# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1855_S232
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

232 The Erlangen “Journal for Protestantism and the Church”

far from wishing to bind the conscience of such a man with any human symbol; but we do require him to notify the church that entrusted him with the teaching office in its midst of the disagreement into which he has fallen with it, and to resign his office, which was entrusted to him only on condition of agreement with the church’s doctrine. Thus, our view is by no means that a Lutheran must interpret Scripture according to the symbols because, as the confession of the true church, they must be acknowledged by everyone as the norm for interpreting Scripture; rather, a teacher can be regarded as a servant of our church only as long as he considers himself bound not to depart from the doctrine of our church in his interpretation of Scripture, namely because he is convinced of its truth, conformity to Scripture, and divine character.

Our declaration that Lutherans as such must interpret Scripture according to the symbols is therefore nothing other than the declaration of our church when it requires its teachers to make a sincere confession of its symbols. For what else can it intend to declare by this than that, in its midst and under its authority, only one who shares its faith should teach, and who therefore understands and interprets Scripture no differently than it itself understands and interprets it? That this is so is demonstrated incontrovertibly by the customary form of the obligation. Thus, for example, the Saxon religious oath still in use reads: “I pledge and swear: with regard to religion, to remain firmly and steadfastly with the pure evangelical doctrine accepted in these lands, as it is contained in Holy Scripture, set forth in the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, and reiterated in the other symbolical books of the evangelical church; to teach in accordance with it; to undertake nothing, either secretly or publicly, against the preservation of this doctrine; and, if I perceive that others intend to do so, not to conceal it, but immediately to report it to my superiors; and if I should feel compelled in my conscience to depart in my teaching from the body of doctrine accepted in the evangelical church, or to profess another confession incompatible with it, to notify my superiors of this without delay, in accordance with the oath I have taken, and thereafter to await a further decision.” (See: Opinion on the Obligation by Oath, etc. Submitted by Dr. G. C. A. Harleß. Leipzig, 1846, p. 33.) The Hanoverian oath formula likewise reads: “I solemnly promise that, in presenting the truths of the Christian religion, I will follow the norm of the symbolical books.”*) Indeed, even in the notorious new

*) Ego sancte promitto, me in proponendis christianae religionis veritatibus normam librorum symbolicorum esse secuturum. See Quarterly Journal for Theology and the Church, with Special Consideration of the Hanoverian Territorial Church, by Lücke and Wieseler. 1848, p. 339.