# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 09 19_S14
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

14

while they now do this latter, and at once defend the clear and simple sense of this pattern against the superstitious additions of the papists and the unbelieving, fanatical subtractions of the enthusiasts, the symbols of the Lutheran Church appear, besides that witness-bearing, also as doctrine and defense.

This, then, spoken in brief, is the true relation of the confessional writings of our Church to the written Word of God; and whoever conceives and represents this relation otherwise is in this respect either ignorant or malicious; and since the Ohio Synod certainly meant only this relation, it certainly wishes to say in the above resolution nothing other than the following:

Because the symbols of the Lutheran Church are precisely the pure and unadulterated exposition and presentation of the Word of God, and are conformable and obedient to it in all the points of the doctrine of salvation; — further, because they maintain and defend the clear, simple Scripture-word, as it reads, so thoroughly and earnestly against papists and enthusiasts; — finally, because they set forth the sum of the saving truth out of God's Word (as for example in Luther's Catechisms) so simply and comprehensibly and understandably; — for that reason, and for that reason alone, we also confess ourselves, individually and as an ecclesiastical body, to these symbols, and henceforth also wish to pledge our candidates at their ordination to them, that they may interpret the Word of God in agreement with them, and fall neither into papistical nor into fanatical interpretation of Scripture.

Or should it be a matter of indifference to the Ohio Synod if, for example, in the doctrine of the Holy Sacraments this or that one of its members should depart from the simple words of Scripture as they read, and from the testimony and doctrine of the symbolical books which accords with these words, and, following the precedent of the Calvinists and after the example of Messrs. Schmucker and Kurz, should read into the words of institution, out of their reasoning conceit, another imagined meaning, and accordingly also preach and teach in conformity with it?

From that same misapprehension of the true relation of the Lutheran confessional writings to the Word of God comes also the heap of groundless fears which Dr. Kurtz derives in what follows from the pledge to the symbolical books. He thinks, among other things, “that this would inevitably become the fruitful source of intolerance, contentiousness, condemnation and separation, yea, would pave the way for unbelief and apostasy,” calls such a procedure “hyperorthodoxy,” which would end either in heartless skepticism or in boundless broad-churchism, in that the conscience of men would thus be enslaved and the spirit of free inquiry hindered; the Roman superstition has brought about atheism in France, and the pledging to confessions in Germany the grossest and most shameless new belief (rationalism)” etc.

To refute these and similar phantoms further would properly be the business of a special pamphlet or of a more detailed work in the Lutheran Standard, and ought certainly to be done by the Ohio Synod, since it is, after all, the party here primarily attacked. We confine ourselves here to a brief reply:

Dr. Kurtz, and the unionists of like mind with him, here and in Germany, has proceeded in the above with his customary superficiality and pretense, in order at least to make room secretly for his unionism through the casting of suspicion upon the church's symbols, after the travailing mountains of the “great evangelical Union and World-Union” at London two years ago, of whose glory Mr. Kurtz also boasted so loudly, have brought forth nothing greater than a — mouse.

In all those accusations, namely, as regards both the symbols and the pledging to them, a manifold injustice is contained, in that the accuser does not recognize, or purposely conceals, several points of the matter.

First, namely, no mention whatever is made of the fact that the Lutheran Book of Concord in none of its component parts desires to have any special authority above and apart from the Holy Scriptures, and at all times and everywhere subordinates itself to the latter and in the application of it proves everywhere its unconditional obedience to Scripture; on the contrary, Dr. Kurtz leaves his readers under the impression and prejudice as though the symbolical books, like the Roman traditions, wished to take a standpoint above the Holy Scriptures, in which case the pledge to them would indeed be the most godless constraint of conscience and the most wretched bondage to men.

Second, this truth is either overlooked or concealed, that neither the confessional writings (in that relation to the Holy Scriptures which they themselves repeatedly indicate), nor the proper pledging of the servants of the Church to them, have ever produced and paved the way for “intolerance, contentiousness, condemnation and separation, yea, unbelief and apostasy,” etc. Such abominations, namely, have come to light here and there only where the sin of contemporaries or descendants has attached itself to those noble and pure testimonies of the fathers, and thereby a shameful abuse was practiced with the church's symbols. This happened, for example, where that subordinate position of theirs with respect to the Holy Scriptures was in a manner abandoned, where it was asserted that they also were inspired by God (if only mediately), and therefore, like the Word of God, binding and obligating the consciences, whence a repulsive confessionalism and paper popedom naturally developed. But what could those precious testimonies do about such perversity and such abuse? And is it just and sensible, does it betray even a small measure of impartial historical love of truth, when Dr. K. on that account calls the symbolical books themselves “the source of unspeakable and incalculable misfortune” in the Church?

Third, not a word is said that partly in opposition to such abuse, partly through punishments sent by God for the ingratitude and contempt of the pure Gospel and of the pure confession, “strong delusions,” or even the negating unbelief and rationalism, the impudent denial of the God of the Bible, arose. This non-use, then, and that abuse of the symbols of the Lutheran Church is not the fault of these testimonies and does not abolish their right use. This right use, namely, is as far from deification as from rejection of them, and consists in acknowledging them, from the Apostles' Creed down to the Formula of Concord, only as witnesses for the saving truth of the divine Word, also against all manner of errors, and, after one has learned by comparison with the Holy Scriptures their complete obedience to Scripture, indeed also in accordance with them to teach the same truth. The case here is similar to that of the Church, when she is called by the Apostle “the pillar and ground of the truth”; for she is this not in the sense that she should produce out of herself, beside and above the Holy Scriptures, the truth unto salvation, or through her testimony of Scripture should first make it to be what it is (as the papists imagine), but in the sense that she unceasingly testifies, confesses, teaches, spreads abroad and propagates the truth once for all delivered in the Holy Scriptures.

Fourth, nothing is reported either of how the confessional writings are altogether innocent even of the conflicts and controversies within the Lutheran Church which broke out, for example, after Luther's death, but rather the error or the spiritual pride of opponents on both sides, who both swerved from the Holy Scripture and from the true middle of these testimonies toward opposite extremes.

So, for example, George Major, professor of theology at Wittenberg, asserted that good works are necessary to salvation, and that it is impossible for any one to be saved without good works. To this proposition Nicholas Amsdorf objected, asserting that good works are harmful and pernicious to salvation. Further, Victorinus Strigel set up the proposition that original sin is a slight accident (accidens), like a magnet smeared with garlic, whereby the whole essence of human nature is not corrupted, but only superficially weakened. In contradiction to this Matthias Flacius fell into the opposite error, in that he put forward the assertion that original sin is the very essence of human nature itself. Likewise contradictory errors had come to light concerning the conduct of man in conversion through the grace of the Holy Ghost. For some said that man can cooperate herein, can at least prepare and fit himself for the receiving of the converting grace, the