Interesting things I ran across in Hoenecke

Some interesting things I found in the 4th volume of Adolf Hoenecke's Dogmatics:

1. He is a receptionist, but his argument, though speculative, is compelling for anyone who rejects substance ontology. He equates Wesen with einsetzungsmaessig Akt. The nature of the Lord's Supper is in the act according to the institution. What then is substantial to the act and what is accidental? Hoenecke never reintroduces this Aristotelian terminology, but he functions in such categories. He gives a list of what is necessary. I would reproduce it here, but I left my volume back in St. Louis and the text isn't yet on Google Books. Hoenecke, along with Quenstedt (who, as it turns out, was a receptionist), includes more than just the Word and the elements. Reception is part of the act and the act is included in the Wesen. The Formula includes reception as a sine non qua for Lord's Supper, but it never spells out this act-ontology.

So, the point is that if you include in einsetzungsmaessig--and link einsetzungsmaessig to ontology--anything other than what the Small Catechism includes (namely, the Word and the elements) you appear to do so arbitrarily. Is it necessary that the presider be a man? What is essential and what is accidental?

Here Hoenecke is inconsistent. One of the things he lists as necessary is the benedictio --"this cup of blessing which we bless." However, he can't really identify what the benedictio is. It isn't the verba, he contends. He appeals to the tradition that the benedictio is the Lord's Prayer, but he can't prove this authoritatively. So, he drops the issue and appeals to the power of God's Word in the word's of institution.

This is all from memory, so check me on this.

2. Hoenecke holds that the office of the ministry is divinely instituted. How did the Wauwatosa people get this so wrong?

Quote from a foreward to Hamann's "Golgatha und Schlebimini! von einer Prediger in der Wueste"

Perhaps I'll translate this later, but I'm feeling lazy tonight. I'll give you the first sentence in English: Hopefully, every reader knows Golgatha.

Den Golgatha kennt hoffentlich jeder Leser. Dieser Berg der Erniedrigung und der Schmerzen, zugleich der Versoenung und des Heils, scheidet unuebersteiglich das Judenthum und das Christenthum von einander, und kann durch keinen mendelsohnischen Philosophismus abgetragen oder ueberhuepft werden.

Today, in view of Zizek, one could replace "mendelsohnischen" with "hegelischen." Although, the same could have been said at earlier times in different contexts.

Hamann on Church Music

The holiness of the church service does no harm. One may consider her music as miserable as one will; it is not her intention to commend herself to men. Why should she who wants to be worthy to be a maid in the house of her Lord court mortal tastes when the Highest looks upon her lowliness and lets himself be moved thereby?

Does God care for the bulls and calves of our lips? He who is pleased with the voice of the ravens when they call out to him, and who can prepare the mouth of sucklings to be the herolds of his renown, prefers the sincerity of a suffocated sigh --of a held-back tear-- to the subtle righteousness of euphony and the suet of the choir.

Johann Georg Hamann: A greater Feyerabend before Feyerabend

Check out this quote from Sokratische Denkwuerdigkeiten: Whoever doesn't believe Moses and the Prophets becomes forever a poet against his own knowledge and will.

Kliefoth cuts to the quick...

in the third part of the first of his eight volumes entitled "Liturgical Essays" [Liturgishe Abhandlung]. Check out this very rough translation of the first page. And watch Kliefoth play the Polonius ("without getting specifically into this let me get specifically into what I won't get specifically get into") And yes...the last sentence is all one sentence. Any ideas about how to chop this up into respectable English?

The ritual order [Anordnung] of ordination is condition by the concept and significance of ordination, and this by the concept and significance of the Office of the Church.
Recently, a profound difference has emerged within the Lutheran Church over the doctrine of the Office. This cannot be the place to go specifically into this difference. Admittedly, however, we will have to take our position in regard to this impending question: our pursuit of the matter will sufficiently lay out how we do this, why we do this the way we do it. Superfluously we want to confess beforehand, that the position which conceives the Office of the Means of Grace as a product and arrangement of the common priesthood of all Christians, which only allows for the Lord to have established a function of the administration of the Means of Grace, but not a certain ministry entrusted to certain person, according to which opinion [welcher- antecedent?] the mandate of the administration of the means of grace is not given to the Church as to a membered body with the provision that it must have a office for this, but rather is given to the congregregation [Gemeinde], that the congregation may at its discretion and expediency form an office from itself, and which opinion consequently views the congregation as the bearer of the office of the means of grace and the pastor as mandatary of the congregation –that we cannot go into this position or the circle of opinions about Church and the Office of the Church that in part undergird this position and in part result from it.

The true evangelical use of the Scriptural doctrine on the reward of good works

First, it is important to note that Franz Pieper gives "the reward of good works" its own heading and treats "the great worth of good works" seperately (Bd. III, pg 64ff.) These doctrines are responses to two different errors, and they drive different preachments. Both contain admonition, but the former is particularly consoling. And this is its use, to console those who suffer and to encourage those who are weak or wish to look back once having put the hand to the plow.

Pieper concludes "the reward of good works" with a lengthy Luther quote, in which Luther takes on the subject in the Bergpredigt and Matthew's Gospel as a whole. Luther, interestingly, is reluctant to broach the subject, but admits that he can't ignore it since it comes up so frequently in Scripture. It raises a sharp question that belongs more to the schools of the learned than to the pulpit before the simple. He says that one must first distinguish between grace and reward. Where one speaks of grace one may not speak of reward and vice-versa, but the real distinction here is between grace as unmerited favor, justification, eternal life, heaven, and all other gifts, which while given nevertheless correspond to that which one is given to do, such as suffer with sin.
The world tightens around you because your flesh, the devil, and the world hang on you. In the face of this we might despair and say, "Who wants to be a Christian, preach, and do good works?" Well, God has promised you rewards in this life and the life to come. It's his promise that matters here and not the "worth" of your works. The "worth" of works has to do with the neighbor. This is Gospel, however, that God has promised rewards here and in the age to come. Everything banks on this. There's comfort in the promise. The works themselves are still stained with sin (a point that Pieper is quick to make). Don't look to them but to the promise. It's the promise and not your works that you hold before God. Endure the suffering. Do what you are given to do.

Does ministry ever exist in the abstract?

I was recently given a first edition of Walther's "Die Stimme unserer Kirche in der Frage von Kirche und Amt." I began reading through the theses on the ministry and noticed a glaring omission. Under the testimonies of the confessions for the second thesis there was no discussion of whether the Predigtamt refered to in AC V is in abstracto or in concreto. That this distinction is fundamental for Walther's case against Grabau is evident in the fact that he gives this attention in later editions. http://books.google.com/books?id=2XQrAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=die+Stimme+unserer+Kirche+in+der+Frage#v=onepage&q=&f=false

While the distinction helps make an effective point against the claim that there can be no congregation of the faithful without a pastor, the distinction is unfortunate. It is certainly Platonic. How can one have a leibliches Wort without a Leib? Ministry never happens in the abstract. That it happens at all requires that it be concrete. Someone must be speaking. So, while we cannot say that there can be no congregation without a pastor, we ought to take it seriously as a possiblity. I think we can say, "Where there are no pastors for long, there will be no congregation." There is an urgency here.