Under these conditions, in the era of Lutheran Orthodoxy of the seventeenth-century, Lutheran universities such as Jena and Wittenberg in particular became centers of a Lutheran scholasticism in which purity of teaching was preserved via Aristotelian logic in the writings of the Lutheran dogmaticians of the age. For instance, Gritsch highlights the work of David Hollatz (1648-1713) to illustrate how his dogmatics served to embed authoritative teaching in the church “within an intricate system of ecclesiastical authority culminating in a doctrine of synods.”^[9] According to Hollatz, there is the ecclesia synthetica, the church comprised of those who preach the gospel and administer the sacraments and those who hear and receive them—in other words, the church which is the creation of the Holy Spirit through the means of grace. This is distinguished from the ecclesia repraesentiva, or “representative church” comprised of ministers and church officials who represent the faithful in the church’s governing bodies. Such language was carefully hedged, however, to avoid any identification of the ecclesia repraesentiva with the concepts of the ecclesia docens/ecclesia discens, that is, the “teaching church” and the “learning church” of Roman Catholic understanding and parlance. The ecclesia repraesentiva, rather, was to serve a purely administrative function and could not make declarations iure divino, but was itself governed and obedient to the Word.

In actual practice, the “representative church” which gathered in councils and synods were the judges of what was orthodox in faith and practice “in accord with the Bible.” Such conclaves were co-chaired (we would say) by an ecclesiastical presider (praeses)—the bishop or superintendent—and a political presider, that is, the prince of the territory or his proxy. Particular councils or synods were sometimes assisted by theology professors who served as “expert consultants” during doctrinal controversies. But in tandem, the two praeses formed what was considered to be the magistratus orthodoxus, “the office for right doctrine” in direct charge of the maintenance of doctrine and practice of the faith in the region, something that was often enforced by the power of the secular arm. This arrangement was considered to be congruent with Luther’s argument in his 1539 treatise On the Councils of the Church in which he noted the historical effectiveness of past councils in protecting the church from error, but to whom he denied any authority to create new articles of faith apart from the Word.^[10]

This structure, with minor variations from territory to territory, was the European Lutheran arrangement by which the state church system maintained and supervised teaching in the church. But in the eighteenth-century, Lutheran Pietism, which placed a “religion of the heart” ahead of synods, consistories, princes, and university theologians in terms of authority and authenticity, challenged the teaching and juridical authority of the territorial church. Gritsch assesses that the respective thrusts and parries of Pietism and Lutheran Orthodoxy in connection with teaching authority reflected

Éin an extreme fashion the vicissitudes of a theology based on the distinction of law and gospel. Lutheran Orthodoxy could teach the verbal inspiration of Scripture as the highest doctrinal authority guarded by a legalistic conception of the teaching office; Lutheran Pietism could reject scholastic and juridical expressions of faith altogether in favor of a spiritualistic personal piety as the highest authority in the Church.^[11]

The nineteenth century confessional reawakening experienced in Lutheranism as a result of Klaus Harms’ call to confessional arms in 1817 sparked renewed debate on both sides of the Atlantic about ecclesiastical offices and authority. Did Christ establish an office (Amt) in a juridical sense? The question was answered with a substantial Ja by Wilhelm Löhe and his followers who argued that there was a divinely-ordained sacramental office “climaxing in the episcopacy as the teaching office of the Church.”^[12] A rejoinder of Nein was issued by Johann Höfling and his followers who maintained that the foundation of all official structure in the church was the universal priesthood. And although we could rehearse a long history concerning the course of the debate over this issue in Europe and the United States well into the twentieth-century, the matter has never been truly settled one way or the other for all “Lutheranism.” For after all, the very nub of the problem is, “who speaks for the Lutherans?”

