A History of Luther Seminary: 1869-2019

By Mark Granquist

Church historian and Luther faculty member Mark Granquist provides a new and comprehensive history of Luther Seminary just in time for the celebration of the institution's 150th anniversary (1869-2019). Luther Seminary today is the product of the merger of number of seminaries over time. Granquist's search of Luther's past will provide an inside look at how Lutheran ministry was defined and formed. The path runs through the early university system, Orthodoxy, Pietism, and Rationalism, as well as the formation of Mission schools, and the beginnings of Lutheran theological education in North America. Granquist explores the confessional Norwegian Synod as well as the pietist Haugean tradition--the two bookends or twin traditions that would define and eventually become Luther Seminary. Chapters 4-6 explore each primary strand that formed the history of Luther. Chapter 7 focuses on unification and merger, concluding with the ELCA merger in 1988. The final chapter looks at more recent history, including internal unification, the challenges faced by the ELCA, and the major shifts in theological education in the early 21st century. Includes a gallery of photos chronicling Luther's history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Release date: Dec 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781506456638

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Index

Introduction

On the surface, the need for this book is fairly obvious. Luther Seminary has been around now, in one iteration or another, for 150 years, and as a major Lutheran and Protestant seminary in the United States, it is worth an updated history at this point. The fact that a narrative history of the seminary has not yet been written is itself another impetus for proceeding, as is the point that its history is an interesting story in and of itself and should be told. But these are rather pedestrian reasons to write a book such as this. Rather, the history of Luther Seminary is an integral part of the broader story of American Lutheranism and an important part of American religious history, especially the development of Protestant theological education within this larger narrative. So this book will not only tell the story of Luther Seminary and its people but also place its history within the context of these larger movements.

This work will trace the story of Luther Seminary from its beginnings in 1869 to its 150th year in 2019. The current title of the institution, Luther Seminary, will at times be used anachronistically, because the seminary is, in fact, an amalgamation of a number of predecessor institutions that have been merged at various points and times, mainly (but not exclusively) out of the broader world of Norwegian American Lutheranism; in its present form the seminary dates from its last merger in 1982. But even the beginning date of the seminary, 1869, is rather arbitrary. One could trace this history back to 1855 with the first, short-lived attempt of the Eielsen Synod to establish a seminary, or to the founding of a Norwegian-language professorate at Concordia Seminary in 1859, or to the Augustana Seminary of the Scandinavian Augustana Synod in 1860. The year 1869 marks the withdrawal of the Norwegian professor August Weenaas and his Norwegian American students from Augustana Seminary to found Augsburg Seminary and has been generally noted as the beginning of Luther Seminary, at least in continuity with the present institution.

This history is roughly chronological, beginning with a brief overview of the Lutheran traditions in theological education, especially in North America, as a means of situating the narrative of Luther Seminary within this context. Chapters 2 and 3 attempt to give some definition to the sometimes bewildering early history of Norwegian American Lutheranism and its initial attempts at theological education. The second chapter examines the two ideological bookends of this tradition, the low-church Eielsen Synod and the Haugean tradition, and its opposite, the Norwegian Synod, representing the formal, confessional group much in harmony with the Church of Norway. Chapter 3 returns to pick up the story of the Norwegian American Lutheran center, with the beginnings of Augsburg Seminary in 1869 and the formations of the United Norwegian Lutheran Church in 1890 and the United Church Seminary to 1917. Chapter 4 continues the history of Luther Seminary from the Norwegian American Lutheran merger of 1917 through to 1963. The fifth chapter resumes the history of Augsburg Seminary from its breakaway in 1893, through the formation of the Lutheran Free Church in 1897, to its end in the merger in 1963 that formed the American Lutheran Church. Chapter 6 then begins with the story of the founding of the Northwestern Lutheran Theological Seminary in 1922, the only part of the current institution that does not have its roots in Norwegian American Lutheranism, and takes this narrative to 1982. The seventh chapter resumes the history of Luther Seminary in 1963 at the time when Augsburg Seminary joined it, continues through its merger with Northwestern in 1982, and concludes with the merger that created the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1988. The final chapter completes the history of Luther Seminary to its 150th year in 2019.

As can be seen from the preceding description, the history of Luther Seminary has been full of mergers and other institutional rearrangements. Set in the larger context of American Lutheranism, and especially the labyrinthine history of nineteenth-century Norwegian American Lutheranism, this narrative could easily be overwhelmed by the institutional details of seminary and denominational mergers, schisms, and new formations. This history will endeavor to keep such details of institutional formation and rearrangements to a minimum, to provide the necessary outlines of this history without overwhelming the reader with too much detail. The bibliography at the end of this work can direct the reader to more details about these events, should they be desired. Hopefully this rather complicated history will be clear enough in the pages of this work.

