# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1855_S70
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

70 A Statement by Pastor Löhe, etc.

...said, that the doctrine of the ministry and the Church was precisely a focal point of the Reformation struggles — and as far as the refutation of the Roman errors is concerned, this is indeed true; but their own positive doctrine of the ministry and the Church, as is evident, did not turn out so successfully that everyone could have been satisfied with it. Nor is this taught so decisively in the symbols that a difference of opinion in the Church would have become impossible. Whence otherwise the diversity? — Truly, the guidance given the Lutheran Church from the beginning was not, and is not, suited to make up for the deficiency of the symbolic books out of Luther — out of Luther, who, as the recent work by Richter and so much other thorough historical research shows, was on his final principles unable to organize a congregation, but had to see everything pass over into the hands of jurists and princes.

Now when we said that we, on this side, read the symbols and the writings of the Reformation according to Holy Scripture, we do not mean by this to say that the symbols of the Lutheran Church are not, in their properly symbolic articles, faithful to the divine Word. On the contrary, we adhere so earnestly to the Reformation doctrine of the clarity and perspicuity of Holy Scripture that we hope for the triumph of the symbols precisely from a faithful reading of Scripture. We fear nothing from the study of Scripture; therefore we pay it homage, and although some of us — the writer of this, for instance — proceeded from the symbols to Scripture, we nevertheless believe that a wholly unprejudiced investigation and comparison between Scripture and symbol can only confirm the symbols. But neither do we hold the symbols and the teaching of the sixteenth-century dogmaticians to be so perfect that faithful research could not make up for some deficiency and lead to a richer, fuller, more harmonious, and more Scripture-worthy presentation of the symbolic doctrines. Indeed, we consider it possible that here and there a correction may at some point occur, through which the symbolic decisions can only become more glorious and more blessed. In a word, we do indeed pay homage to the principle: from Scripture to the symbol — and from the symbol back again to Scripture — Scripture in everything and above all — and without it, nothing. We may perhaps live to see the American tendency gain the upper hand among us too for a while; in that case we shall have to put up with — as in the doctrine of the holy ministry and the Church — being treated as apostates and seeing our course branded as a dark side. But it does not remain so forever. Every exaggeration leads to a swing back — and once we have wavered back and forth for a while, in the end we all give the Word the honor that it is and remains above the symbols, and that in the course of time it leads the Church from clarity to clarity. Forward on the old path! and: "In thy light we see light" — let that be and remain our watchword. Perhaps it will soon come to...