# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1856_S238
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

238

(Sent in by Pastor Hoyer.)
The Obligation to the Church's Confessions and Free Theological Scholarship. *)

2. As the churchly confession which is entirely suited to form the presupposition of theology in the present age, we designate the Evangelical-Lutheran. It is true that its form shows that it arose within a particular church body, yet the one holy Christian Church on earth is likewise present only within particular church bodies, and is to be recognized by the pure preaching of the Word of God and the right administration of the holy Sacraments — that is, by the confession that conforms to Scripture. What matters is the doctrinal content of the dogmas of the Evangelical-Lutheran confession: if this agrees with Holy Scripture, then it utters the faith of the one holy Christian Church, the edifice of wholesome doctrine which theology is not to tear down but to carry forward. It has, in fact, long since been proven true by Holy Scripture; indeed, precisely what has been charged against it as false — its dogmas of the Holy Supper, of sin, of grace and the election of grace, among others — bear witness to the complete obedience with which its confessors submit themselves to Holy Scripture and ground their faith on nothing human, but on the Word of God alone, and on this in deed and in truth. The commitment, then, to the Evangelical-Lutheran confession, asserted in its full extent, takes from theology so little of its freedom that it rather first makes it truly free, where it is embraced in faith and faithfully followed. The unfree condition of theology toward the end of the seventeenth century was brought about not by faithfulness to this commitment, but by the abuse which was then practiced, in Machiavellian fashion, with faith and the confession of faith. As for the faith, finally, that is required for undertaking this commitment and for free labor in theology, we are convinced that whoever believes in Christ together with our confession cannot, in the long run, withhold his assent to its individual dogmas — though we readily grant, from our own experience, the difficulty of turning, against all the opinions now prevailing and despite customary, Christian-sounding talk, to a faith which, comforted through Word and Sacrament that it is Christ's own possession, is therefore willing, for the sake of the pure evangelical doctrine, if need be, even to give up churchly fellowship with those nearest to it. However plausible the misgivings against an unreserved assent to our confession may sound, they must not be allowed to come into consideration where believing, and confessing the faith, is at stake; groundless in particular is the opinion according to which it is supposed to be the death of free theological scholarship when the articles of faith of the Lutheran confession are honored and employed, in accordance with the commitment to them, as the rule of faith in theological work, especially also in the interpretation of Scripture. —

*) This is the conclusion of the closing section of Pastor Hoyer's longer submission, which through an oversight was not printed in full in the June number. Ed.