# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1855_S242
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

242 The Union.

The author has just as little success, and probably even less, when he invokes the distinction between articuli fundamentales et non fundamentales and maintains that those who agree in the fundamental articles must, according to God’s will, unite. We cannot possibly be satisfied when, concerning the distinction just mentioned, it is observed that “theology can no more dispense with it than determine it in an objective, universally valid manner.” If it cannot be determined, then it is also unfit to show how far the union may go and how far it may not. Indeed, even if it could be demonstrated to us that certain doctrines on which the churches differ do not belong to the fundamental articles, unless it is also proved to us that these doctrines are wrongly believed to be founded on the Word of God, we must reject union with all who have a differing confession here. By accepting it, we would be declaring a part of the divine Word indifferent. And we can regard that only as sin, since it is written: “He who is faithful in the least is also faithful in much, and he who is unjust in the least is also unjust in much”—words that surely must also apply to the mysteries of God, over which the church, the pillar and foundation of the truth, has been appointed steward. “Truly, I say to you,” says the Lord, “until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter nor a tittle will pass from the law”; should this apply only to the law, and not also to the Gospel, not also to all its doctrines, including those that dogmatics calls nonfundamental? “Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches people to do likewise will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.” Let it be proved to us that every doctrine, even the seemingly most insignificant, is not at the same time a commandment for our faith. But we would not willingly become the least in the kingdom of heaven by breaking such commandments of faith, by declaring them indifferent and granting their opposites equal legitimacy.

Might it perhaps again be objected that the union does not mean abandoning the distinctive confessions, but rather preserving them? This has already been answered in part above, and we answer again: The church that comes together through union must nevertheless declare the disagreement between the confessions irrelevant; if the distinctive confessions were still to be preserved within the separate churches, then it would simply not be united. It is also impossible for the union to be limited merely to church governance and communion at the Lord’s Supper; where there is communion at the Lord’s Supper, there must necessarily also be fellowship in doctrine and confession, for the Holy Supper itself rests upon doctrine and confession and is so essentially a creator of fellowship that those who celebrate the Holy Supper together without restriction must, more and more over time, come to recognize no grounds for separation in doctrine and confession, and must admit one doctrine and another, one confession and another, as equally permissible. What Mr.