Part 1: Wengert’s willful change to Article 14
Timothy Wengert changed the Augsburg Confession, and it just so happens that the change supports his skewed view of what Lutherans hold about ministry. He added a word to Article 14 that should not be there. The added word puts a spin on Article 14 that should not be there.[1]
Wengert added the text highlighted in yellow below to Article 14 of the Augsburg Confession:[2]
“Concerning church government it is taught that no one should publicly teach, preach, or administer the sacraments without a proper [public] call.”78
78 ”On ordenlichen Beruf. Beruf means both “call” and “vocation.” The 1531 editio princips and the 1580 Book of Concord add the word in brackets.”
This change was no lapse, no typo. It wasn’t done in a few minutes. It took time and effort.
Wengert had the audacity to claim that the word “[public],” which wasn’t there until he added it, is “the important word” in Article 14. In a 2004 lecture to the ELCA Conference of Bishops he said:
Third, the important word in CA XIV is “public.” This is the eschatological purpose of church government and order: to see to it that what has been whispered in secret is shouted from the rooftops (Matthew 10:27). In fact, the point is so important that both the official German printing of the CA in 1531 and the version printed in 1580 in The Book of Concord repeated the word “public” in the final phrase (shown in brackets above). This emphasis contrasted directly to self-appointed, so-called radical preachers who based their authority solely on themselves and their personal or private, “congregational” calls. Although the Roman authorities often accused Luther and the evangelicals of such usurpation of authority, in fact all the leaders of the evangelical movement were duly called pastors and preachers of the existing church. “The call,” Luther once said at table, “hurts the devil very much.”[3]
But that was not true. The word “[public]” was not there and should not be there. Neither the official German printing of the Augsburg Confession in 1531 nor the version printed in 1580 have the bracketed word “[public],” as Wengert claimed they did.
It would seem that Wengert’s own agenda, claiming that for Melanchthon “proper call” means Amt (“the authority of the office rests in the office itself and in the word of God”[4]), overwhelmed his critical faculties.
In a previous generation a scholar who changed a public text, as Wengert did, would have had faced professional consequences.
Part 2: The Unraveling and the Cover-up
A pastor noticed the doctored text. Pastor Kris Baudler noticed the change Wengert had made to the Augsburg Confession. He realized the immense significance of the change, which coincided with the ELCA’s vote in 1999 to change its constitution to require a threefold, sacramental episcopate.[5] Pastor Baudler wrote to Professor Wengert and received a terse response defending his change to Article 14.[6] After some back and forth, Wengert acknowledged the added word and its footnote were inaccurate.[7]
Consequently in the second printing of The Book of Concord two changes were made: The added word “[public]” before “call” was deleted and its inaccurate supporting sentence in the footnote was deleted. Nevertheless, three big problems remain.
Problem #1: The first printing of The Book of Concord was the largest and most widely distributed.
The first printing of The Book of Concord 2000 was large enough that most libraries own only the first printing. For example, Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota has four copies of The Book of Concord 2000, all from the first printing. Who would even know there is a second printing? Most non-Lutheran libraries would have only one copy, the first printing,and would have no idea of its inaccuracies.
Problem #2: The second printing of The Book of Concord is silent about the serious flaw in Article 14 in the first printing.
The second printing of The Book of Concord 2000 contains no notice whatsoever – nothing in the Preface, Forward, or the text of Article 14 – that the first printing was inaccurate and the text in the second printing has been corrected. Again, the change Wengert made in Article 14 was no lapse, no typo. It had to have taken time and effort.
Problem #3: Wengert continued to misrepresent Article 14 and public ministry in the Reformation.
In Wengert’s 2008 book, Priesthood, Pastors, Bishops. Public Ministry for the Reformation & Today, he writes in a footnote: “I am grateful to Pastor Kris Baudler for pointing out an error in CA 14, in BC 2000, 46, which has been rectified in subsequent printings.”[8] What error, Professor Wengert? The specific error is not identified. The bland wording suggests the error was insignificant, like a typo. In this way Wengert obscures rather than corrects the error he inserted in the text.
