The Pastor: Wilhelm Loehe

Overview
Never before translated into English, The Pastor is a practical handbook for clergy who embrace the Reformation. Encounter newly uncovered perspectives from nineteenth century clergyman Wilhelm Loehe as he explains the “how” and “why” of a pastor’s duties in the “one holy catholic and apostolic church.” He clarifies not just Lutheran pastoral practice in the nineteenth century, but also what it means to apply the Means of Grace to God’s people in the twenty-first century, in harmony with the Church of all ages.

Topics include:
• Pastoral practice and ethics
• Homiletics
• Catechesis
• Liturgics
• Pastoral care and counseling

“To the so-called Lutheran, that is the true catholic Christian, belongs the entire past, before and after Luther. The future must belong to him as well. All things true and scriptural are his, when and where they are spoken. The norma normata [i.e., the confessions] of the sixteenth century is for him not congruent with the norma normans [i.e., Holy Scripture] in the sense that the former exhausts the latter, and that God Himself would not be permitted to give something to his Church that either did not exist in the year of 1580, or was not observed.”

—Foreword to the First Edition of Booklet Two


Praise for The Pastor

“Loehe’s The Pastor is of great benefit, especially for Lutheran pastors today. Loehe, a German Lutheran living in the 1800s, was an expert in the pastoral and devotional literature of Lutheranism and of the early Church. He brings forth these old treasures in this, his pastoral theology, and by doing so he opens a door to areas of divine wisdom that most modern pastors do not even know exist. From pastoral formation to Lutheran ‘ascetic literature’ to Lutheran casuistry (solving difficult issues, cases of conscience) to worship and preaching, the old words of Wilhelm Loehe are new and contemporary to us.”

—Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, President, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

“When Wilhelm Loehe died in 1872, he left behind a legacy in missions and diaconal work that is rightly celebrated down to the present day. His approach to pastoral theology was eclipsed by clinical approaches to pastoral care which were long on psychological theory but short on theology. Now The Pastor makes his rich and reflective work as a shepherd who cared for Christ's people available to an English-speaking audience. The wisdom contained in this book was shaped by Loehe's own life under the cross which pressed him into the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions. The Pastor is a classic work in the care of souls. I look forward to using it as a text in my own classes in pastoral theology.”

—John T. Pless, Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministry & Missions, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN

About the Author
Wilhelm Loehe (1808–1872), a Lutheran pastor in Germany, was the main founder of the Missouri Synod’s seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He sent many missionaries to America in the nineteenth century. These missionaries helped form the Missouri Synod and the Iowa Synod (now part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America).