Thursday Theology: Thoughts on Werner Elert and a Brief Announcement

Co-missioners, 

Our editor has thoughts to share and an announcement to make. 

Peace and Joy, 
The Crossings Community

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Back to the Basics 

by Jerome Burce 

I returned to my roots this week. I mean “roots” as in theological roots, which lie for me in the Lutheran confessions on the one hand and the work of Werner Elert on the other.  

Werner August Friedrich Immanuel Elert (19 August 1885 – 21 November 1954) was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of both church history and systematic theology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. His writings in the fields of Christian dogmatics, ethics, and history have had great influence on modern Christianity in general and modern Lutheranism in particular.

Elert was a German theologian who died when I was still a toddler, though not before my future teacher, Ed Schroeder, had spent a summer sitting through one of his classes at the University of Erlangen. Ed would later devote his own labors as a theological professor to inculcating Elert’s insights into the lesser likes of me and the folks I went to school with at Seminex in the mid- to late-1970s. Our textbook in Ed’s ethics class was Elert’s The Christian Ethos, a less than happy translation of Das Christliche Ethos that Fortress Press published in 1957. It was already out of print when I signed up for Ed’s class in 1975. No matter. I and other students had to scramble to borrow copies wherever we could find them. Was it worth it? Yes. Unreservedly so. 

As was my introduction to Elert’s Der Christliche Glaube, or in English, The Christian Faith. Ed’s older and revered colleague, Bob Bertram, assigned this as the text for one of his essential classes in systematic theology. Bob’s father, Martin H. Bertram, had translated it from the German expecting that the Missouri Synod’s Concordia Publishing House (CPH) would issue it. Came Missouri’s theological struggles of the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s. When the dust settled with J.A.O. Preus in charge, the project was cancelled. Elert had failed to support the party line about biblical inerrancy as the grounds of scriptural authority, insisting on another—and yes, better—approach to the question of why Scripture should be trusted. [1] Those of us who attended Seminex as English-only speakers got to see this alternative reasoning. That’s because CPH had permitted the printing of a fixed number of mimeographed versions of the Martin Bertram translation as augmented by Walter R. Bouman. This came to 319 pages of text on 160 pages of standard American paper (eight and a half by eleven inches), assembled and bound with coiled plastic spines. Anyone who still remembers the old mimeograph process will appreciate how much labor this involved. To this day I can’t thank God enough for those who undertook that labor. The copy I purchased in 1975 is still on my shelves within very easy reach. It’s the rarest book I own. 

Nearly as rare, though not quite, is a forty-eight page booklet by Elert called Law and Gospel. Fortress Press published it in 1967 as part of its Facet Book series. Ed Schroeder was the translator. He did a better job with Elert’s German than others have. The booklet was still readily available during my student days. By now it’s been out of print for decades. A few days ago I found two used copies, one at Amazon and the other at AbeBooks.com. I snatched them both and had them shipped to younger colleagues who won’t have encountered Elert before. Here’s an example of what they’ll read— 

The law erects an insurmountable barrier between the [righteous] and the sinners. Christ tears it down when he, “the Holy One of God,” sits down at table with the sinners and makes them his equals. The evangelists agree completely with Paul that he himself, in his own person, perfectly fulfills the law. But what he here does with sinners goes against the law. This gospel differs from the law, nor merely by “the clarity of its manifestation,” but as day differs from night, as condemnation differs from pardon. They simply cannot be united. Nor is any compromise between them possible. Sinners are either forgiven or recompensed [where “recompensed” means getting what you deserve]. [2] 

Who talks like this in the church today? Who dares to think like this? Illegal Jesus. Dangerous Jesus, as one might say. God vs. God for us and for our salvation. Imagine that. 

For his part, Elert not only imagines this; he also demonstrates how it can and must be so. This is one way of describing the project he undertakes in The Christian Faith. He “necessitates” Christ, to use a favorite phrase of Robert Bertram’s. I had forgotten how magnificently he does this until the other day when I glanced again at his opening chapter—it had been years since the last look—and found him beginning precisely where David Foster Wallace began with Kenyon College graduates in the You Tube video I shared four weeks ago. What we get in that chapter is a vivid description of our human dilemma as incorrigibly self-centered creatures. This daily and inescapable experience emerges in Elert’s treatment as a vague inkling of something out there to which or to whom the word “god” might apply. His ensuing discussion of Christian theology unfolds from that point on.  

