# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1855_S69
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A Statement by Pastor Löhe, etc. 69

...brief description of the difference may perhaps appear too curt and abrupt; yet whoever is more familiar with the state of affairs on both sides will nevertheless recognize what is true in it.

That the brethren in Missouri and the synod that follows them quite simply make the claim that Scripture should be read according to the symbols (and the symbols according to the private writings of Luther and the great dogmaticians of the sixteenth century) — this they certainly do not deny. The excerpt cited above from the reply to the Fürth Conference states this clearly — and long before, already at the time when Walther and Wyneken were present, it was set forth in the Lutheraner, from a letter they wrote back from Erlangen, as a fault common to the various parties in Franconia and Bavaria, that they all proceeded from Scripture to the symbols instead of proceeding from the symbols and the old teachers to Scripture. By this the dear brethren naturally do not mean that Scripture should be interpreted according to the symbols, etc.; rather, their opinion is only this, that there can be no correct interpretation of Scripture other than that of the symbols, etc. Their claim arises entirely out of the strong confidence that the symbols have rightly understood Scripture. And they are right: this is the unanimous conviction of all Lutherans; all therefore hold to the quia and not the quatenus. Only the American brethren extend the quia further than has ever been done before, so that for them the historical sense of the quia becomes, and must become, a pure quatenus. For quia has in fact never been applied to anything but the symbolic decisions made in the sacred controversy and the great questions of the Reformation era, and not to what was incidental, not to every proposition and argument that arose and was set forth in the course of the lengthy — yet still human — symbols. In the symbolic decisions all parties of the Lutheran Church recognize the correct exposition of Scripture; but where no actual decisions have been given, one has always turned to Holy Scripture and sought to supply the deficiency of human words by the divine word. If one understands the quia otherwise, one must wield a sharp knife back to the very first times of the Reformation, and one will have to deny ecclesiastical fidelity to many who have hitherto been regarded as especially faithful. Such conduct also looks entirely like our reflective and levelling age. Just as at present one is, on the one hand, indifferentistic, so on the other hand one carries the clearing-out and the demand for doctrinal unity to such an excess that the Church, were it to go these ways, could only arrive at a self-dissolution. One will act wisely only by holding fast to the consensus of the Lutheran Church with the ancient Church, so far as it exists, and to the consensus of the Lutheran churches among themselves, so far as it exists — yet also allowing room and time for research, for prayer, and for the urge toward further unity, until new symbolic decisions on the pending questions have matured. Our brethren will, of course, say — as indeed they have already often said —