LUTHERAN QUARTERLY Volume XXV

Hermann Sasse (1895-IQ76) by JOHN T. PLESS

Hermann Otto Erich Sasse can be characterized as a global Lutheran.1 Born in Germany, his years would end in Adelaide,

Australia, where he had lived since 1949. Between his birth on July 17,1895, in Sonnewalde (Niederlausitz) inThuringia and his death from fumes emitted by an overturned kerosene heater on August 8, 1976, Sasse traveled extensively in Europe and the United States. By means of his mimeographed, circular "letters to Lutheran pastors," he communicated with far-flung pastors around the world. His life would take him through two world wars, from the relatively casual Protestantism of the Prussian Union to an unwavering and unflinching Lutheranism molded by the confessional revival of the nineteenth century. An early critic of National Socialism and an engaged ecumenist, Sasse led an adventuresome and, more often than not, a contentious life. He would be hailed by some as a tragic figure, hopelessly entangled in an age now past;2 others would see him a pioneer for a new and robust confessional revival that continues to unfold in the present.3 After a survey of his career, his thought will be covered under four headings: the nature of confession, the doctrine of scripture, the sacrament of the altar, and ecclesiology.

Early Formation

The first of five children, Sasse was named after his father, a pharmacist. In 1913 he matriculated at the University of Berlin simultaneously studying theology and philology.4 Berlin, at the time, was the showcase of theological heavyweights: Adolph von Harnack,5

Karl Holl, Reinhold Seeberg julius Kaftan, and Adolph Deissmann. Deissmann would become his doktorvater while Holl would instill in Sasse a deep interest in Martin Luther. Later, in a 1965 article, Sasse recalled "We who had been students of Holl suddenly began to realize that the Lutheran Reformation meant something also for modern mankind: 'Man is nothing, and nothing is left to us but to

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Hermann Sasse (Courtesy of Concordia Publishing House).

despair of ourselves and hope in Christ'.. .We began to study Luther, the Confessions and the Bible."6

Sasse's studies in Berlin were interrupted by the First World War as he enlisted in the army in October of 1916 with the rank of sergeant. Shortly thereafter, his infantry regiment was engaged in the Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium, one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Out of the one hundred and fifty men in his regiment who went into battle, only six survived. The lethal realities of

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warfare would leave their imprint on a student twenty-one years old.7 After the war Sasse passed his second theological examination under the auspices of the Consistory of Berlin. He was ordained at Saint Matthew s Church in Berlin on June 13,1920. For the next few years he served pastoral positions in three churches in and around Berlin. While a pastor in Oranienburg, he married Charlotte Naumann in 1924. Two sons and a daughter would be born to this union; their daughter died in infancy.

A year after his marriage Sasse sailed to the United States with Wilhelm Pauck and Peter Brunner. He spent the 1925-26 academic year working on a master of sacred theology degree at Hartford Seminary. There Sasse read Wilhelm Löhe's Drei Bücher von der Kirche, a book that he would credit with making him consciously Lutheran, and leading him into a more profound study of Luther and the Lutheran Confessions. Reflecting lalter, in the foreword to Here We Stand, Sasse wrote "Personally I must confess that it was in America that I first learned fully to appreciate what it means to be loyal to the Lutheran Confessions; but for what I learned from the Lutheran theologians and church bodies in the United States, I probably could never have written this book."8

In the United States, Sasse was exposed to American pluralism and liberalism, recording his reflections in a 1927 monograph, "American Christianity and the Church." This book, read by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in preparation for his own study at Union Seminary,9 is important insofar as Sasse touches on a number of themes that will become critical for his life's work, such as the nature of dogma and confession and the question of church unity. He commented on the Federal Council of Churches in America and the Social Gospel movement, observing that "the American concept of church" avoids the question of truth.10 Sasse was here suspicious of both Uberai, undogmatic Protestantism and also Fundamentalism with its literalism and naïve eschatology; this essay prefigures his later critiques of both. Sasse also here records his reflections on the various confessional traditions in American Christianity, including Lutheranism. Generally positive in his assessment of the American Lutheranism of this era, Sasse recognized the "dangers of the process of Americanization"11 but saw promise for a vibrant, genuinely

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Lutheran communion free from guardianship by the state. "The life of these churches dispels the foolish notion that Lutheranism's doctrine of justification necessarily leads to quietism. There is in America perhaps no more active church than the Missouri Synod, which is the most dogmatically rigorous in the country."12

Upon his return to Germany, Sasse became active in ecumenical affairs, serving as a member of the German delegation to Lausanne in 1927 and editing the delegations official report. In 1928, he became a member of the Continuation Committee for the Lausanne Conference. Sasse's participation in ecumenical work continued until government-imposed travel restrictions made this untenable in 1935, even though he journeyed illegally to a meeting with the Archbishop of York in 1936.13 Throughout his life, Sasse would remain committed to a responsible ecumenism, that is, an ongoing conversation that presupposes the oneness confessed in the Nicene Creed,14 where dialogue partners are accountable to the confessional standards of their respective churches. His thoroughly Lutheran convictions compelled Sasse to this conversation as can be seen in his long correspondence with Cardinal Bea and his involvement with Reformed theologians and organizations in Australia.15

Confessing Against National Socialism

Sasse took a prominent role in opposition to the growing penetration of the National Socialists into the affairs of the church. Already in 1931, as editor of the Kirchliches Jahrbuch, he provided a strong theological refutation of attempts by National Socialists to manipulate the church for political ends.16 In 1932 he identified himself with the anti-Nazi cause with his refutation of Article 24 of the Party Programme of the Nationalsocialistiche Arbeiterpartei.11 Along with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Georg Merz, Wilhelm Vischer, and Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, he was a drafter of the Bethel Confession of 1933. Although he would not sign the Barmen Declaration of 1934, seeing it as an embodiment of Barth s theology and a betrayal of the Lutheran distinction of the Law from the Gospel, he participated in discussions leading to the document. Although severely criticized for his refusal to endorse the Barmen


text, Sasse steadfastly saw it as a denial of the Lutheran Confessions, and thus a capitulation to an alien theology.18 This incident demonstrates something of the weight the Lutheran Confessions carried for Sasse and their authoritative status in guiding his activities with other Christians.

Called to the theological faculty at Erlangen in 1933, taking his place amongst such notable theologians as Werner Elert, Otto Procksch, and Paul Althaus, Sasse would find himself in political controversy with some of his colleagues. Lowell Green describes Sasse s relationships as "complicated and often neuralgic."19 While the Erlangen colleagues shared a common commitment to confessional Lutheran theology, there were also differences. Elert and Althaus had taken a decidedly different path in regard to the political situation in Germany. Along with other clergy, they had signed the Ansbacher Ratschlag in 1934,20 clearly opposing the Barthian character of the Barmen Declaration but also identifying themselves politically with the National Socialists. Sasse, while adamandy opposed to the Barmen Declaration, had been persistent in voicing a sustained theological refutation of Nazi ideology. Through the maneuverings of Elert, the theological faculty at Erlangen was spared radical interference from the Nazi government during the war years. Sasse was able to maintain his faculty position although he was denied promotion.21

Sasse found himself in opposition not only to Althaus and Elert but also, for different reasons, to his New Testament colleague, Hermann Strathmann, who was critical of those who put loyalty to the Lutheran Confessions above the Barmen Declaration. After the war ended, Sasse was asked by authorities with the American Occupational Force to prepare a memorandum on the theological faculty. What was intended as a confidential report soon became public, revealing less than flattering descriptions of his colleagues' political persuasions and activities.22 Strathmann was especially infuriated, blaming his retirement on Sasse s report. In an article entitled "German Theologian Describes Postwar Situation" published in the August 28, 1946, issue of the official periodical of the United Lutheran Church in America, The Lutheran, Strathmann told of the physical hardships endured after the war s ending and then added:

