I

“Culture” is defined perhaps most simply by anthropologists, who say it is “a certain pattern of life which influences the aims and habits of men.”^[1] H. Richard Niebuhr of Yale University, in his book Christ and Culture,^[2] fittingly calls attention to the fact that the problem of Christian culture is specifically a theological problem. Jakob Burkhardt, on the other hand, stresses that religion, state, and culture are “supremely heterogeneous to each other”; culture, according to Burkhardt, differs from religion and state because it is not intrinsically authoritarian in character.^[3] We thus see that a person’s use of culture and his resultant approach to its problems help to determine what the character of a culture may be. We realize, too, that not all culture is on the same high plane; a cultural heritage may be very good, but it may likewise be depraved and low. While a culture may thus be described and evaluated, its essence can never be defined. In further describing culture, we may say that it is always social and involves people; it is a realm of high, medium, or low values which have an outlook and which serve an end; it is human achievement which includes the arts, the sciences, and education and of which one can gain possession only through conscious effort. A culture usually experiences historic growth and development and requires constant nurture and care. In all cultural activity, the conservation of values is practically as important as the realization and achievement of these values. Decay and debasement set in the moment supervision, nurture, and care cease or begin to lag. This last point must of necessity be a matter of grave concern to the leader and educator who takes his work seriously. Every true educator, regardless of what he teaches, must of necessity regard himself as a propagator and disseminator of culture. If those whose duty it is to dispense knowledge and instruction fail to promote the cause of wholesome and progressive culture through the media of their teaching and guidance, said culture will soon decline and degenerate, and they themselves will become faithless to a paramount and preeminent duty of their most honorable vocation. We agree, I am sure, with H. Richard Niebuhr, when he says:

Let education and training lapse for one generation, and the whole grand structure of past achievements falls into ruin. Culture is the social tradition which must he conserved by painful struggle not so much against nonhuman natural forces as against revolutionary and critical powers in human life and reason. . . . culture cannot be maintained unless men devote a large part of their efforts to the work of conservation.^[4]

I quote likewise from V. A. Dement’s chapter on “The Aims and Assumptions of Our Culture”:

To call a pattern of life a culture means two things: first, that the pattern is a historic growth; it depends upon certain definite influences in a historic period; if these influences cease to operate, the plants will continue to bloom like flowers in a vase for some time, but cut off from their roots, they will not survive; secondly, to use the word “culture” for a life-pattern implies that it is something which requires tending—like a garden and the land. Man has a responsibility towards it; if he treats it like a wild forest that will continue to grow by itself, it is doomed, and man with it. That is largely what has happened. We have taken our civilization for granted; or, to change the metaphor, it has become an artificial superstructure upon crumbling foundations.^[5]

II

The problems posed by the realm of culture are as old as civilization itself. Our culture and its ethics concern not only the church but also the world at large. They play into our social, our political, our scientific, our ecclesiastical, and our home life; they likewise invade the various areas of education and hence concern us as members of society, as citizens of our country, as parents, as educators, and as members and servants of the church. Some have said that the church need have no cultural interest, that her work is to save souls and not help to establish a civilization through cultural interest and activity. In his The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon for this very reason faults Christian people for being “animated by a contempt for present existence.”^[6]We have a pronounced anticultural spirit in our midst which asserts itself strongly even in our church- and worship-life. People very readily refer to Phil. 3:8, where St. Paul says that he counts all things but dung that he may win Christ, but they very conveniently ignore Eph. 4, where Paul speaks of the edification of the body of Christ, and 1 Cor. 14:40, where Paul, while speaking of worship practices of the church, exhorts that all things be done not only in order but also decently, fittingly, Christo-culturally, if you please. Wholesome and inoffensive cultural interests and activities are too often sacrificed in order to cater to narrow and hateful prejudices and to introduce and support a worship culture of an indecent, unbecoming, lowbrow character.

III

As we view this anticultural interest and activity among nominal Christians, we think of Marcion, a pseudo-disciple of St. Paul, who inherited neither St. Paul’s great spirit nor his breadth of understanding. This Gnostic insisted that he loved the Gospel of Jesus Christ and its blessed message; and yet Polycarp referred to him as “the firstborn of Satan,” not only because he was an errorist who mutilated and deleted the Holy Scriptures to suit his corrupt purpose but also because he fanatically and cruelly sought to divorce the Christian religion from its many close associations with the culture of the Jewish people.

