# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1856_S45
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Church Informatorium. 45

...had been meant to overturn shortly before — namely the explanation that places the essence of the Church in the fellowship of faith. But just as a serpent can writhe, so too does the Informatorium know how to slip away. It continues: "Faith and the Holy Spirit are not essentially the Church, but rather the essential bond of the Church." Indeed, a remarkable proof of dialectical dexterity, to assert a thing and take back the assertion in the very same breath.

If the Church, in and of itself, is a fellowship, then surely that which essentially places one within this fellowship, or binds one to it — that is, its bond — must also be the essence of this fellowship. It therefore comes to exactly the same thing whether I say: faith and the Holy Spirit are essentially the Church, or: faith and the Holy Spirit are the essential bond of the Church. Here, however, the Informatorium sees a chasm in which it can hide itself from Luther and the whole host of Lutheran dogmaticians. It thinks: a shadow, too, can shelter one from shadows.

Immediately thereafter it is boldly asserted that, even though the Apology at that passage lists preaching and the administration of the sacraments merely as marks of the Church, this should nevertheless not be understood as though they were nothing more; no — preaching and the administration of the sacraments "also retain, in addition" (the meaning) "which they have principaliter according to Article 5." That is to say: the Apology, which here expressly calls faith and the Holy Spirit principaliter the bond of the fellowship that constitutes the Church, and which, by the addition that the Gospel and the sacraments are its marks, denies to the latter that they principaliter constitute the Church — this Apology, it is claimed, might just as well say the opposite of what it here expresses, namely, that the Gospel and the sacraments principaliter are the Church.

In short: one is, after all, not one; it can be sweet and sour, white and black, at the same time.

But of such double-dealing the Lutheran Church has ever been far removed. Whoever misuses the confessional writings in order to hide behind them must be the most fearful before the very fortress in which he seeks refuge.

Had we not long since, despite the Informatorium, a good conscience in Christ, this glimpse into its tidy hiding-places would have to give us good courage. For it is so blinded that, in open contradiction to our confessional writings, it cites them for itself — that is, it regards its sworn adversary as its friend — so that things can hardly stand any better with the comfort it seeks from the Holy Spirit. One can only grow fearful for the soul of him who could write such a thing, when one reads, in the issue of the Informatorium named above, these dreadful words:

"But the Lord our God informs you through His mouthpiece: 'They will not carry it on much longer, for their folly shall become manifest to