# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1855_S107
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lutheran Antitheses. 107

Mr. Stier is the cornerstone! Surely you will not want to say, along with me, that this Stier-brand religion relates to the Christian one as shoemaker's wax does to honey?

45) Just let Christ, the Gospel, faith, and other inessential matters rest! "Inner mission, church life, scholarship, the work of union," and similar good works are indeed the way by which "every true Christian" attains eternal salvation; to deny this "is a deception from the devil." (Thesis 112–117.)

46) Zwingli and Calvin must surely have understood better than the apostles and evangelists what Christ instituted in the Supper — the apostles and evangelists whose mistaken opinion "creeps on among the Lutheran people as a dead superstition." (Thesis 118–121.)

47) Just go "for a little year, or, if that does not help yet, for two or more, into a Reformed country" (especially into the classic "Wuppertal and its surroundings"), "into fellowship there with believers in Christian life and activity; the cure will take hold;" once thoroughly cured of the communion of saints in the Christian faith, you will afterward learn to seek fellowship with dear old Popery as well (cf. p. 31). (Thesis 122, 123.)

48) Besides, "who indeed prevents you from saying, with the best knowledge and conscience: For our part we hold to the development of doctrine on the Lutheran side, clear down into the Formula of Concord? The Union has room for that too" — because it, unlike the ignorant Reformers, knows not merely one Christianity but many, and is not in the least disinclined to declare your religion, too, to be one of them. (Thesis 124.)

49) That in the Holy Supper what matters is not Christ's word, command, and institution, but rather the "faith of the recipient" and the Reformed "mediation of the Holy Spirit" — surely you will not wish to deny that? (Thesis 125–136.)

50) Since the sacrament of the altar is supposed to be, and can only be, a mere "memorial meal," "you Lutherans ought to reject the distribution formula, 'This is the true body,' etc., for that reason alone," because it, like the words of institution, points to a meal of the body and blood of Christ — which, according to Zwingli and Calvin, does not in fact take place. "Accordingly it is truly the formula of the Union — not one that reports, but one that testifies to" doubt and unbelief — "'Our Lord and Savior says' (not 'said'!) — that is to be preferred to all others." (Thesis 137–139.)

51) "The Holy Supper is itself, wholly and entirely, the union-rite instituted by the Lord" for all possible spirits "on earth." (Thesis 140–143.)

52) Therefore one ought also to teach all confessors of all religions existing on earth, "confidently and according to the truth," that their faith "embraces every saving fundamental doctrine," "so that they may gain the courage to come to the Lord's table in unity as well, and set dogmatics aside here." (Thesis 144–146.)