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More painful for me was that my colleague, Sasse, considered it proper in April 1945, without any compulsion to besmear Eiert, Althaus, and myself in a secret letter to the Americans. I did not learn of it until August and as a German and a theologian can only be deeply ashamed of his conduct. By perverting the truth, I was described in his letter as a 'Nationalist.' I was not dismissed, but requested temporarily to request a 'leave,' and since December 1,1945, do not lecture anymore. I was one of the very few men who did not howl with the wolves and was the only man in the whole university who, as long as it was possible, actively opposed the Nazis with the spoken and printed word. For that reason, I was maligned and hated by them.23

Exodus from the Bavarian Church

Escalated tensions with faculty colleagues would thus plague Sasse in the years immediately following the war. There would be other hardships as well. A heart attack in 1946 kept him from attending the first meeting of the Faith and Order Committee after the war. The family would suffer from scarcity of food and lack of fuel to heat their home. But Sasse s greatest disappointment had to do with the formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany (EKD) in 1948.Thirteen years later his bitterness is still evident as he wrote: "In Eisenach, at the foot of the Wartburg, the Lutheran Church in Germany was buried in 1948. Lohe s nightmare of the Lutheran Church being buried by its own pastors became a reality."24

Church historian and ecumenist that he was, Sasse was keenly aware of the story of unionizing movements in German Lutheranism and the drive toward institutional unity in the world Christianity of his day. Under political pressure, the Deutsche Evangelische Kirche (DEK) was formed as a body encompassing Protestant territorial churches in 1933, thus fulfilling the aim of the Prussian Union of 1817. Sasse had hoped that the end of the Nazi era would signal a new day for the Lutheran Church in Germany, free from politicized union with the Reformed. His hopes were dashed as Lutheran churches freely entered into the EKD. For Sasse this was a crisis of confession. Already in 1946, he pleaded unsuccessfully with his bishop, Hans Meiser, warning that such a union would sacrifice the Lutheran confession of the Sacrament of the Altar.25 Not the least of Sasse's disappointments with this episode was the failure


of theologians of the Missouri Synod s St. Louis seminary to come to his aid. In fact, Frederick Meyer and Theodore Graebner pleaded with Sasse not to leave the Bavarian Church which had just joined the EKD.26 In a letter to Robert Preus in 1975, Sasse recalled what he could only see as Graebner s betrayal of the confessional cause:

When the synod Hannover had to decide whether or not to accept the constitution of the EKiD and join it or not, the decisive vote was against the motion and for the preservation of the Lutheran Church. This came as a great surprise. Then the chairman, the new Bishop Lilje, declared the proceedings as confidential and read the assembly a letter written by one of the outstanding older men in St. Louis, a man of blameless orthodoxy in the same way of Walther and Pieper, as he was generally regarded. He was traveling in Europe and had just attended as a visitor the constituting convention of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam, 1948. He wrote to Bishop Lilje: Don't follow the advice of the 'Schwabacher Konvent' (the organization of some hundreds of confessionally minded Lutheran pastors), and its leaders.There can be no objection against joining EKiD and the WCC. Do you want to be more Lutheran than Missouri, Lilje asked.The public was readmitted and a new vote was taken in favour of the motion. This was the end of the endeavors to restore the Church of the Augsburg Confession in Germany. It was not the fault of your church, but of one man who as it sometimes happens with old men had completely changed his formal views. But it must be kept in mind if one wants to understand the development of Missouri. This event showed clearly what was to come if the dogmatic compass of the great ship was no longer working.27

Sasse resigned his membership in the territorial Church of Bavaria and joined in the Evangelische -lutherische (altlutherische) Kirche in 1948 and the next year he accepted a call to teach on the faculty of Immanuel Seminary in North Adelaide, Australia, a school of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia (UELCA).

The Australian Chapter

The move to Australia would mean sacrifice for Sasse financially and academically as he would draw a lesser salary and be deprived of library resources. He had contributed several articles to Kittels Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, but the additional entries he had agreed to contribute would have to be assigned to others

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because the needed scholarly sources were unavailable in his new location. Lutheranism, a minority church in Australia, was divided into two rather small groups: the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia with roots in the tradition of Lohe in Bavaria, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia (ELCA) with historic connections to The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Sasse found it deplorable that these two bodies, both products of the nineteenth-century confessional revival were not in fellowship. He worked untiringly toward their merger as the Lutheran Church of Australia in 1966. This merger was due in no small part to Sasse s theological capability to diagnose matters that had created division between the two groups and to work out clear doctrinal definitions with accuracy and integrity.28 In fact, Kurt Marquart (a pastor in Australia at the time) was of the opinion that "without Sasse s weighty intervention, however, and this precisely on the UELCA side, it is almost impossible to envisage this kind of consensus which led to the union of the two churches."29

While Australia would isolate Sasse from the academic circles he had moved in while in Germany, it would also provide him with new opportunities for work within global Christianity but especially amongst English-speaking Lutherans. Sasse s contacts in the United States date back to his study leave in 1925-26. Theodore Tappert of the Mt. Airy Seminary in Philadelphia had visited with Sasse in the summer of 1939, offering him a position there. Although they never met in person, Sasse also carried on a correspondence with J. Michael Reu ofWartburg Seminary beginning in the 1930 s and continuing until it was interrupted by the outbreak of World War IL Reu had sought to bring Sasse to the faculty at Wartburg in 1936. Herman Preus of Luther Seminary in St. Paul became a trusted friend. Sasse first met E.Theodore Bachmann in Erlangen in 1934 and in 1949 it was Bachmann who as Chief of Protestant Affairs for the U.S. Military Government in Germany cleared Sasse for emigration.The two kept in contact for most of the remainder of Sasse s life.30 Sasse s "Letters to Lutheran Pastors" were frequently published in the theological journal of the Wisconsin Synod giving Sasse even more exposure to an American audience. These sixty-two open letters between 1949 and 1969 addressed a range of theological topics,

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usually providing commentary on happenings in the wider Christian

community, and often extending a message of pastoral consolation

and encouragement to clergy laboring in challenging times.

The relative geographical isolation of Australia, however, could

not curtail Sasse's ecumenical contacts. The Roman Catholic

Church was always within Sasse's field of vision even though his

engagement with Rome was more pronounced after his departure

from Germany; in general, Rome had not been involved in

ecumenical discussion prior to the war.31 For Sasse, Lutherans share

with Rome a common theological heritage rooted to the

Christological and Trinitarian dogma confessed in the Nicene Creed.

This dogmatic grounding provides a basis for genuine ecumenical

conversation that Sasse found lacking in Uberai Protestantism. Yet

Sasse was also a realist; he contended that ecumenicists must not

bend church history to make it conform to their goal for a reunion

of Lutheranism with Rome. A keen observer of the contemporary

Roman Catholic Church, especially the proceedings of the Second

Vatican Council, Sasse reacted with both hope and disappointment,

publishing over twenty-five articles on the Roman Catholic Church

and the SecondVatican Council between 1959 and 1970.32 Cardinal

Augustin Bea, a highly influential theologian in the Vatican, was

Sasse's host in Rome in 1965 and his conversation partner through

a regular exchange of letters in the i960 s up until Bea's death in

1968. Sasse lauded what he recognized as positive developments in

the Roman Church, including openness to other Christians and a

fresh appreciation for the place of the Holy Scriptures in the Ufe of

the church. Yet he was also critical fearing that the proponents of

change within the Roman Church were unable to distinguish the

fresh breezes of the Holy Spirit from the winds of modernism which

had wreaked havoc within so much of the Protestant world. When

Sasse directed a polemic against Rome, he most often found occasion

to apply his criticism also to movements within the Lutheran

Church. He beUeved that Lutherans would ignore or dismiss Roman

CathoUcism at their own peril.