Moreover Wengert’s vague apology did not deter him from again making his false claim about Article 14 a few pages later: “Third, one very important word in Article 14 is public.”[9] No, the word “[public]” is not in the text and never was. Wengert’s persistence in promoting false information about Article 14 shows his lack of sincerity in his “gratitude” to Pastor Baudler for catching his “error.”
The precise wording matters here. Article 14 states: “Concerning church government it is taught that no one should publicly teach, preach, or administer the sacrament without a proper call.” Note the adverb “publicly.” It modifies the actions of preaching and administering the sacraments. What Wengert did is insert the adjective “public” before the noun “call.” To claim the Reformers sought to establish a “public call” of ministry might imply falsely that they intended to establish an ecclesial office or Amt that is constitutive of the church.[10]
There’s more. Wengert’s misrepresentations of public ministry in the Reformation era don’t end there. He also claims that “all the leaders of the evangelical movement were duly called pastors and preachers of the existing church,”[11] thus implying an ecclesial office from which authority for ordained ministry derives. To the contrary, as German Luther scholar Dorothea Wendebourg, among many others, notes:
“[I]n the secular territories and cities the government of the Church lay to a considerable extent in the hands of the secular authorities, i.e., the princes and the city councils. Visitations, ecclesiastical patronage, monastic reforms and many other activities were carried out here to a considerable extent by the secular authorities and not – or only nominally or in the context of initiatives by the secular prince – by the bishop.”[12]
Wengert was surely aware of these facts but chose instead to present a view of Reformation history that conformed to his biases.[13]
In 1956 Theodore Tappert worried about “the Lutheran clerical drift towards episcopalianism in North America.”[14] He asked: “Is there the beginning of a tendency today to adopt the theology and the practice of a neo-Romantic remythologization which is currently flowering in our environment?”[15]
Although Tappert saw what was coming, it’s doubtful that he foresaw the fraudulent lengths ELCA leaders and professors would go – even altering the Augsburg Confession — to support their drive to establish a sacramental clerical hierarchy within American Lutheranism.
Appendix 1
Wengert on Article 14 in a 2004 lecture to the ELCA Conference of Bishops:
(formerly available at www.elca.org/en/Resources/Plan-for-Mission)
“Third, the important word in CA XIV is ‘[public.]’ This is the eschatological purpose of church government and order: to see to it that what has been whispered in secret is shouted from the rooftops (Matthew 10:27). In fact, the point is so important that both the official German printing of the CA in 1531 and the version printed in 1580 in The Book of Concord repeated the word “public” in the final phrase (shown in brackets above). This emphasis contrasted directly to self-appointed, so-called radical preachers who based their authority solely on themselves and their personal or private, “congregational” calls. Although the Roman authorities often accused Luther and the evangelicals of such usurpation of authority, in fact all the leaders of the evangelical movement were duly called pastors and preachers of the existing church. “The call,” Luther once said at table, “hurts the devil very much.”
Wengert on Article 14 in his 2008 book, Priesthood, Pastors, Bishops, p. 42:
“Third, one very important word in Article 14 is public.This is the eschatological purpose of church government and order: to see to it that what has been whispered in secret is shouted from the rooftops (Matthew 10:27). This emphasis contrasted directly to self-appointed, so-called radical preachers, who based their authority solely on themselves and their personal calls. Although the Roman authorities often accused Luther and the evangelicals of such usurpation of authority, in fact all the leaders of the evangelical movement were duly called pastors and preachers of the existing church. “The call,” Luther once said at table, “hurts the devil very much.”
The highlighted changes:
- Although the first sentences differ slightly, Wengert continued to claim falsely that the word “public” is in Article 14, and it is not.
- The second sentence from Wengert’s 2004 lecture, which begins “In fact. . . .” is deleted in his 2008 book.
Appendix 2
Below is a translation of the remarks of four German professors pointing out the errors of Lindbeck’s (and Wengert’s) claims about rite vocatus in the Reformation. The German text is available online. See pages 467-72. Underlining below has been added for emphasis.
