# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 09 19_S11
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

(Submitted.)

The Synod of the West.

Indianapolis, Ind., September 7, 1846.

Because Mr. J. J. Lehmanowsky, President of the Synod of the West, firmly maintains — contrary to the resolutions of the old Synod of the West which were drawn up during the last meeting at Luther's Chapel, Harrison Co., Ind. — that the newly organized synod of the West now in existence is and remains the old one, and consequently is and remains, without further ado, in connection with the General Synod (which falsely calls itself the Lutheran Church); whereas, according to the resolutions mentioned above, it is in fact a new synod which has, of its own free choice, retained the old name, and is therefore free to join the General Synod or not — since, then, an attempt is being made in this way to lead us over to the General Synod, while we, for conscience's sake, can no longer remain in connection with the said General Synod, inasmuch as the latter has openly and publicly acknowledged, even in the circular letter recently sent to Germany, that it has long since abandoned a portion of evangelical-Lutheran doctrine — therefore, "we also hereby withdraw from the association of the Synod of the West."

We do this, however, in love and peace, with the prayer that the Lord may lead us, more and more as time goes on, by His Spirit into all truth.

J. G. Kunz, W. Wier, J. F. Isensee, J. J. Meissner.

Immediately after withdrawing from the Synod of the West, the brethren assembled in the schoolhouse of the Evangelical Lutheran and Reformed congregation here, and after unanimously offering their prayers before the Lord, the Searcher of Hearts, the new synod was organized. Elected as officers were: Pastor J. F. Isensee, President; Pastor J. G. Kunz, Secretary; Pastor W. Wier, Treasurer. As to the name of the new synod, it was resolved that this synod should be distinguished by the name: "German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Indianapolis."

Proceedings were then taken toward the drafting of a constitution, according to which we confess all the symbolical books of faith of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, to which all joining members are obligated to commit themselves.

A resolution was passed by which this synod pursues the work of missions with all earnestness, and sends out Brother Meissner as its missionary into the various western states, in order to proclaim to our scattered, shepherdless brethren in the faith the joyful message of Christ Jesus, the Savior of sinners; and that the said J. J. Meissner be warmly recommended to the dear brethren in the ministry, as well as to all members of the church generally.

N.B. We have just read that the well-known Freygang, a former Catholic priest, la-

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ter Methodist, then a member of the old Synod of the West and at present an evangelical preacher at Beaver, Pa., has declared in the Pittsburgh Courier that he had his name struck from the roll of the old Synod of the West, because certain preachers of that synod had made an attempt to seduce his wife and had demanded of him that he be baptized once again; and also that he had previously requested an investigation of the matter, but that this had been refused him. So long as not all the former members of the said synod thoroughly and publicly clear themselves regarding these accusations, or, if this charge is well-founded, name the guilty parties, so long does a heavy suspicion rest upon every preacher who was connected with that synod.

Methodism.

Although the Methodist gentlemen — who, as most of our readers know, had themselves recently started a most vexatious controversy over Holy Absolution — afterward repeatedly declared that they would by no means enter into any "religious controversy" with us, Mr. Mulfinger, a young Methodist brother, has nevertheless not been able to bring it over his heart to refrain from continuing the controversy already declared sinful by his own brethren, and from unburdening himself, in the "Apologist," of his wisdom, which had probably already caused him much bodily distress.*) From this one sees how wise is the warning of the holy Apostle not to choose a novice as bishop, lest he be puffed up with pride (1 Timothy 3:6). We would indeed fear that, once this young man sees his name printed again in the Lutheraner (whether to his honor or dishonor), it will at last become more and more a fixed idea in him that he is truly capable of and called to conduct theological pen-wars; we do not, however, wish entirely to give up the hope that a few reminders we intend to give him may take away some of his itch for authorship.

*) When we read Mr. M.'s slanders against Holy Absolution, we were reminded of the Franciscan A. F. Alveld, who wrote against Luther and used, among other things, the following words: "I will attack you not with the highly learned words of human wisdom, but with the Spirit and with the truth." Of this Alveld and people of similar stripe Luther writes: "I observe that such poor fellows seek nothing more than to make a name for themselves; they hang on to me the way dung clings to a wheel; they would rather cause an outcry to their own harm (so that people will talk about them everywhere) than stay quietly at home."

The first thing we must recall is this: in order to gloss over his slanders against Holy Absolution with the example of a zealous Lutheran preacher, Mr. Nast had falsely claimed that the preacher Schade, in his tract "Praxis des Beichtstuhls" [The Practice of the Confessional], etc., had rejected the doctrine of Holy Absolution. We thereupon declared, in No. 22 of the Lutheraner, that we did not have that tract at hand, and that we could therefore not give literal quotations from it, but we cited a clear testimony of Spener's that Schade, in that book, spoke only against the false practice of absolution, while acknowledging in it the divine character of absolution itself, and we proved this also by a quotation from another writing of Schade's own, which we did have at hand. Thereupon Mr. Mulfinger writes: "Now Mr. Walther indeed confesses, in No. 22 of the Lutheraner, his ignorance of Schade's writings, and yet he accuses Mr. Nast of lying. Is that an honest Christian, one capable of attacking, before God and the public, his neighbor's honor without any cause at all (!)?" — Either, then, Mr. M. wished hereby to whitewash Mr. Nast's lie with another lie, on the assumption that his Methodists do not read the Lutheraner, and the Lutherans do not read the Apologist (which seems to be a comforting thought for many of the Apologist's contributors); or Mr. M. himself does not know that there is a difference between "knowing" and "having at hand," and therefore supposes that it is with us as it evidently is with himself — namely, that we must "confess our ignorance of a writing" whenever we do not have it at hand. Let Mr. M. therefore take note, for his future guidance, that whoever wishes to write publicly, and even venture into church history while doing so, must already carry a good deal in his own head that is not necessarily found in the books he first has to look up and copy something out of. The mere persuasive knack of a Methodist market-crier is by no means sufficient to make one a writer; such a knack only makes poor, formerly religiously neglected people gape in wide-mouthed astonishment at the dreadful eloquence of the new prophet.

We proceed further. In what follows, Mr. M. strikes out on an entirely new path — one unsuspected even by the greatest theologians, and finally discovered by him in the noonday light of the Reformation*) — for uncovering the true understanding of the words of Scripture in which the Christian Church, since the time of the Apostles, imagined it had found the power to forgive sins on earth. Mr. M. asserts, namely, first, that Matthew 16:19, 18:18, and John 20:21–23 actually deal only with "church order"; but since he may soon have recalled that these passages also speak of a forgiveness in heaven, and that therefore this explanation of his would surely seem far too weak to many, and since it is indeed

*) In an amusing fashion, the highly enlightened Mr. M. seeks to excuse poor, blind Luther — who, in his simplicity, still took comfort in absolution — as follows: "Let no one expect from the rising sun the warmth that it spreads at noon; just as little can one expect that everything should be as bright at the morning of the Reformation as it is in our own day." — Oh, you poor blind Luther, that you did not have the good fortune to first see the light of the world in the enlightened nineteenth century! How the scales would now fall from your eyes at the bright shining of the great lights of the church that gleam nowadays in the German-Methodist firmament!

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