Lutherans also had a shared heritage in the Reformation with

other Protestants. While he never weakened in his opposition to

church feUowship with Reformed, Sasse maintained a coUegial and

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friendly network of contacts with conservative Protestants in Australia and beyond. A chief publisher of Sasse s articles and book reviews was the Reformed Theological Review, and numerous shorter articles were published in Christianity Today. In 1966, Sasse accepted an invitation to address the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin on "Preserving the Truth of the Bible."33 He served for a time as president of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship in Australia. Henry P. Hamann, Sasse s colleague at Luther Seminary in Adelaide, observed that Sasse opened the door for a wider and deeper understanding of Lutheran theology for non-Lutherans in Australia.34

The Nature of Confession

An early essay from 1931, "Jesus Christ is Lord: The Church's Original Confession," is in several ways a prolegomenon to the many works that Sasse would produce on the theme of confession throughout his career. This fundamental Christian confession, "Jesus Christ is Lord," is echoed and unpacked in all future creeds of the church. Sasse understood confession as "the answer that is evoked by God's revelation of Himself, faith's answer to the received Word of God."35 Here Sasse identified four aspects of confession. First, as a response to God's revelation in Christ, "the church's confession tells objectively of facts, not of human experience."36 Second, confession is churchly. Church and confession belong together for Sasse. "Christ's church is always a confessing church. Not only does each Christian confess his personal faith, but the church, the whole company of believers, gives testimony of the revelation that has happened. The individual Christian joins this testimony in his personal faith. Out of such consensus of faith, worked by the Holy Spirit, is true confession born."37 Third, confession is doxological as "it belongs in the liturgy, in the divine service, in which the church appears as the hearing, praying, and confessing congregation."38

Fourth, confession is made both coram deo and coram mundo, before God and the world. According to Sasse this means that genuine confession always is polemical in that it rejects alternatives to the faith that was once delivered to the saints.These themes appear over and again in Sasse, interpenetrating his writing on the church, the

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Lord's Supper, liturgy, church fellowship, ecumenism, and particular

critical issues of ecclesial Ufe as they confront the contemporary

church.

Themes in this early essay were then taken up in one of Sasse s

best known books, Was heist lutherisch? Written in 1934, it was

published in an English translation by Theodore Tappert in 1938

under the title Here We Stand but now with a focus on the particularity

of the Lutheran confession. After surveying various interpretations

of the Reformation, Sasse sought to answer the question of why is

it necessary that the Lutheran Church continue to exist. He observed

that "Whatever the faults are which the Calvinistic and the Catholic

critics have to find with each other, they agree in condemning the

Lutheran understanding of the Gospel as inadmissible, as limiting

the fullness of Revelation, as not giving the whole of the divine

Word its due; consequently it is a doctrine which, although it just

misses being heresy, leads to it."39 For Sasse the only claim that the

Lutheran Church has for continued existence is in its confession of

the truth of the Gospel of Gods justification of the ungodly.

Sasse s thinking on confession was shaped by his involvement in

the ecumenical movement in the 1920 s and 30 s,40 but it was tested

and sharpened in the crucible of the Kirchenkampf. It is in these

articles and essays, written in the period leading up to the war and

during the war itself, that Sasse s work on confession accents its

eschatological character.41 In a 1937 essay,"Confession and Confessing:

Lessons from Five Years of Church Struggle," Sasse cited both Luther

and the Formula of Concord to make the point that confession is

never merely limited to a historical moment or a geographical

location but is always made in light of the last day and God's final

judgment.42 Given the coming judgment, the church must ever be

vigilant and discerning, because, Sasse says, "where man can no

longer bear the truth, he cannot Uve without the He."43 Error presents

itself as truth; this is the "pious He" that "will He not only to people,

but also to God in prayer, in confession, in the Holy Supper, in

sermon, and in theology."44

A church that can no longer recognize or remove error in its

midst, Sasse argues, will expel the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth.

Heresy is a real category for Sasse. "The great heresies die as little as

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does the devil."45 "A church can fall into terrible dogmatic error, it can open door after door to heresy by tolerating it and doing nothing about it. With the help of the Holy Spirit, such a church can later repent, return to the pure Word of God, and take up the fight against false doctrine commanded by the Word. But if it has solemnly acknowledged the right of heresy in its midst, then heresy itself has become an organic component of the church concerned. It can no longer fight against heresy; and a burning struggle against the false doctrine in its midst would be a completely illegal fight of one wing of this church against another."46

The Doctrine of the Holy Scriptures

Questions of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures and the corollary issues of biblical infallibility and inerrancy were, for the most part,47 not engaged by Sasse prior to his departure from Germany. When he arrived in Australia, however, he soon discovered that the questions of inspiration and inerrancy were matters of lively discussion and controversy. The same would be true in American Lutheranism. In 1963, Sasse wrote to Herman Preus:

Or take the tragedy of your doctrine of Holy Scripture. I remember the day when we walked along the 'Kanal' at Erlangen and spoke of the inspiration of Scripture. I have never forgotten that conversation. You wondered, and rightly so, of our ability to understand the doctrine of Inspiration. No one in German Lutheranism understood any longer this dogma of the church. You only have to look at Elert's Dogmatics to understand how right you were. Historism (sic) had simply destroyed, also among conservative Lutherans, the understanding of that aspect of the Scriptures which cannot be understood only historically. It was only when I came to Australia that I saw that problem. If I have learned one thing in the English-speaking Lutheran world, then it is this issue. It was to the honour of your churches that you have preserved the doctrine. What you have not been able to do was to re-examine it and find what of your formulas was dogma, based on Holy Scripture, and what was theological tradition, a venerable tradition which goes back to Gregory the Great and Augustine, but just a tradition. Perhaps this is the greatest tragedy of the churches of the Reformation that just in the doctrine De Sacra Scriptura they were actually bound by tradition rather than the Scripture. Thus while we in Europe lost the doctrine altogether, you preserved it in a form which does not answer the question the Bible itself raises by being written in human form.48

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Sasse's letter provides a window into understanding his struggle to articulate a doctrine of inspiration and the controversy that would be provoked surrounding his "On the Doctrine De Scriptum Sacra" (often simply referred to as Letter 14) written in 1950 shortly after his arrival in Australia. In this letter, Sasse sought to bring clarity to how Lutheran theology might confess the Holy Scriptures as God s Word over against both Neo-Protestantism and also Fundamentalism, doing justice to the human character of the biblical books without undermining the Bible s divine nature. Realizing that if the Scriptures are not the Word of God, theology is reduced to a completely human exercise that renders preaching impotent and robs faith of certainty, Sasse wants to confess the absolute authority of the Holy Scriptures in all matters of faith and life while avoiding a speculative doctrine of inspiration that he sees as arising from the neo-Platonic views of Augustine transmitted through Calvin and seventeenth-century Lutheran Orthodoxy.

