# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 12 21_S67
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

67

and call to them as once to the prophet Jeremiah (15, 19): "Before thou shouldest fall to them, they must rather fall to thee."

The Grabau Informatorium.

Since another number of this paper has appeared since the appearance of the last number of our "Lutheraner," we again render the necessary report concerning it.

No. 1 is the continuation of the criticism of the doctrine of the Church which we laid before the public from the writings of our old teachers in the book: "Die Stimme unserer Kirche in der Frage von Kirche und Amt." The master of that criticism toils therein to prove that by the catholic Church in the improper sense we understand the totality of all sects, as such. The poor man, in his lack of practice in distinguishing, appears not to have grasped that every false church which has not yet made itself guilty of a complete apostasy can and must be regarded in a twofold manner: first, insofar as it has made itself partaker of a partial apostasy and insofar as it is therefore a sect; and then, insofar as it still has so much of the goods of the Church, namely of the means of grace, the pure doctrine, the sacraments, whereby even within the erring church children of God are still born, and insofar as it therefore, though not an orthodox church, is yet not a non-church, as our old Lutheran theologians express themselves. Whoever, to be sure, cannot or will not grasp and reconcile this will find nothing but contradictions in Lutheran theology; at one time he will think the Lutheran theologians are on his side, when he holds an orthodox particular church to be the universal Christian Church outside of which there is no salvation, — at another time he will think those teachers made of the universal Christian Church a unionistic medley of all sorts of churches, sects and factions. And so, alas, it goes also with our dear Herr Critic, as yet unknown to us. Yet we cannot this time either linger over his galimatias of doctrine, but will lay before the readers of the "Lutheraner," in due season, in plain and clear connection, what we have set forth aphoristically for practiced readers in the book cited.

No. 2 contains the continuation of the so-called Christian Consideration of Grabau. In reading through this continuation we could not, we must confess, refrain from the thought: It is true, Pastor Grabau is indeed a gifted man! For he has the rare gift of never letting any embarrassment be noticed, indeed, just when he is beaten, of treating his opponent with all the greater boldness as the vanquished and convicted one. This he does in this essay also. From Musäus we proved to him that in an unjust ban it is properly not the banned man who separates from the Church, but the Church that separates from the banned man, that Grabau therefore cannot demand of him that he remain with his alleged dear mother, the banning church, but that the latter rather has the duty to remove the guilty schism. What does the Herr Pastor do now? He acknowledges the testimony of Musäus, but twists it as if he had spoken only of the papistical church, in which the false ban is a daily work, and as if he had not set forth the doctrine of the unjust ban in general, so that it might find its application also to Protestants. And upon this Herr Grabau now falls upon us, gives us all kinds of evil titles, such as "king of slanderers" and the like, then comes to the preachers sent to his former church children at their request, who are said to have been sent to them solely out of ambition, calls us a Donatist bishop (because we related to him beforehand the history of the Donatists and of the colloquy rejected by them in No. 4 of the "Lutheraner"), declares that only on account of our impenitence did he decline the conversation offered to him*) and published the opinion of Neumeister mentioned in No. 5 for quite other reasons, which one might have gathered already from the words: "How an evangelical Christian is to conduct himself when a religious conversation takes place between him and another who is of a strange faith?"! It sounds strange when the essay says, among other things: "We have never declared the church of the Missouri Synod to be a false church." Gratifying as this declaration is on the one hand, in that it shows that Herr Pst. Grabau is still restrained in his conscience from declaring our Church a sect (although he has done so with mouth and pen countless times), yet this publication of his conviction seems to be only an artifice, whereby he would designate the writer of this alone as the author of the discords, make us alone the scapegoat, alienate us from our Synod and decoy the latter for himself; although he knows very well that the editor of the "Lutheraner" has only One vote in our Synod, indeed has for three years been only an advisory member of it, and that everything that has been done against him on our part since the existence of our Synod has been acted upon by the whole Synod.†) — Herr Pst. Grabau closes with the promise to testify against our doings "unto death," and with the admonition to flee us as "democratic wasters of the vineyard of God;" we close with the wish that God may open the eyes and heart of our opponent before his death and ours, so that we may not have cause to testify against his hierarchical and Romanizing doctrines and practices, which undermine the freedom of the Christian congregations, until our death.

*) Pst. Grabau probably means that Luther colloquized with Zwingli on account of the latter's penitence.

†) It is, moreover, a distortion when Herr Pastor Grabau represents the matter as though we had chiefly taken up the cause of those banned by him; the great majority have rather, so far as we know, been put under the ban by the Buffalo gentlemen against all understanding of the nature of the ban only after they had already left their congregations and called a preacher from our midst.

No. 4 is a communication from Herr von Rohr. Therein he seeks to prove, because we teach that in all parties within Christendom souls are saved, that according to our doctrine Herr Florencourt might calmly have turned Roman. He thinks that, to prevent becoming Catholic, the doctrine is necessary that not only communion with the invisible Church is unconditionally necessary to salvation. Since Herr von Rohr has still become a preacher, he ought indeed to know what this means: unconditionally necessary to salvation is only communion with the invisible Church. This means, namely: however necessary to salvation it is, under certain conditions, circumstances, relations, etc., to hold to a visible church, yet this is not unconditionally, not under all circumstances so necessary (so that one could not at all be saved without communion with a visible church), when, for example, the orthodox visible church, as in the times of Elijah, is nowhere to be found; — whereas communion and membership in the invisible Church of believers is unconditionally, that is, under all circumstances and conditions, necessary to salvation, because namely no man cometh unto the Father but by Christ, because faith in Christ alone makes righteous and saved before God. — In consideration, however, that Hr. von Rohr turned late to the study of theology and had Herr Pst. Grabau for his teacher, this blunder of his, great as it is, is surely to be forgiven.

No. 5 is by Pastor Winkler. He declares, in his old simple way, again to be a lie what we wrote of him: that he himself, namely, had already declared beforehand to be a lie what we would write of him! But Herr Winkler had really written verbatim as follows: "Instead of this, Herr Prof. Walther threatens in the 'Lutheraner' henceforth to drive filth, that is, to communicate 'offensive stories' — as he himself calls them — about Herr Pastor Grabau, etc. What is meant is the filth of lies and slanders which he has from the enemies of this man." — Now let the reader himself judge with what face Herr Winkler can charge us with lying, when on the ground of these his words above we have ascribed to him the declaration that what we shall yet write about him is itself a lie. Is that perhaps the little back door that Herr Winkler in the second