The Spirit of God works directly in everyone, Stephan assured the hearers. It is the Spirit who awakens people with God’s call to receive God’s love. The Holy Spirit reassures all that in Christ God loves us humans as we are. The Holy Spirit is a seal of that love:
I don’t think there is anyone here who has never experienced the witness of the Holy Spirit. Just remember the many times your heart was surely moved. In your own mind you felt secure even though you were on the way to destruction, but the Spirit of God awakened you and called out to you with all might: Keep seeking the things that are above where Christ is. You were concerned deeply about food and all aspects of the earthly life. You were excessively involved with earthly things and forgot about your eternal soul and spirit. At this point the Spirit of God spoke to your heart in a living way: Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Some of you were deeply saddened because of your sin, with fear and trembling you were facing God’s judgment, and you were thinking about eternity and the omnipresent God and trembled. But the Spirit witnessed in your heart about Christ and spoke to you; Jesus receives sinners, therefore believe in the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved.28
As he did often in his preaching, Stephan invited the hearers to call on the Holy Spirit to fill them with the love of God, and then know they are indeed God’s own people standing in a relationship of grace:
Ask the Holy Spirit that He would pour the love of God into your hearts so that you may taste and see the Lord is good. Only through this witness can you fully appreciate and enjoy your salvation on this side, as well as the other side, of the grave. When the Holy Spirit gives this witness that you are God’s Children, who will deny you the great standing in His grace.29
According to their own comments, Stephan’s words sometimes touched his congregation deeply inside their “souls.” Those moments happened when Stephan addressed the human longing to be connected to God. Then he lifted up the work of the Spirit of God who opens their hearts and awakens them to the love God has for them as persons. This paragraph is a distinct marker of the “awakening” emphasis of German Pietism and a part of Stephan’s own training from his youth. Some of his colleagues called this individual emotional relationship with God a kind of “Schwarmerei,” or enthusiasm because it had such deep personal psychological impact:
Don’t be too amazed when His witnesses seem unfathomable, and bring into your heart many feelings that appear strange to you. If you feel in your heart that you are being made restless because of your sins, and when the words of Christ, as well as his person, ministry and grace appear very important to you, and when you have a deep longing for His grace, when the Word of God becomes precious to you, when the world with all its vanity, unbelief and blindness becomes obnoxious to you, when you feel seriously compelled to think about all of this in your heart, then you may be sure that this is the witness of the Holy Spirit. Then, you know that He wants to fulfill His mission in you. Then you are driven to say “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”30
The theme of the “witness” of the Holy Spirit in disciples’ lives not only tells the story of the first Pentecost, but it is applied also to the people in the congregation hearing the sermon. The “witness” is the evidence of the working presence of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the Apostles and in the lives of the hearers. This evidence is a different kind of approach to the power of God at work in people and in direct contrast to the reasoned evidence of God’s existence. The Holy Spirit’s indwelling is both the power of “awakening” and a sign of it, too. This witness is in the heart, and it convinces the listeners to be consoled in their lives, that God loves them and has redeemed them, lives in them and moves them now to live in the world as loving people.
Seven years after publishing his sermons, Martin presented this two-volume work to his daughter Julia on the occasion of her marriage in 1835. The spine of the book was embossed with a crest of the family: the open Bible, a cross with palm branches at its base, a crown, and the passage from the book of Revelation 2:10, “Be faithful unto death and I will give you a crown of life.” The cross of Christ was a symbol of salvation and the suffering in this world. In the emblem a large cross lay at the center of the family crest; this became the background for his bishop’s wax-impression seal. The phrase, “In the cross of Christ I glory” was the heart of his preaching. The palm branches symbolized victory and peace. Martin created a word play on the family name Stephan, which means “crown” in the Greek language. This symbol inspired a motto that he created for the family. One version reads, “For this my eternal crown, I give my whole poor life.” A hat with tassels was added later, and the new symbol was engraved in brass and used for his bishop’s insignia used to seal documents and letters.31 Stephan’s images faithfully portray his beliefs and his preaching.
NOTES
1 Mary Todd, Authority Vested (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans, 2000),15.
2 Todd, Authority Vested, 13.
3 Todd, Authority Vested, 15. Ludwig Fischer, the author, preached at St. Peter’s Church in Dresden. In later years after the union of Protestant churches, this church merged with the remnants of St. John’s Lutheran and later came to be called Trinity when the previous two churches merged with Trinity. This church became part of the Lutheran Free Church movement and was free of the German governmental regulations. This congregation claims to be the successor to Martin Stephan and that group of “Old Lutheran.” This group claims that the Missouri Synod originated with this merged group of Lutherans.
4 William Koepchen, “Pastor Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838” (unpublished ms., St. Louis: Concordia Historical Institute; New York: Stephan Family Archives, 1935), 17.
5 Koepchen, “Pastor Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838,” 15–16.
6 Karl G. von Polenz, Die Offentliche Meinung (Dresden and Leipzig, Germany, 1840), 19. This quote was from a fragment used by a number of authors such as Carl Mundinger and Mary Todd.
