The Grantville Gazette - Volume 1 Part 17

Or, in other words, the counts of Oldenburg were Philippists. Tolerant Philippists. Lax, even as Philippists went.

The Count of Oldenburg's problem was a longstanding attachment to a woman of unequal birth.

Elizabeth von Ungnad was scarcely a kitchen maid-her grandfather had served as Imperial amba.s.sador to Turkey. But she was not of the higher n.o.bility. Ferdinand II's uncompromising introduction of the Counter-Reformation had driven her family out of Austria and they had found refuge in Oldenburg. By this relationship with Elizabeth, he had a dearly-beloved namesake son, very promising, who was not ent.i.tled to inherit Oldenburg. He foresaw that his snug, well-governed, little corner of Germany would some day be torn apart by feuding cousins from Denmark and Holstein, as Juelich and Cleves had been by cousins from Brandenburg and the Palatinate.

The Count of Rudolstadt's problem, obviously, was how to resolve the quarrels among the disputatious groups of Lutherans encamped upon his doorstep.

Surely, the two of them thought, something could be arranged.

Count Anton Guenther proffered the first hypothetical suggestion.If Ludwig Guenther could see his way to granting the exemption to let Grantville's Philippists take communion at St. Martin's near Grantville , he suggested,then, in view of the upcoming marriage alliance, he himself might extend feelers through his new cousin-in-law that could possibly lead to an alliance of Oldenburg with the CPE .

If Anton Guenther were interested in an alliance, Ludwig Guenther replied,he was sure that Gustavus Adolphus would be happy to discuss terms . He cleared his throat.It was possible, of course, that such terms might include support for young Anton's succession to his father. There might ways for an interested ruler to legitimate his status, since neither of his parents had ever been married to anyone else. If it should be found that the mother's family were to have been raised into the higher n.o.bility prior to the boy's birth, but that somehow this had been inadvertently overlooked... ?

Once the hypotheses were out in the open, more or less, the conversation advanced to procedural concerns. Count Ludwig Guenther commented that he would be willing to invite the King of Sweden's personal observer, Margrave George of Baden-Durlach to dinner the next evening. If Margrave George proved to be open to further discussion, the American secretary of state, Mr. Piazza had a radio operator from Grantville here in Jena. There was a radio operator from Grantville with the King of Sweden. With a judicious use of these marvelous radio communications, one might...

The conversation continued for several hours, every sentence carefully kept in the subjunctive. It never referenced the doctrine of ubiquity. Not even once.

Both men were, in their own ways, very sincere, faithful, practicing Lutherans. Ludwig Guenther, to be sure, was considerably more pious, but, still, Anton Guenther was also. The doctrine of ubiquity had never played a large role in either of their religious lives, any more than it did in the religious life of Carol Koch.

If men are from Mars, then Carol is from... some planet outside the solar system. (Attributed to her husband, Ron Koch.) Privately, Ron did think that she might be from Venus. But also, as a good Lutheran, he thought that the Venus aspect of her life wasn't anyone's business except her husband's. Besides, it didn't have anything to do with the way she conducted a debate.

Ron never argued with Carol. Over the past twenty years, he had realized that there wasn't any point in it. It wasn't that she pouted. It wasn't that she sulked, or screamed, or threw things. It wasn't that she didn't fight fair.

She just didn't follow the argument script. A proper argument was like a minuet. The first speaker performed a step. The second speaker responded with the appropriate riposte. The first speaker took the next step in the dance. The second responded with the expected answer. In Ron's view, a proper argument was almost liturgical in form.

It didn't work with Carol. If he advanced with the first minuet step, she offered a mental pirouette. If, disconcerted but persistent, he nevertheless performed the second step in the minuet, Carol did a bit of a tango and added some cha-cha-cha as a codicil.

Just because they were on opposite sides of the official debate, Gary, Jonas, and Carol didn't see any reason why they shouldn't eat supper together. It was a relief just to speak plain American English for a change. While the two counts were dining with one another, the three of them occupied a corner bench at the Freedom Arches.

"They're going at it all backwards," said Carol with annoyance. "If the confirmation cla.s.s mothers had taken this, 'I won't give an inch' sort of att.i.tude, we'd never have agreed on a cla.s.s time that everyone could make."

