Strangers to Sisters - Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary Library: Essays

intellect of an orthodox systematician.” 19 This author would argue that their method is
simpler than the one that is described by Nelson. Caspari and Johnson, from their own
personal and professional experience, knew that true confessional Lutheranism is born
from the direct study of the Scriptures. Their method was nothing more than the method
of Luther and his colleagues: Sola Scriptura.
The reverence for Holy Scripture as the sole authority for the establishment of
articles of faith and the guidance of a Christian is clearly seen in the Johnsonian
Awakening. Historian Gerald Belgum gives this glimpse into Johnson’s classroom
lectures on the Holy Scriptures,
The accounts of his public lectures, those calm, scholarly
expositions of Holy Scripture, were that those classes, some
of which lasted for over two hours, were intensely moving.
Welle reports that, “the whole assembly trembled when
Johnson quietly and with his thin voice quoted the
prophet’s words: ‘there is no peace for the ungodly, says
my God.’ 20
Or consider this snapshot of Caspari’s lectures and classroom method, given by Andreas
Brandrud, who succeeded Johnson to the chair of Church History at Christiania,
Caspari’s orthodox view of the Bible did not allow him to
investigate with complete freedom…He was not a
pietist…but he possessed at the same time a deep and childlike
piety, which especially lived and breathed in the Bible,
not least in the Old Testament, in the piety of the
Patriarchs, Prophets, and Psalms. And he understood how
to give it impressive expression. None of his hearers could
ever forget Caspari as he often stood on the podium
expounding upon the Hebrew Psalm or a portion of the
Prophets, and with closed eyes and in a scarcely audible
19 Nelson, Lutherans in North America, 159-160.
20 Gerald Belgum, “The Old Norwegian Synod in America: 1853-1890.” (PhD diss., Yale University,
1957.), 38.
18