# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1855_S194
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

194 The Erlangen “Journal for Protestantism and the Church”

which was given to the two delegates of the Buffalo Synod by the German brethren has borne no fruit, as the Missourians maintain. Mr. Grabau, as is asserted from Missouri, is still just as venomous and biting as before, and he will have changed his mind even less on the matter itself and will continue, as before, to excommunicate members of the congregation if they refuse obedience concerning the construction of a schoolhouse or parsonage. Conversely, the mediation undertaken from Germany also seems to have found no acceptance among the Missourians: their replies are decidedly dismissive. Nor are we surprised at this, for the Missourians simply hold a different opinion on the question under discussion from those two synods that sent them communications. Indeed, it seems to us in general that there is a misunderstanding between us German Lutherans and the North American Lutherans. We believe that, as their elders, we can and may advise them. If we interpret correctly the tone prevailing in these replies from the Missourians, and if we recall that the two Missourians who visited us several years ago found among us various questionable writings produced by men whom we count among our orthodox theologians—something which, to our knowledge, they did not tell us while in Germany, but which they reported to their countrymen in the “Lutheraner” immediately after returning home—then we are led to suspect that their confidence in us and in our theology is not particularly great and that they probably believe they have outgrown our instruction. And indeed, their theology seems to be different from ours. As evidence of this, we reproduce a passage from their reply to the Fürth Pastoral Conference. It was this passage that prompted these lines. They say on p. 37: “If you ask us to join you in ‘understanding our good confessions according to the guidance of Scripture,’ we, as Lutherans, cannot consent to such a request; indeed, we are surprised that you, as Lutherans, should address it to us. For as such, we already possess the pure understanding and unadulterated interpretation of the divine Word in our church confession; and only if we had to deal with non-Lutherans who expressed reservations and doubts about the scriptural character of our confession, or if somewhere in our symbols—which, however, is not the case—some interpretation were unclear, would we indeed have to return to Scripture itself and demonstrate to the other party from it the scriptural character of our confession.”

“But Lutherans as such must not interpret their symbols according to Scripture, but rather Scripture according to their symbols, and must hold firmly and unwaveringly to the quia; for if we were to abandon the quia even at a single point where our symbols clearly and incontrovertibly believe, teach, and confess, and if we were anywhere to incline toward the quatenus, we would thereby also surrender our character as Lutherans and place ourselves”