Again, the reason for this ambiguity seems to be vested precisely in the Lutheran confessional position that views all forms of church polity and government as ultimately adiaphora. For although the Lutheran Reformers treasured the unity of the church and desired earnestly to maintain it, nonetheless, as the familiar confessional language of Augustana VII puts it,

It is enough for the true unity of the church to agree concerning the teaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. It is not necessary that human traditions (and here Melanchthon included matters of church polity), rites, or ceremonies instituted by human beings be alike everywhere.

Thus, although Melanchthon stipulated Lutheran willingness (or at least his willingness) to grant a unifying function to the pope under certain conditions, he insisted that this unifying role had to be recognized as a matter of church usage, not divine institution, along with an admission that the Reformers’ understanding of the gospel was catholic.^[13] Subsequent Lutheran history shows that there has never been such a unifying figure or structure for Lutheranism so that throughout the nearly 500 years of Lutheran history, Lutherans have continued to live in separate churches that share in—with varying levels of agreement as we here are all well aware—only a common subscription to the Three Creeds and the Lutheran Confessions.

But what can be said, then, of the individual Lutheran churches and teaching authority? For the sake of time and focus, I am going to ignore what might be said specifically about Lutherans and magisterium in Europe and beyond. For although Scandinavian Lutheranism, for instance, has had an unbroken tradition of episcopal polity, has that or does that include an understanding of a magisterial episcopate iure divino? It would seem not. But let Gustaf Wingren can speak for the Scandinavian Lutherans:

[Ecclesiastical] authority lies primarily in the means of grace themselves. The means of grace do not receive any authority because they are administered by those who have the office, but they possess authority in themselves, because Christ has bound his own presence to them.”^[14]

So, it’s on to America, then, and more familiar territory. Lutheranism in the United States has not had such a long-standing tradition of episcopal oversight as in Sweden. Indeed, the general historical situation and American Protestant ethos of the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, grounded in a firm distrust of overarching authority (whether political or religious), rubbed off on American Lutheran immigrants eager to shed overbearing European authoritarianism. And although Massachusetts under state law maintained the Congregational Church as its established church until the 1830s, the First Amendment’s prohibition of federal establishment of a state church meant that the European Lutheran territorial church structure would not, indeed could not be replicated here. Rather, with a “sense of nonchalant pragmatism” (Gritsch), American Lutherans organized themselves in congregational and synodical structures that reflected American democratic self-rule. In this regard, if I may hazard an outsider’s perspective, it would seem that the relatively recent establishment of the office of bishop in modern American Lutheranism has mostly meant a change in labels from president to bishop, not the admission or practice of a magisterium in the developed sense we saw earlier in our etymological survey.

Indeed, American Lutheranism of every stripe, if looked at broadly, shares a polity that is fairly uniform, although for accuracy’s sake, I will use my own synod’s polity as a case study by which to describe it. The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod [WELS] is a union that is now some 160 years old. While the initial Wisconsin Synod was technically a ministerium, it quickly adopted the kind of polity that was the “rule and norm” of the latter nineteenth-century and which has continued in its essentials down to the present. The local congregation is the basic unit of WELS polity. Presently, WELS congregations are organized into twelve geographic administrative districts that are distributed throughout the United States and Canada. The districts have an elected president who is constitutionally mandated to be from among the parish pastors of the district. The district president is assisted by two vice-presidents (pastors) and a district secretary (pastor or teacher). The district presidents are individually responsible for the supervision of doctrine and practice in their districts, and in assembly together as the Conference of Presidents [COP] are charged with “supervising, maintaining, and strengthening synodical unity of doctrine and practice.”^[15] However, it is the synod in convention that is the WELS’s highest ecclesiastical authority. The WELS’s constitution notes that “The synod in convention shall act as the legislative body of the WELS” and is constitutionally empowered to “establish, review, and amend the policies and the direction of the synod in pursuit of its mission and in recognition of Articles II [the WELS’s confessional subscription statement] and IV [the synod’s mission statement].” Conventions comprised of pastors, teaching ministers, and lay delegates meet biennially. The convention is mandated by the Bylaws to reflect an equal number of lay delegates to pastor/teacher delegates. Our current synodical president, the Rev. Mark Schroeder, serves in accord with the Bylaws “in every way as the synod’s pastor and chief executive officer.” The pastoral aspects of his office are stipulated in terms of doctrinal and practical oversight of the synod’s “operations,” that is, its various programs and ministries, from world and home missions to ministerial training, etc.

