Address by Karl Barth
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Address by Karl Barth at the 2005 Concordia Historical Institute Awards Banquet

Reprinted by permission

Seven years, almost to the day, I was privileged to speak at your Awards Banquet on behalf of all those being honored. Please excuse me if I add a little P.S. to my words at that time.

I closed with a quotation from Charles Philip Krauth in an article he wrote in the Evangelical Review over 150 years ago. Complaining of our tendency as Lutherans to seek the approbation of others, he said in part, "Too ignorant have we been of our own doctrines, and our own history, too little have we known of the fountain from which we sprang…Shame that it has to be so!...Let us go back to our father's house, let us see what it has, make ourselves acquainted with its structure and furniture, let us sit down at its table and partake of its viands. They will better suit our appetite than the crumbs which we have gathered elsewhere."

I thought of those words when I read Alan Wolfe's comments in a May 2004 issue of US News and World Report. Wolfe is a Boston College political scientist, and his complaint is that "evangelicals are far more shaped by the culture than they are capable of shaping it to their needs." Pointing by way of example to the "megachurches" he wrote, "The priority is to get them in, but to do that you downplay the Christian symbolism: you take the crosses off the church; you put a MacDonald's franchise in the lobby." Sometimes," he says, "you don't even know you are in church." The net result is that "the faithful are remarkably like everyone else." You can just imagine Krauth nodding his head.

And then, just a couple of months ago, an article in Newsweek (Sep. 5, 2005) put it all in focus with the shocking news that even evangelicals are apparently becoming "remarkably like everyone else." Unless the results were skewed by the way the question was asked, a recent survey seems to indicate that 6% of evangelicals no longer believe that the only way to the Father is by Jesus the Christ. Therein lies a wake-up call for all of Christendom, certainly also for The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. We too need to sit up, take notice of the inroads of 21st century culture, quit flirting with the cheap theatrical techniques of the "market driven," "felt needs," "give ‘em what they want" philosophy which threatens the preservation of our precious patrimony, and, as Krauth advised, "go back to our father's house."

With that said, I should like to have you join in going back, especially to my grandfather's "house," to see some examples of how God works in history through people and even through the trials which He permits His children to experience.

My grandfather, Gustav Adolph Barth, was born in Giesmannsdorf, Silesia, in 1844. He intended to become a Glassmahler, a painter on glass, and during his apprenticeship stayed with a family named von Pellnitz. At the time grandfather belonged to the state church, but, as the sainted Dr. August Suelflow pointed out in our 150th anniversary history video, the established church at that time had discarded almost everything distinctively Christian.

It was in the von Pellnitz home that grandfather was brought to Christ. More than that, he was led to the study of the ministry and attended the pre-seminary training in Steeden under Pfarrer Brunn, then came to this country in 1866, and because the students from Fort Wayne during those days were transferred to St. Louis, he came here to study and graduated in 1869.

Just think of the consequences of the von Pellnitz testimony to my grandfather, not only to his life and ministry but the consequences for the generations who followed. My father became a pastor, as did two of his sons. My uncle, father's brother, did likewise. So did his son and his grandson. Those seven people have served in the Lutheran ministry for a total of 360 years. Those ministries overlap, but if you lay them out separately, they become the equivalent of continued Gospel preaching since 1645! And all, under God, because two pious Christians shared their faith with a young Glassmahler.

That's hardly the end of the story. How did Grandpa and Grandma meet? She was a deaconess and served under Pastor Loehe at Neundettelsau in Bavaria. She was engaged to be married to one of Loehe's Sendlinge [young men prepared and sent as missionaries to America] and promised to follow him a year after his departure to America to complete his studies. When she arrived here, however, she learned that her young man had met another was already married. Think of it! If one rescued from hurricanes Katrina and Rita has had to make many adjustments when transplanted to Massachusetts or Wisconsin, think of what it must have been like for a young German woman to find herself in a strange country, speaking a strange language and without family or friends for support!

But God works in history through people. In this instance he used Friedrich August Craemer, founder of the missionary colony in Frankenmuth, who was president of the seminary in Fort Wayne and came to St. Louis when the two seminaries were temporarily combined, an action which President Wenthe jokingly refers to as "the Babylonian Captivity of the church."

According to my father, it was Craemer who found a job for Grandma at the orphanage in Des Peres, which by the way was the first orphanage of any kind west of the Mississippi. And then – yes, you guessed it – Craemer introduced Margarethe Kamm to Gustav Adolph Barth, and the two were later united in holy matrimony.

It is a lovely story, but it took a tragic twist in the year 1880, when Grandpa was serving in a congregation in Pella, Wisconsin, not far from Shawano in that state. The Barth's had four children, but all four, the oldest not quite six years of age and the youngest just 1?, died within seven days of diphtheria, once again I am dependant on verbal history for the following. My father told me that the children died while Grandpa was at a meeting in Milwaukee in connection with the Predestination Controversy.

Incidentally, there is extant a letter Dr. Walther sent Grandfather regarding that controversy. And in the lovely volume, Walther speaks to the Church, there is another letter from Walther, written at the time of the children's death and comparing my grandparents with Job and his wife.

Dr. Walther shows his pastoral heart when he writes, "After reading your dear letter of the 8th of this month, which I received today with its heart-rending news, I am deeply moved, and I must tear myself away from everything else, no matter how urgent, to assure you that you have brothers who weep and lament with you." Later he says, "It is very evident that God wants to make a real theologian out of you, therefore He matriculates you in the graduate school of His kingdom, the school of severe tribulations." As for tears, Walther says, "But weep! You would have no parental love if you could restrain your tears, of which the Son of God was not ashamed at the grave of Lazarus. However, I hope that in time your tears will flow less copiously and will often change over into tears of joy for the glory in which you know all your dearly beloved children to be."

The long letter closed with these words, "Who knows how soon we too must close our eyes here, so that we can open them there, where we shall see with amazement the loved ones who have gone before us, embrace them, and then cultivate an eternal fellowship with them, which no woe can disturb and no death can end." God used Walther not only for the many other tasks of his presidency but also to comfort a sorrowing pastor and his wife.

Like Job, who had seven more to replace those who had died, Grandpa and Grandma had four more. And the second four were the same as the first four – three boys and a girl.

I have often wondered if there would have been four more if the first four had lived. Perhaps my father and his siblings would have come along anyway. But would my father, who then would have been the fourth son instead of the eldest son, been led into the ministry? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

What happened to my dear grandparents is by no means unique. God has worked in history through people and used both good and bad experiences for His blessed purposes. A little slave girl speaks simply to her mistress, "If only my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria! For he would heal him of his leprosy." And Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, is not only healed physically but promises the prophet that he will no longer sacrifice to other sons but only to the Lord.

Jealous brothers sell their young sibling into slavery, and the young lad is thrown into prison for a crime he did not commit. Yet the final word is, "God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive." God works in history through people.

"Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" is the question of Nathanael. Philip doesn't argue. He simply says, "Come and see," and so yet another kneels before the Savior to confess, "Rabbi, You are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel."

Indeed, it is God's own Son through whom we see God's crowning work in history, laying the sins of all the world upon Him, then giving us His good Spirit, by whose power in Word and Sacrament we have been made His forevermore!

Yes, God works in history, and who knows what pleasant surprises await us as God continues to work in history, even through us!

Soli Deo Gloria