"I think," said Jonas cautiously, "that the schedule for a confirmation cla.s.s really is adiaphoral. Possibly even from Professor Osiander's perspective."

"Not if one person digs in her heels and says it will be nine A.M. on Sat.u.r.day or else and four of the kids can't make it then. Men! They go in and toss all these demands on a table. 'This we've got to have.' Well, they can't both eat the whole cake, so even when they negotiate a compromise, they all go home with a grudge, thinking that they've lost something."

If d.i.c.kens had been writing Carol's dialogue, she would have added, "Bah!"Bah! was inherent in her tone of voice.

"Er," Gary said. "That's the way negotiations are done. It's laid out in all the business textbooks."

"No." Carol was firm. "Yelling, 'it was at 9:00 on Sat.u.r.day morning when I was growing up' or 'we always had it on Tuesday in our church' just causes fights. The way to do it is to make up a paper with squares, right at the beginning. The days of the week and the hours of the day. Then you take a red hi-liter and mark out what's impossible-like school hours, or when the pastor holds services at the retirement home. Everybody gets a copy of that. Then, at the first meeting, all the mothers say what's impossible for them-like Kevin's sports practice or Alyssa's flute lesson. Mark those out in orange.

Then everyone says what would just be a little difficult-like, 'We might be ten minutes late some days if the traffic gets tied up.' Mark that in yellow. When you finish, you look at the white s.p.a.ces that are left and you know what you have to work with. It might be that n.o.body in the whole room would have suggested 'after supper on Thursdays,' but if everyone can make it then, it'll do. You're down to what everyone can agree on, or at least work with. And n.o.body goes home mad."

Both Gary and Jonas looked deeply saddened. There had to be something wrong with that, philosophically. Politically. Somehow, such a procedure reflected a lack of strong convictions. A guy who thought that confirmation cla.s.ses ought to be at nine A.M. would stick with it, come h.e.l.l or high water-a firm ideological commitment. If Carol Koch was a reasonable specimen of the workings of the female mind, they could only reach one conclusion. Women were frighteningly, terrifyingly, pragmatic.

Gary had started to suspect that already, during the eighteen months of his marriage to Sheila. The all-too-short eighteen months-Sheila had been left behind by the Ring of Fire.

Jonas leaned forward, resting his chin on his good hand. "Have you guys noticed that we've got a problem?"

"Yeah," said Gary. "That's why we're here."

"No," said Jonas. "A new problem. The Tuebingen people weren't here yet when the conference started.

They missed the opening statements. They had heard that Carol spoke before she delivered the ELCA response today-that I guarantee. But they hadn't seen it. They hadn't sat there when it was happening.

We could get a rerun of the first couple of days of the colloquy."

Gary rested his chin on both hands. "Well, I don't care what the Saxon chancellor said, Carol, they can't have you beheaded. Two swords or no two swords. I went down to Rudolstadt last Sat.u.r.day and looked it all up in the count's library. According to the law, they beheaded those crypto-Calvinists in Saxony for treason, not for heresy. You can't commit treason to the Elector of Saxony or even to the Duke of Wuerttemberg. You're not one of their subjects. He's just blowing smoke. And I'm inclined to tell him so."

"Oh, I never really thought that he would have me beheaded here." Carol looked a little reflective. "But if I ever went up there, I think he might actually try. His mouth was pretty frothy. And the professors from Wittenberg were just egging him on. But these guys from Tuebingen are even more so."

"It was the 'Philip had four daughters who prophesied' reference that really got to him." Jonas grinned.

"Especially since Melanchthon's name was Philip."

Carol looked injured. "He annoyed me with the 'women should keep silence in the church' bit. I still don't understand, though, why he slammed that baton on the table so hard when I pointed out that we were in a lecture hall and not a church."

"Umm," said Jonas. "Carol, has it ever occurred to you that you have a rather literal mind?"

Gary referred back to her earlier comment. "The guys from Tuebingen are 'even more so,' in a way. But they didn't ever try to behead Kepler. They just excommunicated him and wrote lots of letters. It really wasn't even them that were involved with having his mother tried for witchcraft-that was accusations from her neighbors and a local judge who didn't like their family. It's not as ifthese guys were out to get her..."

His voice trailed off. "I think, maybe, I'm getting an idea. Give me a couple of days to work it out."