Sasse recognized the attractiveness of Fundamentalism in view of the acidity of modernistic attempts to erode the content oí the biblical faith. But ultimately, such Fundamentalism is the wrong turn for it claims more of the Scriptures than they claim for themselves. Fundamentalism yields a view of the Bible as a divine book at the expense of the Scriptures' human nature. This does not mean that the Scriptures are not the inspired Word of God for Sasse. He repeatedly asserts, "The doctrine that the Holy Scripture is given, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is the self-understood presupposition for the understanding of the Bible which Luther and the Lutheran Confessions had even when it was either not expressed at all or expressed only incidentally."49

Sasse saw the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures as a dogma of the church but argued that neither the Bible nor the Lutheran Confessions seek to define a process of inspiration. Lutheran theology does not so much argue for a doctrine of biblical inspiration as it presupposes and argues from this doctrine: "even though the Lutheran Confessions do not contain an extended doctrine concerning the Holy Scripture, it must definitely be asserted that they do teach the inspiration and consequent absolute trustworthiness of the Bible as God's Word. The Lutheran church does not, however, know of a detailed dogma about the nature of inspiration."50

According to Sasse three happenings make it mandatory for Lutheran

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theology to provide a new formulation of the doctrine of Sacred Scripture. The first is emergence of the view of inspiration in both Reformed and Lutheran Orthodoxy which Sasse sees as a departure from both the New Testament and Luther. Secondly, there is the decline of "this doctrine and the loss of any scriptural authority whatsoever in Neo-Protestantism."51 Thirdly, there is the way in which the First Vatican Council has brought Rome's own doctrine of Scripture to completion. Sasse worried that world Lutheranism is not prepared for this challenge: "The Lutheran World Federation would immediately fall apart if its members should attempt to express what they mean when they confess that for them the Holy Scripture is the highest authority in the church."52

Seeing the task at hand of a fresh articulation of the doctrine of Scripture, Sasse made several proposals in Letter 14. He contrasted the notion of inspiration in the Old and New Testaments with that in the history of religions, showing how the biblical teaching is different than that of Mormonism or Islam for example. Drawing on Luther, Sasse sought to set out a Christological understanding of inspiration: "But the Holy Scripture is inspired because in it that is said which can be said only 'in the Holy Ghost/ (I Cor. 12:3), because in it that fact is testified to, to which the Holy Ghost alone can testify (Jn 14:26; 15:26; 16:13$.), namely that Jesus is the Christ and Lord yS3 The Bible is to be received as a book which is both divine and human even as Christ is both God and man. This necessitates a hermeneutic which Sasse then goes on to lay out:

If we must therefore learn that the entire Holy Scripture, Old and New Testaments, is God's Word, the Holy Ghost's book because Jesus Christ is its content, the question then arises of how these assertions relate to the fact that the Bible is a collection (a collection which grew up in a long history) of literary documents of entirely different natures which all, written by men, have had the fortunes of human books. If we must say of the Bible with all seriousness and without reservations that it is God's Word and the Holy Ghost its author then we must declare no less seriously, on the other hand, that the books of the Bible are genuine man's word. If we deny the first, the Bible loses its character as Holy Scripture and becomes a haphazard collection of documents from man's history-of-religion, a collection of which a person is unable to imagine why they should have any normative dogmatic significance. If we deny the human character of the Bible, then the human-ness [sic] and naturalness of the

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biblical texts become mere appearance—think of personal confessions like Psalm 51 or Jeremiah 2o:7fF., or the natural human traits of the Pauline epistles.54

In short, Sasse argued that Lutheran theology must steer its way between "the cliffs of a rationalistic, history-of-religion s understanding of the Scripture and a super-naturalistic, docetic understanding of Scripture."55

Sasse went on to draw out the implications of his proposal, suggesting that Luther's approach to sola Scriptura was a consequence of the sola fide, while the reverse was true for the theologians of late Lutheran Orthodoxy. For him, Luther's reception of Holy Scripture as the Word of God clothed in human speech allows for seeming historical or geographical errors or even contradictions between biblical writers in the reporting of events without detracting from the Bible's status as the Word of God. While Sasse saw the thoughts expressed in Letter 14 as preliminary and exploratory, others did not. Some would see Letter 14 as a denial of the orthodox teaching of biblical inspiration and inerrancy. Others would use the letter to champion a critical reading of the Scripture, drawing conclusions Sasse never intended. In the end Sasse withdrew this letter. When in the 1960s it was printed and sold without his permission through the bookstore at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, he protested. It was Sasse's intention to write a book on the doctrine of Holy Scripture. Although he never finished this project,56 he wrote numerous essays attempting to clarify his position on the nature of the Holy Scriptures, biblical infallibility, and inerrancy. A few months after the publication of Letter 14, Sasse wrote Letter 16, "What Does Luther Have to Say to Us on the Inerrancy of the Holy Scripture?" In this letter, Sasse suggested that Luther's doctrine of the Scripture is best apprehended as "a piece of this great Theology of the cross (theologia crucis) !'1y>'The Scriptures come in lowliness and the form of a servant yet faith beholds these writings as the very Word of God.

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, Sasse continued to expound an approach to the doctrine of Scripture that holds together the Bible as both human and divine. In a book of essays commemorating the 450th anniversary of the Reformation, Accents in Luther's Theology,

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Sasse contributed a chapter, "Luther and the Word of God," which serves as something of a summation of his earlier reflections on the nature of the Bible while demonstrating the vitality of Luther's hermeneutics from the perspective of the debate with Erasmus. Sasse repeatedly expressed his discomfort at what he deemed to be a wooden and Aristotelian doctrine of biblical inerrancy in the theologians of Lutheran Orthodoxy and in classical teachers of the Missouri Synod such as Franz Pieper, Theodore Engelder, and Paul Kretzmann. He was also troubled by what he saw as a new theology emerging from the Synods St. Louis seminary after the Second World War. His 1951 essay, "Confession (Confessionalism) and the Theology of the Missouri Synod," renders a diagnosis of the inability of theologians indebted to Franz Pieper to move beyond the thought world of seventeenth-century Orthodoxy. But then he finds it strange that "A Statement" signed by forty-four prominent Missouri Synod pastors and theologians in 1945 calling for greater openness to and increased cooperation with other Lutherans makes no mention of the Lutheran Confessions. "The Lutheran Confessions no longer play the role in the life and theological thinking of the Missouri Synod, in fact, of all of American Lutheranism by far which they played during the 19th

century."58 In Sasse s reading, "A Statement" represents a shift from theology to ethics in keeping with the spirit of American Christianity but detrimental to a confessional understanding of the church.

As indicated already, the Australian theologian was no disinterested observer of the Missouri Synod. He saw the departure of the faculty majority at the St. Louis seminary to form Concordia Seminary in Exile in 1974 as the culmination of a problem deeply rooted in the Missouri Synods insecurity with the Lutheran Confessions, the Synod s malfunctioning "dogmatic compass" as he put it in his 1975 letter to Robert Preus.This long letter (23 pages on legal paper) is instructive not only as to how Sasse perceived the crisis in the Missouri Synod but also in regard to his articulation of the doctrine of Scripture. Critical as he was of aspects of Missouri's traditional teaching on the inerrancy of Scripture, he was even more opposed to what he saw as a confessional collapse embodied in those who left the Synod. In the letter to Preus, Sasse observed that the events surrounding the formation of the exile seminary pointed to a fault

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in the theology of Missouri which needed to be rectified. "Since you could not solve the problem by your own strength your theologians made the worst blunder they could make; they borrowed the theology from other churches without realizing that by doing so they abandoned what could help to solve your problems: the strong sense of Missouri for the authority of Holy Scripture and the faithful preservation of some of the great truths of the Reformation They simply took over uncritically and carelessly what was offered on the European market of the newest theological or pseudotheological fashions."59 While maintaining a strong criticism of Missouri Synod teachers such as Alfred Rehwinkel60 and Lutheran Orthodoxy's over-reliance on Aristotelian categories, Sasse went on to express his appreciation for Preus'work on the seventeenth-century theologians and the doctrine of inspiration. He lauded Preus for dispelling faulty mistaken characterizations of the period. "The books published by you and your brother in recent years together with some other similar publications made by others are really a promising beginning of a new indigenous Lutheran theology in America. It may be significant that they have not come from the dissenters."61

Sasse suggested that Robert Preus himself may be in the position to assist in the theological revitalization of the Missouri Synod:

If Missouri has now to rethink its theology one of the first tasks will be to examine the philosophical presuppositions of your traditional theology. This is especially true of the problem of Inspiration and Inerrancy of Holy Scripture. Your discussion of the doctrine of our orthodox fathers on these problems should open up the door to a fresh approach to this problem which is of greatest concern to all Christian churches and which may be the basic question underlying the troubles of your church. You refute rightly the wrong conceptions of inspiration as the Biblical authors had only been the penmen of the Holy Spirit who dictated to them the holy books. You are fighting in an impressive way simultaneously the theory of a mechanic dictation as well as the untenable reaction of modern theologians who are watering down or bluntly rejecting the doctrine of Inspiration altogether, as it is being done even by otherwise conservative thinkers like Werner Elert whose Dogmatics are marred by this blunder.62

Sasse s treatment of Holy Scripture would remain something of an enigma even to the end of his life as he attempted to chart a way for

H E R M A N N SASSE (1895-1976) 315

contemporary Lutherans to confess without equivocation that the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God while recognizing that God's Word comes in and through human words open to literary and historical analysis.

