# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1855_S196
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

196 The Erlangen “Journal for Protestantism and the Church”

has not been present at the meetings in which we did indeed express our differing convictions, and did so repeatedly and with such candor that we were truly humbled by the signs of goodwill that, despite this, we continued as before to enjoy from the professors. —

The “Journal” further questions whether the theology prevailing in our Synod is a “sound theology,” because our Synod declared that it could not consent to the request of Pastor Löhe and those who share his views “to understand our good Confessions according to the guidance of Scripture,” and stated the principle that Lutherans as such should instead interpret Scripture according to the Confession.

To this we reply as follows.

When the present critique of our Synod’s answer says: “Then let Löhe and Wucherer and others see how they can get along with the Missouri Synod when they speak of a further development of confessional understanding on the basis of Holy Scripture!”—the writer of the article appears, first of all, to find in the declaration in question by our Synod a meaning that it at least did not intend to express in those words. Far from assuming that the full content of divine revelation is contained in our Confessions, or that the “further development” or fuller elaboration of the doctrines set forth in them should proceed from the Confession apart from Holy Scripture, our Synod instead believes, first, that the Confessions of our Church contain only a portion of the divine truths, namely, as many as circumstances once required to be publicly confessed; and, second, that not only the doctrines of faith not contained in them, but also the further exposition of the articles already included in the confession, are to be derived from nowhere other than Holy Scripture. Indeed, our Synod regards it as just as great a treasure of our Church that our fathers, faithful to the Confessions, so splendidly developed further, from and according to Scripture, the doctrines already fixed in the Confessions, and so masterfully presented and developed the others from the same principle of Christian theology in their exegetical, dogmatic, and polemical works, as it regards the Confessions themselves. Our Synod also receives with joy and gratitude to God every genuine contribution that the theologians of our time have made and continue to make toward the “further development of confessional understanding on the basis of Holy Scripture,” all the more because so many do not recognize the voice of our Confessions as the voice of the true catholic Church and therefore do not further develop confessional understanding, but instead develop it out of existence. Furthermore, far from regarding our Confessions as a rule of faith to which everyone must submit because it has been established by the Church, our Synod instead believes and teaches that our Confessions bind a Christian’s conscience only insofar and to the extent that they agree with the written Word of God and present it by way of confession; that