As the colloquy droned on the next morning, Gary sat quietly at his place on the bench, fingers laced in front of him with his thumbs going around one another in circles, first clockwise and then counterclockwise, closing out the speeches and examining his idea. Gary didn't come up with a lot of ideas. He didn't have one of those sparkling, scintillating minds that threw out innovative concepts right and left. Consequently, when he did have an idea, he tended to react with a certain amount of apprehension. He was looking at this one very carefully-sort of the way that Red Riding Hood would have examined the wolf if she'd been on high alert.

The weekend came. Ed, who had conscientiously refrained from asking Tanya why the counts of Oldenburg and Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt had needed four hours of private, uninterrupted, radio communications with Magdeburg, nevertheless rode home for a long talk with Mike.

The weekend went. Ed dutifully returned to Jena. With every day that pa.s.sed, those benches got harder.

Monday evening, the "personal observers" again met for supper with Margrave George. Later, Ed would describe the conversation to Mike as "acrimonious," although, in fact, as the representative of the state that had dumped the problem in the lap of the others, he had rather enjoyed it. The German word wa.s.schadenfreude: delight in the tribulations of others.

It ran late. In seventeenth-century Germany and Scandinavia, religion was a matter of doctrine, but for the rulers, it was more. From the perspective of the princes, religion was important in the "here and now"

because religion here and now was a way of making the population behave. In Lutheran countries the church was, if not simply, at least also, a branch of the executive government. Any change in church practice would affect the maintenance of public order-which was the reason, for example, that Christian IV of Denmark promoted orthodox Lutheranism although he privately favored Calvinism. The chancellor of Hessen-Ka.s.sel had made more than a few pithy remarks about the unsettling effects of religious change-he had lived through Ka.s.sel's switch from Lutheranism to Calvinism.

On Tuesday morning, Count Ludwig Guenther opened the colloquy with the bland statement that since all views had now been given a sufficiently full and fair hearing, the morning would be free. He carefully failed to look at the Tuebingen delegation as he made the statement about a full hearing, for fear of observing any signs that there might be a contrary opinion. The afternoon, he stated, would be devoted to short summaries. He would permit four summaries only-each of the plaintiffs, the Philippists and the ELCA, might have one representative speak. Each of the opponents, the Flacians and the Missouri Synod, might have one representative speak. He would announce his decision in regard to St. Martin's Wednesday morning. Wednesday afternoon and evening would be devoted to the closing ceremonies and a state dinner. Any delegates who lived near enough to Jena were encouraged to bring their gracious wives to the banquet. Please notify his steward of the number of attendees from each delegation. He smiled and rose.

The down-time delegations started to buzz. Who would snag the prestigious opportunity to serve as closing speaker for each position? They adjourned to squabble.

The up-time delegations didn't have to wonder who would be speaking, since each delegation consisted of one person. Within ten minutes of the count's rising, the only occupants of the anatomy theater were Carol, Gary, and Jonas, who was leaning against the chalk board, looking a little deprived at not having a full morning of multilingual page references ahead of him.

"What now?" he asked. He dropped his chalk into the holder and sat down.

"I sure wish that I had some idea what the count's going to decide," said Carol.

"Me, too," said Gary. "But we don't."

Jonas looked at his pupils sternly. "Write! You've each got two hours to get down the basics of what you want to say. Then I've got one hour apiece to turn your English into German that says what you probably intended for it to say. Move it, guys."

"I've already got mine written." Gary started poking around in his pockets. "I knew this thing had to end some time." He fished out a sheet of paper, neatly hand-printed on both sides. "The points are in order, and I've numbered them." He handed it over to Jonas. "You can work on this now, while Carol's writing, and then you'll have more time for hers. I've got to go down to the printer's."

Gary Lambert believed, very sincerely, that he did not have the right words. If he had ever heard the maxim, "We are dwarfs, standing on the shoulders of giants," he would have subscribed to it on the spot.

For the time being, he would be content if he could just achieve one goal-to sound as much like his grandfather in the pulpit as possible.