Paul was more discreet and he was likewise more appreciative of cultural values. He made no attempt to reject the great and worthy Greek and Roman culture of his day unless it was definitely anti-Christian; in divinely inspired epistles, he quoted not only from the Old Testament Scriptures but likewise from classical literature of his day and previous days. He thus gave a great cultural Christian ethic to churches in Corinth, Ephesus, Rome, and elsewhere, churches which were in the very midst of societies steeped in depravity and darkness. As far as its origin was concerned, much culture enjoyed by the early Christians was not purely and expressly Christian in character.

The early church, like Paul, adopted the great Greek and Roman culture of its day as far as it could and Christianized it, so to speak, by its adoption, Under Paul’s own leadership, the Christian church became also a great cultural institution which made diligent use of a great cultura1 heritage and which did not become extreme, fanatical, and anticultural. As you know, Julian the Apostate was bent on destroying the Christian church. He felt that one way in which to destroy the church was to deprive Christian people of their entire cultural heritage and thus reduce their status to that of illiterate and uncultured wretches and slaves. Motivated by this impulse, he forbade them to read classical literature. However, God converted this tragic misfortune into a blessing. Since they were not permitted to read classical literature, the Christians now did what they were permitted to do: They began to write their own literature. However, in writing it, they adopted the classical style and thus produced for themselves and for posterity many of the great Greek hymns which have stood the test of time, which the powers of hell could not destroy, and which are the marvel of hymnologists, poets, literateurs, and Christian people to the present day. True, they are not appreciated by many people of our day, but those who do not appreciate them are invariably people whose cultural knowledge and interests are very limited or even low, perhaps through no fault of their own.

We think, too, of Martin Luther, who did not reject the great heritage of the Middle Ages as a weapon of Satan and as a tool of Antichrist but who said in his Formula Missae of 1523: Quod bonum est, tenebimus (“What is good we will retain”). Luther related the Christian life in Christ to the life of culture and did not believe that the two are irreconcilable with each other. Rather than abolish and reject entirely, as did the fanatics of his day, Luther, like Paul, applied the Christian religion to the great cultural heritage and traditions of his day as a catharsis and a prophylactic. Though he was able to make fine and delicate distinctions, Luther effected no divisions where divisions were unnecessary in the sight of God and where they might lead to disaster, bigotry, and chaos. Luther is, in fact, the only preeminent theologian of the entire New Testament church who may be put beside St. Paul as one who integrated Christianity with culture. He surpasses by far Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and others who played important parts in the cultural development of the Christian church. Not only the histories of music and books on liturgics but likewise great works treating the subject of culture speak of Luther with respect and awe, though they may at times disagree with him or fail to understand him or his philosophy. Permit me to quote again H. Richard Niebuhr, a Reformed theologian:

More than any great Christian leader before him, Luther affirmed the life in culture as the sphere in which Christ could and ought to be followed; and more than any other he discerned that the rules to be followed in the cultural life were independent of Christian or church law. In a person “regenerated and enlightened by the Holy Spirit through the Word” the natural wisdom of man “is a fair and glorious instrument and work of God.” . . . The education of youth in languages, arts, and history as well as in piety offered great opportunities to the free Christian man; but cultural education was also a duty to be undertaken. (Cf. An den Adel)^[7]

Before proceeding to the next point, mention should be made of the fact that, though scholars invariably sing the praises of Luther, they likewise express their regrets that Luther’s followers down to the present did not inherit the great spirit and insight of Luther also along these lines. We are reminded in this connection of words spoken years ago by the English historian Lord Macaulay; as we view what is happening culturally in America today, we see that his words were true rather than pessimistic. Macaulay said of America:

Your republic will be pillaged and destroyed just as Greece and Rome . . . but the ones to destroy your nation will be the citizens of your own country, the products of your own civilization.

If the cultural life of a people or of a church declines, it is likewise very possible, despite much outward growth, activity, and organizationalism, that the spiritual life of a church and people is on the downgrade, for the Christo-cultural life of a church is definitely an outgrowth and a fruit of her religiosity, faith, and spirit. Where a church rejects and repudiates her own God-given heritage and her members are acquainted with it only superficially or not at all, what may be the reason for her continued existence? Here lies a great challenge for us who insist that Christian educators are of necessity bearers of a great culture.