The Sacrament of the Altar

Among the theologians of his era, Sasse stands out as one who gave ongoing and thorough attention to the Lord's Supper from exegetical, historical, dogmatic, and liturgical perspectives. Perhaps the most focused treatments of the Lord's Supper come within the period of 1938 toi94i when Sasse wrote several essays on the Lord's Supper although his best known work on the Sacrament, This is My Body: Luther's Contention for the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar, was not published until 1959. This book, written by Sasse in English, demonstrated his capacity as a Luther scholar as he traced the medieval background for the Reformer's teaching on the Sacrament, the conflict with Rome from 1517 to 1524, the disagreement with Zwingli at Marburg, and later developments with Bucer, Melanchthon, and Calvin concluding with the confessional decisions of the Formula of Concord. A final section of This is My Body took up questions raised by new exegetical and ecumenical studies. But This is My Body built upon earlier works of Sasse on the Lord's Supper. In the "Preface" to Vom Sacrament des Altars (1941), a collection of essays by Sasse and like-minded colleagues (Friedrich Wilhelm Hopf, Theodor Knolle, Hans Preuss, Otto Procksch, and Ernst Sommerlath), Sasse located the Sacrament at the heart of the church. "Around the Lord's Table is gathered the church. At the Table of the Lord, the church knows what it most profoundly is: the body of Christ. There has been no doubt of this since the days of the apostles. Where the Lord's Supper is no longer known or celebrated, there the church dies, irretrievably lost."63 Noting the decline of the place of the Sacrament in the Lutheran Church in the periods of Pietism and Rationalism, Sasse urged Lutherans to test their doctrine of the Lord's Supper by the Scriptures and then joyfully to proclaim this gift before all of Christendom.

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Another essay from the same year (1941), "The Lord's Supper in the Catholic Mass," is instructive on a number of levels. It demonstrated Sasse s historical acumen as well as his knowledge of contemporary developments in the Roman Church in a day when ecumenical contact with Rome was limited. Sasse also observed how the history of liturgy and the history of dogma are woven together: "In this history of the Lord's Supper, the church lived her own history. As a lens gathers beams of light to a burning point, so in the history of the Sacrament of the Altar are gathered the history of liturgy and of doctrine, the history of the way Christians worship and Uve, and how the church is structured. The history of this Sacrament is the core of the church's history."64 This essay gives evidence of how Sasse saw the relationship between doctrine and liturgy. "Even though liturgy may indeed have its inherent laws of essence and form, yet it does not produce its doctrinal content out of itself. This it receives from God what has been revealed. Whatever the liturgy says is subject always to the judgment of norma normans ('ultimate/norming norm") of Holy Scripture. The assertion that something could be liturgically right and doctrinally wrong may indeed be true of the ancient mystery religions, but never of the Christian liturgy."65 Sasse observes that the ancient rule lex orandi lex credendi also applies to perpetuation of false doctrine in the church as in the case of Mariology and development of the notion of the Mass as a sacrifice. "What it may lead to when lex orandi lex credendi is used to subordinate doctrine to liturgy may be seen in the development of the Lord's Supper into the Mass of the Catholic churches in the East and in the West."66

Sasse thus champions the liturgy for the sake of the church's dogma, which led him to take a critical position over against the liturgical movement.67 Arguing that a real renewal of liturgy is needed, Sasse wrote "Liturgy and Confession: A Brotherly Warning Against the High Church Danger" in 1959. In this treatise, Sasse was critical of Arthur Carl Piepkorn68 and his associates who published Una Sancta. A Lutheran liturgical movement, Sasse opined, ought to be anchored in "the saving message of the justification of the sinner by faith alone" (314). Sasse chided the formulators of the 1958 Service Book and Hymnal for importing an Anglican eucharistie prayer into

H E R M A N N SASSE (1895-1976) 317

the Lutheran rite, pointing out the weaknesses of Gregory Dix s approach to liturgical theology. At the heart of his criticisms of the liturgical movement is its inattentiveness to the doctrinal content and orientation of liturgical forms and practices. The lex credendi lex orandi must also be reversible. "The liturgy defines doctrine only if doctrine defines the liturgy."69

Ecclesiology

The confession of the church, for Sasse, is a confession of the Lord of the church, Jesus Christ. The church is defined not by historical observations or sociological data but by the Gospel purely preached and the sacraments rightly administered. The Seventh Article of the Augsburg Confession is the ever present refrain in Sasse's ecclesiology. In a 1930 essay, "Church and Churches: Concerning the Doctrine of the Unity of the Church," he wrote "No treatment of the church which begins with people, with human communities, with the faith of people, ever leads to that other aspect of the church which the N T describes with the words 'body of Christ."70 The church is known only from her head. It is from this perspective that Sasse addressed the unity of the church. "If this is the case, if the church is the body of Christ, if the church as body of Christ comes into history, then the proposition of the unity of the church needs no further foundation. If the church were constituted by our faith, then a series of churches would be conceivable, because there are varying views regarding Christ. Luther's faith in Christ is something different than that of the modern American Protestant. But Christ, the present Lord, constitutes the church, then there can be only one church, because there is one Christ."71 This raises the question of the visibility of the church. Rather than using the language of the church's visibility or invisibility, Sasse, following Luther, speaks of the church as hidden but known through the marks of the church (notae ecclesiae), the means of grace around which the assembly of believers is gathered. The unity of the church is then not an ideal to be pursued, but a gift to be confessed even though it is finally hidden from human eyes.

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In his discussion of the Lutheran Church and the Una Sanaa four years later in Here We Stand, Sasse continued to expound this theme in light of Article VII of the Augustana:

In this great article, for the first time in the history of Christian doctrine, a part of Christendom tried to express confessionally what the church really is and what its unity consists. The two truths which are inseparably conjoined in the doctrine of the church are set forth in this article. The first truth is the belief in the una sancta ecclesia perpetuo mansura, in the one holy church which has been given the promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. The second truth is the conviction that the church militant on earth, the realization of church unity is dependent upon agreement in the generally received truth of the pure Gospel. It is the plain teaching of the New Testament that the true unity of the church is unity in the truth.72

This twofold aspect of the church's unity, the unbroken continuation of the one church and the necessity of consensus in the truth, are axiomatic for all of Sasse s writings on the church whether they have to do with his rejection of the Barmen Declaration, his critique of the formation of the EKD, his ecumenical discussions with Rome and the Anglicans, his disquiet with the Arnoldshain Theses and the Leuenberg Concord,73 or his observations regarding pressures for confessional compromise on the mission field. So, in a 1946 essay, "The Question of the Church's Unity on the Mission Field," Sasse wrote "Genuine faith in the una sancta as an indestructible, divinely established reality in the world can guard us all, Christians of churches young and old, from doubting the church of God. For the present state of Christianity will plunge anyone into despair who only sees this outer state and knows nothing of the hidden glory of the regnum Christi ("kingdom of Christ") which stands behind it."74 For Sasse, the doctrine of the church is always an ecclesiology of the cross. The Christian stance is thus not despair but faithfulness and patience in the face of the outward fissures in Christendom. "As difficult as it may be for us Christians of the modern world, we must allow ourselves anew to say that the question of the unity of the church of Christ always has to do with the truth of the Gospel."75 Where this is forgotten, a lethal synergism sets in that would attempt to create a unity other than that of Article VII of the Augsburg Confession. This Sasse sees as the error of Pietism expressed in its slogan "Doctrine

H E R M A N N SASSE (1895-1976) 319

divides, service unites."76 Without the truth of the Gospel, the unity of the church is never secure; in fact, it can become an energetic but idolatrous project coming under divine judgment.