7 Koepchen, “Pastor Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838,” 17.
8 Koepchen, “Pastor Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838,” 19. This quote was taken from the National Zeitung of November 21, 1821, p. 63. It indicates how early Pastor Stephan’s stance drew the malevolent fire of the public starting with the press.
9 Koepchen, “Pastor Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838,” 19–21.
10 Koepchen, “Pastor Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838,” 19–21.
11 Martin Stephan, The Christian Faith (Dresden, Germany: self-published through the Saxon Royal Printer, 1825).
12 Koepchen, “Pastor Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838,” 15.
13 Paul Burgdorf, “Martin Stephan’s Published Sermons on the Christian Faith,” Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly 42, no. 2 (1990): 93.
14 Burgdorf, “Martin Stephan’s Published Sermons on the Christian Faith,” 95.
15 Stephan, The Christian Faith, 253. This sermon was typed from the German by Bill Biar in May of 1988 for Concordia Historical Institute and translated by John Conrads of Longmont, Colorado. The sermon can also be found in the Stephan Collection of Concordia Historical Institute, Saxon File F 11.
16 Stephan, The Christian Faith, 590. All of the sermon excerpts are translated by John Conrads of Longmont, Colorado.
17 Stephan, The Christian Faith, 73.
18 Stephan, The Christian Faith, 74.
19 Stephan, The Christian Faith, 75.
20 Stephan, The Christian Faith, 77.
21 Stephan, The Christian Faith, 79.
22 Stephan, The Christian Faith, 89.
23 Stephan, The Christian Faith, 479.
24 Stephan, The Christian Faith, 481.
25 Stephan, The Christian Faith, 481–83.
26 Stephan, The Christian Faith, 32–33.
27 Stephan, The Christian Faith, 36, 39.
28 Stephan, The Christian Faith, 42.
29 Stephan, The Christ
ian Faith, 42.
30 Stephan, The Christian Faith, 45.
31 Theodore M. Stephan, “Notes on Family History,” (unpublished ms., 1921). There is also a family oral tradition about the hat drawn in the seal. It was believed that the hat represented the hat that Martin used when he preached. This preaching hat may have represented Herrnhut, which translated into English means, ”the hat of the Lord.” Herrnhut was also an important place in the pietist tradition. It was in Herrnhut where two families of Moravian Brethren came to live on the estate of Nicholas Ludwig, called Count von Zinzendorf. The count donated the land for their community that grew and then they built a church on the donated property that was near Dresden. Later in 1745 after von Zinzendorf was elected their bishop, and although these pietists were a part of the Lutheran Church, they formally organized their own church with their own government and liturgies. Zinzendorf was born in 1700 only seventy miles from Dresden. He had a profound influence on the “awakening” movement, on Pastor Stephan, and on the Bohemian founders of St. John’s Church in Dresden.
8
Martin Stephan as Pastoral Counselor
Martin Stephan was the kind of pastoral counselor who offered consolation to those who came to talk with him. His counseling contained much of the same kind of comfort he offered in his sermons, based on his insight into reassuring and encouraging biblical passages. His devotional meetings known as conventicles were sometimes intensely personal. At these gatherings for prayer and study of Holy Scripture, participants were urged to look inward and examine their lives. Stephan told them blessings would come from self-examination. Sometimes these sessions would move people to profound feelings about themselves and their relationship to God. Some would seek further guidance for past or present personal issues. Sometimes these sessions led to private confession and absolution, still considered a sacramental rite at Stephan’s time especially among the “Old Lutherans.”
Those who came to confession sought counsel, guidance, and comfort for their troubled consciences. Some of these younger men and women were called the confessional children (German: beichtkinder). The pastors who heard their confessions were called confessor father (German: be-ichtvater). Such was Stephan’s relationship with a number of people in his congregation. Sometimes he would take walks in the wooded parkways on the way to his retreat places, accompanied by men and women. Some people would discuss their personal issues. For the most part, though, Stephan’s counseling was done in the schoolroom, on the bottom floor of the building that also housed his living quarters.
Carl Eduard Vehse, the attorney for the Emigration Society, observed in his book of 1840 that Stephan possessed a unique ability to know and understand people.1 His deep understanding enabled him as he addressed their distress in both sermon and personal counsel. He connected easily with people in their darkest hours with words of support, consolation, and encouragement. Stephan’s compassion was aided by being personally tested. He learned about himself and others during his years wandering the German provinces scratching out a living as a weaver. His survival experience honed his sharp people skills.
Karl von Polenz said Stephan was cheerful and pleasant; he would visit friends among the clergy in country parishes. He exchanged pulpits with his brother pastors. Vehse was fascinated by Stephan’s cordial conduct. He was good hearted and friendly. He extended his empathy to the working class by renting a hall where they could gather to play pool, visit, and drink beer. Stephan also enjoyed relaxing and socializing with this working class group of friends.