Trying to condense the 150-year history of Luther Seminary into a single book of this size is a challenge, and there were many good stories that simply could not be told within the confines of this present work. This is obviously the history of an institution, Luther Seminary, but it hopes not to be an institutional history. Rather, the intended focus is on the history of the people who themselves have constituted these institutions—the faculty, staff, and students who comprised the seminary communities themselves and their supporters in the Lutheran denominations who made such institutions possible. This book, too, is a work of history, of the history of Christianity in this time and place. Some might object that there is not enough of the history of Christian theology in this work, and that perhaps is a fair complaint. But though the history of theology does have an important role in this story, it is not the key element of the narrative. Rather, this is primarily a history of Lutheran theological education in North America, through the lens of a single institution, and especially through the people who made this institution possible.

There are many themes that recur through this narrative, but overall it seems that the most prominent are the twin themes of challenge and response. The establishment of this institution of theological education by nineteenth-century immigrants and its continuation by their descendants has been a constant struggle, not only on the financial and logistical end, but also because of ongoing questions of mission and identity. The story is not just how these experiments in theological education have been established and continued but, perhaps more importantly, why they did what they did. The transition from Europe to the United States in the nineteenth century, the shifts in language and acculturation to the mainstream of American society in the twentieth century, and the shifting contours of American religion in the twenty-first century have all been an immense challenge to the community of Luther Seminary. The pages of this history show how the people of the Luther Seminary community met these ongoing challenges and their attempts to innovate and develop a sustainable and meaningful form of theological education in light of the challenges and opportunities they encountered.

The writing of this history has been made possible by many different individuals and groups. Support for this work has been provided in part by Luther Seminary, especially through the auspices of President Robin Steinke and Vice President of Seminary Relations Heidi Droegemueller. The archivist at Luther Seminary, Paul Daniels, and the staff of the seminary library have been extremely helpful in the research for this volume, as have been those whose previous research and historical writing undergird this work. The people at Fortress Press, including Will Bergkamp, Scott Tunseth, and especially editor Beth Gaede, have been of immense assistance in bringing this project to conclusion. Faculty colleagues and friends of the author have read chapters and made invaluable suggestions and corrections. Many in the community of Luther Seminary have given great encouragement toward the completion of this work, encouragement that is often priceless during the long periods of solitary drafting, writing, and revision. Of course, great thanks is due to the author’s family, who put up with long periods of writing and research; their dear support is best of all. Many people contributed to the making of this book, although the author alone assumes responsibility for the materials contained therein.

Mark Granquist

Luther Seminary

July 2019

1

The Lutheran Tradition in

Theological Education

The history of one particular theological institution, such as Luther Seminary, is not an isolated narrative. This history comes in a context, a trajectory of theological education that stretches back to the beginnings of the Christian movement. It is important to understand the rise and development of Christian theological education in general, specifically in Western Europe, and more specifically among the Lutheran Protestants. It is equally important to understand the development of theological education in the North American context, and even more the context of American Lutheranism, to see where Luther Seminary fits in the larger narrative. The patterns of piety and education that can be seen in the history of Luther Seminary do owe a great deal to these historical traditions of theological education. 

The Development of Theological Education

in Europe

From its beginnings, the Christian movement relied on recognized leaders both to spread the new teachings about Christ to new audiences and to lead established communities of faith. Jesus Christ himself spent a great deal of his ministry on earth teaching and preaching to his disciples and the crowds that followed him about God and the coming kingdom of God. Jesus also commissioned disciples and apostles as an extension of this teaching and preaching, and sent out the seventy to proclaim the good news (Matt 10:1–16; Luke 10:1–11). The Gospel accounts record Jesus’s explicit instructions to these evangelists as to how they should carry out their tasks. In Acts, the apostolic teaching is spread from Jerusalem by those who had been selected by the Holy Spirit, and the teaching and preaching of the gospel was carried to the wider world through the efforts of evangelists, apostles, and prophets. While Acts follows primarily the ministry of Paul and his companions, many other such leaders and their efforts are also mentioned. A detailed record of Paul’s ministry is seen in the letters he wrote to communities he had founded. The letters show his theological leadership and his work in teaching and preaching to these new Christians.[1]

