# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 07 29_S187
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

187

And precisely these cases make it sufficiently clear how acceptable and appropriate precisely our proposal of a colloquy with Mr. P. Grabau is, with which the Breslau Lutheran brethren also, even without this our orientation, are in agreement; for there might be not a few cases of the ban which have occurred, precisely, and that is still the best supposition, as a result of Mr. P. Grabau's false doctrine of the power of the preaching office and especially of his unevangelical interpretation of Heb. 13:17, cases which he accordingly, as a result of his doctrine, holds to be just, but we, as a result of our doctrine, which is in deed and truth that of our Church, hold to be unjust. How could we therefore become one in the judgment of such cases before a reconciliation in doctrine has taken place?

In the second place, as regards the "immediately" of the reception of the "excommunicated sinners" and their absolution by our pastors (of which the 2nd question of Mr. P. Grabau's admonition makes mention), let it be permitted to give the Reverend Conference a brief historical survey of the events and of our procedure, in order to gain from it, God willing, an impartial judgment whether it stands as this "immediately" has it, as alleged.

First, before the Synod of Missouri, etc., came into being, the Saxon preachers who had emigrated to Missouri in the year 1838 sent, at their request, a preacher to a number of Lutherans in the State of Wisconsin who had formerly been served provisionally by Pastor Kindermann, a preacher among whom not only was none under the ban, but whom Pastor Kindermann himself had first referred to the said preachers in Missouri as those from whom they might still obtain an orthodox preacher. Later, to be sure, when it appeared that the Saxons could not agree to the doctrine contained in the so-called Hirtenbrief issued by Pastor Grabau, particularly concerning ordination and the power of the preachers, Pastor Kindermann was indeed opposed to those Lutherans being supplied by those named; but neither those who had become convinced of the Scriptural character of the doctrine of the Saxon pastors found in Pastor Kindermann's now existing aversion to them a reason not to call a candidate from their midst, nor the Saxons not to recommend and send one to them at their urgent request. This took place in the late autumn of 1844. — Only from the year 1847 on, when the Synod of Missouri, etc., came together, have Lutherans been received by us from time to time, and indeed now by the whole Synod, who formerly had belonged to congregations of the Synod of Buffalo and among whom there was also a number of such as had already had the ban pronounced upon them. But never have they been received "immediately." We have rather done everything that we believed we could do with a good conscience, in order to prevent a rift that might possibly follow from it and be scarcely healable. Only Pastor Grabau frustrated every attempt toward unity in doctrine and toward an understanding about the practical cases. He had, to go back here once more, as mentioned above, written a so-called "Hirtenbrief," which he issued in the year 1840 for the settling of disputes that had arisen in his congregations, and had sent, among others, to the Saxon preachers also for their judgment. These had thereupon sent him their judgment of it. But since the Saxon preachers had shortly before, by God's grace, come to the knowledge of the false, half-papistic Lutheranism into which they had let themselves be seduced by the well-known Pastor Stephan of Dresden, they were indeed more alarmed, than would otherwise have been the case, to find again in the "Hirtenbrief" the very same dangerous principles which had brought them to the brink of spiritual and bodily ruin. So brotherly therefore as was the disposition with which they drew up that judgment of the "Hirtenbrief" (in July 1843), so decided nevertheless was the testimony which they had given therein, from the constraint of their conscience, against the false doctrine they found. This had so embittered Mr. P. Grabau that he had sent the Saxon preachers an Antikritik, in which he, without retracting, for example, his bluntly and flatly stated assertion in the Hirtenbrief that the Sacraments become effectual and efficacious only through the Office, and other gross errors, whose contrariety to Scripture and the Symbols the Saxon pastors had pointed out to him in the gentlest manner, rather charged them with not merely 17 errors without any proof, but also declared to them among other things: "Finally I assure you that I cannot recognize you as such Lutheran pastors as still hold earnestly to God's Word and to the Symbols of the Church." (1844.) In June of the year 1845 the Pastors Grabau, von Rohr, Kindermann and Krause had thereupon held their first synod, and in spite of the wish that had become loud in their own congregations and been brought to them, that the Saxons also be invited to it for the settling of the discord that had arisen, they had instead already announced to them at that time that they could not invite them under the existing circumstances. The Saxons had still not published a word against Pastor Grabau and those agreeing with him, but had negotiated the matter privately with diligence, when Pastor Grabau first drew the matter into publicity and publicly branded the Saxons in his first Synodalbrief as false teachers with a manifest perversion of the pure doctrine presented by them. They did not fail to justify themselves in writing. But since the correspondence carried on had led to no favorable result, they, the Saxon pastors, already in the year 1846 invited Pastor Grabau to a conversation at Fort Wayne; Mr. P. Grabau did not come, excusing himself with circumstances, yet with the promise to hold a conference with the Saxon pastors at the latest in the spring of 1847. This time also passed, and Mr. P. Grabau made no preparation for a meeting. Yes, although as early as January 1847 even the pastor and the elders of the congregation at Kirchhayn in the State of Wisconsin, belonging to the Buffalo Synod, urgently begged Pastor Grabau in the name of the congregation to hold a synod, for the purpose "of being able to settle the pending disputes between the Missourian preachers and them" (the Grabauite faction), P. Grabau nevertheless refused this and thereby brought about a division also in the Kirchhayn congregation. — In this time a number of Lutherans, former members of the congregations of Pastor Krause, turned to the Saxon preachers with the request for an opinion on account of certain highly grave accusations against their former pastor concerning his doctrine and his life. As in April 1847 the Synod of Missouri, then forming, was to hold its first sessions at Chicago on Lake Michigan, the matter was put off until then and the Pastors Grabau and Krause were invited to come there and to confer brotherly with the Saxons about the pending disputes, with notice of what those Lutherans had laid before the Saxon preachers. The former, however, did not appear this time either, but rather induced the whole synod led by them, the Synod of Buffalo, when it assembled for the second time in July 1848, to declare publicly: "that P. Grabau was not authorized to travel there on such an invitation and in such a manner," allegedly, namely, because not all his fellow-ministers had been invited with him, the negotiations would therefore have had to take place without witnesses (!), and because, finally, the so-called "factious preachers" had not yet been recalled. This was beyond all doubt only an empty, dishonest evasion, since in the first place it went without saying that, if the two other preachers, von Rohr and Kindermann, had come along, the Saxon preachers would have regarded it only as a favorable reception of their invitation and a friendly meeting of them; it must have been manifest to those themselves that these had asked for the presence of all four pastors only in order not to be immodest. As to the "factious preachers" alleged, men understood by them at that time Pastor Geyer and a certain Klügel. The former had indeed, as remarked, come to Wisconsin through the mediation of the Saxon preachers, to serve Lutherans whom Mr. P. Kindermann had formerly served provisionally and from whom he had therefore demanded a new call for further ministration; but this mission had, as shown, been in nothing less than a factious manner, but only later by the