While Christian people themselves often reject great culture and purposefully divorce religion and theology from its own fruits and blessings, it likewise happens, of course, that non-Christians outside the church separate culture from religion and thus dechristianize the very character of Christian culture and take it out of the church to put it into a museum to be gazed at and enclosed rather than used and applied to life itself. While cultured and intelligent Christians bemoan this fact, others rightly attribute many of this world’s evils and tragedies to this segregation. Christopher Dawson thus says:

The present crisis of Western civilization is due to the separation of our culture from its religious basis.^[8]

Much of our cultural heritage is but a rattling skeleton without flesh and blood because people often divorce our culture from Jesus Christ, the very Rock of our Christian religious foundation. Often, however, this is the fault of Christian people themselves and of the Christian church of which they are members. Had they appreciated and enjoyed, used and shielded their great cultural heritage, the world would not have pillaged man’s cultural heritage so easily. From the purely cultural point of view, the world often shows a broader and a deeper appreciation for the great cultural heritage of the Christian church than do the vast majority of Christian people themselves. Here, too, we as Christian guides and educators are confronted with a tremendous challenge.

IV

The church is by no means the only agency of our day that has belittled and neglected the potentialities of our cultural heritage, neither is the Christless world as such the only agency that has despiritualized much culture. Not a few so-called educational organizations, schools, and educators of the 20th century have become so imbued with the idea of mass and popular education, that any cultural approach is quickly brushed aside by them. Their thinking is quite different from that of a Martin Luther, who insisted that some people simply should not attend higher schools of learning, because God has not given them the necessary gray matter and because the world will always need streetsweepers, cowherds, and garbage collectors. We are all aware of the fact that many such people have no capacity for cultural understanding, interest, and activity. For very good utilitarian reasons, God Himself has not given them the capacity they require for such endeavor. The tragic feature of much mass and popular education of our day is that through its policies and activities it drags down people of great native capacity to the level of those who do not have it. By no means may it be said that all people who are uncultured or anticultural lack native cultural talents and faculties. That the talents God Himself has provided are not used and developed is due to negligence and disinterestedness of people, and more than one church body is guilty of adhering to the principle: “Keep the people in ignorance, and you can rule them better.”

When people divert or emasculate God-given talents and capacities, they misuse and exploit the responsibility God has given them, particularly if it is their duty as educators of the church and the world. While many American educators are today raising their voice against the evils and dangers of so-called popular mass education, their voices are often not heard. The loud cries of others drown them out, particularly when they speak of culture, classical languages, musical culture, the historical approach, cultural tradition, our artistic heritage from the past, and the like. Permit me to read some rather trenchant remarks to you which were made by Christopher Dawson of England, whom we quoted only a few moments ago.

The real evil of popular education was not so much its secularism, but its utilitarian character, which led to the progressive discarding of all nonsecular elements and motives. It is true that in this country and in America we had a sort of alliance between dogmatic religion and secularism which was characteristic of the Victorian and 19th-century compromise. But it was an unnatural alliance which was incapable of withstanding the growing pressure of secularist culture. At the same time that this bleak utilitarianism was being replaced by a more humanist ideal of popular education, humanism itself was losing its prestige and its influence on high education. As the idea of culture became divorced alike from religion and life, its social significance rapidly disappeared, until today we are witnessing a regular war against culture and the apotheosis of the Common Man and the Little Man and the Tough Guy—a regular pantheon of strange gods who are emerging from some underworld of culture in the half-light between the old European day and the dark night of total barbarism. I do not think our civilization will be saved from this fate by the quantitative progress of education on the existing lines; that is to say, by more education given to more people for longer and longer periods. Indeed, the extension of public education—only increases the mass-mindedness of modern society without raising its cultural standards or deepening its spiritual life.^[9]

We must link up with this zeal for popular mass education even the undue and unbalanced athletic programs of hundreds of American schools, which contribute toward stifling cultural interest, activity, and achievement. I am sure that we all readily admit that this situation is a most serious one, one that affects also the ecclesiastical schools of the prophets at which many of us are privileged to teach. Not so very long ago one of our esteemed colleagues, who has taught at one of our synodical schools for many years, and who, I should add, is an ardent baseball fan, remarked to me: “We seek to culturalize our students through the majority of our activities, but we neutralize these efforts by barbarizing our students through an excessive use of athletics.” While the remark was likely overdrawn for a purpose, the fact remains that many American educators of our day are more concerned about the purely physical and athletic side of life than they are about the mind, the spirit, the will, and the heart of their students.