Gesturing toward the door, he said: "I have brought printed copies of the speech upon which my words are based. There are enough copies for everyone here. If you need more copies, you are certainly all welcome to have it reprinted. It was made by a far greater man than I-by the first president of the Lutheran synod that it is my honor to represent here. His name was C.F.W. Walther and he spoke these words in 1848. He spoke them just over a century and a half before the intervention of G.o.d transported Grantville to this place and time."

Gary glanced up at Count Ludwig Guenther a little nervously. The man had been good to him and had done many fine and commendable things for Grantville's refugees.

"These words are also mine, and I'm glad that I can say them before the honorable Count of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt announces the outcome of the colloquy. We don't know, yet, what his decision will be in regard to the church of St. Martin's. Yet, there is one thing that we do know. Whatever the decision is, it will have been taken by a secular prince-a Lutheran prince, but still, a secular prince.

Because of that, whatever the decision may be, we must fear that it will not have been taken entirely upon the basis of Scriptural teaching. We must fear that it will have been influenced by considerations of political expediency and pragmatic necessity. That is the very nature of civil government."

In the chair, Count Ludwig Guenther kept his face very stiff. If the young American had been speaking defiantly, the count might have reacted otherwise. But Gary's words were said more in sorrow than in anger.

"The views expressed by Professor Osiander here," Gary continued, "are in great part the views of Synodical President Walther. The church must not compromise its doctrinal stance. It cannot accept being forced to grant communion to people who hold heterodox opinions."

He paused, straightened his shoulders, and drew a deep breath. "However, the Church has no proper authority but that of the Word of G.o.d. It must not try to use the State as a tool to force the consciences of others. The position of my Synod is that there is one proper remedy for the orthodox Lutherans-a remedy that will avoid the parallel danger that the State will try to use the Church as a tool.

"Gentlemen, it is the position of the Missouri Synod"-all one of us, you arrogant, stupid, idiot;what do you think you are doing?a niggling little voice in the back of his mind screeched at him-"after careful and conscientious consideration of the argumentation presented here, that the orthodox Lutherans of Germany should withdraw from the State churches and form an independent synod, neither funded nor controlled by the princes."

The a.s.sembled authorities of German Lutheranism looked down from their elevated benches. From the podium that had been set up on the floor of the operating theater, a not very tall, slightly stocky, prematurely balding, dishwater-blond man with a round face, thick gla.s.ses, and a very worried expression looked back at them, all the way around the circle.

"I've also brought copies of Synodical President Walther's manual about how to set up an independent synod. The t.i.tle is,The Proper Form of an Evangelical Lutheran Congregation Independent of the State . There are copies of that over by the door, too. I'm not a theology professor. I'm not even a pastor. My college major was in business administration and I'm the business manager for the hospital in Grantville. I'm not saying this to you from me, the person, because I have any authority. I'm saying it to you because Lutherans had tried out a lot of ways of governing their churches between the seventeenth century and the twentieth century. This-which was worked out by your descendants, who were also my ancestors-was the only one that let them hold to pure doctrine. When the Ring of Fire happened, I lost my wife and my parents. I lost all my friends and my job. But I didn't lose my faith. So I'm not going to give you any more of my words. This is how Synodical President Walther ended his speech."

Gary lifted his head.

"'Even though we possess no power, but that of the Word, we nevertheless can and should carry on our work joyfully. Let us, therefore, esteemed sirs and brethren, use this power properly. Let us above all and in all matters be concerned about this, that the pure doctrine of our dear Evangelical Lutheran Church may become known more and more completely among us, that it may be in vogue in all of our congregations, and that it may be preserved from all adulteration and held fast as the most precious treasure. Let us not surrender one iota of the demands of the Word. Let us bring about its complete rule in our congregations and set aside nothing of it, even though for this reason things may happen to us, as G.o.d wills. Here let us be inflexible, here let us be adamant. If we do this, we need not worry about the success of our labor. Even though it should seem to be in vain, it cannot then be in vain, for the Word does not return void but prospers in the thing whereto the Lord sent it. By the Word alone, without any other power, the church was founded; by the Word alone all the great deeds recorded in church history were accomplished; by the Word alone the church will most a.s.suredly stand also in these last days of sore distress, to the end of days. Even the gates of h.e.l.l will not prevail against it. "For all flesh is as gra.s.s, and all the glory of man as the flower of gra.s.s. The gra.s.s withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away; but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.'

"Amen," Gary said.

