# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 04 04_S61
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

...let [it] remain.

A

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall never pass away."

Published by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 2.

St. Louis, Mo., April 4, 1846.

No. 16.

Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at a subscription price of one dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay half of this in advance and bear the cost of postage. — In St. Louis, each individual issue is sold for 5 cents.

(Submitted by Pastor Th. Brohm.)

Can a Lutheran Christian, with a good conscience, take part in such administrations of the sacraments as are performed according to the prescription of the newest "Church Agenda for the Evangelical Lutheran Congregations in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, etc.," of 1842?

I did not devise this question myself; rather, it has actually been put to me as a case of conscience by several persons, and the longer I have thought about it, the more convinced I have become of the importance of the question and of answering it. It is sad enough that such a question can arise concerning an Agenda that calls itself Lutheran. If doubts arise regarding the sacramental practices of the Episcopalians, Catholics, Methodists, etc., that is not surprising; but the question above leaves only the alternative that either the one posing the question or the Agenda being questioned must be grossly violating the Evangelical Lutheran confession. It is certainly worth the trouble to examine on which side the fault lies.

What kind of administration of the sacraments does the Agenda prescribe? As regards Holy Baptism, the Agenda contains four different forms. The first is still the most tolerable and was without doubt included to satisfy those people who still "cling to the old ways"; something of the old form of the Lutheran baptismal booklet still shows through, however meagerly. Yet one may fairly ask: why did they not simply retain the old, unaltered baptismal booklet, which Luther, after all, did not compose himself but took over from the ancient church and merely purged of papistic additions? Why did they not let it remain as in the baptismal form of the old American Agenda of 1756? If one were in heartfelt agreement with the doctrine laid down in the old baptismal forms, why does one introduce innovations without cause — innovations that ought, after all, to be avoided in the church of God?

Yet already in this form there occur false innovations that permit one to infer a troubling aversion to the doctrine itself. I will point out only one instance. The question to the baptismal sponsors is indeed retained: "Do you, in this child's name, renounce the devil and all his works and all his ways?" — but at the same time the questionable explanation is added: "that is, the dominion of sin and vanity." What purpose is this addition supposed to serve? Is the question so unclear that it requires an explanation? Should not a child, from the Small Catechism, fairly be expected to know who the devil is and what his works and nature are? Or is the intent thereby to remove the offense that the educated people of our time take at the doctrine of the devil, and to give them to understand that one need not imagine a personal devil, that this is merely a symbolic designation for the dominion of sin and vanity? When one knows that this addition is taken from the newer Agendas that arose under the influence of rationalism — such as, for example, the Agenda of 1818 — it becomes more than doubtful whether the form still assumed the existence and kingdom of an actual devil. A Christian who does not walk in craftiness — 2 Corinthians 4:2 — and who gladly professes his faith unambiguously, must already be deeply wounded and offended by this ambiguous addition.

The second form goes a step further and stands entirely on the ground of modern unbelief. In the entire address to the baptismal sponsors there is not a single word about the necessity and power of baptism, not a word that the child is conceived and born in sin, indeed subject to death and the kingdom of the devil, not a word that Holy Baptism grants forgiveness of sins, redeems from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation; instead, "through baptism the child is only to be received into the fellowship of God and Jesus." To this, of course, even the most unbelieving person — even one who denies the eternal deity of Jesus Christ, but who nonetheless wishes to be a worshiper of God and of Jesus — could say Yes without objection. The Apostles' Creed is entirely omitted from these forms, and its place is taken by the question: "Do you desire that this child be baptized according to Jesus' institution and received into the number of Christians?" And what Christian baptismal sponsor can answer this question with a joyful Yes?

Equally pitiful is the closing prayer and the address to the baptismal sponsors, and I do not say too much when I say that not a single sentence agrees with the pattern of the wholesome words. Whoever finds this too harsh should read the form for himself. What more is there to say about the third form? It is as though the authors had competed with one another over who best understood the art of emptying the sacrament of Holy Baptism of all its power and reducing it to a mere, meaningless ceremony.

Whoever does not yet know to what degree of decay the Lutheran church of this country has fallen need only hear the beginning of this third form: "The divine founder of our holy religion, Jesus Christ, before his departure from the world, made the arrangement that all who wish to profess his teaching should, through baptism, be consecrated as his confessors and followers"; further: "baptism is the initiation of a person into a child of God"; further: "the sprinkling with pure water is a symbol of the inner purity of the soul, to which a person is called in fellowship with Jesus and to which he is led through the impartation of the Holy Spirit." "Therefore (note well, why? because, namely, baptism is supposed to be a symbol of the inner purity of the soul) Paul calls baptism a bath of regeneration and renewal through the Holy Spirit," etc.

You poor, deceived Lutherans, you have hitherto believed that your pastors baptize your children so that they might receive forgiveness of sins, be redeemed from death and the devil, and attain eternal salvation, according to the words of your catechism; you have been deceived; they intend to do nothing but consecrate*) your children as confessors and followers of Jesus; they sprinkle them with water, not so that they

*) The word consecration, initiation — even when used in an ecclesiastical sense — when applied to the sacrament of Holy Baptism, attaches to it a meaning that contradicts its inner nature. One consecrates churches, that is, one declares and appoints them by a solemn act to divine worship; one consecrates [ordains] pastors, that is, one solemnly confirms them in the office to which they have been called. Whoever, then, calls the sacrament of Holy Baptism a consecration of a person as a child of God, an initiation into Christianity, thereby denies precisely the nature of the sacrament as a powerful means, ordained by God, of imparting grace to the sinner, and thus makes Holy Baptism into an empty ceremony that gives a person nothing that he does not already possess.

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