SCHEIBLE: First of all, I would like to thank you for the fact that you did not pronounce an anathema on readers and confessors of Augustana who see the ministry a little more pragmatically than you. I also think that your hermeneutical principle, that the CA wants to be catholic as understood by the Roman Catholic Church, is not sustainable. I would rather interpret the CA according to the practice of their authors. And it must be said first of all that one must distinguish between the call to ministry and ordination. There were many evangelical pastors who were not ordained because they were still too young to be Catholic priests. They were called to the ministry and did not undergo ordination. There were also problems and disputes about the situation. The best-known case is Veit Dietrich, Luther’s student. Melanchthon and Luther considered whether Veit Dietrich should be ordained; and it was explicitly not done. So I would like to think that the rite vocatus refers not to ordination, but to the call to the office of ministry. And then later, at the end of the 1530s, when the ordinations in Wittenberg became customary, if not mandatory, only ordained candidates for a parish or a diaconate were called – and called by whom? The expression ‘state church system’ strikes me as being quite unfortunate and unhistorical; the call was extended in each case by the responsible authorities; this can be, and usually was, the patron; it could theoretically also be the community. And I do not want to give up insisting that the one priesthood of all believers was not abandoned later, because even the ordained Protestant pastor is totally different from the Catholic priest. He (the Protestant pastor) has no special grace, no specially ordained powers. He is a lay person appointed to a specific position. And it is also not correct that sacramental acts can only be done by the ordained. The most famous example is Lukas Cranach’s Wittenberg Reformers’ Altar, where Melanchthon, in your terminology a layman, baptized.
LIEBMANN: I agree in principle with my colleague Scheible. I find it appropriate bring in what was actually done in Augsburg by adding local color. How was rite vocatus understood back then in Augsburg? Since 1524 there had been preachers in Augsburg, no longer from the bishop, no longer from the head of an Order, and no longer by an authoritative patron, but – something totally new – preachers appointed by the city council, without this having being coordinated with one of the authorities just mentioned, as was the case up to then. There are four to be named here: Michael Keller, who was Lutheran-oriented; Urbanus Rhegius, as the first and most important, Stephan Agricola or Kastenbauer – not to be confused with Johannes Agricola – and fourth, the former Carmelite prior, Johannes Rana or “Frog.” All had been called by the city council over time as needed, and they all felt very comfortable about their status as rite vocatus. Since they were also all ordained, the question about ordination was not asked at all. In the Years 1527/28 the big question of the Anabaptists came up and Urbanus Rhegius – the other three were involved – presided at the trial. This trial of the Anabaptists sometimes led in the final analysis so far that the teachings and activities of the Anabaptists were condemned and the Anabaptists themselves were put to death. One of the most important charges of these four men against the Anabaptists was: With what right do you preach? – rite vocatus – by what right? Can you show that the city council has appointed you? No! But then you are not rite vocatus, you endanger the public order, your actions are seditious, and your teaching is wrong anyway. The primary question here was – it seems to me – was the question of the office and not so much the question of ordination. Rite vocatus must be interpreted at least as a defining distinction from the Anabaptists.
REINHARD: Mr. Lindbeck, allow me a layman’s question to your hermeneutic principle. As far as I know, the constitutional judges have also had difficulties with the “strict interpretation” [of the CA as a legal document]; I have some, too. For the secular historian there is evidence that suggests that the return to office in the Augustana is the result of a process of responding to conflicts as they arose; one can perhaps put it succinctly: the fear of Müntzer. And after that the Augustana has a symbolic value, that is, it tells us what gospel is correct; then this reactive process regarding the dispute with Müntzer was providential. And I wanted to ask you whether you imply that with your statements.
SEEBASS: I just wanted to point out that ordination came relatively late in the Lutheran territories. Luther himself had always recognized the sacramental acts of non-ordained theologians. He had, for example, approved of his longtime secretary Veit Dietrich serving as preacher in Nuremberg, and that office surely included administering the sacraments. Veit Dietrich never received ordination or the laying on of hands. It is true that Osiander had already proposed in 1526 that one may, if one day one would have to, appoint clergymen who had not been consecrated by a bishop, who had received the laying on of hands. But the city council had neither then nor later allowed such an ordination. Ordinations were permitted, but always after the candidate was examined by the preachers who appointed the person. Therefore it has never been questioned that in the territories of the Reichstadt the sacraments were rightly celebrated and administered. That’s not the only reason why I have reservations about the presentation of Mr. Lindbeck.