Again, such a structure and polity is, I think, essentially the same in all the “larger” Lutheran bodies in the United States, if one makes due allowances for differences in nomenclature and matters of protocol. The fact is, the various churches’ conventions or assemblies represent the highest ecclesiastical authority of the church body with various officials—presidents or bishops—charged with oversight. Do these various structures exercise an authoritative teaching office? Well, who speaks for the Lutherans? It would be presumptuous for me to speak for you with respect to the nuances of your church body’s understanding and confession of the doctrine of the church or its practice. But, if I may continue my use of the WELS as a case study, I can answer “yes”: there is a teaching office—albeit one that is “fluid, variable, and well-dispersed,” to borrow from Quanbeck again—which is exercised from the congregational level up to and including the synodical level. That office is most simply stated as the faithful teaching and preaching of the “whole counsel of God,” both law and gospel, but especially the gospel of Christ, also as that takes place in the administration of His sacraments—the Word made visible. Integral to this teaching office is the maintenance of the truth of the Word against error and the right division of law and gospel in the application of the Word for Christian life. Certainly this office is given into the hands of sinner-saint ministers by virtue of the divine call to the holy ministry; it is committed to them by call and attested to by ordination, so that their authority is derivative: it flows from the Word, not from themselves or their respective offices per se. Perhaps St. Paul’s metaphor is most useful at this juncture in expressing and maintaining this relationship: “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us,” the Apostle says in 2 Corinthians 4:7. The “treasure” is the truth of the Word, especially the gospel. The minister is merely “God’s Tupperwareª, if you will, to whom the treasure of the gospel is given for the ministry, but the minister is not the same as the treasure. Similarly, these additional words of the Apostle are also essential in this discussion: “Now, it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful” (1 Cor. 4:2).

I am certain there would be no dispute here that ordained pastors and those called to the teaching ministry of a Lutheran church body—in my example, the WELS—exercise teaching authority within the scope of their call. I am fairly certain that the same would be said about pastors and theologically trained and ordained individuals who are called to serve in areas of the church’s life that include doctrinal and practical oversight and/or teaching. The district praesidia, synodical president, seminary faculty, etc., all exercise by virtue of their call a valid teaching authority (and responsibility) within the WELS. I believe we would all stipulate that in whatever church body we are, those holding high ecclesiastical office—with respect especially in connection to teaching and upholding the Word—are called to teach faithfully and in accord with the Scriptures and the Confessions, and that in so doing they both exercise legitimate authority and are themselves accountable for the exercise of that authority, ultimately to the very Lord of the Church. I say we can affirm this—the actual execution of that teaching authority in any particular instance is a different discussion which I am not raising here either in the case of my own church body, or that of another.

There is, instead, a different proverbial “elephant in the room” that better demands our attention and consideration. What is the relationship of teaching authority—at the highest ecclesiastical level in a polity like the WELS’s—to the lay delegates of the synod in convention?