Gary Lambert had just achieved something that no one else in human memory had achieved. Professor Lukas Osiander, Jr. was temporarily speechless.

He recovered quickly, but he realized that he was also going to have to rewrite his carefully prepared summary statement. It seemed a little... irrelevant.

He called for an overnight break. Count Ludwig Guenther gave him two hours.

It was possible, of course, that if Count Ludwig Guenther had granted the full overnight break that Osiander requested, the world would have turned on a different axis. But there was no way to peer into time and find out thewhat ifs and themight have beens of history. The count, like many others, was getting very tired of those hard benches. His secretary was writing up a draft of the decision he had already taken after his supper with the "personal representatives" at Margrave George's rooms, even as the summary statements were being publicly presented. He was fifty-two years old and he was feeling every one of them. He wanted to go back to his own quarters and sit on a comfortable chair. He definitely did not want to stretch this meeting out for another day, especially since the provisions for the scheduled closing banquet were being delivered to all the contributing-and unrefrigerated-kitchens of Jena at this very moment.

Professor Osiander spent very little of the two hour break looking at the Walther material. His colleagues and a.s.sociates were alternately reading random sentences from it out loud and shouting at one another. There was no chance that they would reach agreement on a modified summary statement within the allotted time. Osiander suddenly thought that no secular rulershould have the right to prevent the church from making a full and conscientious examination of a crucial issue before it.

He ended up presenting his original summary. With one more sentence at the end.

"If the decision of the count should be to require an orthodox minister to extend communion to lay persons who claim to be members of his congregation, but who are not in full doctrinal agreement with the teachings of theFormula of Concord , then the defenders of Lutheran orthodoxy feel that they must take the step of consulting with their brethren of the Missouri Synod on possible changes in the const.i.tution and structure of the visible church."

Wednesday morning, the chancellor of Saxony and his entourage left Jena at first light, riding hard for Dresden. The Wittenberg theologians, however, stayed behind.

Cavriani, who just happened to be leaning against the city gate when it was opened, took down a list of those departing. He and his list made it back to the Black Bear in time to have breakfast with Ed Piazza.

"The distinction between Saxony's politicians and theologians is, to say the least, an ambivalent signal," he mused out loud.

Tanya promptly roused up the people napping next to other radio sets and relayed a copy of the list to Magdeburg and Grantville.

In the matter of the ministerial appointment at St. Martin's in the Fields, near Grantville, United States.

In the matter of the a.s.sociated appointments of the teaching staff at Countess Katherina the Heroic Lutheran Elementary School, near Grantville, United States.

In the matter of the antic.i.p.ated ministerial appointment at St. Thomas the Apostle, near Grantville, United States.

In the matter of the a.s.sociated appointments of the teaching staff at the yet-unnamed Lutheran Elementary School to be constructed in connection with the church of St. Thomas the Apostle.

Count Ludwig Guenther rechecked the heading to make sure that his secretary had included everything.

He didn't want to go through another one of these in the foreseeable future. Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt was a small county, only about 35,000 in total population. It had a limited budget. This colloquy had been a big financial drain, coming on top of the mandatory war contributions. He would, once it was over, have to call his Estates-the county's legislature-and request a special tax levy to cover the debts that he had incurred.

Count Ludwig Guenther had a well-known streak of financial prudence, two miles wide and two miles deep. He loathed asking for special tax levies. The Estates always wanted some kind of aquid pro quo.

It was much better for a man to live within his means.

His announcement of the decision proceeded at a measured pace. In addition to the actual decision itself, which would come at the end, his presentation covered all the possible approaches, as his consistory saw them and upon which it had advised him, as well as the points debated in the colloquy.

There was the option of appointing an orthodox minister to both churches, allowing them to exclude those unwilling to subscribe, without reservation, to the Formula of Concord and unaltered Augsburg Confession, from communion; There was the option of appointing an orthodox minister to both churches, but requiring them to admit such persons to communion; There was the option of appointing an orthodox minister to one of the churches and a Philippist to the other; There was the option of establishing a parity arrangement, in which one group used the church facility for part of the time and the other group used the church the remainder of the time, each group having its own minister; There was the option of appointing Philippist ministers to both of the churches-who would, it was a.s.sumed, be willing to admit Lutherans of all theological views to communion.