  (Schmauk Page 833)

"The real question is not what do you subscribe, but what do you believe and publicly teach, and what are you transmitting to those who come after?  If it is the complete Lutheran faith and practice, the name and number of the standards is less important. If it is not, the burden of proof rests upon you to show that your more incomplete standard does not indicate an incomplete Lutheran faith." (Schmauk p. 890)

"Is the Lord's Supper the place to display my toleration, my Christian sympathy, or my fellowship with another Christian, when that is the very point in which most of all we differ; and in which the difference means for me everything--means for me, the reception of the Savior's atonement?  Is this the point to be selected for the display of Christian union, when in fact it is the very point in which Christian union does not exist?"  (Schmauk 905f)

“The first and simplest summary of the faith, testifying to the pure Gospel, is the Apostles’ Creed, which, with the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed, are the ‘brief, plain Confessions’ of the Church to the facts of the Gospel, which we also believe and teach, and confess as binding upon us, and reject all principles and teaching that are contrary to these Confessions.”  (Schmauk Page 937)

 

January 16, 2004