While Paul, like the disciples and the seventy, was commissioned directly by Christ, the New Testament also records that the early Christians raised up and recognized leaders within the communities both to spread the gospel and to minister to the needs of the local churches. These leaders were called by various titles, including elder, presbyter, bishop, deacon, and pastor, and descriptions of their qualifications can be seen in 1 Timothy 3:1–13 and Titus 1:7–9. Gradually, the terms bishop and deacon were applied to local church leaders, elected from within the community on the basis of their spiritual qualifications and leadership skills—the bishops leading and teaching, while the deacons assisted with service to the community.[2] Gradually, these local leaders begin to take on more prominence in the wider Christian community in place of the spiritual offices such as prophets and evangelists. This trend is accelerated in the second and third centuries because of tensions with spiritual prophets such as the Montanists, who claimed that their direct experience of the Holy Spirit gave them precedence in leadership, even over the Scriptures. In response, the Christian community increasingly emphasized structural elements to define leadership, including the training and qualifications for leaders to lead the local community. This dispute, which William Placher refers to as the tension between spirit and structure, has been a perennial issue when it comes to defining and recognizing Christian leaders.[3]

In some of the larger cities, such as Alexandria and Rome, Christians developed educational schools for teachers and leaders, although most early Christian leaders were still educated within the local Christian communities. These famous catechetical schools were generally intended to provide higher education for Christian intellectuals so they would be able to propound on theological topics and defend the Christian movement against pagan intellectual attacks. In general, Christian leaders were expected to be literate, having received formal education in the classical schools.

Much of the theological education in the early church was a general education of new Christians in the catechumenate, a process by which they were prepared to receive baptism and to enter the Christian community as a full member, including admission to the Lord’s Supper. In some areas of the Christian world, this process of general theological education could be quite lengthy, lasting many months or even several years. This education was required of all, but those who were destined to become recognized leaders in the community did no further formal education, although they might continue to study the specific responsibilities of their new positions. With the dramatic expansion of Christianity in the Roman Empire after Constantine’s official recognition of it, the flood of new Christians overwhelmed the catechetical system, and the length of the catechumenate and its educational requirements were drastically reduced. Infant baptism grew in popularity, and the process of adult catechumenate leading to baptism fell out of favor.

After Constantine

As Christianity developed, especially after the fourth century, many of the local Christian communities, especially in the cities, became too large for the personal pastoral leadership of a single bishop. Rather, multiple worshipping communities (eventually called parishes) were developed within a single location, all in an administrative unit known as the diocese, headed by the bishop. The bishops relied on local presbyters or elders to carry out the ministry within the parishes, and gradually these local leaders were named priests because of their sacramental role, especially in presiding at the Lord’s Supper. The bishops were responsible for the selection of these priests (in consultation with the community) and for their education and formation. The example of Augustine and his community in North Africa shows this pattern as it develops in the Latin West—essentially an apprenticeship model. It was expected that bishops and the leading clergy had a good education from the classical Roman schools, but their theological education was largely tutorial, as was the case with Ambrose, Augustine, and many other Christian leaders and theologians.

The decline of learning and education in the West, especially with the collapse of centralized Roman authority, made theological education difficult. Some teaching and learning continued in the monasteries and around the cathedral or episcopal schools, such as the one established by Alcuin and Charlemagne in the ninth century, but these schools could educate only a limited number of students, and most priests were still trained locally. Standards of educational literacy were generally low, books were not readily available, and many local priests were essentially illiterate. Candidates for the priesthood were taught the Creeds, the Lord’s Prayer, some selected psalms, and the canon of the Mass by rote memorization, usually while apprenticing to a local priest or perhaps the household of the bishop. More formal literary education was maintained in the monasteries, but mainly for the monks themselves. From the seventh to the eleventh centuries, the monasteries in Ireland were particularly known for their education and scholarship, which eventually was spread to other areas of Western Europe.

With the rise of Western universities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a new avenue for formal theological education developed among the theology faculties of these institutions. These faculties were generally independent of the direct control of bishops or religious orders. Some who wished to become priests came to the universities to study theology, and many of them lived in student dormitories established in proximity to the universities by various religious groups and orders, who supervised the students. The new mendicant orders, such as the Dominicans and Franciscans, were primarily involved in university education, training candidates for tasks of preaching and apologetics. The theological training in the universities was generally academic in nature, and pastoral formation was handled outside the classroom. The priests and religious who received such training were generally destined for positions in the upper ranks of the Western church. The large majority of priests during this time still had no formal education whatsoever. Many of the local priests did carry out their ministries with care and devotion, to be sure, but with only the rudiments of training and often living in grinding poverty, their ability to be effective was severely limited. The emphasis was on the local priest’s sacramental duties—to see that the Mass was celebrated and the other sacraments were performed. Illiteracy and a lack of Bibles were common.

