First President of The Lutheran Church-MissouriSynod: 1847-1850 & 1864-1878

C.F.W. Walther was educated at the University of Leipzig, after which he tutored for the Loeber family in Cahla from 1833 to 1837. He was ordained on 15  January 1837 and briefly accepted a parish in Braeunsdorf, before sailing to America in 1839 with the Saxon Immigration. In 1878, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from Capital University in Columbus, Ohio.

On 21  September 1844 he married Emilie Buenger (1812-1885), also one of the original Saxon immigrants.

For forty-six years Walther was the pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in St. Louis. He also taught at Concordia Seminary,St. Louis, from 1850 until his death. He served as the president of the Synod from its founding in 1847 to 1850. In 1864 he was again elected president and served until 1878.

• For more biographical information on Walther  read this.
• For more information on Walther as Pastor at Trinity Lutheran, and some interesting historical videos regarding Trinity and Walther, go here.

Walther has been called “The Martin Luther of America”.  I do not think this assessment is inaccurate.  As Pastor, President and Professor he had a great influence upon one of the largest Lutheran Church bodies in the United States.  But ‘his’ influence was only from the book he is  probably pointing to in the picture above:  The Holy Scriptures.

Whoever thinks that he can find one error in Holy Scripture does not believe in Holy Scripture but in himself; for even if he accepted everything else as true, he would believe it not because Scripture says so but because it agrees with his reason or with his sentiments.

His most influential book is The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel , the series of 39 evening lectures of his 25 Theses regarding this crucial Biblical understanding to his  seminarians between Friday, September 12, 1884 and Friday, November 6, 1885 and it was published posthumously .   The lectures were based upon great Reformation insight confessed in The Apology of the Augsburg Confession:

“All Scriptures should be divided into these two chief doctrines, the law and the promises.For in some places it presents the Law, and in others the promise concerning Christ, namely, either when [in the Old Testament] it promises that Christ will come, and offers, for His sake, the remission of sins justification, and life eternal, or when, in the Gospel [in the New Testament], Christ Himself, since He has appeared, promises the remission of sins, justification, and life eternal.  Moreover, in this discussion, by Law we designate the Ten Commandments, wherever they are read in the Scriptures.  ” (Article IV. Justification)

Law and Promise (Gospel) do two different things:  the Law shows us our sin and the Gospel points us to our Savior.  If we mix up Law and Promise we have what goes for much of Christian religion:  then we just have to do what we can and God will do the rest, but since sin is death, then it would be like telling Lazarus:  just want and try to live and I’ll do the rest! No!  Jesus Christ called him out of the tomb by His Word…and you and I!  Luther called distinguishing Law and Promise a great, difficult and high art.  Walther contributed to this art mightily.  His lectures have been called “uncreative”.  I thank God for Walther’s uncreativity.  He was no hero but he was faithful to the Scripture and their true exposition in The Book of Concord which was immensely unpopular in 19th Century Protestant America.  Like Lydia, he was considered faithful. 

I came across this meme below  recently.  It’s funny.  He was not handsome. Yes, I agree with the meme…to a point, this point: There is no luck in the Kingdom of God, only the Lord’s sheer grace for sinners.  Yes and thank God for that! The statue of Walther in his mausoleum on the south side of St. Louis, shows him standing and his hand resting on two books: the Bible and the Book of Concord.  The  Lord raises up men to preach and teach the Word of God so it may heard in our day:  May the Lord ever do so! May the Church be so blessed with faithful preaching and teaching!

Arise, you Lutherans of America! Arise! Let us use the glorious freedom that we taste here in America to the end that the old banner of confession, which in our old fatherland lay in musty [ruin], be hoisted here again. And let us gather around this banner as a faithful and courageous people of confession. Let us renew today the old oath of loyalty that we Lutherans have recited already at our confirmation. Let our teachers in church and school be sworn to that oath! Let us examine and correct everything, which we hear and read, next to God’s Word, according to this confession. Finally, let us only work and fight in rank and file with those who are prepared to follow this banner. The storms of the world and the false brothers may rain upon us. They will not rend asunder our banner, but only more fully and broadly unfurl it before the eyes of all the world. In the Old World, my brothers, it is evident that the sun, which once rose in Augsburg and upon the Bergen Cloister, the sun of the pure Gospel, is setting. Many true Lutherans in the Old World look with longing and hope to our young American Lutheran Church, which though it is small, is free. And because she is free, she is, before others, called to salvage and rescue the pure Gospel here in the New World in these last times, that holy relic entrusted to our Church.O arise! Arise, American Lutheran Zion, and let there be light! You, her watchmen, forward! Lay hold the holy banner and hold it high and swing it joyously! All of you, you children of this Zion, man and wife, old and young, follow those who show themselves true bearers of the flag! 0 take heart and be joyful! The Lord, who is a God of truth, is with us! By that sign we shall conquer, though all powers of darkness in midnight hour plot against us and rise against us on the battlefield. The battle will rage hot and ever hotter! Finally, we, persistent to the end—and grant this to us Jesus Christ, Thou Leader in the fight!—we will be taken in triumph into the congregation above, to the eternal festival of jubilation. Amen.

—C. F. W. Walther, from The Treasury of Daily Prayer (CPH)