# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 07 29_S192
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

192

hierarchical practice founded upon it, either already lay under an unjust ban, or at least had to expect it, and now sought help, comfort and provision with us, since they found no hearing before the church courts of their Synod, which had itself already put us under the ban in printed writings, that is, publicly, as shown above, called us heretics, and would negotiate with us neither in writing nor by word of mouth. Therefore we hope also that the dear brethren, after the above historical orientation, will now see how they have judged too hastily, as if a ban existed among us through our course of action toward Pastor Grabau, in that they at once, without having first heard us, regard us as like Achan [Joshua 7], which we cannot well reconcile with Lutheran churchly prudence and justice, and of which we have not at once been accused by other brethren either, as e.g. the Prussian Lutherans in Breslau.

It also in truth astonishes us how an entire Conference, consisting almost wholly of theologians, can with reason and right reproach us with the example of Achan, since in the first place we have not, like Achan, sinned against a clear and recognized command of God, that is, against better knowledge and conscience, and so therefore certainly no one who enters into or remains in fellowship with us makes himself a partaker of our sins; secondly, the case of Achan belongs also to the ceremonial-legal domain, since Israel was to be a holy people among the other nations, set apart from the other nations by circumcision and other laws and ordinances of worship, through a certain outward holiness. In the N. T., on the other hand, such an order no longer holds, since the sanctification of a Christian consists only in faith and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Here one would thrust out faith in Christ and the Holy Spirit through sins against conscience, be they secret or open; but only he makes himself partaker of another's sin who, if it were open, knowingly joins in it and imitates it, or does not rebuke it, and by such silence of his is indeed already in a certain sense in fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.

The other is this, that the Reverend Conference, in order to attain, if God will, an impartial standpoint, should keep as closely as possible to the whole historical course of this controversy, and not let itself be swayed against us and for Pastor Grabau by the last exchange of letters between the two Synods in June 1853, which Pastor Grabau laid before the Conference at Leipzig; for we cannot, to our regret, resist the supposition that the on the whole moderate tone — for though Pastor Grabau, as you write, "willingly accepted" your rebuke, yet he soon after his return, without any provocation or occasion from without, accused Professor Walther of Jesuitism as venomously and bitterly as ever before — of those letters to us was assumed only in order afterward to make the impression upon the brethren in Germany, who did not know the more exact connection of our controversy and the conduct of it, that he had always dealt with us in this way, as indeed shortly before the departure of the two delegates to Germany the offensive name, "the Lutheran Church emigrated from Prussia" [instead of Congregation], was laid aside and the name "Synod of Buffalo" adopted in its place.

The third point is this, that, according to Grabauian oral and written representations and communications about us, it might easily make the impression upon the dear brethren over there that we yielded on churchly ground to the civil conditions here, and, since here, as the Conference writes, "the bridle of the Christian state is wholly lacking," exercised no church discipline at all, or at least a very lax one, and did not apply the ban at all. This, thank God, is by no means the case, and we feel obliged to say in advance that we have never missed "the bridle of the Christian state" for the exercise of the church discipline pleasing to God and following Christ's order, and for warding off democratic lusts and encroachments upon the prerogatives of the holy ministry; for we have found God's Word, in right application, always strong enough, also through our feeble mouth, to produce the right knowledge of the doctrine of church discipline and of the ban, and accordingly to instruct the consciences and to move the will of the congregation to obedience to it, although here and there individuals resisted, temporarily or permanently, and in the latter case mostly separated themselves from the congregation, after all pastoral love and fidelity in teaching, admonishing, entreating, beseeching and warning had been spent upon them in vain.

It is indeed true — and cannot, according to the state of things, be otherwise, and has hardly ever been otherwise in the Church — that, according to the Christian and churchly standpoint of the individual congregations, in knowledge, faith, experience and spiritual life, church discipline also, in the wider and narrower sense, is handled, and, e.g., many a thing is more sharply punished in more advanced and older congregations (indeed, possibly the ban is there incurred) which in still younger and Christianly and churchly less trained congregations meets with a milder rebuke, indeed perhaps, in the clearing away of still coarser blocks, is at first seemingly overlooked; nevertheless it is just as true that church discipline is nowhere lacking in our congregations, indeed that there are perhaps very few newer congregations in which, alas, cases of the ban have not already occurred, and that, without the congregations thereby dissolving, church discipline, without boasting be it said, is handled more earnestly and impressively than, so far as we know, in all the Lutheran national churches of Germany, although these have "the bridle of the Christian state," but of course also its drag-shoe to go with it. Heretics, drunkards, whoremongers, adulterers, usurers etc. are not tolerated in our congregations, and, as said, God's Word, also through our unworthy mouth, in suitable application to the individual cases, accomplishes everything for the best, without the co-operation of any human means, such as: the secular arm of the territorial-princely church government, pastoral scare-shots and threats of the ban, on the ground of false interpretation of Scripture and such like.

Thus none of us either lets himself be called by the congregation, after the national custom of ill repute, for a time or for an indefinite period, in the form of a human contract; and such Lutherans or neglected congregations as, after sufficient instruction and correction concerning the doctrine of the regular call from God's Word, will not give up this call, are not accepted by us either. Likewise the announcement for confession is introduced without exception in our synodical congregations, and is carefully used, as an excellent opportunity for church pastoral care, in an evangelical and fatherly manner. In newer and rougher congregations, however, where the people, and indeed primarily for the very reason of the decay of this wholesome church order also in Germany, at first still resist it, and will not yet announce themselves personally to their pastor, there these let themselves — though very much against the strict observance of the pastoral dignity, yet, it is hoped, as evangelical fellow-workers of the Holy Spirit — in the love and patience of Christ not be weary of the trouble, especially at the beginning of their ministry, of first visiting individually, on the scattered farms, the people who wish to go to the Holy Communion, in order to examine the state of their Christian knowledge and their other spiritual condition and, according to their spiritual need, to teach, to rebuke, to comfort, etc. Whoever refuses even such conversation is not admitted to the Holy Communion. Unfortunately, however, there is in such refusal mostly not only personal obstinacy, but also the pitiable neglect and churchly disaccustoming, in which, to our regret, the Lutheran national churches send over to us their church-children from so many congregations; for we often hear the saying: "such questions we are not used to from Germany; our pastors have asked us nothing when we wished to go to the Holy Communion; we needed only to give our names to the sexton," and the like. So we pastors here must in many ways atone for the guilt of our mother church, in which we too, to be sure, have a share, and do so gladly, since we envy her neither her pastoral honors, goods and dignities, nor "the bridle of the Christian state," but meanwhile, as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing, as poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing, and yet possessing all things, endeavor to found and build up our dear congregations on the ground of the pure doctrine and in a practice conformable to the good Confession; for not in this or that form of so-called apostolic or old-Lutheran church orders, liturgical services, confessionistic show and pietistic-legalistic holiness do we place the essence of truly Lutheran congregations, but in the life and moving in justifying faith, after preceding repentance toward God and with subsequent upright godliness in speaking, doing and suffering, wherein faith proves itself living and active also toward men; for this faith alone is indeed the right Christian and Lu-