# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 10 02_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine pure shall to eternity endure."
Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Volume 6.  St. Louis, Mo., 2 October 1849.  No. 3.
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 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 addressed to the Editor; all others, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthol, care of C. F. W. Walthor, St. Louis, Mo.

Preface of the Editor to the Sixth Volume of the "Lutheraner."

(Conclusion.)

In our last number we showed in what sense we claim for the Lutheran Church that it is the One holy universal Christian Church.*) We have now only a little to add as to the ground on which we are, and mean and must remain, exclusive in this respect.

*) We have taken up only the reproach which is made against us concerning the exclusive character of our doctrine, since, as regards our practice, Dr. Sihler has already often justified it in this paper. Compare, among others, Volume 5, No. 3.

The cause, in brief words, is this:

Gladly as we would lay aside the name Lutheran, and call ourselves merely Christians, and call the Church to which we desire to belong simply the universal Christian Church, yet it has always been precisely the adversaries who have forced us to call ourselves Lutherans and our Church the Lutheran. For as soon as Luther, 300 years ago, had taught the doctrine of the universal Christian Church, and a great multitude had received this doctrine in faith and confessed it with the mouth, the adversaries — and that to this very day — called this doctrine the Lutheran, and all who received it the Lutherans or the Lutheran Church, in order with this name to brand our doctrine as a new heresy and our Church as a new sect. No appealing and protesting has helped, that we do not at all believe in Luther, but in Christ and His Word, and that we do not at all wish to make a new sect or party, but to remain with the old universal Christian Church and to belong to it — the adversaries held to it: You who so believe and teach as stands in your Augsburg Confession and in your whole Book of Concord, you are Lutherans, and your Church is the Lutheran Church. As early as the year 1522 Luther wrote: "I beg that my name be left unmentioned, and that men call themselves not Lutheran, but Christians. What is Luther? The doctrine is not mine; neither was I crucified for any man. St. Paul, 1 Cor. 3, 4. 5., would not suffer the Christians to call themselves Pauline or Petrine, but Christians. How then should I, a poor stinking maggot-sack, come to have the children of Christ named with my wretched name? Not so, dear friends; let us abolish the partisan names and be called Christians, whose doctrine we have. The Papists have good reason for a partisan name, since they are not content with Christ's doctrine and name, but would also be Papistical, whose master the Pope is. I am not, and will not be, any man's master. I have, with the congregation, the one common doctrine of Christ, who alone is our Master. Matth. 23, 8." (See Admonition to Beware of Insurrection. Works. Halle ed., X, 420.) But what have all such public protests availed? — Whether we would or not, we were to be and must be Lutherans. What now could we do, or what would we do? We had at last to resign ourselves to it and say: Well then, if the Christian faith which we confess and carry in our hearts is to be a Lutheran faith by all means, then the Lutheran faith is the Christian; and if those who have and confess this universal Christian faith are by all means to be Lutherans or the Lutheran Church, then the Lutheran Church is the Christian, and so all believers of all times, Adam and Eve, and all the patriarchs, and all the prophets, and all the apostles, and all the witnesses of the truth, who had no other faith and were saved through no other, have been Lutherans.

From this the reader can see why we Lutherans bear this name in the first place. We do so by no means because we would thereby separate ourselves sectarianly or in a partisan spirit from the universal Christian Church, and would "exclude" other truly believing persons from us, as once the Corinthians did with the names Pauline, Apollonian, Cephine, etc. (1 Cor. 1, 12.), but because our adversaries for three centuries have laid this name upon the pure Christian doctrine and its confessors. For since this has happened, we should, if we were ashamed of this name, be ashamed of Christ and of His pure Word itself, and deny the holy, only true Church, as Peter once denied Christ when he would not be a "Galilean." (Luke 22, 59. 60. John 7, 52.) As earnestly, therefore, as Luther has contended against men's calling themselves Lutheran in a falsely exclusive sense, so earnestly has he nevertheless warned those who would not be called Lutheran because they were ashamed of the Christian doctrine called Lutheran by its enemies, and would not bear the reproach resting upon the confession of it, nor take upon themselves the persecution then so often joined with it. He therefore writes in the same year in his little book "On Receiving Both Kinds" thus: "I see that a good admonition is needful, to be given to those whom Satan now begins to persecute. Among these there are some who think they will escape the danger thereby, when they are attacked, that they say: I hold not with Luther, nor with any man, but with the holy Gospel and with the holy or Roman Church: so they are let alone in peace. And yet they keep my doctrine in their hearts for evangelical, and abide by it. Verily, such a confession helps them not, and is just as much as to have denied Christ.*) Therefore I beg that they would take good heed. It is true that thou shalt by no means, on thy body and soul, say: I am Lutheran**) or Papistical, for neither of these died for thee, nor is thy mas-

*) How many of the so-called United Evangelicals may now be in this case, that, though convinced of the correctness of the Lutheran doctrine, they yet do not wish to be counted among the Lutherans, because in this time of the Union the bitterest reproach of Christ now rests upon this name! Several examples of this kind have already come to our knowledge.

**) Luther means, of course, here the voluntary calling of oneself Lutheran in a falsely exclusive sense.