# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 08 02_S171
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

171

1. The Synod of Missouri "confesses by its refusing conduct that it wills to persist in the sin against the 8th and 5th Commandment toward its Lutheran fellow-Christians."

Pastor Grabau causes a Pastoral Letter to go forth which contains offensive propositions. The Saxon Lutherans are called upon by him to give their judgment concerning it. Accordingly they state their misgivings. Pastor Grabau justifies himself. They defend their standpoint in turn. Thereupon they are declared by the Prussian Synod to be innovators who bring the holy preaching office into contempt. In the meantime disturbances have arisen within the Prussian congregations. Here and there distressed members of the same turn to the Saxons, because according to their confession they have scruples of conscience, together with these, concerning the tendency which prevails in the Synod of Buffalo. The Saxon Lutherans, to be sure as men who can judge only according to the confession of the mouth, take up the cause of such people. This draws upon them such titles of honor as: "godless protectors of factions, Ahab-synod, idol-temple," etc. Thus they now stand at present, together with us, the remaining members of the Synod of Missouri, who in this their controversy declare ourselves for them, because before our conscience they have become manifest as those who have the truth and the right on their side, over against the Synod of Buffalo. The latter has overwhelmed them with a flood of abusive and blasphemous speeches. They have, on the other hand, as they solemnly assure us, defended only "God's Word and Luther's doctrine," and have been compelled to lay bare blunders and injustices into which Pastor Grabau has been led astray by his erroneous doctrine. That is their "sin against the 8th and 5th Commandment toward their Lutheran fellow-Christians."

In this sin they "persist," and confess it by their refusing conduct." — Last year we offered ourselves for a colloquy concerning the pending doctrinal controversies. Although we had to do in the first place with Pastor Grabau, by whom the erroneous doctrines in question had been scattered abroad and defended, while our defense against the same has the consensus of the whole church for its support and is nothing more than a defense of the common inheritance of the Fathers, yet our proposal was rejected for the very reason that we had not addressed it to the whole Synod of Buffalo, but had directed it to Pastor Grabau. A manifestly unintended error of form sufficed to hedge up again the path of peace opened by us. At our synodal assembly of this year a letter arrives from the Synod of Buffalo, assembled at the same time, in which it condescends, as a preacher of repentance, to offer us on its part a colloquy, whereby it might win us, in that we hear "it." The same concludes with the following words: "May the merciful God bless this our faithful reproof and admonition, that we may win the Reverend Synod of Missouri as Christian, Lutheran fellow-brethren, in that they hear us. Amen!" We accept the offer also in such a manner, and request, be it only to reprove and admonish us, that a personal meeting with us be arranged, yet not to attach to it conditions which we cannot fulfil for conscience' sake. In a second letter from Buffalo these conditions are indeed reduced to a smaller measure, but yet not entirely remitted to us. We request anew that nothing be demanded which would wound our conscience, or at least that the demand be postponed until the oral discussion shall have convinced us that it is just, and we repeat besides our earnest desire that the colloquy not be refused us. That is the last step which we have taken. Thereupon we are publicly branded as such as persist in the sin "by their refusing conduct." Is that anything other than if the wolf in the fable muddies the water and afterwards the sheep, which stands farther down the stream, is blamed with the cry that it is its fault that one can no longer see the bottom?

But the conditions of which we have just spoken are perhaps of such a kind that the Synod of Buffalo also was bound in its conscience to make the colloquy dependent upon them. That will appear in the discussion of the second ground of accusation:

2. The Synod confesses that it "does not will to release our excommunicated from its covenant-union."

This the Synod of Buffalo had demanded as a condition under which alone a colloquy could be held between it and us. Among the former members of congregations of the Buffalo Synod who have attached themselves to us are, namely, some who are under the ban of the Synod of Buffalo. Now the practice which this body follows in excommunication is so closely connected with the errors of its doctrine that we must from the outset have misgivings about regarding as banned those whom it excludes from church fellowship. In the first place, it does not agree with sound doctrine to demand from the parishioner obedience toward his pastor to the extent that Pastor Grabau asserts. How easily will it now happen that, by a consistent carrying out of this erroneous principle, someone is excommunicated by Pastor Grabau who has done nothing unjust? Then also, from the erroneous conception of the relation in which the holy preaching office stands to the congregation of the saints, as it prevails in the Synod of Buffalo, incorrectness in the execution of excommunication cannot be separated. If we were to go into the matter of dealing with those among us whom Pastor Grabau and with him the Synod of Buffalo regard as banned, before we have become united with our present opponents on the pending points of doctrine, we should therefore, before the union, concede that we had hitherto been in error, and moreover confuse the consciences of those whom we thrust from us. But supposing the excommunicated were really in the ban through impenitence, which has been pronounced over them by a pastor of the Buffalo Synod, why should we not in such a matter have far more right to take offense at a mere error of form, since for the sake of such a one Pastor Grabau would not even go into a far less weighty matter, such as a colloquy is? For that the execution of the ban, considered merely as to its form, must be incorrect when one removes the preaching office so far out of the congregation as is done in Buffalo, has already been pointed out.

That we therefore could not comply with the demand of the Synod of Buffalo is evident, and it will itself not doubt it. But not even this follows from it, that we will not release the excommunicated of the Synod of Buffalo from our covenant-union; we only will not do this without more, before the colloquy and the agreement in doctrine. Did we not offer in our second reply to the Rev. Synod of Buffalo to answer for ourselves to its accusations and to recognize and put away a wrong proved against us, only that it be really proved to us. How can one then on that account accuse us of implacability, lay it at our door that nothing came of the colloquy, yes, cry out over us: "Manifest now is the curse which the Rev. Synod of Missouri takes upon itself?"

But let us suppose for once that there were in our synodal connection some individual pastors who, by careless admission into the flocks committed to them, strengthened in impenitence such as had been banned with right by pastors of the Buffal. Synod, who would then indeed, and indeed alone, have to answer for it, because, however little the Synod of Missouri would permit it, and would rather punish it wherever it perceived the like, yet it is impossible that all its members can be responsible for pastors and congregations whose circumstances lie too far from them for no deception to be possible; these would then make themselves partakers of the sins of those excommunicated, and we, although this latter conclusion would require the yet to be proved presupposition that we knew of the sin of such thieves and murderers and could be convinced of it without transgressing the 8th Commandment, would load upon us, like them, the curse and ban of these excommunicated — and so it would stand even now with the Synod of Missouri: would then the Sy-