Reformation-Era Improvements

The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation in Europe brought major improvements in theological education for pastors and other local church leaders. Martin Luther was educated and trained for the ministry in both his monastery and at the university in Wittenberg, and his model of theological education included elements of these two traditions. Luther’s movement for the evangelical reform of the church was based on the proclamation of the word of God, which required educated preachers who were trained to preach the word effectively. The ministry of theologically trained and educated preachers also needed to be supplemented by educated laypeople, who could read the Bible themselves and teach children and others the basics of the Christian faith. In the 1520s, Luther and other leaders visited the local parishes and were appalled by the illiteracy and theological ignorance of not only the laypeople but also the pastors.[4] The goal of the Lutheran leaders was to have all pastoral candidates be literate and theologically educated, preferably by the new evangelical theology faculties in universities. The reality was that because the world of the early Reformation was often chaotic, this was not always possible. In Wittenberg itself from 1537 to 1560 there were ordinations of 772 university-trained pastors but also of 868 pastors with much less formal education.[5] Because of the need for new evangelical pastors, the goal of university education was often not possible, though this situation in Lutheran parts of Germany did improve as the sixteenth-century progressed.

The development of theological education necessitated an improvement in education from the bottom up. Parents and heads of households were enjoined to teach their families the elements of the Christian faith through the Small Catechism (1529). Luther developed his Large Catechism (1529) to enable these family leaders to carry out this charge. Local Lutheran parishes were charged with establishing local parochial schools that taught the elements of literacy and of the evangelical faith to children, so that they too could read the Bible and devotional literature. Those chosen for leadership in the church and society were sent for further schooling, especially at local Latin schools (later, gymnasiums) that provided education in classical languages and curriculum, preparatory to admission to the universities. Universities prepared individuals to become pastors and teachers for local parishes and schools, as well as those needing advanced degrees to join the theological faculties.

One of the key individuals to shape Protestant education, and particularly theological education, was Luther’s younger colleague Philipp Melanchthon, who became known as the Preaceptor Germaniae (Teacher of Germany). Melanchthon influenced all levels of education, from the common schools to the universities, and he developed a comprehensive outline for education that lasted for several centuries. He also wrote a number of the textbooks used in university-level theological education and assisted in the formation of a number of new Protestant universities in Europe in the sixteenth century.

Thus, the Protestant universities in Germany and Scandinavia, and especially their theological faculties, became the loci for pastoral and theological education.[6] Not only did they prepare candidates for the ministry, in many places they were the ones to examine these candidates for ordination and approve them, along with other church leaders. After the death of Luther in 1546, the theological faculties also began to serve as a type of theological magisterium, deliberating on contested theological issues and passing their judgments on the questions. Students from all over Europe flocked to Lutheran universities, such as the one in Wittenberg, and took their new theological education back to their home areas.

The growth and maturation of theological education in the Lutheran areas was also spurred by external developments in Europe and the need to define and defend the Lutheran theological tradition against the attacks of Roman Catholics and other Protestants. The Roman church was slow to respond to the Protestants in theological education, but after the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Roman Catholics (especially the Jesuit order) aggressively established new, high-quality schools throughout Europe that sought to counter the Protestants. As theological polemics, to define the faith for their communities and to counter the definitions of the faith provided by others, became an increasingly important aspect of the task of pastors and professors, theological education was sharpened.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century, most Lutheran pastors had received a solid classical education and at least some training in the universities, although not all of them completed a degree. Having received a theological education, their practical ministerial training was generally completed under the supervision of a senior clergyperson or, later, at a practical training school set up by the churches. Church officials and the theological faculty examined the candidates for ordination and ruled on their suitability for the ordained ministry. Others sought the somewhat less prestigious position of schoolteacher, which was still a largely academic position. Often, ministerial candidates had a difficult time finding a permanent pastoral position, and many served for a time as either teachers or private chaplains to institutions or wealthy families.

The theological education at this time was heavily weighted toward formal dogmatic and polemical theology, classical languages, and exegetical and biblical knowledge. Instruction was in Latin, and the chosen intellectual foundation was the philosophy of Aristotle. Luther himself had strongly dismissed Aristotelianism, but since it was the general basis of learning and scholarship for Europe, this philosophy was judged to be the proper basis for intellectual and theological learning. This was the age of creating massive volumes of theological dogmatics for the purpose of supporting academic disputation and correct doctrine. Later critics dismissed this as a sterile Age of Orthodoxy. This charge is not completely correct, for this was also a period when deeply moving hymns and devotional works were written, often by the same dogmatic theology professors. However, theological education was still focused mainly on correct doctrine and the defense of the faith.