Conclusion

Albrecht Peters speaks, no doubt, for many when he says that "to the chorus of present-day theology, Sasse s voice sounds foreign and shrill."77 Sasse could be easily dismissed as one who was theologically rigid, an isolationist, out of place in a climate that calls for tolerance in the midst of pluralism and diversity. But such a judgment would fail to understand the depth of Sasse s learning, the scope of his engagement beyond Lutheranism, or the strength of his conviction. He was a theologian of the cross who realized the perpetual temptations to a theology of glory. Relentless in his insistence that "all that we think and do in the church has to be cleansed by the theology of the cross if we are to escape the perils of a theology of glory,"78 Sasse used the theologia cruets as the orienting point for his discussion of Christology, church, the nature of Holy Scriptures, the sacraments, and liturgy. Ultimately nothing is left untouched by the theology of the cross for this theologian so deeply rooted in the thinking of Luther. Sasse's indebtedness to Luther is also evident in an essay from 1968 on Erasmus. Sasse says of Luther: "He saw behind Erasmus' concept of an undogmatic Christianity the coming neo-paganism of the modern world."79 Like Luther, Sasse knew that to take away assertions destroys Christian faith with a feeble skepticism. His diagnosis of twentieth-century Christianity, including much of Lutheranism, was that it had opted for the way of Erasmus, not Luther. Thus Sasse would become something of a John the Baptist-like figure in contemporary Lutheranism, a minority voice, calling for repentance and faith.

Bavarian Lutheran Bishop Hermann Dietzfelbinger would comment after Sasse's death that his words "seldom conformed with the general trend, also in regard to the church. Should they not precisely for this reason then occupy our interest again?...This harsh Lutheran, also at times unsparing with his powerful assaults, was by no means a narrow confessionalist. Rather he was a passionate

3 2 0 L U T H E R A N QUARTERLY

ecumenist with worldwide vision."80 Bishop Dietzfelbinger s words are a commendation of the legacy of Hermann Sasse for our day where the challenges addressed by Sasse have only intensified for the Lutheran Church "which has been sentenced to death by the world."81

The author dedicates this article to Dr. Ronald R. Feuerhahn, Professor Emeritus at

Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis, in honor of his untiring scholarship on the life and

theology of Hermann Sasse.

N O T E S

i. For biographical treatments of Sasse's life, see Ronald R. Feuerhahn, "Hermann

Sasse: Theologian of the Church" in Hermann Sasse: A Man for Our Times? ed. John R

Stephenson and Thomas M. Winger (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1998): 11-36;

Ronald R. Feuerhahn, "Hermann Sasse (1895-1976)^ Biographical Sketch" in The Lonely

Way: Selected Essays and Letters Volume I (1927-1939) ed. Matthew C. Harrison (St. Louis:

Concordia Publishing House, 2002): 13-21; Maurice Schild,"Hermann Sasse" in Profile des

Luthertums. Biographien zum 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Wolf-Dieter Hauschild (Gütersloh: Gütersloh Verlagshaus, 1998): 591-603. For a bibliographical guide to Sasse's writings, see

Ronald Feuerhahn, Hermann Sasse·Λ Bibliography (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1995).

2. See Walther von Loewenich, Erlebte Theologie, Begegnunggen, Erfahrungen,

Erwägungen (Mumch: Claudius Verlag, 1979): 136.

3. Evidence of this may be seen in the article by the current president of The Lu

theran Church-Missouri Synod, Matthew C. Harrison, "Hermann Sasse: A Remarkable

Anti-Nazi and Lutheran Confessor" Higher Things XI (Summer 2011): 8-9.The centennial

of Sasse's birth, 1995, was observed with an international conference, "The Sasse Sympo

sium," hosted by Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary in St. Catharines, Ontario,

from October 30 to November 1, 1995. The essays from this gathering were subsequently

published under the editorship of John Stephenson and Thomas Winger in Hermann Sasse:

A Man for Our Times? In the same year, the Reformation issue of Logia: A Journal of Lutheran

Theology was devoted to Sasse's life and legacy.

4. For a treatment of a sample of Sasse's early exegetical work in Berlin, see

Norman Nagel "Hermann Sasse Identifies the Paraclete" Lutheran Quarterly 10 (1996): 3-23.

5. See Sasse's reflections on Harnack in his 1936 essay, "The Theologian of the

Second Reich: Thoughts on the Biography of Adolf von Harnack" in The Lonely Way

Volume 1:1927-1939, ed. Matthew C. Harrison, pp. 311-320.

6. Hermann Sasse, "The Impact of Bultmannism on American Lutheranism,With

Special Reference to his Demythologization of the New Testament" Lutheran Synod

Quarterly V (June, 1965): 5.

7. Years after the war, Sasse would comment "You can perhaps live on (Harnack's

theology) in happy times, but you can't die with it, and so the liberal theology and optimis

tic view of man died in the catastrophe of the First War" - Sasse, "The Impact of

Bultmanmsm on American Lutheranism," 5.

H E R M A N N SASSE (1895-1976) 3 2 1

8. Hermann Sasse, Here We Stand Nature and Character of the Lutheran Faith trans

Theodore G.Tappert (Adelaide. Lutheran Publishing House, 1979), 10-11.

9. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Λ Biography, trans. Eric Mosbacher et al

(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 143.

10. Hermann Sasse, "American Christianity and the Church" in Lonely Way, Vol. 1,47.

11. Hermann Sasse, "American Christianity and the Church," 55.

12. Hermann Sasse, "American Christianity and the Church," 55.

13. Ronald Feuerhahn, "Hermann Sasse:Theologian of the Church," 13.

14. See the discussion of this point in Gordon J. Gerhardy, Hermann Sasse on Confes

sion and Culture for a Younger Church, Master of Theology Thesis (St. Paul: Luther North

western Seminary, 1981), 91.

15. See Maurice Schild, "Lausanne Ecumenist—Lutheran Confessionalist: O n Her

mann Sasse's Significance for Australian Lutheranism" dialog ij (Summer 1978) 216-221.

16. Klaus Scholder, The Churches Under the Third Reich Volume I" Preliminary His

tory and Time of Illusions 1918-1934, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,

1987), 142. Scolder observes that "it was not some dubious, or at least debatable, political

analysis which led Sasse to this conclusion but rather the examination of what was said by

the Lutheran confession" (142). Also note Sasse's letter to Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Septem

ber 12, 1933. Sasse writes that the Aryan paragraph "means that even the apostles of Jesus

Christ, and moreover the Lord himself, who in the flesh was a Son of David, would have

to leave the ordained ministry of the Prussian church. This new law indeed separates the

Prussian Church from Christianity. It amounts to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which

cannot be forgiven in this world or the next" - Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol 12 Berlin:

1932-1933, ed. Larry Rasmussen, trans. Isabel Best and David Higgins (Philadelphia:

Fortress Press, 2009), 169.

17. Gerhardy cites these words from Sasse in 1932: "This article makes any discus

sion with the church impossible. One can forgive National Socialism for all its theological

sins. This article 24, however, excludes every conversation with the church, the Evan

gelical as well as the Catholic.. ..For the Evangelical Church would have to begin a discus

sion about it with the frank admission that its doctrine is an intentional and permanent

offence to the 'moral and ethical feelings of the Germanic race.'... Let it be said that the

Evangelical doctrine of original sin - in contrast to the Catholic- does not admit of

the possibility of the Germanic, Nordic or any other race being able by nature to fear and

love God and do his will, that on the contrary a newborn child of the most noble German

descent with the finest racial characteristics of an intellectual and physical sort is just as li

able to eternal damnation as a halfbreed born of two decadent races and with serious he

reditary defects. However, we have to confess that the doctrine of the sinner sola gratia, sola

fide is the end of Germanic morality as it is the end of all human morality, and we take the

liberty to state, this again being a serious offence against the Nordic race, that because of

this doctrine which overthrows all morality, the Jews nailed Jesus Christ to the cross also in

the name of the German people (Volk) and the Nordic race" (Gerhardy, 50) Also see Her

mann Sasse, In Statu Confesswnsis Zed. F W Hopf (Berlm:Verlag der Spur, 1975): 251.

