# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 06 13_S82
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

within such generally worded expressions, carefully avoiding a purely Lutheran confession, from which no other meaning can be construed than that of the third formulary.

It is not my intention here to prove the unscriptural character of the Reformed confession regarding the Supper; rather, all I have wished to show is that the agenda has become wholly unfaithful to the confession of the church whose name it nevertheless bears on its brow, and that a Lutheran Christian deceives himself if he thinks that with this agenda he holds a Lutheran Supper — that is, the Supper instituted by Christ. At the same time, this second and third formulary cast a dark shadow back upon the first formulary. For even if one wished, without suspicion, to accept in the first formulary a clear Lutheran confession of the essential presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Supper, there still remains the anxious question: how is this to be reconciled with the undeniably Calvinistic doctrine of the second and third formularies? Is one to assume an open contradiction between the formularies, as though the Lutheran doctrine were asserted in the first formulary and then denied again in the others? Such confusion of understanding, or total ignorance of the characteristic distinguishing doctrines, can hardly be presupposed in learned authors. Or is one to assume that this contradiction was deliberately introduced, in order to satisfy, with the first formulary, those of Lutheran mind, and, with the second and third, those of Reformed mind, so as to unite them, despite an otherwise contradictory confession regarding the Lord's Supper, at one and the same Supper nonetheless? Then indeed that "Christ says, etc." would take on a tendency at which a Christian heart would rightly be horrified, and one would involuntarily be reminded of the earnest words of Dr. Luther, who writes to the Christians at Frankfurt in 1533: "It is dreadful to me to hear," he writes, "that in one and the same church, or at one and the same altar, both parties should have and receive one and the same sacrament, and the one party should believe that it receives mere bread and wine, while the other party believes that it receives the true body and blood of Christ. And often I doubt whether it is to be believed that a preacher or pastor could be so hardened and malicious as to keep silent about this and let both parties go on, each in his own delusion, thinking that they receive the same sacrament, each according to his own faith. But if there is such a one, he must have a heart harder than any stone, steel, or diamond; he must indeed be an apostle of wrath. For Turks and Jews are far better, who deny our sacraments and confess this freely, for by this we remain undeceived by them and fall into no idolatry. But these fellows would have to be the very worst archdevils, who give me nothing but wine and bread and let me hold it for the body and blood of Christ, and so miserably deceive me; that would be too hot and too harsh — God will soon strike back for it. Therefore whoever has such preachers, or relies on them for this, let him beware of them as of the devil incarnate himself." Or is a third case to be assumed, namely, that under Lutheran-sounding words the first formulary conceals only a Reformed meaning? In making this assumption one would not be indulging in any malicious misreading, but merely following the rules of a reasonable interpretation, which explains what is indefinite by what is definite, the general by the particular, the more obscure by the clearer. Since, then, the second formulary states definitely what it understands by the body and blood of Christ in the Supper, namely "his whole grace of reconciliation," one does no violence to the words if one assumes that this, and no other, is also the meaning of the first formulary when it speaks of the body and blood of Christ which one receives under the bread and wine.

What, then, follows from what has been said? It follows that those preachers who administer the Supper according to the prescription of the aforementioned agenda administer it not in the faith, doctrine, and confession of the orthodox Lutheran Church, but in the false belief of the Reformed or the doubt of the united church, and that, on top of everything else, they commit the sin of lying and deceiving in God's name, in that they persuade unsuspecting Lutheran members of their congregations that this is a Supper according to the Lutheran confession, whereas it is in fact the very opposite. Far be it from us to wish to accuse all preachers who make use of this agenda of conscious deceit. Many perhaps pull unknowingly at this foreign yoke and do not perceive the depths of Satan; many, whose faith is better, may perhaps be displeased with the agenda, but out of timidity do not dare to oppose the voice of the majority. All secret Nicodemites God will surely, in his own time, also lead out of their darkness; the upright he causes to prosper.

May these words become, for one reader or another, an impetus to take God's truth more seriously than has perhaps been done until now, and to learn more carefully to distinguish the voice of the good Shepherd, Christ, from that of the stranger, so that they may not be led astray by the deceptive shapes of error in this last, troubled time. May also those who enjoy the blessing of pure preaching and pure sacraments be all the more thankful for such grace, and consider: of him to whom much is given, much will also be required.

Holy Absolution
Vindicated against the Slanders of the Methodists.
(Continued.)

A very common device, also employed by the Methodists in their campaign against the Evangelical Lutheran Church, is to accuse her of not having fully reformed, but of having retained many remnants of popery; and among this papist leaven, supposedly left behind in our church, one reckons, among other things, holy absolution as well. What, people say — does not the Pope do exactly this, when he claims to have the keys of Peter, namely the keys of the kingdom of heaven, that is, to have the power to open and shut heaven?

To this we answer, first of all, this: Is it indeed a right, Christian judgment to say: this or that the Roman Church has, therefore it is false and must be thrown away? Does not the Roman Church also have the Bible? Does she not have holy Baptism? Does she not have the Apostles', the Nicene, and the Athanasian Creed? Must all this be rejected because this apostate, false church has it too? The Apostle says: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." What therefore agrees with God's Word, that the Lutheran Church retains, and praises and commends, wherever it may be found, however foolish it may seem to our natural reason and however repugnant to our natural heart. Other churches may, then, have reformed themselves according to reason and feeling, and keep pace with the spirit of the age; the Lutheran Church alone has reformed herself according to Scripture, and stands unmoved upon the foundation of the old, unchangeable truth. Since, then, Holy Scripture says in plain, clear words: "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them," our Church does not depart from these words, but holds them to be as certain and true as the word: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"; whether these words are rejected by the Methodists and highly esteemed by the Pope is to her a matter of complete indifference.

For the rest, there is a world of difference between the office of the keys as it is administered in the Lutheran Church and as it is administered in the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholics teach, namely, 1.) that only their ordained priests can validly absolve. For thus it stands in the decrees of the Council of Trent: "If anyone says — that the priests alone are not the ministers of absolution, but that it has been said to all believers in Christ, 'Whosesoever sins ye remit, etc.,' by force of which words anyone may absolve from sins — let him be accursed." (Sess. XIV, Cap. III, De poen. Sacr., Can. 10.)

The Roman Catholics teach, 2.) that the priests sit as judges in confession, that it is theirs to examine the sinner there, to demand of him a complete confession of all mortal sins, and, on the ground of their investigation, to pronounce the sentence of judgment upon the one confessing. For thus speaks the Tridentine council: "Although the absolution of the priest is the dispensing of a good belonging to another, it is nevertheless not merely