The contrast here with the older approach taken by the likes of the Missouri Synod’s Francis Pieper could not be starker. There the discussion gets launched in the clouds, so to speak, with a standard dogmatic assertion about the Bible as “God’s own infallible word and the source and norm of Christian doctrine.” [3] One might well paraphrase: “Breathe deep and swallow hard or go no further.” With Elert, on the other hand, we start our thinking about God on the ground with the incontrovertible evidence of every person’s everyday experience. It’s this that God addresses through the stringency of the Law and the astonishment of the Gospel. So Elert makes plain. 

I was indelibly shaped by Elert’s theological approach. Others who passed through Schroeder’s and Bertram’s classes were too, though not all of them by any means. Are any students at today’s seminaries, whether of the Lutheran right or the Lutheran left, being shaped like this as well, if not directly by Elert, then by other profound theologians who approached their task as he did—at ground level, that is, with ears attuned to the witness of the Lutheran confessions? I’m guessing not. This in part, I suspect, is why it’s gotten so hard to hear the outrageously refreshing promises of God in Christ when one goes to a Lutheran church of a Sunday morning. It’s also, perhaps, why a few younger pastors on the ELCA side of things have found their way to Crossings in recent years. Thanks to Elert as channeled by Bertram and Schroeder and a little clutch of their disciples, they’ve encountered a theological depth and a pastoral richness that simply isn’t available elsewhere. Or so they’ve told me. 

Rev. Robin Lütjohann
Faith Lutheran Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts

One of these younger pastors is the Rev. Robin Lütjohann of Faith Lutheran Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Aside from his main job as pastor, Robin introduces Lutheran students at Harvard Divinity School to the Book of Concord. Of late he’s also been serving on the Crossings board. Two months ago, he began studying for a doctoral degree in systematic theology. 

And as if this weren’t enough, Robin has also recently agreed to join me as co-editor of this weekly exercise called Thursday Theology. Our initial approach will be to take turns, Robin editing or writing one week’s post, I the next week’s. Robin’s first turn at this will be next Thursday, August 7. Two longtime editorial helpers, Carol Braun and Steve Hitchcock, will be standing in the wings with their advice along the way.  

Some of you may have caught Robin’s contributions to Crossings’ Table Talk discussions over the past year, two of which dealt directly with Elert. If you appreciated that—how could you not?—you’re sure to look forward to his contributions in this venue. 

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I wrap things up with one more snippet from Elert. This comes from the introductory chapter of The Christian Faith. I found it while scanning a draft of a new translation by the late Robert C. Schultz, a contemporary of Ed Schroeder for whom Elert was not only a teacher but also a doctoral advisor. Bob started retranslating Der Christliche Glaube in the very early 2000s. Thirty-five years earlier he had translated The Theology of Martin Luther by Elert’s Erlangen colleague, Paul Althaus. [4] Bob died in 2018. By then he had completed a first draft of Elert’s book and polished the first few chapters. Assisting him with the project was an early Seminex graduate, Richard Jungkuntz. Rich—thanks be to God—has continued to work toward getting the project completed. A few of us at Crossings are talking with him about how to facilitate this. We would love to have the work available for all of you to read and study. Here is Elert’s one-sentence summary of what you will encounter there— 

As I see it, the most important reality for any Christian whether in life or in death consists in knowing: 1) that we must explain ourselves to god, and that we cannot justify ourselves; and 2) that in this situation, Christ and Christ alone is our justification in our relationship to god. 

(Why is “god” in lower case here? That will have to wait until the translation gets issued. Soon, God grant!) 

Jerome (Jerry) Burce 
Hereafter Co-editor, Thursday Theology 

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Endnotes 

[1] Elert puts it like this: “We can experience the authority of the Scripture only in terms of its actual content. For example, we do not believe in Christ because we have previously accepted the formal authority of the Scripture. Rather, Scripture becomes an authority for us only because it bears witness to Christ.” This would have curled the hair of Missouri’s inerrantists.  

[2] Werner Elert, Law and Gospel, tr. Ed H. Schroeder (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967) p. 25 

[3] Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1950), vol. 1 p. 3. 

[4] Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, tr. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1966).