Wauwawhat? (Part One)

In my next couple of blogs I will be writing about “the Wauwatosa theology.” It gets into some arcane history, but some of that history gets into more recent events in confessional Lutheranism. Even though I belong to the Missouri Synod (ca. 2.4 million members) instead of the Wisconsin Synod (ca. 390,000 members) where the Wauwatosa theology was centered, I cannot entirely ignore it because the Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Synod were in fellowship with each other at the time and it had an effect on both denominations.


But what is the Wauwatosa theology? It refers to the emphases found in the Wisconsin Synod of approximately the 1910’s and 1920’s when that synod had its seminary in Wauwatosa and was under the leadership of J.P. Köhler. Although August Pieper and Johannes Schaller (and sometimes Hermann Meyer and Adolf Hönecke) are often mentioned as fellow Wauwatosa theologians, it was Köhler who was the driving force behind the movement. Although it would be incorrect to speak of a Wauwatosa theology as soon as he began teaching at the seminary in 1900, it was certainly well in place when he took over the presidency in 1920. The movement came to a formal end with the seminary’s move in 1929 and the end of Köhler’s presidency in 1930, although most in the Wisconsin Synod would say that its legacy remains.

At the heart of the Wauwatosa theology was a re-emphasis on exegetical theology (which explains the Scriptures verse by verse) and to a lesser extent historical theology (which is concerned with the history of the church and theology). This emphasis stood in distinction to the Missouri Synod at the time, which spent more time on systematic theology (which explains the teachings of the Scripture topic by topic) and practical theology (which teaches pastors how to apply doctrine in their parish life through preaching, teaching, pastoral care, and the like). In addition, the Wauwatosa movement criticized the Missouri Synod for its educational system that placed a premium on doing theology in Latin. This was due to the fact that nearly every systematic theology had been written in Latin until the nineteenth century and the early Missouri Synod found little to commend in the contemporary systematic theologies being published in German or English. Because many students were too busy struggling with the Latin in the Baier-Walther Compendium, the main systematics textbook, they had no time to devote to verse by verse exegesis of the Scripture.

Even before the Wauwatosa theology made its appearance, the Missouri Synod had realized that there was a problem and was correcting it. C.F.W. Walther (who is sometimes caricatured by historians of the Wauwatosa school as hostile to serious exegesis or at least uninterested in it) finagled a call to Georg Stöckhardt to teach exegetical theology at his seminary; indeed, Walther was far more eager than just about anyone to see more exegesis taught at his seminary. Köhler and his colleagues readily acknowledged their deep debt to Stöckhardt and to Walther, but some more recent chroniclers of the Wauwatosa movement are less willing to do so. Moreover, about the same time that the Wauwatosa school was forming, Franz Pieper wrote a systematic theology in German so that his students wouldn’t have to struggle with Latin theological texts any more, thus freeing up more time for other studies. (A generation later seminarians found the German as difficult as their forebears had found the Latin, and Pieper’s work was translated into English.) More exegetical courses were added with the result that today the total number of required exegetical courses in Missouri’s schools outnumbers the systematic ones and is close to that required by the Wisconsin Synod. The transition was also furthered along by a change in Missouri’s environment. In its first half century or so the synod was growing so quickly that the best form of education seemed to be to cover all the major theological topics as well as possible and to offer advice on how to preach them and then to let the seminarian read the Bible carefully verse by verse on his own once he was out in the parish. But now the synod was beginning to realize the value of a more rounded theological education.

I tend to think of myself as more of an exegete than a systematician, but systematics has been a close second love. It is not surprising then that I find much to commend in the Wauwatosa theology. I recommend the three volume collection of the Wauwatosa theology published by Northwestern Publishing House, the first of which has a quite detailed history of the movement. I also recommend John Schaller’s Biblical Christology as a fine example of systematic theology done with an exegetical bent. At the same time, though, I find that there are areas of that school that bear further investigation and perhaps even critique.