Stephan employed his interpersonal skills weekly as a pastoral counselor and teacher in various spiritual growth meetings at St. John’s. His pastoral role was extensive, as is clear from his schedule for a given week. The list of parish events was unusual for most Lutheran churches of the time:
Opening and closing the Sunday afternoon gatherings with song and prayer, Stephan would review, in catechetical form, his sermon preached in the morning service, with such practical applications bearing upon Christian life as he could not well have made from the pulpit. Of these meetings Dr. Carl Edward Vehse wrote, as late as 1840: “Even at this late date I must say, that never so far in all my life have I heard anything more glorious as his addresses in the devotional services on Sunday afternoon. I cannot but record in this connection the opinion of a friend who said of Stephan.” His lucidity of speech and presentation, the correct grasp and understanding of the age in which we are living, this superlative wisdom, the glory of Word and Majesty of God’s holy name, permeated his sermons, gave them power to raise up, to comfort, to enthuse faith ... On Monday evenings Pastor Stephan would answer, in an open forum questions put to him pertaining to doctrine and Christian life. Even [von] Polenz, who attended them, confesses that they served a good purpose and were worthy of imitation. The Friday evening meetings were devoted to Bible study and singing of good Lutheran hymns. After 1830, Stephan devoted these Friday evening meetings to the study of the Formula of Concord.2
Some of the people who attended “conventicle” meetings desired further counseling with Stephan. Members of St. John’s and other congregations came to him in order to explore personal issues raised by these weekly gatherings. It was said by Vehse and others who witnessed Stephan at these discussions of the Sunday sermon that Stephan was in his own element. He guided, taught, and spoke freely about the issues the sermon raised with many individuals.
C. F. W. Walther was one of the persons who came to Stephan for comfort. Walther was then a student of theology at the University of Leipzig where he belonged to a conventicle called “collegium philobiblicum,” meaning a college or group who loved the Bible. That term was chosen to cover the illegal activity, since conventicles were outlawed. St. John’s operated under special dispensation dating back centuries.
An older theological candidate by the name of Kuhn led Walther’s particular group of candidates for ministry at the university.3 Their meetings were held on specific days each week, and the theological students participated in communal prayer and joint scripture reading. The discussion around the biblical passages and concepts included students encouraging one another to “seize what was necessary for their salvation.”4
Kuhn’s approach was excessive and harsh. He urged the group to practice various kinds of denial and hardship in order to test and prove their conversion and commitment and join Christ in His sufferings. It was said of the leader that he had come to his spiritual certainty through many temptations and believed others should do the same. Walther practiced these spiritual exercises to the extreme, depriving himself of food and exercise because he thought these things were sinful. Walther’s condition was described by Franz Delitzsch: “During that period of struggle he was wasted like a skeleton, coughed blood, suffered from insomnia, and experienced the terrors of hell. He was more dead than alive.”
Walther dropped out of the University and undertook a private study of Luther’s writings. Acting on the advice of friends, Walther wrote Stephan begging him to help him find comfort in God’s Word about his salvation. When Walther opened Stephan’s return letter, it is reported that he was lifted from hell to heaven by the comfort Stephan offered him.5 Pastor Stephan demonstrated his pastoral care when he urged Walther and others suffering from the same kind of legalism to seek comfort and peace in God’s good news that God loved and accepted them as they were without proving themselves worthy. Walther praised Stephan later as the one who had “saved” his soul. He sought Stephan’s counsel on many other occasions after this liberating encounter.
Some forms of “Pietism” similar to the kind practiced at the University of Leipzig urged these Disciples of Christ to demonstrate proof of their awakening by practicing forms of penitence that called for some physical signs of denial. However, Stephan himself, steeped in Pietism though he was, managed to cut through these ascetic practices that were used as proof of disciples’ conversion. He helped people troubled by these practices to find peace and consolation in the love of Go
d, not in the wrath of God. Stephan preached God’s love and also counseled that same love. Many experienced the freedom of that message.
Some elements of Martin Stephan’s character appear contrastive and contradictory. There were those who thought Stephan was arrogant and aloof. Yet he enjoyed being a friend to many and established rapport with the working class. He was relaxed and confident when conducting the biblical life applications in the conventicles. Above all, his preaching shows his own personal faith journey. In his counseling his compassion is shaped as by his own losses and challenges. It is not unusual for a complex person like Stephan to show many sides of his character. It is part of his being human.
NOTES
1 Carl Eduard Vehse, The Stephanite Emigration: With Documentation, trans. Marion R. Winkler (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Xerox University, 1975), 2.
2 William Koepchen, “Pastor Martin Stephan and the Saxon Emigration of 1838” (unpublished ms., St. Louis: Concordia Historical Institute; New York: Stephan Family Archives, 1935), 17–18. Eighteen thirty, and after, was a time of intense pressure for the Union of Lutheran and Reformed Churches into an Evangelical Church where old confessions of faith such as the Lutheran Confession, the Formula of Concord, were to be abandoned.
In Pursuit of Religious Freedom: Bishop Martin Stephan's Journey Page 9
