I saw this post on Confessional’s Bytes. He quote Walther at length about the need to stand up for the whole of God’s Word, not giving up any point of doctrine to bring about peace or unity. This is an important thing for us to remember as the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod begin to work towards unity that has divided us. Please go to Confessional’s Bytes to read the whole post. In the mean time, here’s just a snippet.
“When a theologian is asked to yield and make concessions in order that peace may at last be established in the Church, but refuses to do so even in a single point of doctrine, such an action looks to human reason like intolerable stubbornness, yea, like down-right malice. That is the reason why such theologians are loved and praised by few men during their lifetime. Most mean rather revile them as disturbers of the peace, yea, as destroyers of the kingdom of God. They are regarded as men worthy of contempt. But in the end it becomes manifest that this very determined, inexorable tenacity in clinging to the pure teaching of the divine Word by no means tears down the Church; on the contrary, it is just this which, in the midst of greatest dissension, builds up the Church and ultimately brings about genuine peace. Therefore, woe to the Church which has no men of this stripe, men who stand as watchmen on the walls of Zion, sound the alarm whenever a foe threatens to rush the walls, and rally to the banner of Jesus Christ for a holy war!…C.F.W Walther
