# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1855_S90
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

90 The Modified Confession of the Symbols.

The fact that many people, whether lowly or—as in Prussia—high and highest-ranking, profess it at present changes nothing in this respect; if they are many and highly placed, that merely shows what a powerful and dangerous error has thus arisen. — It will now hardly be necessary to single out further details from this excellently written treatise in this connection (such as the statement on p. 20 that “the very point at issue is what is Scriptural in that question, and therefore also Lutheran”—by no means; otherwise, for example, the Scriptural character of the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord’s Supper according to John 6 and of the doctrine of justification according to the Epistle of James would first have to be decided before one could set forth the Lutheran doctrines of the Lord’s Supper and justification confessionally; rather, the issue now concerns only an objectively Lutheran confession or a subjectively divergent one, and whoever maintains the Puseyite conception of the ministry stands, when measured by the Lutheran Confession, however different in degree, just as subjectively divergent in kind as the Göttingen men; — furthermore, the statements on p. 22 and elsewhere that the question of the ministry is “unresolved, and consequently disputed”—for it is unresolved or “problematic” (p. 28), or “an open scholarly question of controversy in our time” (p. 43), etc., only insofar as one does not wish to decide it according to the Lutheran Confession, and “disputed because unresolved” is in any event an inadmissible inference; — furthermore, the fact that on p. 50 the Göttingen men are denied the right to determine what in the Confession is fundamental and what is problematic, while the defenders of the crypto-Catholic conception of the ministry exploit that very right so vigorously in their own way; — and the categorical statement on p. 44 concerning that conception of the ministry: “It has nothing whatever to do with this entire affair,” etc.). We ask leave to note explicitly only this further point: it is by no means true (p. 17) that “the Besser Bible studies arose from the midst of the community of the separated Lutherans in Prussia”; rather, as is well known, they arose quite specifically from the midst of the Evangelical territorial church in Prussia and were only afterward inserted into and grafted onto the separated Lutheran community. Suum cuique. But may the esteemed author forgive a theologian who has tasted the horrors of the Puseyite conception of the ministry, in the theories and practices of Stephan and the Prussian Lutherans, down to the dregs, for being unable, even despite his weighty authority, ever to recognize the principle behind such incredible horrors as Lutheran, or as a question of whether it is Lutheran or not that remains problematic; instead, he rejoices that in these horrors, which he has himself incontrovertibly experienced and lived through, he possesses a safeguard that keeps his eye clear and his courage confident, enabling him, especially in this matter, to recognize the light of the Evangelical Lutheran Confession and, as far as lies within his power, to preserve it inviolate. (G.)*)

*) May I at this point also draw attention to a statement in a letter that an eminent Lutheran theologian has just addressed to me (dated September 20, 1854) concerning the Puseyite tendency in the Lutheran Church? “To the deepest sorrow my soul is