# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 09 28_S19
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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to expose, which his crafty opponent performs, which, however fearsome they look, are yet, as the knowing and attentive well know, only blows in the air? Moreover, if Pastor Grabau requires that we demonstrate to him this his dishonest manner of fighting, we are ready to furnish this demonstration with a few examples out of many. — Another reason why our present conflict is a more difficult one is this: that, in order to appraise and judge rightly the matter at issue, there is needed partly a greater earnestness, partly a greater knowledge, than most readers have. Few at present, alas, have so great a divine zeal for the purity of the holy doctrine that it would be important enough to them to weigh earnestly the reasons for and against in such a conflict; not a few rather regard the matter as hardly worth mentioning and the whole conflict as an empty, useless wrangling about words. Few also know the doctrine already so fully that they would be in a position to see how a departure in this or that apparently less important point can and must lead to an overthrow of the whole ground of salvation. In such a conflict, therefore, the champion of the truth can indeed expect assent from only a few. — A third reason why this conflict is especially difficult is this, that the errors which Pastor Grabau defends have already for more than a hundred years crept here and there into the Lutheran Church, so that many now cherish them by virtue of a certain doctrinal tradition (handing down of doctrine) and, thoughtless as they are, imagine that what we combat has been the doctrine of the Lutherans from time immemorial. The errors of Pastor Grabau are an old hurt in our Church, whose origin is to be dated back to the time when the watchmen in our Church began to sleep and made orthodoxy consist in this, that they removed themselves as far as possible from the mode of view of the fanatical sects that hate whatever is churchly, and so gradually moved back again toward papistic conceptions. This old hurt breaks out only in Pastor Grabau, once for all, like an ulcer that has become ripe. As in the land of the lame the man who walks straight is held a cripple because, according to the custom of the land, he does not limp along, so among such Romanizing Lutherans an old evangelical Lutheran is held from the outset to be unchurchly and a heterodox person, that is, one who departs from the right faith, because he will not Romanize along with them. — A fourth reason, finally, why our present conflict has particular difficulties is this, that Pastor Grabau's doctrine, which we combat, enters reason far better than the pure doctrine, and because it falls in with the lusts of domineering preachers. It goes down much better with the natural man when he hears that the Church is a visible kingdom in which there are those who command and those who obey, than when he hears that the Church is properly an invisible spiritual kingdom in which only Christ commands, but all are brethren, in which the preacher has only the power of the Word and may compel no one to his human ordinances, however good they may seem to him. And how agreeable it is, especially to self-willed preachers, when it is held out to them, as Pastor Grabau does, that the congregation must be obedient to him in all churchly matters, provided only that these are not against God's Word! when, that is, the proud delusion is instilled into the preacher that Christians in the Church owe the preacher at bottom the same obedience which they have to render to the king in the state! For if anything is demanded contrary to God's Word, then indeed the citizens are not bound to obey even a king, but there too the saying holds: We ought to obey God rather than men. It is therefore truly not easy to enter the lists for a doctrine against which the reason and self-love of so many revolt!

Yet in God's affairs we have, after all, not to look to the success to be expected from our doing, but solely to God's command and our duty. Looking only to that, and committing the success to God, we shall now with the same zeal combat the adding to our dear evangelical doctrine with which we have hitherto combated the taking away from it; with the same zeal resist the attempt to smuggle Roman error into the doctrine of our Lutheran Church with which we have set ourselves against the attempt to smuggle in Reformed, fanatical and unionistic errors. As hitherto in all our conflicts, so also in the one now begun shall our guiding star be and remain:

God's Word and Luther's doctrine
Shall pass away nevermore.

We testify, however, before God and all the world, once more in conclusion, that in spite of all the grievous and discouraging things we have experienced in connection with our proposals of peace, we are at every moment still willing and ready to accept any conclusion of peace which we can accept without having in any way to bend the truth of God. We are not the enemy of Pastor Grabau; we do not hate him; we wish him no evil, no shame, no lapse of the blessing which God has already laid upon his labor otherwise; we rejoice heartily over all the good that God lets succeed with this man, and especially over all the rescues of souls that take place through his service. Were it therefore possible that we could still extend to him the hand of reconciliation, that would be for us the most precious thing that God could still let us live to see in this poor life. United with him in truth and love, we would then gladly step back, become his, as the elder's, servants, and, as Luther himself says of the Pope and bishops in such a case, gladly wash his feet and carry him on our hands. God grant it! Amen!

The Voice of Our Church

on Unjust Excommunication.

Motto: "As their laws are, so is their ban also. As the law and the ban, so is their church also. As the church, so is their God also." (Luther.)

That we once more lay something before the readers of the "Lutheraner" on this subject may seem to not a few something superfluous. But the more readers there are who think that the point of unjust excommunication is not so important, the more necessary it appears to return to it again and again. For as sad as it is in the congregations in which church discipline almost wholly lies prostrate, and the ban against open and obstinate sinners and heretics is not exercised at all, so terrible is it when in a congregation men are unjustly excommunicated, that is, when innocent Christians are therein repelled from the holy Supper and shut out from Christian communion. Thereby a fearful sin is committed. By such an unjust public ban before men the excommunicators plunge themselves, without their suspecting it, into the secret ban before God, which, as Luther quite rightly says, is the most terrible ban of all. Such excommunicators do nothing else than as if they would cut from the LORD JESUS a living member of His body (which of course they cannot do.) Such excommunicators shut out with the innocent Christians the LORD JESUS Himself from them; for in believing Christians the LORD JESUS dwells, and He says that what one has done to one of the least among His own, that one has done to Him. Such a congregation, which thrusts out His believers from the Saviour and separates them from itself, He no longer acknowledges for His dear congregation, even if some simple, good, honest souls are still among them; unless it repent. There is therefore no trifling with the ban. With the key of binding a great and responsible power is committed to us poor sinners, which we may use upon our fellow-sinners only with fear and trembling and not lightly, if we do not wish thereby to shut ourselves out of the kingdom of heaven and draw down the curse of God upon us. Only read the following passages of Holy Scripture: Jer. 23, 1. 2. Ezek. 34, 4–6. 20–22. Luke 6, 22. 11, 52. John 9, 22. 12, 42. 16, 2–3.

The Grabauian Kirchen-Informatorium would indeed maintain that a congregation with its preacher, in spite of the unjust ban which it exercises, remains the true Church, the Bride of Christ, the dear mother of believers, from which therefore no one may separate himself, even if he has been put under the ban by it contrary to God's Word and right, that is, unjustly excluded from the enjoyment of the means of grace and Christian communion