Even within the church we find that many an American parish expends large sums for parish houses, athletic floors, bowling alleys, lounging-rooms, card tables, and lavatories, whereas the church services must content themselves with a badly arranged and badly equipped church interior, electronic musical instruments, a vested but inefficient choir, cheap appointments, and pseudo church art of all types. May not this situation be due in large part to the type of training and education men have received in their school days? Is it really accidental that some try to foster Christian fellowship through an athletic program rather than through services of corporate worship of a wholesome and uplifting liturgical character? Is it only by chance that among those who are strongly interested in physical activity we too often find little or no interest in the things of the spirit, in Christian culture, in liturgical worship, and that at many ecclesiastical conventions pinochle and Schafskopf are the compline of the day? Is this perhaps not largely an outgrowth of the training men have received at the time they prepared themselves for service in the church? I honestly believe it is. The law of cause and effect plays into the situation.

Please do not misunderstand me. My remarks are not directed against a well-regulated athletic program. They are directed against abuse and overindulgence, against those who, if not in theory then at least in practice, exalt what is physical, mercenary, and popular at the expense of what is spiritual and cultural. The underlying spirit of this tragic situation which confronts the educational world of America today does not take God and His Christ into serious consideration at all; it is basically hedonistic and self-centered in character. The painful experiences inter-scholastic athletics in America have had within the past two or three years help in part to substantiate what has been said. There can be abuse and corruption also in other areas, of course, including the cultural and the ecclesiastical, but the fact remains that the physical athletic spirit soon runs wild and degenerates when it is not linked up with Christianity and its great culture. We need hardly discuss how tragic it is that religion and culture do not appeal to the masses as do athletics. Man is by nature not only more carnal but also more physical than spiritual.

We are not directing our remarks against mass education as such but rather against its concomitant evils. Mass education is very necessary and unavoidable, also within the church. However, taking the unique character of the work done by pastors and teachers into consideration, we must conclude that those who teach at synodical schools of the church must be doubly careful that the rather low standards identified with much popular mass education, the lack of its spiritual approach, and the anticultural character of its attitudes do not determine the character, the standards, the approach, and the attitudes adopted for our church schools. There are other types of professional and vocational schools in America and in other 1ands which dare pay no attention to the cries and demands of impulsive and short-sighted masses. However, very seldom need they face problems of culture and anticulture as must the church. This is the case already because, unlike the church, they usually have no specific sociological concerns and worries. When our schools, as part of the church, must approach the problem, they must bear in mind the spiritual improvement and amelioration not only of individuals but also of groups of people.

This sociological approach to our problems of culture intensifies the difficulty of our work as educators. If we train people who become pastors, teachers, and leaders within a chosen generation, within a royal priesthood, within a holy nation, and among a peculiar people, we should train them accordingly. Taking the very nature of God’s chosen people into consideration, our pastors and teachers, more so than any other educators, should be men of culture and teachers of culture, good manners and refinement. According, to God’s own verdict, we of the church are dealing with the highest type of society in this world, a genuine spiritual society. Our sociological obligations are indeed on as high a level as our cultural obligations. I should like to read to you an excerpt from an article bearing the title “Literature, Society, and Personality”; it was written by Robert N. Wilson and appears in the June 1952 issue of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. I preface the quotation by calling attention to the fact that Mr. Wilson is not thinking specifically of a Christian society or people. Relating his words to our own situation therefore gives us all the more reason to take to heart what he says.

