# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1856_S277
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Rhenish Palatinate Church Struggle. 277

...the assembly listened to an essay from Dr. Petri's Zeitblatt on the doctrine of the visible and invisible Church, which illuminated many of the relevant points. In the discussion that followed, three propositions then gained acceptance, namely: 1. that the foundation of all doctrine, the doctrine of justification by faith, is endangered if one speaks of any kind of personal union with Christ that exists apart from faith and justification; — 2. that Holy Scripture likewise teaches nothing of such a thing, that it, in particular, presents as the (mystical) body of Christ only the congregation of believers and the justified, Eph. 5:26, against which one also cannot rightly press into service the words of v. 30 concerning his flesh and his bones; 3. that the churchly dogmaticians say only that, even in the case of the unbelief of the one baptized, the substantia (the essence) of baptism remains present unimpaired, but do not speak of an effectus (an effect) of baptism upon unbelievers and hypocrites; — at least to this extent there was universal agreement, that with the hope of complete unity — even though for the moment it had not yet emerged on every point — the discussion could nevertheless be brought to a close.

But what at that time had not yet reached its goal has since then — and this too may surely be included in the report of the conference — come to pass completely through an exchange of letters, so that the blessing of this brotherly discussion of doctrine may rightly be called an exceedingly great one; and through it, it has become quite plain how important it is for those of us who mostly stand alone to have occasion now and then to express our views on matters of doctrine to fellow brothers, to hear theirs, and thus mutually to help and to let ourselves be helped toward clarity concerning them.

(From the "Freimund" of June 19 of this year.)

On the Rhenish Palatinate Church Struggle.

No land on German soil was worse afflicted and consumed by the rationalism that began to spread about the time of the French Revolution than the present Bavarian Rhenish Palatinate. The territory was for the most part attached to the Reformed confession, was connected with neighboring Heidelberg, and from there, in the decades that followed, the common rationalism of the aged Professor Paulus streamed, by way of many young men who had studied theology at Heidelberg, across the Rhine into the Bavarian Rhenish Palatinate. The consequences were not long in coming. In the civil sphere a veritable fever of revolution already prevailed in the twenties and thirties, and in the churchly sphere nothing seemed more urgent than formally to abolish the two Protestant churches and to establish a union (unification) between the Reformed and the