18. Here see Sasse's essays from 1934-1937, especially "Union and Confession" in

The Lonely Way-Vol. I, 265-305 and " T h e Barmen Declaration-An Ecumenical Confes

sion?" in Lonely Way Vol. I, 347-349. Arthur Cochrane writes "It is to the lasting credit of

Prof. Hermann Sasse, of the University of Erlangen, that he was the first to declare that

because of this one plank in the Party's program the Church could in no way approve of

3 2 2 L U T H E R A N QUARTERLY

Nazism. It had to be categorically repudiated. The fact that Sasse eventually broke with the Confessing Church in the interest of narrow Lutheran confessionalism, and thereby greatly weakened the Church's opposition to National Socialism, must not obscure the prophetic role he played at the outset"-Arthur Cochrane, The Church's Confession Under

Hitler (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1962), 36. The text of Sasse s statement, handed to President Karl Koch, before he left the Barmen meeting on May 31, 1934 is included in Cochrane, 194-195. In short, Sasse sees Barmen in conflict with Article VII of the Augsburg Confession. Also see Martin Wittenberg, "Hermann Sasse und Barmen," in Die

lutherischen Kirchen und die Bekenntnissynode von Barmen: Referate des Internationalen Symposiums auf der Reisensburg 1984, ed. Wolf-Dieter Hauschild, Georg Kretschmar, and Cartsen Nicolaisen (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984): 84-106 and John Wilch, "Hermann Sasse and the Third Reich Threats to the Church" in Hermann Sasse: A Man for

ourTimes?, 65-105.

19. Lowell Green, "Hermann Sasse s Relations with his Erlangen Colleagues" in Hermann Sasse. A Man for Our Times?, 37. Also see Karlmann Beyschlag, Die Erlanger Theologie (Erlangen: Martin Luther Verlag, 1993), 160-203, and Lowell Green, The Erlangen

School of Theology. Its History, Teaching and Practice (Fort Wayne: Lutheran Legacy Press, 2010), 289-298.

20. See Lowell Green, Lutherans Against Hitler:The Untold Story (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2007), 240-249 and Robert P. Enckson, Theologians Under Hitler (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1985), 87-90.

21. Lowell Green, "Hermann Sasse s Relations with his Erlangen Colleagues," 43-44. 22. For example, Tom G.A. Hardt relates how Sasse defended Paul Althaus to the

American authorities saying "that Althaus never could have been a Nazi being a typical Melanchthonnatur, lacking the ability to reject or affirm anything"-Tom G.A. Hardt, "Hermann Sasse in His Letters" Logia IV (Reformation 1995): 7.

23. Hermann Strathmann, "German Theologian Describes Postwar Situation" The Lutheran 28 (August 28, 1946): 13-14. After an American student reported to Sasse the Strathmann article, Sasse wrote a letter to the editor of The Lutheran protesting Strathmann s allegations, as published in the January 15, 1947, issue of the magazine. A few months earlier, George W Forell wrote a letter to the same magazine in defense of Sasse. See The Lutheran 29 (October 2,1946): 32.

24. Hermann Sasse, "Article VII of the Augsburg Confession in the Present Crisis of Lutheramsm: Letters to Lutheran Pastors, No. 53, April 1961" in We Confess the Church,

trans. Norman E. Nagel (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1986), 59.

25. Sasse wrote to Bishop Meiser in a letter dated July 17, 1946: "From the standpoint of the Lutheran confession it is to be said that fundamentally altar fellowship is always church fellowship, since both accord with the NT. Koinonta tou somatos Christou. If the VELKD [United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany] fundamentally acknowledges altar fellowship with the Reformed as it was proclaimed in the declaration of the Prussian Confessing Synod of Halle cited by Wuttemberg, then church fellowship has been realized which Calvin and the Reformed have desired from the start. Then we are still Lutheran Church only in the sense that Calvinism has always tolerated it. For then the doctrine of the Sacrament has lost its church-dividing force. There we must grant no more than in particular cases of emergency non-Lutherans may be allowed to come to the Lutheran Supper." Cited by Matthew Harrison,"Hermann Sasse and the EKiD — i948:The Death of the Lutheran Church" in Logia: A fournal of Lutheran Theology IV (Reformation 1995): 41.

H E R M A N N SASSE (1895-1976) 323

26. For an account of Sasse s disappointment with the St. Louis faculty on this issue,

see Matthew C. Harrison, "Hermann Sasse and the EKiD-1948: The Death of the Lu

theran Church" Logia. Λ Journal of Lutheran Theology IV (Reformation 1995): 41-46.

27. Letter of Hermann Sasse to Robert Preus, January 19, 1975 (in this author's

possession).

28. For an assessment of Sasse's theological leadership in bringing the two Australian

Lutheran bodies together, see J.T.E. Renner, "Hermann Sasse & the Australian Lutheran

Scene" Logia. Λ Lutheran Journal of Theology IV (Reformation 1995): 37-40

29. Kurt Marquart, "Hermann Sasse and the Mystery of Sacred Scripture" in

Hermann Sasse Λ Man for our Times?, 168

30. See Hermann Sasse, "Letter to E Theodore Bachmann, December 15, 1955"

Lutheran Quarterly 13 (1999)1213-17.

31. Here see Ronald R. Feuerhahn, Hermann Sasse as Ecumenical Confessor (PhD

Dissertation Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge, 1991; Revised 1994), 123-138;

also see Gottfried Martens, "Where the Rhine and the Tiber Met: Hermann Sasse and the

Roman Catholic Church" in Hermann Sasse Λ Man For Our Times?, 194-223.

32. Gottfried Martens, "Where the Rhine and the Tiber Meet," 198.

33. Hermann Sasse, "Preserving the Truth of the Bible in One Race One Gospel One

Task, Vol II Official Reference Volumes. Papers and Reports, ed. Carl F.H. Henry and W

Stanley Mooneyham (Minneapolis: World Wide Publications, 1967), 219-221.

34. "His [Sasse's] gained him entry to all centres of theological learning and eccle

siastical government. It is again difficult to assess the impact made here It is certain, how

ever, that because of him the leaders of other churches grew more ready to listen to other

members of the Lutheran Church, whom they previously tended to regard as nonentities,

and probably not without reason. At the same time, the example of Sasse encouraged Lu

therans themselves to be more open and ready to speak beyond their own church, some

thing which for various reasons had happened only rarely in the previous history of the

Lutheran Church here. It might not be too much of an exaggeration to say that Dr. Sasse

made more of an impact at the level of church life in Australia then had been made by the

Lutheran Church in all its previous history." Henry P. Hamann, "Hermann Sasse: The

Adelaide Chapter" in Theologia Crucis. Studies in Honour of Hermann Sasse, ed. Henry

P. Hamman (Adelaide: Lutheran Publishing House, 1975), 7

35. Hermann Sasse, "Jesus Chnst is Lord· The Church's Original Confession" in

We Confess Jesus Christ, trans. Norman N. Nagel (St Louis: Concordia Publishing House,

1984), 10.

36. Hermann Sasse, "Jesus Christ* The Church's Original Confession," 10. Here

Sasse echoes August F. C. Vilmar (1800-1868), the mneteenth-century theologian whose

book, The Theology of Facts Versus the Theology of Rhetoric, trans. Roy Harnsville with Intro

duction by Walter Sundberg (Fort Wayne: Lutheran Legacy Press, 2008), left an indelible

imprint on Sasse's theology.