Perhaps the most damning indictment which can be entered against contemporary social science is that it has made of man something less than he really is. . . . Not only is it true that the student[s] of man have neglected those deeper qualities, the spiritual realms of values, creation, tragedy; but they have also disfigured even the relatively simple and superficial human of their designing. Social science has long borne a pronounced animus against the aesthetic and graceful. This animus, in turn, generated a more or less professional disrespect for “culture” as that word is popularly employed.^[10]

I regret to state that the movement for popular mass education here in America has done much to exploit and foster what the German calls Pöbelgeist. A pronounced Pöbelgeist is finding its way also into our church and into her parishes and thus attacks also our seminaries, teachers colleges, and preparatory schools. This Pöbelgeist, even when found among Christian people, is quite different from the Christian spirit of God’s chosen generation. It is no less dangerous and vicious than the Pöbelgeist which is asserting itself in so many areas of American life today. This Pöbelgeist paves the way for Pöbelherrschaft and is strongly anti-cultural in character. It is one of the great tasks of the church and her schools to offset this Pöbelgeist by fostering the cause of Christian culture. Ought not those who claim to be Christian educators be aware of the fact that the church has expressed her sublimest thoughts and her greatest ideas in her great liturgies, in art, music, hymns, and in literature? Do we not in our great cultural heritage see some of the most luscious fruits of the Gospel? Does not our culture show us clearly that God’s chosen people are not a Pöbel, a plebs, or hoi polloi? From the cultural point of view, is it not tragic that our people sing the praises of an inferior painter such as Heinrich Hofmann and ignore completely and even belittle the great art of an Albert Dürer?

It is, I believe, good that also among us the Lutheran chorale must struggle for its existence, but does this very fact not point to our poverty-stricken minds, spirit, taste, and intellect? This is, no doubt, due in large part to the training and education they have received. It is known that the defects exhibited by people in their adult years usually reflect what was neglected in their childhood. Thus parents are often responsible for the bad behavior of their children because they neglected to apply necessary discipline. Many a child does not bring to maturity the musical talent God provides in its early youth because the parents do not provide for the child’s musical development. Not God but man fails to provide the necessary training and discipline; not God but man must be blamed for failing to develop the child’s inherent talents.

V

Radio, television, and movies discourage much serious reading, and many within the church, including many members of the clergy and many teachers, do practically no reading of great and noteworthy literature. This affects not only the church but likewise our entire civilization; permit me to quote once more from Robert N. Wilson’s article.

The current paucity of great literature is compared with the lack of contemporary vitality in the others arts (so far as the productions of genius are concerned), and this general phenomenon is viewed as one possible index of a decline of Occidental civilization. . . . literature is probably, to a greater extent than any other part of culture, a mirror of the life in which it arose. It is, then, a peculiarly valuable key not only to culture as such, but to the societies and individuals who determine, and are molded by, that culture.^[11]

Within our own circles we have made much of the fact that we stress the classical languages and classical literature in the curricula of our schools. Europeans who have visited our shores in late years particularly have marveled at the fact that our Seminary in St. Louis, unlike the vast majority of theological seminaries in America, insists that its students be equipped to read the Bible in its original tongues and outstanding theological literature in Greek, Latin, and German. This is what they, too, insist on in the foremost theological seminaries of Europe. At a conference of theological professors which I attended recently, an excellent paper was read by one not affiliated with the Synodical Conference. He urged that a larger number of Lutheran theological seminaries of America adopt language requirements like those of our St. Louis Seminary. Luther’s remarks To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany are well known. He said in part:

“But,” you say again, “granted that we must have schools, what is the use of teaching Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and the other liberal arts? We can still teach the Bible and God’s Word in German, which is sufficient for our salvation.” I reply: Alas! I know well that we Germans must always remain brutes and stupid beasts, as neighboring nations call us and as we richly deserve to be called. . . . Arts and languages, which are not only not harmful but a greater ornament, profit, honor, and benefit, both for the understanding of Scripture and for the conduct of government, these we despise. Therefore . . . let us open our eyes, thank God for this precious treasure, and guard it well, lest it be again taken from us and the devil have his will. For though the Gospel has come and daily comes through the Holy Spirit alone, we cannot deny that it has come by means of the languages, by which it was also spread abroad, and by which it must be preserved. . . . In proportion, then, as we prize the Gospel, let us guard the languages.^[12]

Despite words of commendation from outside our circles and despite the foresight and insight Luther and our forefathers showed, yet do we hear loud voices within our own ranks which mention exactly the same argument which Luther rejected so effectively. Unfortunately the voices we hear come particularly from called servants of the church and from the ranks of those who themselves have had this linguistic and classical training and who today turn their backs upon this thorough type of training, which develops deeper insights and a better understanding of God’s holy Word and of Christian theology. What may be the cause? We can truthfully say, I believe, that we here have another manifestation of the anticultural Pöbelgeist of our day, for many who agitate against the classical tradition are not interested either in an exalted and distinctive cultural tradition.

