# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1855_S100
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

100                    Lutheran Antitheses.

...he raises such a dreadful outcry of alarm wherever he catches sight of me. What is meant by "fanatic" I do not indeed know, since the sublime realm of ideas in which a Stier moves has remained closed to me. But this much pleases me well, that in matters of faith he declares me to be, at any rate, no wax or reed, but rather "ore"; as for Herr Stier himself, surely no one will call him an arch-babbler, but at most a curd-babbler.

9) Since there can hardly be any doubt that the editors and contributors of this journal are called upon, by Thes. 201, 202, in the interest of union, to renounce "brotherhood" with me chiefly, I find myself prompted to set forth, in complete brevity, my conviction, so far as it appears reprehensible to Herr Dr. Stier.

10) I am nobody's "hanger-on." In a scholarly respect I gladly, and with unfeigned modesty, seat myself at all times at the feet of the highly respectable Lutheran theologians against whom the theses are directed. But when it comes, as here, to the knowledge of salvation, which consists in the forgiveness of sins, then I am not their grateful pupil, but their equal fellow-pupil; for it was through none of them, but solely through the apostles and reformers, that I became acquainted with the Gospel. Of "scolding words" against me there is, unfortunately, more than sufficient material at hand; but the man is yet to be born who finds "extravagances" in my faith to "reprove."

11) Over against Christ and the Gospel, one ought rightly to refrain from the Lutheran name. But whoever, to please the Antichrist and his papal and unionist kingdom, throws away Luther, as Thes. 1—8 demand, throws away Christ along with him, since neither the Papacy nor Unionism can stand unless both — Luther together with Christ — are denied.

12) To assert that if Luther were to "return" now, he would "form new doctrine" and help Pietism, Calvinism, and Unionism onto their feet, is senseless twaddle invented by the rationalists.

13) Yes, there is but One Christian Church, Thes. 9—11. But we define her, with the Apostles' Creed, as the communion of saints, not — as Stier would have it — as the gathering-place of every religious will-o'-the-wisp and weathervane. The point at issue lies in the definition of the term.

14) A "religious society" which, with Thes. 12, 13, does not "maintain itself as the church of the scriptural confession," but rather, "in acknowledgment of the fact that the others too are convinced, on an equally (??) sound ground of evangelical (?) faith, that they confess according to Scripture (!!!), merely says: adhuc sub judice lis est [the case is still before the judge]" — such a society is no communion of believers, but of doubters, and has no right whatever to the Christian name. To reproach the Evangelical Lutheran Church for the fact that she — resting in her confession, and in her confession