# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1855_S212
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

212 Prof. Dr. Hengstenberg’s Judgment on the State of the Union.

naturally has no basis. Hengstenberg writes, fairly near the end of his preface, in the fifth and sixth January issues, as follows:

The friends of the absorptive Union have shown themselves much more active during the past year than their opponents. This is explained by the fact that the former must themselves help their cause along, while the latter, on the basis of so many facts showing that, by God’s providence, what is true in the confessional position is now to prevail, have taken to heart the words: “The Lord will fight for you, and you shall be still.”

The defenders of the absorptive Union continue to represent their Union as the Union as such. We, on the other hand, maintain that this is a presumption; that the objective substance of the Union consists only in unification under one church government and in a corresponding willingness to admit one another to the Lord’s Supper, without any legal compulsion to do so and without this willingness being entirely independent of circumstances. It has already been demonstrated many times in these pages that the defenders of doctrinal union do not even have the letter of the royal cabinet orders on their side: the order of 1817 is at least neutralized by that of 1834. But even if this were otherwise, it would make no difference. We wish to state it here as clearly and frankly as possible: royal cabinets are not the place where the Church’s dogmas may be even slightly modified, much less made; in the sphere of doctrine, the “most distinguished members of the Church” have not the least bit more right than the humblest, and a royal cabinet order that sought to make new determinations concerning doctrine could never establish a lawful state of affairs. If it were otherwise, we would be very wrong to look down upon the papacy. There the secular authority is, after all, only an appendage of the spiritual authority; here the highest spiritual authority would be an appendage of the secular authority. Moreover, the pope’s doctrinal authority is restricted in many ways—by councils, the College of Cardinals, and so forth.

But if they continue their encroachment upon another’s territory in defiance of divine and human law, they will produce the same consequences as their predecessors, the Crypto-Calvinists, once did. In the continual struggle against encroaching injustice, confessional consciousness will very easily acquire an added bitterness; at least in part, attempts will be made to renounce the truth that underlies the absorptive Union and is merely distorted and made carnal within it, all the more so because, with a few praiseworthy exceptions, the representatives of the absorptive Union are themselves deeply imbued with the spirit of bitterness,*) which so easily arises when one stands upon a self-made

*) A striking example that proves this is Mr. Stier. L. u. W.