# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 08 14_S203
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203

cal and other controversies, which embittered men's minds long after the Augsburg Interim had already gone to ruin. Those are the fine fruits of the union of peace! —

How grieved at heart Melanchthon must have been may be imagined when, e. g., Calvin admonishingly writes to him: "You alone, by your yielding, though it be only slight, have awakened more complaints and sighs than 100 mediocre men by open apostasy." And when he answers Flacius, his most violent opponent: "You began to contradict, I gave way and did not contend. In Homer Ajax is content when Hector confesses that he is vanquished. But you will not cease to scold. Where is there an enemy who goes on striking when the other party retreats and throws away his weapons? You may keep winning, I give way. I do not ask to contend for those ceremonies and customs, and wish from my heart that all be quiet and peaceable in the Church. I also confess that I have erred in the matter and transgressed, and I beg God for forgiveness that I have not fled far enough from wearisome and crafty designs." —

(To be continued.)

(Contributed.)

The Position of the Iowa Synod

toward the

Symbolical Books of the Ev. Luth. Church.*)

In No. 20 of this volume the Lutheraner laid before its readers a declaration, taken from the churchly communications of Pastor Löhe from and concerning North America, in which the position is stated which the Iowa Synod has taken toward the Lutheran Symbols. In examining it conscientiously, we have to decide the questions: Does the Iowa Synod stand toward the Symbols in the relationship which the Lutheran Church recognizes as the only right one? Does it give us sufficient security that it has and wishes to preserve the pure Lutheran doctrine? Can we accordingly, with a good conscience, advise our congregation members to join it?

*) We cannot refrain from most urgently commending this excellent essay of our honored friend, Pastor Fick, to the diligent study of our dear readers, also from the lay estate. It is evident that a time has come in which, in the interior of our Church, opponents of our churchly confessions have arisen who are the more dangerous the greater the services they have otherwise rendered to our Church. Here it behooves us to look away from men and say to our father and to our mother: I see him not; and to our brother: I know him not; and to our son: I know not. Deut. 33, 9. Woe to our Synod and to all its members if they are not now faithful, when the apple of the eye of our Church is attacked loudly and ever more loudly by those whom many of us were first led to it by, and who, having now come to esteem in the Church through their former fidelity, wish to use this esteem to lead away from it again by degrees! We mean here men such as a Löhe. To be yielding here is a more horrible sin than the most wretched union, such as is here being manufactured by the paste of a new catechism patched together overnight. In such a union no one who wishes to be an orthodox Christian is deceived, and the Lutheran Church remains standing beside it unharmed as a refuge for all those who at length begin to feel uneasy in their Babel of union. But if in the midst of the Lutheran Church we allow departure from any point of the confession, then we tear down the Lutheran Church itself and show ourselves to be the traitors who have taken a place within her walls in order to level her fortifications under the pretext of repair and to open wide the entrance to the enemies upon her ruins.

The Editorial Board of the "Lutheraner."

Certainly the symbolical books of our Church have for every Protestant a high historical significance. For they are a venerable testimony and monument of the faith which the dear heroes and witnesses of the Reformation joyfully confessed before all the world under the greatest dangers. But for the ev.-luth. Church they have besides a special authority. For the ev.-luth. Church is certainly and firmly convinced, by the testimony of the Holy Spirit, that her confessional writings agree fully with the Holy Scripture and with the doctrine of the true Church of all times. Therefore she has declared the symbolical books to be the norm, that is, rule and plumb-line, according to which doctrine is to be conducted in her and doctrinal controversies that arise are to be decided.

Expressly our fathers ascribe to the symbolical books the authority of such a norm of doctrine. Thus they say in the preface to the Book of Concord (New York edition), p. 12: that they do not wish "other more useful writings etc., provided they agree with the norms of the Concord, to be rejected or condemned." And immediately after they speak of the "contents of the Book of Concord and of the norm comprehended therein." Further they give as the purpose of this norm of doctrine the prevention of the intrusion of false teachers into the Lutheran Church, p. 15: "Since then this is so, and we are certain of our Christian confession and faith out of divine, prophetic and apostolic Scripture, and are sufficiently assured of it by the grace of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and Christian consciences, and then the highest and utmost necessity requires that, amid so many errors that have crept in, offenses aroused, strife and lengthy divisions, a Christian declaration and settlement of all disputes that have arisen should be made, well grounded in God's Word, by which the pure doctrine may be recognized and distinguished from the falsified, and that to restless, contentious people, who will not be bound to any certain form of the pure doctrine, not everything stand free and open to stir up at their pleasure offensive disputation, and to introduce and defend absurd errors, from which nothing else can follow than that finally the right doctrine be wholly obscured, and nothing else but uncertain Opiniones (opinions) and doubtful, disputable delusions and notions be brought to posterity." Finally our fathers testify in the preface, p. 16, that they intend "not at all, neither in Rebus (things), nor Phrasibus (modes of speech) to depart from our confessional writings, but rather, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, to persevere and abide therein unanimously, and also to regulate all religious controversies and their explanations accordingly."

But by setting up her Symbols as the norm of doctrine valid in her, the ev.-luth. Church withdraws nothing from the Holy Scripture of the authority due to it. She sets the symbolical books neither above nor beside the Holy Scripture. Rather, with holy earnestness she acknowledges the Holy Scripture as the highest and only rule and plumb-line in matters of faith, and testifies that all doctrines must be tested and judged by it, whether they be true or false. She also confidently calls upon everyone to compare her Symbols with the Holy Scripture and to judge them by it. For she knows that whoever examines them sincerely and earnestly with prayer and supplication cannot do otherwise than confess that they contain the pure truth. Through the Holy Spirit she is divinely certain that her confession is unshakably grounded in the Holy Scripture, taken from it and agrees with it. And just on that account she has great confidence and also the good right to set up her Symbols as the rule framed according to the Holy Scripture, and to require that in her teaching and preaching be done accordingly.

Let us hear a clear account on this from the blessed Joh. Benedict Carpzov, whom surely no one will deny the praise of a faithful and highly enlightened Lutheran teacher of the Church. He says in his excellent work Isagoge in libros Ecclesiarum Lutheranarum Symbolicos (Introduction to the Symbolical Books of the Lutheran Church), p. 1143, the following: "That the sense and meaning of our people may be rightly understood, the following must be noted. 1. When one asks simply (absolute) after the plumb-line of faith, where the fundamental rule and plumb-line (principium et norma) coincide (mean the same), there is only one single plumb-line, namely the Holy Scripture, which "alone remains the only judge, rule and plumb-line, according to which, as the only touchstone, all doctrines shall and must be recognized and judged, whether they be good or evil, right or wrong;" p. 474. In this respect all writings, also those contained in the Book of Concord, are only ruled by the rule and judged by the standard (normata et principiata), as they declare of the Augsburg Confession, p. 515: ""So we also confess our adherence to the same first unaltered Augsburg Confession, not because it was composed by our theologians, but because it is taken from God's Word and is firmly and well grounded therein."" And in the present paragraph they confess, p. 517: that these writings are ""a unanimous, certain, general form of doctrine, to which our evangelical churches together and in common confess, out of and according to which, because they are taken from God's Word, all other writings, so far as they are to be tested and accepted; are to be judged and regulated shall be-