# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 12 21_S1003
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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that every particular church still has," receives, leads from there deeper into the whole truth, and graciously preserves from the soul-destroying errors of false doctrines. For with the same right one could otherwise assert also that the Catholic church agrees with the Reformed and Lutheran "in all points necessary to salvation," which is demonstrably not the case. Yes, every Christian sect could advance the same ground for its complete agreement in the doctrines necessary to salvation with every other; and in this way there is no reason to be seen why the Evangelical Union has set itself such narrow limits, and does not say: its confession is the consensus of all confessions of all Christian sects of the whole world. —

However much of a nothing the confession of the Evangelical Union is in itself, yet since it is a cloak of impure mind and impure conduct, it is a dangerous weapon of the seducer and murderer from the beginning, a bad sign of the times, a public confession of lies. For what do the members of the Evangelical Union do, as indeed the whole evangelical church? They profess themselves evangelical, but they are Reformed in theory and practice. The wicked enemy has risen up to undermine the Lutheran church under the glittering, seductive "evangelical" mask, to rob her of her jewel and her crown, of her childlike obedience toward the Word of God. It is precisely the decidedly Lutheran, purely biblical, anti-Reformed doctrines that are aimed at, these are to fall, against these stands the spirit of the evangelical church, however loudly it cries: Union, Union! Peace, peace!*)

*) Hr. F. B., who at the close comes to the hymn book published by the local congregation, says among other things: "Not only linguistic changes, but also changes affecting the sense, which are found in many hymns, seem to indicate that the editors by no means had the principle of giving the hymns unaltered. Thus, for example, in Luther's: ''Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland'', verse 6, in the passage: ''Daß dein ewig Gottes Gewalt in uns das krank Fleisch enthalt'' the last word has been changed into the directly opposite ''erhalt''. We willingly admit that these, like a second alteration censured by Hr. F. B., are mistakes, though made only through oversight, and we are therefore heartily thankful to the Herr Correspondent for their discovery. But if the same thinks that the word "erhalt" is directly opposite to the old "enthalt," that is an error, into which perhaps lack of reading in old writings has led the dear man. We recall only the following passages occurring in older editions of the Bible: "Indeß enthalt uns dein Wort." Jer. 15, 16. "Der freudige Geist enthalte (Samach, hyposterizei, sustentat) mich." Ps. 51, 14. "Der HErr enthält (as above) die Gerechten." Ps. 37, 17. "Enthalten" here has not the meaning of continere, to abstain, to hold back, to restrict, but sustentare, firmare, to hold, to support; and that is the case also in our hymn, which is a translation of the famous Ambrosian hymn: "Veni redemtor gentium," in which it says in verse 6: "Aequalis aeterno patri, carnis trophaeo accingere, infirma nostri corporis virtute firmans perpetim." Since "the Evangelical Union will seek to solve the task of producing a text as pure as possible in sense and, with regard to circumstances, also in language," it might well be in place, to judge by the stated linguistic criticism of a member of the Union, to recommend a previous deeper historical study of language.
The Editorial Staff.

As for the concluding remark of the Herr Editor, it belongs in the category of veiled insincerity cited above. He says: he has taken up this "interesting" correspondence unaltered, because he leaves free play to recognized collaborators, but the "responsibility for the polemic against Old Lutheranism contained therein" he must disclaim, and that on account of the conservative and irenic character of his journal. But the character of a journal is determined by the character of the articles contained in it, and a polemical article does not become irenic by the editor of the journal disclaiming responsibility for the polemic. That is ridiculous, it is exactly as if someone wished to excuse the blow he dealt another by saying that he had not given the blow, but his hand. Nor does a polemic become one "conducted altogether worthily, and free from all personality," if the Herr Editor protests this in a note, while the polemic itself brings forward such things as these: "The tactic of the assailants (in the "Lutheraner") consists not seldom in seeking to make the evangelical clergy suspected before the congregations by the charge of dishonesty and deceit," and represents Guericke as a man who "was not ill disposed to greet the Köthen Friends of Light and the Berlin barricade heroes as angels of vengeance, sent to punish the Prussian royal house for its Reformed confession and its fondness for Union."

Why wear an irenic mask which the polemical impatience covers but poorly? In open combat one gets further! —

B—.

(Submitted by Pastor Fürbringer.)

On the Forbidden Degrees of Marriage.

The divine order of marriage distinguishes itself from every other human community in that it is a sexual union; but what raises it above the satisfaction of bestial lusts is that a fulfilment of these cannot be conceived in Christianity without that spiritual estimation on the ground of which it is a freely chosen union of two beings made in God's image and at the same time a sharing in a personal calling for the whole duration of life. There remains therefore as the chief condition under which this kind of life-fellowship is to be entered upon, the bodily-spiritual attraction and natural inclination of heart of a sexually different human pair toward one another, which proves itself and finds its goal in the union of both persons to the exclusion of all others, to which the consciousness of the fellowship of grace and faith, as the sole source of true confidence and pure love, such as is godly and ceases not even in the world to come, necessarily is added. How the marriage relation has been entered upon, whether with regard to the gifts suited to the other party, to the guidance of God and the will of the parents or not, upon this the subsequent course of life in it is essentially conditioned; and it is not always granted afterwards to make good again what evil was done here. The fruit of the fellowship, the begetting of children, is as fruit and effect not so much the nearest purpose — for this is the full completion of divided needs, Gen. 2:18 — as the added divine blessing of marriage, which may in itself be one well-pleasing to God without being accompanied by fruitfulness. A man shall leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh — that is the divine, meaningful appointment for the most perfect form of personal union, as an image of a higher mystery, on earth, which has indeed become the ground of sin, but also of salvation, which the life-giving Spirit prepares for fallen natural man.

It extends itself into a fellowship of several, yea of many, in a dependence ordered by God upon the founders of the race, and the existence of such families is the natural effect and consequence of marriage. Within this circle, however, the mutual relations are not established by voluntary entering, rather it is innate natural determination alone and an innate spirit of inclination and dependence which here by God's ordinance joins together and separates, beyond whose limits man may not go in freedom of will. The neglect of wise strictness and discipline in righteousness, or the severity that works only wrath and servile fear on the one side, and on the other side the lack of reverence toward the heads of families, as of self-denying love toward one another — "for if there is obedience in the heart, love will not be far" — these are the cursed sowing of the ruin of races, as of whole nations.

A particular way, now, of breaking through by unnatural affection the barriers set by God between parents, children, brothers and sisters, etc., is the entering upon marriages which join in profaning sexual union members of a family stock already tied to one another by blood relationship, who by this very fact were divided from one another in respect of marriage. Who would not wish that these existed among men only in thought and in name, so that one scarcely deemed them in need of mention,