# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 12 24_S69
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

69

we would not know that we are guilty of death, if the Law did not tell us (Rom. 3:20). The ministration of the Spirit is now nothing other than the ministry that preaches reconciliation, because the preaching of the holy Gospel, or of faith, according to Gal. 3:2, gives the Spirit, that is, the Holy Ghost, who regenerates us and makes our hearts subject and obedient to God; not every spirit is therefore meant here, least of all the fanatical spirit of the false teachers, who have this word constantly in their mouths. But since this ministry likewise preaches, it must surely also use words and letters. The letters are therefore not excluded from the ministry of the Spirit, only that, as such letters which impart to us the word of grace, they do not "kill," but make alive. This ministry of the Spirit, therefore, one may not seek apart from the "outward word" and the letters of Holy Scripture, as the false teachers do, who of course can win the ears of their hearers for their lies only when they have first turned their eyes away from the letter of the divine Word. In this their father, the devil, gave them a powerful example, when he first tore the outward word out of Eve's heart, before he filled her soul with his lies (Gen. 3:1 ff.). Read what Luther writes about this in the eighth of the Smalcald Articles: "This is all the old devil and old serpent, who made Adam and Eve also into enthusiasts (that is, fanatics), etc. — for they were holy, says he, since the Holy Ghost spoke through them."

That all doubt may vanish from you that that passage, 2 Cor. 3:6, is misused when it is employed to the disparagement of the letter of Holy Scripture, since it by no means represents the same as without power, but rather ascribes even to the letter of the Law the great power, most needful for us sinners, that it kills, and to the letter of the holy Gospel, however, ascribes the blessed effect that it makes us alive and imparts the Holy Ghost, and thus is in most glorious harmony with John 6:63, where the Lord gives the glorious assurance, concerning "the words that he speaks," from which one may not depart by a single letter (cf. Matt. 5:18; Rev. 22:18, 19), and which could neither be spoken nor written without letters, that they are "spirit and life" — I will therefore also give you Luther's brief exposition of that passage.

Thus, namely, Luther writes of that passage, 2 Cor. 3:6: "To teach the letter is to teach the mere Law and works, without the knowledge of God's grace, whereby everything is condemned, and whatever man is and does is found guilty of death, for without God's grace he can do nothing good. — To teach the Spirit is to teach grace 'without Law and merit,' whereby man is made alive and blessed."

Accordingly a biblical dictionary explains the word "kill" in that passage, 2 Cor. 3:6, briefly thus: "to uncover spiritual and eternal death. After sin has been committed, the sinner feels from the Law curse and damnation."

Thus I hope, by the Lord's grace, to have dispelled all those prejudices which had made the contents of my previous letter suspect to you. It now lies again in your hands whether you are minded, with the other German Lutherans in your neighborhood, to form a lutheran congregation faithful to the Confession, separate from those who wish to remain Reformed. For it does not matter whether all the former members of the congregation in N. N. remain united hereafter, but only whether some, be it even only a few German Lutherans, have so much love for their Church in their hearts that they will count a little trouble, expense, and vexation as nothing, in order, through pure preaching and sound school instruction, to preserve the jewel of the truth and to transplant it to their children. Though the church built in common should be lost on that account, it matters not. Where there is true love to the Lord, one will gladly leave even a church-house for His name's sake, and build anew one, though smaller and less imposing, or make shift for the time being in some other way. For pure Word and Sacrament make the Church, not the house in which one holds divine service.

Yet, as said, it now rests with you and your friends what you will do. If you will follow faithful counsel, then confer with the Lutherans in your region and draw in only those who have a mind for the cause and love for their Church. However few of you there may be, only seek sincerely the Lord's pure Word, and He will not leave your prayer for a laborer in His harvest unheard. But if you wish, merely so as not to offend the great multitude, to let the matter lie, and rather to load yourselves with a preacher after whom the ears of the majority itch, then beware lest you bring your souls into danger. It might be required of you, if you were to deprive yourselves and many of your fellow men, unto child and child's child, of the blessing of the pure Word and of the unfalsified Confession!

Herewith commended to God! In Christ,
Yours,
N. N.

(Submitted.)

A Few Words on a Resolution of the Synod of Indianapolis at its Last Session at Cincinnati, from the 5th to the 7th of September 1850.

Gratifying as, on the one hand, the evident growth of the Indianapolis Synod is in its recognition of the connection between the church's confession and the church practice conformable to it, so regrettable is it, on the other hand, that half-hearted, undecided measures, resisting the spirit of the Confession, keep recurring, which make one doubt anew the thoroughness of their churchly standpoint.

From the extract of their last synodical proceedings in No. 5 of the Lutheraner it is, namely, to be seen that the majority of the Synod rejected the motion of Pastor Wichmann to exclude Pastor Wier from the Synod for having left "without sufficient reason" his Lutheran Zion congregation in Indiana and become a missionary of the Protestant Society as well as an agent of the "Freie deutsche Katholik."

Instead, it was resolved that the President should first make inquiry "into the actual true standpoint of Pastor Wier and the tendency (the direction and disposition) of that paper, and report thereon at the next session of the Synod"; for they were "not yet in a perfectly clear light concerning this his standpoint, and they thought it wrong to exclude him merely because he is supported by the Protestant Society and circulates the 'Freie deutsche Katholik'; for they did not yet properly know the character of that paper; moreover, Pastor Wier is about to found a congregation upon the Confession of the Lutheran Church and to use the Lutheran Catechism."

Let us now ask whether this resolution has a sound foundation and basis in the Confession; we must, alas, deny it, and that for the following reasons.

In the first place, it sounds indeed strange that the Synod (in the majority) should not yet be in a perfectly clear light concerning the actual standpoint of Pastor Wier.

This man, namely, first leaves "without sufficient reason" his congregation in Indiana. Had he stood upon the right churchly standpoint, he would not have done this. For from this standpoint the leaving of a congregation is lawful only when the pastor receives a call, recognized as divine and regular, to another congregation of his church, where with the pound entrusted to him he can work more for the common benefit; or when his congregation will not tolerate God's Word and the church discipline conformable to it; or when it maliciously starves him out. And such leaving is permissible only when, perhaps through mutual fault of pastor and congregation, so evil a misunderstanding has gradually arisen and has spread so deeply and ruinously that the separation is really the lesser evil; yet naturally even this sad step of necessity ought not to take place without the counsel of orthodox servants and members of the Church endowed with wisdom and experience. Where, now, none of those reasons or this last state of evil exists, there the leaving of a congregation is surely a lightly done wicked thing, which runs against God's Word and the church's Confession; and where in such a case a peculiar obscurity is still supposed to lurk over the standpoint of such a runaway, it is hard to see.