The Lonely Way

What would have happened if in the second century Basilidians, Valentinians, Marcionites and Catholics, Montanists, Theodotians and Modalists had had a roundtable discussion and said this: For the sake of missions, let us bury the war hatchet. As followers of Jesus we desire nothing other than to follow the Master, to build one church in which everyone may carry on his particular tradition within the realm of a common truth, over against the one Lord of the one church. What would have come of the church of the fourth and fifth centuries if, for the sake of the mission task, it had not battled through the Arian and Nestorian controversies, if Arian, Homousian, Nestorian, Monophysite, Pelagian, and followers of Augustine had allowed themselves simply to be united in one great ecclesiastical communion? This question is posed in order to find the only answer which can be given to it: Today the church would simply no longer exist. The church would have been ruined. Just as a man whose kidneys no longer eliminate poisons which have accumulated in the body will die, so the church will die which no longer eliminates heresy. Book jacket.

Hermann Sasse (1895-1976) was trained at the University of Berlin under such well-known theologians as Harnack and Deissmann. During a study year in America, Sasse discovered the writings of Wilhelm Lohe and returned to Europe a convinced confessional Lutheran. In this faith he persisted, despite great difficulties, as a professor of theology at the University of Erlangen and then at Immanuel Seminary (later renamed Luther Seminary), North Adelaide, Australia