[1] The Book of Concord. The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Eds. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000).
[2] The text as it appears on page 46 of the Book of Concord, First Printing. Bolding added here and below for emphasis.
[3] Timothy J. Wengert, “The End of the Public Office of Ministry in the Lutheran Confessions,” Resource paper, p.3. Text revised and reprinted in Timothy J. Wengert, Priesthood, Pastors, Bishops. Public Ministry for the Reformation and Today. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 2008) 33-53, here 42.
[4] Wengert, Priesthood, Pastors, Bishops, 12.
[5] ELCA Constitution ¶10.81.01.
[6] See Mark Menacher’s review of Wengert, Priesthood, Pastors, Bishops, in Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology, 19:4 (Reformation 2010)48-51; here 51: “The German text of AC XIV in the BSLK plainly reads ohn ordentlichen Beruf with no reference to or insertion of “[public]” in any form. Only if one rummages around in the notes to AC XIV in BSLK (69) can one find a variant reference to “public call” (offentlichen Beruf), which is probably a misreading of ordentlichen. For those able to access the BSLK, Wengert’s editorial formulation is a novum of the Kolb-Wengert edition.”(The variant reference comes from a Würzburg manuscript.)
[7] See Kristin T. Baudler, Martin Luther’s Priesthood of All Believers in an Age of Modern Myth (New York: Oxen Press, 2016), who was prompted by the misrepresentations in Wengert’s claims about Lutheran ministry to engage in this rigorous study of Reformation history himself.
[8] Wengert, Priesthood, Pastors, Bishops, 125, footnote 27.
[9] Wengert,42 (emphasis added): “Third, one very important word in Article 14 is public.This is the eschatological purpose of church government and order: to see to it that what has been whispered in secret is shouted from the rooftops (Matthew 10:27). This emphasis contrasted directly to self-appointed, so-called radical preachers, who based their authority solely on themselves and their personal calls. Although the Roman authorities often accused Luther and the evangelicals of such usurpation of authority, in fact all the leaders of the evangelical movement were duly called pastors and preachers of the existing church. ‘The call,’ Luther once said at table, ‘hurts the devil very much.’”
[10] Forde, “The Ordained Ministry,” Called and Ordained. Lutheran Perspectives on the Office of Ministry. Eds Todd Nichol and Marc Kolden (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990) 132-33: “Before we leave the subject of the ordained public office we must enter something of a caveat. Increasingly one hears the claim advanced by those involved in ecumenical dialogues that the ordained public office is ‘constitutive’ of the church. To be faithful to the confessional view one must be quite clear that the office constitutes nothing. Christ is the head of the church and as the sheer giver of all good constitutes the church. The office is constituted by this sheer act of divine giving, not vice versa. The office is simply ministry: service inspired by the divine deed. To say more than that is to confuse the giving and the gift. The delivery of the gift, and, indeed, even a ‘delivery boy’ is quite necessary, but it does not constitute anything.”
[11] Wengert, 42.
[12] Dorothea Wendebourg, “The Reformation in Germany,” Visible Unity and the Ministry of Oversight (London: Church Publishing House, 1997) 49-78, here 50.
[13] At the 450th anniversary celebration of the Augsburg Confession in Augsburg, Germany, George Lindbeck lectured on this issue. See George Lindbeck, “Rite vocatus: Der theologische Hintergrund zu CA 14,” in Confessio Augustana und Confutatio: Der Augsburger Reichstag 1530 und die Einheit der Kirche, Ed. Erwin Iserloh (Münster: Aschendorff, 1980) 454-72. In the discussion following, several professors pointed out the variety of ways in which pastors were called, including by a patron or a city council. Thus the historical evidence goes against Wengert’s claim that “all the leaders of the evangelical movement were duly called pastors and preachers of the existing church” (Wengert, 42). See Appendix 2 below.
[14] Menacher, Logia, 51.
[15] Menacher, Logia, 51, citing Theodore Tappert, “Directions in Lutheran Losses to Other Communions, Lutheran Quarterly 14:2 (Summer 2000) 206-8, especially 208.