This system of theological education and ministerial formation was deeply stressed by the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), especially in Lutheran Germany. This period of confessional warfare between Protestant and Roman Catholic forces was deeply destructive of the social fabric of many areas in Germany; institutions were disrupted or destroyed, and the warfare and its attendant hunger and disease reduced the population in some places by half or more. Many universities and schools were partially or completely destroyed, and the existing system of theological education was compromised, as was the moral fabric of many areas. Decades of work were necessary to rebuild the systems of theological education and ministerial formation in Germany after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

Pietism, Rationalism, and Other Challenges

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, the traditional system of Lutheran theological education was challenged again, this time from within the church by the movement known as Pietism, generally dated to begin with the publication of Philipp Jakob Spener’s work, Pia Desideria (1675). Spener and other reformers thought that the Lutheranism of their day, with its stress on correct doctrine, had led to a rigid (even dead) orthodoxy, an overemphasis on the ordained clergy, and a moral decline among the laypeople. The pietists sought to reemphasize Luther’s idea of the priesthood of all believers, the necessity of conversion or a subjective religious experience, and a deep biblical faith for all, both clergy and laity. These reformers sought to push theological education away from dogmatics and formal apologetics and toward the devotional study of the Bible and practical ministerial training. They were also as much concerned with the spiritual formation of Christian leaders as they were with their education, an emphasis that ironically they shared with contemporary Roman Catholic ministerial education. The center of Pietism was in the city of Halle, Germany, where pietist leaders such as August Hermann Francke established the University of Halle (1694) as a training school along Pietist lines not only for clergy but also for missionaries and other church leaders. Pietism was deeply controversial among the Lutherans, but it made an impact on subsequent theological and ministerial education.

In the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War and with the influence of Pietism, the training of Lutheran candidates for ordination shifted toward a more practical course of study. Candidates still had to study at the universities, where they were examined by the faculty for their academic learning—a universal requirement by the beginning of the eighteenth century. But church leaders also implemented a second, practical examination that usually measured preaching, teaching, pastoral care, and elements of worship and apologetics. Both exams were required in order to successfully achieve ordination. While Lutheran officials sought to upgrade these academic and practical requirements, reports indicate that at times these high standards were not always achievable and were sometimes relaxed to meet individual needs and circumstances.

With the rise of the Enlightenment and rationalism during the eighteenth century, there were changes in the universities with implications for theological and ministerial education. The universities, including the theological faculties, generally moved away from specifically confessional positions and proposed instead to study and teach theology from a rationalistic or scientific position. Universities developed general Protestant or Roman Catholic faculties (sometimes both), with much less emphasis on dogmatic and confessional theology; the heavy, classical education faculties, in favor of philosophy, linguistics, and other rationalistic subjects. Some university faculties attempted to maintain their traditional confessional positions, but the trend was generally toward rationalism. Much of the confessional and practical education of pastors was shifted to practical seminaries (Predigarseminar), established by local Lutheran churches, where theological students continued their education after the university. The rationalism of the universities was increasingly influential among the Lutheran clergy and was noticeable in the sermons and other religious writings of the age.

In the nineteenth century, a number of alternatives were developed by those dissatisfied with religious rationalism, naturalism, and deism. The romantic movements, in reaction to traditional classicalism, found their religious proponents in certain theologians, most notably the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, who developed a theological system on the basis of universal human feelings or intuitions, a subjective approach. More immediately influential for Lutheran theological education, however, were forms of neoconfessional theology that attempted to counter rationalism. Sparked by the action of German pastor Claus Harms, who in 1817 issued a series of ninety-five theses against religious rationalism, the movement for neoconfessionalism also strongly opposed attempts to merge the Reformed and Lutheran churches in parts of Germany, especially in Prussia. Leaders in the neoconfessionalist movement in the German university theology faculties divided into two movements, the Repristination theologians and the Erlangen school, both of which attempted, with some success, to bring traditional Lutheran theology into the contemporary world. Formal theological education of candidates for ordination, then, varied from one university to the next, depending on the positions of the various faculty. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, new forms of religious liberalism were developed, most notably with the German theologian Albrecht Ritschl and the historian Adolf von Harnack. These theological developments, especially the forms of neoconfessionalism, were also very influential in Lutheran theological education and the training of pastors among Lutherans in North America as they established their own schools there.

The nineteenth century was also a period of great expansion of Christianity by means of mission activities around the world, especially in Africa and Asia. Groups of Lutherans developed voluntary mission societies to identify candidates for mission service overseas and to provide for their