# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1855_S233
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Erlangen “Journal for Protestantism and the Church.” 233

The ordination formula of the Prussian United Church states: “Whoever has been duly called to the teaching ministry of the Protestant Church ... must publicly testify ... secondly, that, with God’s assistance, he intends faithfully and diligently to continue in that interpretation of Holy Scripture which is carried out through the Holy Spirit according to the laws of language, in unity with the confessions of Christendom at large and with the confessional writings of the Protestant Church.” (See Das kirchliche Bekenntniß etc., by Victor Strauß. Halle, 1847, p. 75.)

It would be utterly superfluous to waste even a word, in addressing a contributor to the Journal for Protestantism and the Church, on the Church’s right to bind its public teachers in this manner. But if we, the members of the Synod of Missouri, etc., intended by the statement, “Lutherans as such must interpret Scripture according to their Symbols,” to say nothing other than what our Lutheran Church has always upheld and has put into practice by binding its public teachers to the Symbols; if, namely, we intended by it nothing other than that a Lutheran teacher, so long as he wishes to be recognized as such, is called to teach in accordance with the Symbols or, what is the same thing, to interpret Scripture according to the Symbols; if, therefore, we are unwilling to accept the proposal of public teachers in our Church who claim to have found something requiring correction in the doctrinal content of our Symbols, namely, that we should go back to Scripture in opposition to the Symbols, unless those teachers relinquish their claim to be orthodox Lutherans—how, then, are we to understand the reviewer when he exclaims at this point: “Is that sound theology? Is that not proof that matters stand badly on both sides in North America?” How are we to understand it when the reviewer further says: “Therefore, let anyone who considers it necessary to write a ‘scriptural proof’ beware!” Now that we have expressed our actual meaning more precisely, may the reviewer be so kind as not to withhold from us his present judgment concerning our relationship to the Symbols and to Scripture. Finally, we confess in the sincerity of our hearts that we are willing to let ourselves not only be “advised” by the “older men,” but also instructed, corrected, and rebuked—and not only by older men, but even by younger ones. Never, however—permit us this further confession, which, God knows, we do not make out of pride—never can we abandon the conviction that every interpretation of Scripture which brings to light a doctrinal content different from that set down in our Symbols is false, even if its author were an apostle, indeed, an angel from heaven.