# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1855_S87
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Modified Confession to the Symbols. 87

Augustana.) What, on the other hand, do many of those who now find themselves in contradiction with the statements of our confessions declare to be the nonessential in them? — Always precisely that, and only so much, as is not the result of their own research; not only what in them belongs to the temporal, human addition, to the form of doctrine, but also what belongs to the doctrinal substance of the confessional writings. They do not shrink from laying claim to fidelity toward the symbols of the church and to agreement with them, even though they mark as erroneous doctrines expressed therein, propositions that determine the doctrinal content. It is not enough, then, that they claim that in the confession of their church which they have sworn to, the sense of the Holy Spirit that lies precisely in certain passages is not always hit upon in the interpretation of some passages of Scripture; they go so far, rather, as here and there even to deny to the symbolical interpretation of Scripture that it is even "similar to the faith" at all. Rom. 12:7.

In the newest quarterly number of the Rudelbach-Guericke journal (the first of this year) we find a pointer to how terribly it avenges itself when those who wish to be the representatives of Lutheran orthodoxy are themselves unwilling to be bound to the whole doctrinal substance of the symbols. A Lutheran pastoral conference in Stade had, namely, publicly attacked the theological faculty at Göttingen for its antisymbolical, unchurchly direction. What happened? The faculty in question pointed out that its accusers stood under the same condemnation as itself, since they too, namely, claim the freedom to depart from the symbols, for instance in the doctrine of church and office. Thus the point has been broken off the weapons in this just and noble contest, which the faithful members of the church had looked forward to with great hope and joy. It has at once become evident that Lutherans holding a modified confession to the church's symbols cannot stand before their enemies. We cannot forbear to communicate to our readers what Professor Dr. Guericke writes on this subject on the occasion of a review of two writings concerning it. In the number in question the following notices and reviews are found, namely:

1. J. H. Wolff (Pastor at Hollern), Lutheran Answer to the Memorial of the Theological Faculty at Göttingen. Stade (Schaumburg) 1854. 92 pp. 10 groschen.

How fair it would be in the history of the militant Christian church if, in all the phases of its conflicts, unadulterated truth stood on the one side and compact error on the other! Instead, however, truth too often takes on so much of error, and error in turn retains so much of truth, that the development of the church mostly presents itself as a ripening through the friction of one-sidednesses. So it was in the ancient conflicts of the realist West—