To stimulate discussion, permit me to point to what I consider a more tangible approach. In our teaching of the classical languages and of German, to what extent do we point out and stress the classical, the cultural character of this literature? Since a great purpose of classical culture is to develop an appreciation for the beautiful, to invigorate, and to inspire, have we not failed to a great extent by placing practically all stress on grammar and analysis? I have no desire to make disparaging remarks regarding grammar and analysis; they are very important and need stress. However, they should not have practically all the stress, even though a great objective of this linguistic training is to prepare students for later exegetical work. It is also possible to analyze something to death, and I fear we have done this in much of the linguistic training we have imparted to our students in the past. In music, too, form and analysis are very important, but how far would music get as an art and as a branch of culture if musical instruction were primarily analytical, if say, a Beethoven sonata were treated as nothing but a compilation of related chords? The late Dean Peter Christian Lutkin of Northwestern University once remarked: “Some people see in music everything but its charm and beauty.” There are people, including many teachers and professors, who see in classical literature everything but its beauty.

As a most important branch of culture, classical literature is far more than an expression of its philology. Exposing a student to our cultural heritage and to the classics should be more than teaching him a lesson; it should be an initiation into a new life, a revelation of new experiences, an unfolding of wonderful mysteries. A teacher of classical languages should not be a mere pedant, for it is an important part of his duty to create interest and to stimulate, to invigorate, and to enthuse. He ought by no means be one who sees not the woods because of the trees. I am reminded of an incident that happened many years ago. I was a guest at the time in the home of an outspoken German rancher in Colorado whose ranch was surrounded by lofty and very beautiful mountains. One morning I said to him: “Es muss Ihnen doch viel Freude bereiten, jeden Morgen diese wunderschönen hohen Gebirge betrachten und bewundern zu können.” “Hm,” he replied, “ich sehe viel lieber einen guten Stier.” So it is very often also with many other people. They are surrounded by the beauties of nature and of our great culture, but what do they see? They see chickens, ducks, oxen, and husky steers.

When such bias and blindness comes to teachers, they tend to convert their students into nothing but Kleinigkeitskrämer and shorten their sight until they can no longer see beautiful horizons and expansive vistas. They teach them to see so many details that they lose all sense of perspective and are unable to progress fluently. They use cultural means to make technicians of them. Need we, then, wonder that they fail to see the beauty and intrinsic worth of their rich culture and too often become thoroughly averse to it? Why not, at least occasionally, have them read excerpts from the liturgies of the church in both Greek and Latin? Why not have them sing Latin hymns and German chorales in their original tongues? Portions of the Scriptures could easily be read at an early stage of their linguistic training, and psalms could be chanted in Latin. Such use of ancient and foreign languages helps to give linguistic self-confidence to students, it relaxes them from tensions which are easily created by necessary analytical work and by translating passages in the classics which are truly difficult because their authors did not mechanically follow the rules of grammar. We can thus break down undue prejudices which have become traditional at sundry schools by applying wholesome pedagogical discretion and wisdom.

We have teachers, who have followed the suggested procedure with outstanding success; their students learned to love these languages, already because they learned to enjoy using them. This is the procedure that was followed in Lutheran schools in the 16th century, and we know of schools and agencies of our own day which have exposed students to a most severe type of linguistic training without prejudicing them. We can easily interest students in German, Latin, and Greek through the media of church music, liturgies, hymns, and liturgical literature. While it is true that our chief objective may not be to interest them in these ancient and foreign languages as such, we are at least able to stimulate interest in these languages and in their great classical literature.

VI

Liturgical interest is in large measure an outgrowth of spiritual and cultural concern which these students have. True, there are some, a very small and insignificant minority, who are liturgically unbalanced, just as others are musically, athletically, and amorously unbalanced. There is much lack of balance at every school and we need not think for a moment that such lack is to be found among students only. But the vast majority of theological students and students who prepare for the teaching profession are not interested primarily in mere externals and frills of a culture. They are interested, for instance, in liturgics because liturgical theory and practice, like church music, is a handmaid of Christian worship. In many cases that have come to our attention, students are driven into liturgics, good church music, and superb Christian hymnody, wholesome ethics and good manners by the uncouth, irreverent, anticultural, and unchristian attitude they have seen manifested here and there within our own circles.

