# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 07 29_S193
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

193

Lutheran heart's blood, without which all correctness of form in Lutheran church frameworks and mechanical machinery is of no worth.

And God be praised! in several of the older congregations, already existing before the formation of our Synod, but also in the younger ones, through the evangelical labor, blessed by the Lord, of seeking shepherd-love and tending shepherd-faithfulness, that longed-for and gladdening fellowship of love between shepherds and flocks is already visibly present, where neither party anxiously and distrustfully guards and watches over its own rights against the other, but on the contrary each party respects and preserves those of the other; where in deed and in truth — and not merely on paper — the parishioners honor and love their teachers and pastors as spiritual fathers, and these in turn tend every single one of the sheep and lambs of Christ committed to their keeping and pasture with all faithfulness and all love, so that also in the harmonious cooperation of shepherds and flocks a true congregational life exists, and in organic articulation and union through the love of Christ each member, according to his kind and measure, seeks to promote the "common good" in the narrower and wider sense; and though in such congregations too there is, alas, no lack of hypocrites and cold-hearted Christians, yet, by God's grace, these have thus far not gained the upper hand and are unable essentially to alter the character of these congregations and transform them into Laodicean ones.

Finally, we assure the dear brethren that we seek peace from the heart and would be highly delighted if we could come to agreement with our opponents through men of true Lutheran mind, rich in knowledge and experience, of our common dear mother Church in Germany, who also, for the sake of God's honor and the peace of many souls, would not shrink from the sacrifice and would willingly undertake to come over here and, according to God's Word and the Symbols of our Church — to which two, but also to these alone, we promise unconditional obedience — to examine our disputes on the spot and, by God's grace and assistance, to settle them in a desired peace; and it shall not be our fault if the suitable steps for this are not taken.

The gracious and merciful God be with you!

Signed in the name of the Synod

Fr. Wyneken, President.

F. W. Husmann, Secr.

St. Louis in the State of Missouri, the 1st of July 1854.

Reply

of the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States to the letter addressed to it by a reverend pastoral conference assembled at Fürth in Bavaria on the 20th of September last year. *)

*) Communicated in the "Lutheraner" No. 12 of the present volume.

Grace and peace from God our Father and the LORD Jesus Christ!

Reverend brethren, beloved in the LORD!

In that we take the liberty of sending you herewith also our detailed defense against the Leipzig Conference, in order that you too may be put in a position to survey properly our controversy with the Buffalo Synod, we cannot refrain from adding some particular remarks, after we have first rendered you our hearty thanks for the brotherly love which unmistakably guided you in composing your letter to us.

These remarks now are as follows:

1. When you write that you came to agreement with the two delegates of the Synod of Buffalo in the 4 points formulated "by them" at once, we must justly doubt this agreement on the part of those two deputies, since Pastor Grabau after his return partly openly denied it, and partly attacked Professor Walther, without any provoking occasion on his side, as bitingly and venomously as ever before, and accused him of Jesuitism; but had he meant No. 4 from the heart, and, as you suppose, "sincerely and humbly" conceded "that in Buffalo sins may have been committed in the exercise of the ban," that violent and bitter outburst would scarcely have been possible; rather he would have taken some approaching steps toward us with the Synod led by him and finally consented to our repeatedly renewed request for a colloquy, in order to obtain from it, if God so willed, an agreement in doctrine, without which a right judgment of the individual cases of the ban is indeed impossible.

2. We must decidedly reject as an unjust judgment the assertion that we too have treated "the pending points of controversy, to the offense of the Church, in so harsh, bitter and passionate a tone, and had cause to recognize, confess and henceforth avoid such sin." This judgment, however, is, as said, wholly unfounded, and we must maintain that the reverend Conference either has not read our controversial writings on both sides, or judges thus out of a favorable opinion toward the Buffalo Synod on account of agreement with its doctrine, or out of an unfavorable opinion against us; for we appeal to the judgment of any unprejudiced Lutherans whether our controversial writings do not always maintain a factual bearing, while those of our opponents do not deny that violent, personally irritated tone, which shows clearly enough that they have more at heart their own honor than the honor of God, the loftiness and glory of the cause, namely of pure doctrine, as the work of the great God; and although error can be maintained and defended in a mild manner, it seems yet scarcely possible that the truth should fight in so slanderous and vulgar a manner, for which we can find a precedent neither in Holy Scripture nor in the Church.

3. Although the dear brethren in your Conference regard and treat the question of the Office as an open one and desire the same of us, we cannot possibly fulfill this wish, since, as we have shown more fully in our reply to the Leipzig Conference, this question is already closed; for it was precisely about these two questions of Church and Office that the doctrinal struggles of the Reformation especially turned, and the testimony of evangelical truth on these two doctrines is already laid down clearly enough in principle in our Symbols, whose guidance we need only follow if we want to treat this article more closely, as the detailed doctrinal systems of our older orthodox teachers of the Church also do.

Therefore we must also decidedly disapprove, and declare un-Lutheran, to let go in essence the quia of our obligation to the Symbols, and, with secret mistrust of their scriptural testimony, to incline to the quatenus, and with and in such a spirit then to undertake anew so-called free exegetical researches in the Holy Scriptures, which are attended with no less danger than that of first reading into this and that individual passage of Scripture certain favorite thoughts and private opinions about the form of the Church, contrary to the connection of the evangelical doctrine, and then naturally finding them out of them as new discoveries.

4. When you finally desire of us to understand with you "our good Confessions according to the guidance of Scripture," we, as Lutherans, cannot consent to such a desire, and it indeed surprises us that you, as Lutherans, address the same to us; for as such we already have the pure understanding and the unadulterated interpretation of the divine Word in our ecclesiastical Confession; and only if we had to deal with non-Lutherans who expressed misgivings and doubts about the scripturalness of our Confession, or if anywhere in our Symbols (which is not the case) some interpretation were unclear, then we should indeed have to go back to the Scripture itself and demonstrate from it to the other party the scripturalness of our Confession.

Lutherans, however, as such, have not to interpret their Symbols according to the Scripture, but the Scripture according to their Symbols, and to hold fast and unmoved to the quia; for if we let go the quia even in a single place where our Symbols clearly and irrefutably believe, teach and confess, and inclined anywhere to the quatenus, we should thereby also give up our character as Lutherans and place ourselves quite in the ranks of the Rationalists, who press for the quatenus, which form of acknowledgment is fit to be applied to the decrees of the Council of Trent or the Synod of Dort and the like, but not to our Confession.

God grant us grace that we may first sit down quite childlike at the feet of our fathers, who truly had a much greater measure of the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit in the doctrine of the Gospel than we, and learn from them, penetrate into the connection of their doctrine, before we set about teaching others and twisting individual passages of Scripture plucked out against this connection to fit any favorite fancies about true Lutheranism and churchliness that may exist; for thereby we too may easily be removed inwardly from the simplicity in Christ and, in the spread of such supposed-