Here we are faced, I think, with two important issues. The first is Article XIV of the Augsburg Confession: “No one should teach publicly in the church or administer the sacraments unless properly called.” Melanchthon’s defense of Article XIV in the Apology makes clear that good order is the desired goal of these words, not merely for its own sake, but for the sake of the Word. The rite vocatus (“properly called” – Kolb-Wengert) of the article has been the subject of much discussion, but certainly it is more than merely the dotting of procedural “I’s” and the crossing of ritual “T’s.” It certainly includes the matter that those called to the ministry possess the requisite gifts and abilities for the work. In this regard, we recognize that while individual churches have established criteria of the kinds of qualifications needed for ministry in their contexts, and have set curricula which those called to the ministry must satisfactorily master, nonetheless, Scripture imposes the true sine qua non‘s for those who desire to serve “as overseers” in passages such as 1 Timothy 3:1-7 (“Now the overseer must be above reproach…,” etc.). Not to ignore Paul’s full set of qualifications stipulated there, for the purpose of the present discussion I will focus solely on Paul’s criterion of διδακτικός, “able to teach.” For the sake of time, if I may simply stipulate Paul’s meaning here, he is not highlighting an ability on the part of those called to ministry that is tied to a specific form of pedagogy or other teaching methodology. He is not speaking about whether one is a “good” teacher in terms of being engaging, exciting, or even erudite. (No “Rate My Professors” website categories here!) He is noting that those called to the ministry need to teach the Word faithfully and truthfully. Thus he exhorts Timothy not many verses after this: “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.”

To be rite vocatus, I believe, is to be called in view of one’s approved status as “filling the bill” for ministry. Per our specific focus, this means being approved in terms of being διδακτικός, “able to teach.” What that means in terms of a church’s various forms of ministry may vary: what kind of doctrinal and theological training is necessary for a particular call’s needs? In my church body, we require greater and more thorough theological training of parish pastors than those we call to serve as teachers in Lutheran elementary school settings. Regardless, every answer to these kinds of questions points to why, self-evidently, the Lutheran church has always maintained specific supervision and instruction of those who desire to serve in the ministry.

This is the first issue, then, regarding the exercise of teaching authority at the synodical level: the Confessions restrict teaching authority to those who have been “properly called,” a criterion that includes doctrinal competence sufficient to the scope of the call.

Thus, the second issue, or better, question is: How are lay delegates “properly called” if, indeed, their service at the “highest legislative authority” of the church includes the exercise of teaching authority? If they are legitimate participants in the teaching office of the church, that is, if they are part of the church’s exercise of authority in teaching and defending the truth of the Word, how is, and to what extent is their doctrinal competence ascertained?

You will recognize this question as merely restating in the form of questions some of the concerns the Society has expressed in one of its affirmations attached to the Rule. That full statement reads:

Concerning the Magisterium in the Church: When the teaching office in the Church is suppressed in the name of democratic participation or in the spirit of a North American anti-elitism, when the dynamic discernment of the gifts of the Spirit for the building up of Christ’s body is supplanted by the rigorous application of proportional representation and a false understanding of the priesthood of all believers, then church assemblies become a battle ground in the “culture wars,” and competition between ideologies of the left and the right replace the quest for truth based on Scripture, creeds and Confessions. We affirm Article 14 of the Augsburg Confession which states that no one should publicly teach the Word of God in the churches without a regular call. We believe this call is from God through the Church, properly exercised by bishops, pastors and theologians. We believe that pronouncements on the faith and practice of the Church adopted by assemblies that are dominated by those who have no public teaching office undermine the right use of teaching authority in the Church. And we commit ourselves to work for changes in constitutional documents of church-wide bodies, judicatories, and congregations that give proper place to the teaching office.

In view of all this, how do we navigate these tricky waters? As merely a humble reporter, I will not hazard an answer. I have tried to describe where we have come from in the structures and maintenance of the teaching office. And the specific matter raised concerning lay delegates, I believe, is a critical issue in connection with the exercise of godly teaching authority in the church. While it may seem benign in those situations where lay delegates essentially defer in their decision-making role to “experts” who provide faithful leadership in such issues, this is patently problematic. And, if we raise the spectre of the intrusion of “culture wars” and ideologically-charged issues—sensitive subjects, indeed, in these days—the issue strikes at the heart of theological integrity and faithfulness. The trajectory set in our church bodies by the culture of American self-governance is a genie that is not likely to be put back in the bottle. But this is what we have been asked to discuss. So, as we do so, it is my prayer that we first take comfort in the assurance that the Lord is in His heavens and rules all things for the good of His Body, the church, and that we affirm in our individual calls to remain faithful teachers of the faith entrusted once for all to the saints (Jude 3).