# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1855_S72
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

72 A Statement by Pastor Löhe, etc.

...because we, like them, and not for their sake, are certain of our Christian confession and faith from divine, prophetic, and apostolic Scripture, and are sufficiently assured thereof, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, in our hearts and Christian consciences." (cf. Concordia, pag. 891, Preface of the Electors, p. 24.) For the rest, and for this very reason, we see

3. nowhere in the symbolic books actual "decisions." For it is precisely Lutheran not to accept any man — be he the greatest and most glorious — as judge over what must or must not be believed. God's clear, infallible Word alone is judge over that. The men who composed the confessional writings had no other work to do than to gather into one sum and confess the common understanding of the divine Word and the faith of the "purified churches," as it was already present among learned and unlearned, children, women, and princes — in order, on the one hand, thereby to renounce all the errors of the papacy and of other sects, and, on the other hand, to bear witness to their agreement with "Scripture, and also, so far as can be gathered from the writings of the fathers, with the universal Christian, indeed the Roman, churches." (cf. Concordia, p. 807, 810, 895, 722, 891, 29.) That is why it says, right at the beginning of the Augsburg Confession: "First, it is taught and held with one accord." (Ecclesiae magno consensu apud nos docent.)

4. When, therefore, Pastor Löhe says: "One will act wisely only if one holds 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" — our fathers have expressed precisely this consensus with the ancient Church, which has indeed always been found among all believers and must be found there, in the name of the so-called Lutheran churches, as a testimony in the symbolic books; and we do the same in our own time, in that, through simple adherence to their entire doctrinal content, we confess with them our fellowship with the universal Christian Church, as with all truly Lutheran churches, in their teaching and their faith. But if, by the emphasized words "so far as it exists," it is meant to say that no complete consensus of doctrine has actually existed, or exists, between the Lutheran Church and the ancient Church, any more than among the various Lutheran territorial churches, then we simply point to the symbolic books themselves as the expression and testimony of this complete consensus, and wait confidently for someone to demonstrate to us an error in them from God's Word. So long as that does not happen — and it never will happen — the symbols remain, for all who simply and sincerely hold fast to them, a proof and testimony of their faith, which they hold in common with all believers of every time and place. But if the words are meant to signify, beyond that, that everyone should be allowed to believe whatever he wishes and yet still be considered Lutheran, then we recognize in that a crude indifferentism and syncretism, which we, like our