# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 01 23_S81
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall not pass away now or evermore."

Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 5.  St. Louis, Mo., January 23, 1849.  No. 11.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who are to pay the same in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 cents.
Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be sent to the editor; all others, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

Why Should We Hold Unshakably Fast Even Now to the Confessional Writings of Our Evangelical Lutheran Church?

"Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world" — so says and laments the Apostle John in his first Epistle, and so, alas, has it had to be said and lamented at all times of the Christian Church. As often as God has caused the wheat of His pure Word to be sown, so often has the enemy soon come after and sown the tares of false doctrine among it. The sorrowful consequence of this has been that in the midst of Christendom a multitude of parties have arisen, which distinguish and separate themselves from one another by a different faith which they have and confess. Most of these parties have therefore also written down certain confessions of faith, which contain the doctrines by which they separate themselves from the others, and to which all their members have united themselves into a particular churchly fellowship. Those books, however, in which such confessions of faith of whole churchly parties are contained, have from of old been called by the foreign word: Symbola, or symbolical books. For this is a Greek word, and means as much as a banner, a watchword. For just as soldiers can distinguish friend and foe by their banners and watchwords, even when he has disguised himself, so also the member of a churchly party can easily distinguish by the symbols or public confessions of faith of that party those who are for or against his faith.

Such symbolical books or public confessional writings our beloved Evangelical Lutheran Church also has, as will surely be known to the great majority of our dear readers. It has, namely, nine of them; these are, first, the three ecumenical or universal Christian Symbola, 1. the Apostolic, 2. the Nicene, and 3. the Athanasian Symbol, then 4. the Augsburg Confession, 5. its Apology, or the defense of the same, 6. the Smalcald Articles, 7. the small and 8. the large Catechism of Luther, and finally 9. the Formula of Concord. In these nine symbolical books, which together are called the Book of Concord,*) everyone who wishes to know what is believed and taught in our Evangelical Lutheran Church can find it clearly and plainly. The doctrine contained in these books the first so-called Lutherans once confessed before all the world, first orally, and then laid down in writing for all time in these books. Upon the doctrine contained in these books, and upon no other, the first Lutherans united themselves also outwardly into churchly fellowships; upon it, therefore, the Lutheran Church is founded, for by it it has come into being, and by it it now distinguishes itself from all other parties and communions that there are in Christendom. Whoever therefore says, I will be a Lutheran, thereby confesses himself to the doctrines contained in these symbolical books of the Lutheran Church; and whoever says that he will be a Lutheran preacher, thereby testifies that he holds the articles of faith contained in these books not only to be true and right, but that he will also preach, defend, and seek to spread them, so far as God grants him grace and strength thereto. But whoever, on the other hand, rejects the doctrine contained in the Symbols of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, is as little a real Lutheran as he is an Anabaptist who rejects rebaptism, as little as he is a Zwinglian who inveighs against the doctrine of Zwingli, and as little as he is a Christian who rejects the Bible. For as Christians in general are distinguished by the Bible from the Mohammedans with their Koran, so in particular a Lutheran Christian is distinguished again by his symbolical books from all other Christians with their Symbols.

Against such Symbols, now, men have probably at no time been more generally prejudiced than in this our time. From all sides men now cry: Away with the Symbols! They are a compulsion of faith; they are the fetters of the spirit and the children's shoes of former times, which men must now at last lay aside in these enlightened days, when all the world has come of age. They are the paper popes of the Lutherans; they are the botched work of fallible men; they are therefore ordinances of men; painted spectacles through which one sees the Bible in the color of one's own sect; impure channels through which the divine truth is conveyed to us not in its full purity, but clouded by an admixture of human error. Whoever holds so stiffly to the Symbols therefore sets human books on a level with the divine, yea, sets them even above them! —

So cry now the Friends of Light, Rationalists, Methodists, fallen-away Lutherans, and especially the present champions of the Union, the so-called Evangelicals, with great zeal and wrath to us Lutherans. Have we now, perhaps, on account of such objections of theirs any real cause to let the Symbols of our Church go? Far be it, beloved Lutheran brethren! These are objections which may well dismay one who is ignorant, "but there is nothing behind them," which, when one looks at them closely, vanish like will-o'-the-wisps into nothing.

That the Church demands of all its members that they accept its Symbols, this men call a compulsion of faith; but who in all the world is then compelled to become a member of our Church? Is it not free to everyone to join it or not, and to sepa-

*) This book Mr. Heinrich Ludwig in New York (Vesey Street No. 70) republished last year, and the same is to be had of the said publisher, as also in Philadelphia of Fr. Gentner; in Baltimore of Pastor Wyneken; in Columbus, O., of Pastor Spielmann; in Fort Wayne, Ind., of Dr. Sihler; in Canton, O., of Pastor Fast; in Zelienople, Pa., of Pastor Schweizerbarth; and in St. Louis at the office of the "Lutheraner" for $1.25.