# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1856_S130
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

130 The Obligation to the Ecclesiastical Confessions, etc.

ecclesiastical fellowship, and thus in a garment such as the peculiar
character of that fellowship brings with it, the faith of the one holy
Christian Church comes forth; and it comes forth in this manner, at the
times appointed for it by God, just as surely as the Church believes and
has the mandate to proclaim the virtues of the Lord Jesus. Even the three
oldest Symbols, whose doctrinal content is held by all later churches to
be the faith of the one holy Christian Church, show in their form the
stamp of a particular church — namely, that church which existed among
the peoples united within the Roman Empire, and which took the
Greco-Roman culture of those peoples into its service. What was peculiar
to this church, to be sure, lay only in its form; at that time no other
church of a different confession stood alongside it — only sects sought
to assert themselves against it. Since the Reformation, by contrast,
particular churches are found existing side by side at the same time,
and the peculiarities that distinguish them from one another concern the
content of doctrine. This latter phenomenon, however, does not
contradict our assertion that the faith of the one holy Christian Church
comes forth in the confession of particular churches; rather, it leads
us to the presupposition that this faith is certainly present in the
confession of one of the particular churches mentioned. *) In which one?
Only the test by Holy Scripture can show this. The one holy Christian
Church is certainly present where God's Word is taught purely and the
holy Sacraments are rightly administered; its faith stands in the
confession that agrees with Holy Scripture — stands, then, in the
evangelical-Lutheran confession, if that confession is in accordance
with Scripture.

The evangelical-Lutheran confession seems, at first glance, not to meet
one chief requirement which we look for in ecclesiastical confessions.
Its agreement with Holy Scripture ought to be evident without further
ado to anyone who simply desires to abide by the word of Jesus, whether
or not he is otherwise gifted for theology. Now, however, the outward
extent of the Lutheran confession, or of the Book of Concord, is already
so considerable, and the number of writings belonging to it so great,
that a clear overview seems to be lost, and with it the possibility, for
the non-theologian, of holding the confession alongside Scripture in a
quick survey. To this is added that, in particular, two writings of the
Book of Concord — the Apology and the Formula of Concord — contain a
great quantity of theological argumentation, a great deal of theological
learning in general, which is not capable of passing over, like dogmas
or the outlines of dogmas, into the faith-knowledge of the Christian
congregation. All these expositions, which take up by far the greatest
space in the Book of Concord, cannot, for all their excellence and
importance to the theologian, by any means claim to

*) We would remind the reader here, however, that the Symbols are not
absolutae necessitatis.
Ed.