37 Hermann Sasse, "Jesus Christ is Lord: The Church's Original Confession," 11.

38. Hermann Sasse, "Jesus Christ is Lord. The Church's Original Confession," 11.

39. Hermaan Sasse, Here We Stand Nature and Character of the Lutheran Faith, trans.

Theodore G.Tappert (Adelaide: Lutheran Publishing House, 1979), 121.

40. Feuerhahn cites a letter Sasse wrote to Klaus Ruma "More and more I studied

Luther while in the ministry. This and my experience in ecumenical work...made me

a confessional Lutheran." Ronald F Feuerhahn, "Hermann Sasse Confessionahst and


Confessor" in And Every Tongue Confess: Essays in Honor of Norman Nagel on the Occasion of His Sixth-fifih Birthday, ed. Gerald S. Knspin and Jon D. Vieker (Dearborn, Michigan: The Nagel Festschrift Committee, 1990): 15.

41. This eschatological theme is very evident in Sasse s preaching. Here one may see Hermann Sasse, Zeugnisse: Erlanger Predigten und Vortrage vor Gemeinden 1933-1944, ed. F.W. Hopf (Erlangen: Martin Luther-Verlag, 1979).

42. Hermann Sasse, "Confession and Confessing: Lessons from Five Years of the Church Struggle" in The Lonely Way Vol. I: 339-349.

43. Hermann Sasse,"Union and Confession" in The Lonely Way Vol 1:266. 44. Hermann Sasse, "Union and Confession," 266. 45. Hermann Sasse, "Union and Confession," 269. 46. Hermann Sasse, "Union and Confession," 269. 47. One exception would be his essay prepared for a meeting of the Continuation

Committee of Faith and Order in 1934, "The Church and the Word of God: Toward a Doctrine of the Word of God" in The Lonely Way Vol. I: 147-158. Here Sasse does not so much speak of the nature of the Bible but rather treats the question of revelation and how the Scriptures are instrumental to this revelation. In this essay, Sasse asserts that "the Bible and the Word of God are not identical" but "neither would it suffice were these preachers to come without the Holy Scriptures, bearing the Word of God only in their heads and hearts" (156).

48. Cited by Jeffrey J. Kloha in "Hermann Sasse Confesses the Doctrine De Scriptum" in Scripture and the Church: Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse, ed. Jeffrey J. Kloha and Ronald R. Feuerhahn (St. Louis: Concordia Seminary, 1995): 344-345; also see Hermann Sasse, "Toward Understanding Augustine s Doctrine of Inspiration" in Scripture and Church: Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse, 221-245.

49. Hermann Sasse, "On the Doctrine De Scrtptura Sacra : Letters Addressed to Lutheran Pastors, No. 14" in Scripture and Church: Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse, 57 (Hereafter cited as "Letter 14").The italics indicate Sasse s own emphasis. For more on this letter and its place in the totality of Sasse s work on the doctrine of Scripture, see Armin Wenz, "Hermann Sasse Beitrag zur Lehre von Heiligen Schrift" in Wort des lebendigen Gottes. Festgabe fur Prof. Dr. Reinhard Slenczka zum 60. Geburtstag (Erlangen: Institute für Systematische Theologie, I99i):99-ii2.

50. Hermann Sasse, "Letter 14," 57. 51. Letter 14, 57. 52. Letter 14, 58. 53. Letter 14, 67. The italics indicate Sasse's own emphasis. 54. Letter 14, 75-76. 55. Letter 14, 76. 56. After Sasse s death, his friend and co-worker, F. W. Hopf edited and published

the uncompleted manuscript under the tide, Sacra Scrtptura. Studien zur Lehre von der Heiligen Schrift (Erlangen:Verlag der Ev.-Lutherisches Mission, 1981).

57. Hermann Sasse, "What Does Luther Have to Say to Us On the Inerrancy of the Holy Scripture? Letters to Lutheran Pastors, No. 16" in Scripture and Church: Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse, 156.

58. Hermann Sasse, "Confession (Confessionalism) and Theology in the Missouri Synod Letters to Lutheran Pastors, No. 20" in Scripture and Church: Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse, 205.

H E R M A N N SASSE (1895-1976) 325

59. Letter from Hermann Sasse to Robert Preus, January 19,1975.

60. Alfred Rehwinkel (b. 1887) had been a professor at Concordia Seminary, St.

Lous. He was the author of The Age of the Earth: Chronology of the Bible (Adelaide: Lutheran Publishing House, 1966) in which he argued for a "young earth" and The Flood (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1957), a defense of the historical accuracy of the Genesis

account of the deluge.



63. Hermann Sasse, "Preface to Vom Sakrament des Altars' in The Lonely Way Vol. II: 12.

64. Hermann Sasse, "The Lord's Supper and the Catholic Mass" in The Lonely Way,

Vol. II: 17.

65. Hermann Sasse, "The Lord's Supper and the Catholic Mass," 25.

66. Hermann Sasse, "The Lord's Supper and the Catholic Mass," 25.

67. See John T. Pless, "Hermann Sasse and the Liturgical Movement" Logia: A Lu

theran Journal of Theology VII (Eastertide I998):47~5i.

68. Sasse's critique of Piepkorn was persistent. He wrote to Robert Preus that Piepkorn's theology "was exactly what the Anglo-Catholics teach in their church." Letter

from Hermann Sasse to Robert Preus, January 19, 1975. Also see Ronald Feuerhahn,

"Hermann Sasse's Critique of Arthur Carl Piepkorn" in Shepherd the Church: Essays in

Pastoral Theology Honoring Bishop Roger D. Pittelko ed. Frederic W. Baue et al (Fort Wayne:

Concordia Theological Seminary Press, 2002): 89-103.

69. Hermann Sasse, "Liturgy and Confessione Brotherly Warning against the 'High

Church' Danger" in The Lonely Way, Vol. 11:301.

70. Hermann Sasse, "Church and Churches: Concerning the Doctrine of the Unity

of the Church" in The Lonely Way, Vol. I:8i.

71. Hermann Sasse. "Church and Churches: Concerning the Doctrine of the Unity

of the Church," 82.

72. Hermann Sasse, Here We Stand, 186, with Sasse's own italics.

73. See Hermann Sasse, "Sanctorum Communio" Lutheran Theological Journal VIII

(August 1974): 49-60. Also see Werner Klan, "Eucharist and Ecclesiology: Marginal Comments Concerning the Inherent Coherence of the Theology of Hermann Sasse" in Lord Jesus Christ,

WillYou Not Stay: Essays in Honor of Ronald Feuerhahn on the Occasion of his Sixth-Fifth Birth

day, ed. J Bart Day et al (Houston:The Feuerhahn Festschrift Committee, 2002): 153-165.

74. Hermann Sasse, "The Question of the Church's Unity on the Mission Field" in

The Lonely Way, Vol. II: 186. 75. "The Church's Unity on the Mission Field," 188, with original italics.

76. "The Church's Unity on the Mission Field," 188.

77. Cited in Gerhardy, 39 (see note 14 above).

78. Hermann Sasse, "The Theology of the Cross, Letters to Lutheran Pastors, No. 18,

Jubilate 1951 " in We Confess Jesus Christ, 52. 79. Hermann Sasse, "Erasmus, Luther, and Modern Christendom" in The Lonely

WayVol II: 381. 80. Cited by Gerhardy, 40.

81. Hermann Sasse, Here We Stand, 187. Also see Steven D. Paulson, Lutheran Theology

(London and NewYork:T & T Clark, 2011). Paulson suggests that Sasse captures something

of the dynamic of Lutheran theology as "always offensive and perverse in its specific attack on virtue with Christ" (4).

^ s

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