# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1856_S164
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

164 The Obligation to the Church's Confessions, etc.

...we, despite the faith-empty or falsely-believing impressions of our youth, believe in Christ and confess with our Church, but we also do not forget how slowly, and under what trials, we came to this, and how hard it is for us to stand fast and progress in it; therefore it does not seem to us surprising when others have not yet arrived at the same accord with our confessions, and we feel most intimately with them the anguish of conscience that comes upon them at the thought of the obligation. Far, far be it from us to deny to such troubled brothers membership in our Church; and concerning entrance into the preaching and teaching office, too, and the obligation connected with it, we have, from our own experience, many a friendly word and heartfelt exhortation to address to them. Our confessions, together with the obligation to them, are indeed something quite new to us, so that it is no wonder if some cannot find their way into it. It is with us as with that blind man (Mark 8:24) who, when the Lord Christ healed him, at first saw men walking as though he saw trees. The Book of Concord appears to us like a great forest of theological discussions of individual dogmas, and when we are told that these dogmas, according to their doctrinal content, are the confession proper, this is scarcely comprehensible to us. Yet it is so, as was explained further above, namely that we are obligated to the doctrinal content of the dogmas, not to their theological garb, the method of their formulation, and the like external circumstances. If now our troubled brothers look to this doctrinal content — which stands out all the more easily and clearly as it is set forth most simply in the Augsburg Confession and the Small Catechism — they will find, as is to be expected, their own faith in Jesus Christ expressed therein: how he is certain of blessedness solely from the grace of God in Christ, and seeks this grace and truth only in and through the Word of God. If, then, they agree with many, indeed with most, of the Lutheran doctrinal statements, they themselves must find it strange that individual dogmas of that same confession should be excepted from their assent. One and the same faith has evidently expressed itself in the Lutheran doctrine of the Person of Christ and in that of the election of grace, in the Lutheran doctrine of justification and in that of the Holy Supper; the faith which is comforted concerning the forgiveness of sins for the sake of the Word that promises it to it cannot, for the sake of the Word which promises to the mouth the body and blood of Christ just as well as bread and wine, be comforted otherwise than by the oral partaking of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Supper; in both cases faith does exactly the same thing, namely, that it trusts the Word of God. Considering this, our troubled brothers will naturally examine the reasons why, despite all their agreement with one or more doctrinal articles of our confession, they nevertheless, for example, contradict its doctrine of the Holy Supper. And they would become convinced that the contradiction in question arises from inclinations or