We have yet to find a member of the student body of a theological seminary who is not interested in Christian culture in general; it is difficult to find a theological student or a student preparing for the teaching profession who, being interested in the liturgical heritage of the church, is not also a wholesome and consecrated type of individual. I may add that these are the students who know best how to look at things from the standpoint of the church. They do find it difficult to understand the type of thinking they see exhibited when they compare the chapels of our synodical schools with their gymnasiums. They find it difficult to understand why, with our appreciation for Word and sacrament, coupled with our vast cultural heritage, we Lutherans argue that one may worship God also in a barn, while beautiful chapels grace the campuses of schools which have not the Word in truth and purity, which undervalue the blessed sacraments, and which do not know the Christ as we are privileged and chosen to know Him. Many students are fond of discussing basic problems of worship, they are interested in good church music and in the better types of hymns; they are, on the whole, faithful in attending concerts and lyceum programs of a cultural character and do not interest themselves in chicanery and trickery. In their field-work program they often prefer to work among the lowly and the unfortunate, including our black citizens. It is most unfair, therefore, to condemn all who have liturgical interests and to judge them all by the excesses of some unbalanced individual and to make flippant and uncharitable remarks about them.

The character of much of our religious thinking is really very negative and destructive. This is most unfortunate and certainly weakens the evangelical character of the religious faith which we should have in our hearts. When we think of Christian culture, liturgics, and church music, we too often think too readily of the dangers involved. We quite readily ignore the fact that countless dangers may and do easily result from much of our teaching and preaching. When we regard and esteem Christian culture, Christian art, music, good morals and ethics, architecture, literature, and liturgics as precious and inestimable gifts of God and also as effective tools and weapons of the Holy Ghost, then does our faith not only become more positive and constructive, but then do we become also better aware of the manifold grace of God. That was Luther’s position, and that is one significant reason for the greatness of Martin Luther. For that reason we could well take to heart the great theme adopted by the Lutheran World Convention at its meeting in Hannover: “Not back to Luther, but forward to Luther.” I should like to close with words from Christopher Dawson’s provocative chapter, “The Crisis of Christian Culture: Education.”

If we admit, as I think we all do in principle, that Western culture was a Christian creation, we ought to pay much more attention to this truth in our educational theory and practice than we have done in the past. . . . From the very beginning . . . Christian education was something that could not be conveyed by words alone, but which involved a discipline of the whole man. Thus Christian education was not only an initiation into the Christian community, it was also an initiation into another world: the unveiling of spiritual realities of which the natural man was unaware and which changed the meaning of existence. And I think it is here that our modern education—including our religious education—has proved defective. There is in it no sense of revelation. It is accepted as instruction . . . but nowhere do we find that joyful sense of the discovery of a new and wonderful reality which inspired true Christian culture. All true religious education leads up to the contemplation of Divine Mysteries, and where this is lacking, the whole culture becomes weakened and divided. It may be objected that this is the sphere of worship and not of education; but it is impossible to separate the two, since it was largely in the sphere of Christian worship that the Christian tradition of education and culture arose and developed. The first Christian education was the initiation into the Divine Mysteries in the liturgical sense, and it brought with it a development of Christian poetry and music and art which was the firstfruits of Christian culture.^[13]

Cited References

1. V. A. Demant, Our Culture—Its Christian Roots and Present Crisis (London: S. P.C. K., 1947), p. 1.
2. New York: Harper and Bros., 1951, pp. 30ff.
3. Force and Freedom, 1943, p. 107. Quoted by Niebuhr, p. 31.
4. Niebuhr, pp. 37–38.
5. Demant, pp. 2–3.
6. Modern Library, I, 402.
7. Niebuhr, p. 174.
8. Demant, p. 35.
9. Ibid., p. 36.
10. P. 297.
11. Ibid., p. 302.
12. Works of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company, 1931), IV, 112–113.
13. Demant, pp. 37–39.

From The Musical Heritage of the Church, Volume VII (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1970). Copyright Concordia Publishing House. Printed by permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Concordia Publishing House.