# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 12 21_S1002
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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theran and Reformed were so far advanced that with a good conscience they could acknowledge a fraternitas in Ch. among themselves, then the true union would really have come to pass. Or does one know and desire a still more intimate union than the fellowship in Christ? — But how can Herr F. B. draw from the words of the consensus just quoted the conclusion, "thus they did not acknowledge the slightest unity," in which words does that lie? It is only between the confessors of the Augsburg Confession and the Reformed, as such, that fellowship in Christ is denied; and where Reformed and Lutherans are spoken of in abstracto, as closed bodies, no fellowship can take place, because and so long as they stand in their confessions against one another; in concreto, on the other hand, some members of the Reformed church, if they truly believe in Christ, may stand with the Lutherans in the most intimate fellowship, in the fellowship with Christ, since they then belong with these to the one true church, and in fact, though unconsciously, have departed from the Reformed confession. —

wonder that they answer somewhat unequally about it." (Volume 4, page 73.) Here dear Spener gives us at the same time the key to the "unequal answers" which one so often receives here from American "theologians" to assertions of this kind. Let us therefore, dear Lutherans, have patience! The Ed.

The manner in which the German Evangelical Church Union of the West arose, as it is represented by the Correspondent, lets us take a look into the nature of the Union itself, into its characterless weakness for want of conviction. The Correspondent says: "nevertheless they planted the banner of the evangelical church confidently and joyfully, not because it had perhaps been their favorite banner, but solely because they saw that it was needful." Thus the Union planted its banner, its confession of faith, confidently, not because that was the confession of its own heart, brought by the Word of God to firm, joyful conviction, nor because it loved its confession, indeed, if the Correspondent will have it so, was its "favorite banner," but "solely" because it saw "that it was needful"; because "a great part of the German immigrants populating the West came from united lands, and desired teachers of the same confession." Thus the constraint, the warrant of the whole Union lay not in the conviction of the founders won through the Word of God, but in the desire of the immigrants. Men built the Union, therefore, not upon the eternal rock of the divine Word, but upon the unstable wave of human desire; at the founding of the Union they looked not first to the honor of the LORD and His declared will, which alone is and ought to be the way of Christians, but to the need of the people; — and because this people now brings "undeniably little outward churchly and still less inward Christian life from the old homeland," as the author himself admits, and on that account, yielding the more quickly to the unionistic spirit of the age and to the covetous craving of the corrupt heart, demands preachers who will not stand in the way of ecclesiastical caprice and will let themselves be entertained most easily by a uniting of the parties; therefore this desire, this need, must be met — and that is the noble origin of the Union. — Yes, more still, they even gave up their own "well-founded conviction" to the demands of those little churchly and still less Christian immigrants; which we would not dare to state so nakedly if the Correspondent did not himself say: "The demand which a part of the Protestant church actually present among the evangelical immigrants made upon them, and the salvation of souls bound up with it, counted for more with them than their own view and conviction, however well founded otherwise." Does Herr F. B. not know that it is written: "I believe" — have a well-founded conviction that something pleases God — "therefore have I spoken"; does he not know that everything which is not of faith — of conviction — is sin? —

As we now pass to another point, to the so-called "Confession of the Evangelical Union," we must repeat the reproach, "the evangelical church has no confession," which is rejected by the Correspondent, and that for the simple reason that it is true. That the Evangelical Union has no confession of its own, peculiarly belonging to it, it will itself not be able to deny, but neither has it a foreign one, but only a Compositum of two foreign ones, belonging to other churches, which however in reality exists nowhere again, but has first to be sought by each member of the Union, first studied out, always made anew for himself, and by each, according to the measure of knowledge or also of will, can be set wider or narrower. When therefore the Evangelical Union in its statutes, Chap. I. § 1., says: the Evangelical Union "confesses itself to the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures as it is laid down in the symbolical books of the Lutheran and Reformed church . . . in so far as they agree," it thereby by no means utters a confession, but only indicates the way in which the confession of the Union may be formed, and has thus, instead of an open, clear confession, instead of a banner which plainly unfolds its colors and devices so that everyone can easily recognize it and follow it, only a signpost, which however does not indicate which way one is to go, but leaves it to each to choose, balancing, the middle direction between two ways which one is not to go. Or does perhaps the consensus of the confessional writings of the Reformed and Lutheran church stand fast? Why then has it never yet been declared, fixed, formulated? Because the whole matter is an impossibility, a nonsense. For this consensus can be either only an inner, organic one, or an outer, mechanical one. The inner consensus between the two confessions, or the true, organic union of the two, has indeed been sought often enough for 300 years, but not yet found, and cannot be found, because both confessions contradict one another in some doctrines and are separated from each other in principle, and these existing, radical differences may well be outwardly glossed over into one in appearance, but in truth can never be brought into accord, never be fused into a true consensus. The eternal Word of God itself separates the Lutheran church forever from the Reformed as such. If now the Evangelical Union has understood by its confession this inner organic consensus, then it has very naively presupposed as generally known and given, and planted as its banner, its sign of confession and recognition, something which is not yet there at all, is still to be found, but by its own contradictory nature can never be found, and so is a sheer impossibility. But if the Evangelical Union understands by the "in so far as they agree" an outer patchwork only of that in which the confessional writings of the Lutheran and Reformed church agree, thus that outer, mechanical consensus, and confesses nothing concerning that on which they do not agree, then it "not only affords a welcome shelter for indifferentism," but is, since it will confess nothing about the article of God, of the person of Christ, of grace, of baptism, of the Lord's Supper, of the office of the keys, of the church, etc., for in these articles the Lutheran and the Reformed church do not agree, in fact the "most desperate indifferentism" itself, and its confession, because it confesses nothing about the most important articles that are to be confessed, — a nonsense. —

But if the Correspondent nevertheless wishes to prove that that consensus nevertheless contains all the points necessary to salvation, and therefore says: "Since Löhe further admits that one may be saved also in non-Lutheran churches, those pieces of truth which he is so kind as not to deny to other churches must nevertheless be essential pieces, by holding fast to which one may attain to salvation. Thus even according to the words of one of the strictest Lutherans there must agree in the confessions of the Reformed and Lutheran church very many, namely all the points necessary to salvation"; we must call this argumentation a thoroughly mistaken one. For one may be saved also in the Catholic, as in every Christian sect generally; but that comes not from every Christian sect also having "all" the points necessary to salvation, but because the Holy Ghost keeps the elect, simple soul by the "one jewel,