# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 01 23_S82
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

82

separate from it or to remain with it? Where, then, is there any compulsion here? Let me give an example. Suppose a society were formed for the purpose of going to war to aid the fatherland. Many join the society. But when at last the word comes: Up now, to the war! behold, several rise up and declare that this is an unjust compulsion; they were indeed willing to remain members of the association, but they would by no means let themselves be forced to go along into the war. They were men of age, who would not let their freedom be taken from them. — Would not such men make themselves ridiculous before everybody? Would not one say to them: Who then compelled you to join us? But since you came to us of your own free will, how can you, fools, now call it a compulsion when it is required of you to do that for the sake of which you became members of the association? See, dear Lutheran readers, it is just as foolish to call it a compulsion of faith when the Lutheran Church requires of those who belong to it and wish to remain with it that they also believe and teach in a Lutheran way.*)

But as groundless as the objection concerning the alleged compulsion of faith is this one: that if one joins and submits to the human Symbols of our Church in full faith, one thereby places them on a level with the divine books of Holy Scripture, yea, in a manner sets them above them. This objection is without foundation, because we do not believe the doctrines of our Symbols for the reason that they are contained in the Symbols, but because they are taken from the Word of God; not because Luther and other esteemed divines believed and taught them, but because they agree with Holy Scripture. A true Lutheran does not make the Symbols the source and foundation of faith; he rather accepts them for this reason alone, that they have flowed from the Bible as their source and are founded upon the Bible as their foundation. But does one thereby make the brook the spring, when one says of the brook that the same water flows in it which wells up in the spring, because it has flowed out of it? And does one thereby place the building on a level with its foundation, when one says of the building that it stands firm upon its foundation? Is not then the water — ascribed to the spring, and the firmness — to the foundation?

But, it is said, are not the churchly Symbols written by men who were liable to error? Who, then, can rely upon them? We answer: The question here is not whether the authors of the Symbols were men who could err, but whether they erred in the doctrines which they confessed and laid down in those books. That they could err, we gladly admit; but that they erred in the articles of faith which they recorded, that we deny. That the manner and way in which the Biblical doctrines are confessed and defended in our Symbols is a human one, and therefore not perfect, who would deny? But that the doctrines themselves are human, imperfect, and faulty, that we deny in all earnestness, for thereby we should declare God's Word itself to be imperfect and faulty. Or does gold turn into brittle clay as soon as it is carried in earthen, brittle vessels? Does a truth become an error when it is confessed and recorded by a man liable to error? Does a Bible doctrine thereby become a doctrine of men, when those who bear witness to it are men? Does God's eternal Word, when it passes through the mouth of a mortal sinner, then become a changeable wisdom of this world? — Alas, then all the millions of dear martyrs, because they were men who could err, would have shed their blood amid nameless tortures not for eternally firm truth, but for uncertain opinions and conjectures? Then the Church of Christ, too, because it consists of men, might never say: We have found the truth!? — O, away with such blasphemous skepticism, that is, with such heathenish despair of finding the truth! For this very purpose the Bible has been given to men, that they may no longer wander about in this world without light, without hope, and without certainty, but, defying world and hell, may rejoice in firm faith: We have found the truth! And the Church, indeed, is to be a pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3, 15.); if nowhere in the world, yet in the Church this most precious of all the goods of men is to be found.

What, then, is the meaning of the outcry of the enemies of our Church: Your Symbols have been written by men who could err, therefore let them go, for they are uncertain!? Is not that a lovely conclusion: Every man can err, the confessors of our faith were men, therefore they erred? Are not the gentlemen who so conclude also men? Why do such assailants of the Symbols not first of all represent their own affair as unreliable and uncertain? Why do they not say at the close of their sermon: Dear hearers, you know that I am a man who can err, therefore do not believe firmly that what I have preached is true!? Why do they preach at all? They will say: Yes, we demand no unconditional faith; where we are convinced that we have erred, we are ready to retract. Well then, so you yourselves admit what the point is here. For it is not enough that one say the writers of the Confessions could err, but that one also prove that and where they have erred. How confident we Lutherans can therefore be! For no man has yet furnished this proof. With reason and with the thoughts of his heart men have indeed been able to fight against our Confessions, but with God's Word they have never been able to refute them. In the case of many of their doctrines men have indeed had to say, when they consulted their reason and their heart, with Nicodemus: "How can these things be?" but never have men been able to set against them, as against the Symbols of other churches: "It is written!" For three hundred years men have indeed reproached the Lutheran Church that it holds too stiffly and rigidly to the letter of Holy Scripture in its Symbols, but only seldom have they dared even to assert, and never have they been able to prove, that it has departed from it. If we should therefore fall away from the doctrine of the Symbols, we should fall away not from the word of men, but from the Word of God itself; we should deny not Luther, but Christ; we should cease not only to be called, with right, Lutherans, but also to be called, with right, Christians. —

But many now say: Suppose your Confessions agreed entirely with Holy Scripture, yet you cannot deny that they are only human confessions; why, then, will men not rather go back to the Bible alone, as the pure Word of God?

We answer to this as follows. It is mere folly to set the Bible against the Symbols. The Bible is, so to speak, God's confession to us; but the Symbols are our confession to God. The Bible is God's question to men: Do you believe my Word? The Symbols are the answer of men: Yea, Lord, we believe what thou sayest. The Bible is the shaft in which all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God lie hidden; the Symbols are the treasure-chambers in which the Church has laid down, as in a spiritual magazine and arsenal, the treasures which in the course of the centuries she has dug out of the Bible-shaft with much labor and brought to light. The Bible with its doctrines is God's own handwriting concerning our salvation, which Satan is ever seeking to falsify and to declare spurious; the Symbols contain the documents annexed, from which one sees how the Church has believed those doctrines from time to time, and how she has always held fast to them. The Bible is the revealed Word of God itself; the Symbols, however, are the right understanding of the Word of God, which God has given to His Church.

*) How foolish it is to speak here of compulsion of faith, even Rationalists have had to admit. Thus, among others, v. Ammon, instructed by his mere reason, writes in his Sittenlehre (II, p. 106.): "The Evangelical Church can take no notice of the pretext of those who assert that they cannot reconcile the oath upon the symbolical books with their faith, with their conviction, and therefore also with their conscience. 'I do not believe in the divinity of the Bible, for I am a Naturalist; I reject original sin, for I think as a Pelagian; I deny the divine dignity of Jesus and hold him only for the orator of God to the blinded human race.' But why do you believe that; have you a right to demand of the Evangelical Church that it change its Confessions on your account; does anyone compel you to enter its service, for which, precisely because of this individual view of yours, you are neither fitted nor able?"