# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 05 09_S150
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

150

"The Confession of the Ev. Lutheran Church Maintained against the Confession of the Berlin Church Diet by Several Teachers of Theology and of Church Law."

Under this title a number of German professors, under date of the 18th of October of last year, have published a most important document. As has already been reported in the "Lutheraner," the so-called German Evangelical Church Diet at Berlin (an assembly of Protestant clergymen from all Germany and some other countries, who are devoted to the principles of the Union), on the 21st of September of the said year, almost unanimously adopted the following resolution:

"The members of the German Ev. Church Diet hereby declare that they hold and confess with heart and mouth the Confession delivered in the year 1530 at the Diet of Augsburg by the ev. princes and estates to the Emperor Charles V., and hereby publicly testify their agreement with it as the oldest, simplest, common document of publicly acknowledged evangelical doctrine in Germany. With this testimony they join the declaration that each of them in particular adheres to the special confessional writings of his church, and the Unionists to the consensus of the same, and that the different position of the Lutherans, Reformed and Unionists with regard to Article 10 of this Confession, and the peculiar circumstances of those Reformed congregations which have never had the Augustana as a symbol, shall not be prejudiced."

Against this resolution the following professors and doctors of theology have entered a public protest: at Erlangen, Thomasius, Hofmann, Delitzsch, Harnack and Schmid; at Leipzig, Kahnis, the two Lindners (father and son) and Hölemann; at Rostock, Wiggers, Krabbe, Baumgarten and Philippi; and finally the professors and doctors of both laws, von Scheurl and Mejer. In it it says among other things as follows:

"In view of this supposed confession of the Augsb. Conf., we see ourselves obliged to testify publicly to the real relation of this Confession to our ev.-luth. Church.. Had those assembled at Berlin, so many of them as were able out of clear conviction, testified before all the world that they acknowledge as scriptural what the Augsb. Conf. acknowledges as scriptural, and reject as unscriptural what it rejects as unscriptural, and that they will live and die on this doctrine, show its truth by word and walk, and maintain it against every adversary; surely no one should have a more heartfelt joy over it, and give God more thanks for it, than we. But the resolution does not read so, and is not so meant. For Reformed and Unionists too have taken part in it in great number: Reformed, who belong to an ecclesiastical communion which arose out of opposition to the scripturalness of the doctrine confessed at Augsburg; Unionists, who see the truth neither on this side nor on that, but wish to make a third thing, in expectation of which they set themselves above the contradiction between the two, as if it meant nothing for Christian life and death... This is the lesser harm, that through the appended declaration the preceding allegedly unanimous confession is again abolished and brought to naught, in that the Reformed reserve what is taught otherwise and contradictorily in the confessional writings of their church, otherwise and contradictorily, the Unionists, however, that wherein Lutheran and Reformed doctrine conflict, to believe and teach differently from both, so that both in part reject what the Augsb. Conf. confesses, and confess or hold for equally true what it rejects. As different as the position, as the resolution calls it, of the Lutherans, Reformed and Unionists is, not merely toward the tenth article (which cannot be taken singly and pulled out of the connection of the unified evangelical doctrine), but toward the whole doctrinal content of the Augsb. Conf., so different is also the confession of the Church Diet to it, so self-contradictory a confession (which is therefore none) has it made."

"But not merely something unseemly has the Church Diet done, but its resolution impairs the worth and endangers the existence of our Church. It devalues it by its own misuse of the Augsb. Conf., and it threatens its existence, in that it is fitted to bring about a still worse misuse of it."

"When the ev. princes and estates of the German Empire laid their Christian confession before the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, they were by no means of the mind to found a particular church; but the one Church of our LORD JESUS Christ, so they hoped, should be renewed by the pure doctrine of the Gospel brought again to light. And only the resistance which the greater part of Christendom offered to the truth testified by them has led to this, that the communion of the ev. doctrine became a particular church communion beside the rest of Christendom. This church communion of the Gospel confessed at Augsburg, however, is the Lutheran Church and no other. For all the ecclesiastical communions which arose in the train of the reformatory movement beside and outside the Luth. Church have arisen through deviations from that one and indivisible ev. doctrine, whose first public testimony the Augsb. Conf. was. What the Berlin Church Diet calls the special confessional writings of the Luth. Church, *) these are all only either expositions of the very same ev. doctrine in another form and on another occasion, or assertions and safeguards of the same against errors by which it was to be displaced and falsified. The Lutheran Church is therefore not a division within the church founded upon the Augsburg Confession, but is precisely this Church itself, which extends so far, but also only so far, as the doctrine of its Confession holds; and its other confessional writings are not Lutheran special confessions, which would stand in the same relation to the Augsb. Conf. as the confessional writings of the Reformed churches also do, but they repeat and confirm the doctrine of the Augsb. Confession which is in part disputed by the Reformed." . .

*) By this are understood the Apology, the Smalcald Articles, the Large and Small Catechism of Dr. Luther, and the Formula of Concord. Ed.

"The Church Diet has misused the Confession of the unanimous ev.-luth. doctrine to let its discordant and many-minded members make a seemingly unanimous confession, which is yet no confession to the Church of this Conf., but expressly denies that it wishes to be so. And in that it took the Augsb. Conf. out of its connection with the ev.-luth. Church, whose Confession it is in truth, and treated it as the confession of a church in which Lutherans, Reformed and Unionists live, allegedly with equal right, by their different faith, it has deprived our Church of its essential worth, of being the Church of the scriptural confession, and has declared the purity of its doctrine doubtful.. Against this we maintain the divine right of our Church to the Augsb. Conf., which in truth belongs to it alone, and thus to the calling given it by God's grace, to be the preacher of the pure evangelical doctrine. We do this not to secure for ourselves the renown of being members of the true Church, but in order to preserve for Christendom, so far as in us lies, undiminished and uncovered, the certain and pure testimony of the saving truth." . .

"That such a sham confession, which blurs the divinely appointed boundaries of truth and error and changes the opposition of scriptural and unscriptural doctrine into the fluid difference of equally justified convictions, has been made by many hundreds of earnest Christians and servants of the Church with such publicity and such notice, will serve to bewilder utterly, in the midst of our Church itself, those uncertain of their faith, to make the erring glad of their error, and to take the sting out of the conscience of all who draw the truth to