# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1855_S71
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A Statement by Pastor Löhe, etc. 71

...the day will come when what the brethren call the dark side is light, and much of what they call the bright side is, after all, not light.

Our comfort, however, is that we are always at one with our dear American brethren, so far as the symbols have decided. If our handshake toward their position is not, as we nevertheless hope, a brotherly one in their eyes, then we will bear it lovingly and prayerfully until it becomes otherwise.

* * *

Allow me to add a few remarks:

1. If Pastor Löhe presents this as the difference between the two positions — that we, with our fathers, firmly believe that our symbols are "taken from God's Word, and are firmly and well grounded therein," while the brethren over there only hope, through thorough study of Scripture, still to find the same, so that we are Lutherans while they hope still to become such — then we for our part can be satisfied with this judgment. How, indeed, the brethren, holding such a position toward the symbols, quiet their conscience is hard for us to see; and that they have a large following which imagines the truly genuine Lutheran Church to be concentrated and represented in them grieves us.

2. That we read the symbols according to the private writings of Luther and of the great dogmaticians of the sixteenth century, we do not concede — not in the sense in which Pastor Löhe asserts it of us. On the contrary, we ourselves, in the very excerpt he cites, have expressly testified that our symbols need no special explanation. For, thank God, they are not built on evasions. On the contrary, in composing them it was precisely intended that they should speak out plainly, purely, openly, clearly, and without secret reservation, what and how they mean. Every misunderstanding, every playing at concealment of insincerity, has been guarded against as far as possible. Just as little do they need any supplementation, for the doctrinal propositions expressed in them are not only clear but also complete according to thesis and antithesis. Against false interpretations we do indeed appeal to Luther, since we cannot, even on the testimony of the symbolic books themselves, deny that they are "the sum and pattern of the doctrine which Dr. Luther of blessed memory, in his writings, set forth grandly and grounded well from God's Word against the papacy and other sects," and that they themselves wish to be understood "with reference to his detailed explanations in his doctrinal and polemical writings." (cf. Conc. ed. Reineccius, Leipzig 1735, pag. 808, 893.) We rejoice in the testimonies and doctrinal developments of the great dogmaticians of the sixteenth century, gladly let them further uncover and unfold for us the riches contained in our symbols, and, as with Luther, we appeal to them, over and above, only in the face of false interpretations of the symbols, as to a chain of witnesses that we hold fast and teach the correct sense of our confessions in agreement with our fathers. With them we believe, teach, and confess, as our symbols,