# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1856_S182
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

182 Is This, Then, the Theology of the American Lutheran Church?

...and not to the apostles alone — truly not to his own advantage. But John 20:23 is spoken to those who were present at the appearance of Christ on the evening of the first Easter day, thus to the apostles and to "those who were with them" (Luke 24:33, John 20:19ff.). That the apostles alone received the power of absolution because they received the gift of the Holy Spirit for the discernment of hearts or the testing of spirits is nowhere stated; for that the Lord Christ breathed on them was the visible sign of what he promises the disciples in John 20:23, namely that with their preaching the Holy Spirit should be just as truly bound up as he was bound up with the preaching from the Lord Christ's own mouth. Finally, it does not occur to us to think that Christ, with John 20:23, instituted the act of confession which we allow to precede the distribution of the holy Supper — not so at all. This act of confession is an institution of the Church and is preserved by us because it is a proper structure built on the foundation of John 20:23, edifying and full of great and glorious comfort for the poor, troubled sinner.

Is the theology of the "List" in the Lutheran Observer, and of the essay on "Confession and Absolution" found there, the theology of the American Lutheran Church? — Oh no; it interprets Scripture by human thoughts, whereas the Lutheran Church, by contrast, interprets Scripture by Scripture.

With deep sorrow and anxious forebodings we declare it: that theology which expresses itself in the described mishandling of the doctrines of the holy Supper, of holy Baptism, and of confession and absolution, or of the preaching office, is not merely the theology of the three essays in the Observer here cited, but rather that theology which is praised, again and again, by the Lutheran Observer as the genuine theology of the American Lutheran Church; appearing surrounded by the halo of Pietism, it is received by many a trusting soul as truly Christian and Lutheran; presented by professors and doctors of theology with appeals to German scholars whose rationalistic disposition and manner of thinking is not recognized here, it captures the receptive minds of the students of theological seminaries and, through them, penetrates in turn into the congregations; it seldom meets with contradiction from those who have already better recognized the true essence of the Christian faith, for these fear the struggle and think that church fellowship — especially fellowship in certain works of love — can exist, without denial of the faith, alongside difference of faith; it is highly esteemed, as a product of this age, among a people and generation trained by its teachers and flatterers to regard the education, the "intelligence," of this age as the highest degree of human culture, and to despise all contradiction as stupidity; it holds sway not only in the Lutheran congregations and fellowships of this land, but far and wide in all the sects here, from the Roman Catholics to the Mor-