# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 08 03_S97
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall never pass away, now or evermore."

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Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 1.

St. Louis, Mo., August 9, 1845.

No. 25.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, for a subscription price of one dollar and twenty-five cents for out-of-town subscribers, half of which they must pay in advance, and who must also bear the postage. — In St. Louis, each single number is sold for [illegible] cents.

Reply to the Most Recent Defense of the Union.
(Continued.)

As we now hasten toward a conclusion on the point concerning the Church, we let there follow at last an account of what we understand in particular by the Lutheran Church, and what relationship exists between it and the other denominations.

God, who foresaw from eternity that the human beings he intended to create would, through sin, fall into death and eternal damnation, also resolved from eternity to gather to himself, out of this lost and condemned human race, throughout the whole course of the world's history, an eternal Church, that is, a chosen people; to let this people struggle here for a time, and at last to unite them in heaven as a triumphant congregation unto everlasting blessedness. This eternal and adorable counsel was then at last gloriously carried out in time. Out of unspeakable love, God's only-begotten Son became man, fulfilled the Law for all mankind through his holy life, atoned for all sins through his bitter suffering and death, and through his resurrection brought righteousness, life, and salvation to light. All this God has now proclaimed to the whole world, in part directly himself, in part through his prophets and apostles, and has promised salvation and blessedness to all those who would accept and appropriate to themselves in faith this Gospel, this glad tidings of the universal redemption through Christ. Thus, through this preaching of the Gospel that has gone out into all the world, the whole world has been divided into two great parts: those who reject the gracious Word of their God, or at least do not accept it with the heart, who persist in their unbelief or false belief and are therefore lost; and those who accept this Word in faith, follow God's gracious call, and thus, if they persevere in faith, are at last saved. And these latter are precisely the Church. The Church is thus the sum total of all those whom God has called out of darkness into his marvelous light and who have accepted this calling; it is the sum total of all who truly believe in Christ, the sum total of all who are justified through faith, of all who are born again through the Holy Spirit, of all who have been converted to God from the power of Satan; it is the chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the chosen people, the people of God's own possession; it is the fellowship of all those who have become partakers of the divine nature; it is the holy family, descended from God, of the children of God on earth; it is the leaven which God mixes into the mass of the children of this world, so that this mass may be more and more permeated by him.

This Church does indeed exist at different times under different constitutions and has its various forms and fortunes, but it is and remains ever one and the same. In the time of the Old Testament it stood under a different economy (divine dispensation) than in the time of the New Testament; under the Old Covenant the Church stood under the tutelage and discipline of the Law, but under the New Covenant it is free of that tutelage and lives solely under the Gospel. But this takes nothing away from its unity, for the Church of the Old Testament was righteous and holy through faith in the Savior who was to come, and for whose appearance in the flesh it waited, while the Church of the New Testament is righteous and holy through faith in the Savior who has already come, and for whose appearing and revelation in glory it now waits. The Churches of the Old and New Testament therefore actually constitute only one Church, for they have the same faith, the same treasures, the same hope; only that the Church of the New Testament has been brought to its majority, and is no longer weighed down by the tutelage and the yoke and burdens of the Law.

Just as the Church of the Old and New Testament is one and the same, so the Church of the New Testament, in an even higher degree, has remained one and the same throughout all the centuries. It has always had, and preserved to this hour, the same faith, the same hope, the same Spirit, the same unity, the same truth, the same sacraments, the same treasures, the same holiness, the same foundation. It was one and the same

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before Luther and after Luther. It did not perish under the papacy. The difference consists rather in this: that under the papacy the Church was almost entirely covered and veiled by the clouds of man-made doctrines that had come to dominate, clouds which were again scattered and driven away by the holy work of the Reformation. Even under the papacy there was a holy remnant of believing children of God, but they languished in Babylonian captivity, until God, through the Reformation, provided great help, again allowed the truth to be taught with confidence, and led a great part of his Church out of Babylon, that is, out of the papist sect.

When we now confess ourselves to the Evangelical Lutheran Church, we mean thereby to confess ourselves to none other than the one, holy, universal (catholic), Christian Church of all ages described above, which alone possesses the truth and comprises within itself the sum total of all the children of God.

What! some will exclaim at this — how presumptuous you are! How narrow, how small-minded, indeed how deranged, to regard the Lutheran Church — this little, almost entirely collapsed chapel, this small band ossified in the service of the letter, sunk into spiritual deadness, and almost wholly infected and swallowed up by unbelief — as the universal Christian Church, outside of which there is no salvation, and against which even the gates of hell shall not prevail? To whoever thinks this way we call out: Gently now! Hear us out further first, and judge for yourself afterward.

Luther, dear reader, by no means founded a new church, still less did he wish to found one; he protested, rather, against the fact that the papists had departed, in countless doctrines, from the ancient, true, apostolic Church; his writings were nothing other than a call to Christendom not to abandon the ancient Church. Luther brought forth no new doctrine, but rather, digging in the mine of the divine Word and in the writings of faithful witnesses to the truth, in accordance with the unchangeable doctrine of the true Church of all ages, through study, reflection, prayer, and supplication. Every doctrine that Luther recognized from God's Word as the doctrine of God's true Church, he retained—

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