# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1856_S319
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Miscellaneous Church News. 319

…the assembled guests also gathered that evening. Of this gathering the "Pilgrim from Saxony" reports, among other things, as follows: "The dear father of the church, Dr. Rudelbach, stepped forward at their request and brought the assembly a greeting from Denmark, a greeting full of sorrow, for the great tangle of Grundtvigian errors is tearing the church in Denmark apart ever further. Grundtvig teaches: ""The church has been corrupted by this, that the spoken (!) word has not been heeded; Scripture is a dead letter; the Reformation delivered the church into the hands of the scribes; from this it must be freed; no subscription of the pastor to the confessions of the church may take place, not even to the Apostles' Creed; every pastor shall teach what he believes he can answer for before his conscience; every church ritual, every hymnal is to be abolished!"" etc. And the first step toward the realization of these horrors has been taken: by an act of the Diet — for there is no representation of the church in Denmark; the bishops do not have so much as the shadow of authority, everything is settled by the Diet* — by an act the so-called """parish freedom""" has been granted, that is, anyone may withdraw from his previous parish, all parish ties are dissolved! To be sure, a great reaction is impending. But about 150 pastors adhere to Grundtvig, one of whom has had it printed that heathenism is the necessary passage-point to Christianity, that no one can become a Christian who has not been a heathen; that one must therefore first take up the heathen faith again, and "the Lord Christ must condescend to step down from His throne and seat Himself at Odin's feet, in order to learn from him how to deal with people from the North, for that He has not yet learned!"" — That is indeed something of the potent errors of the last age! said Dr. Rudelbach, and laid this matter upon all hearts for intercession. The assembly had heard this report with great emotion; and the bowed form and the hair so quickly turned gray testified how heavily the care for the church weighed upon the dear champion."

A Wish for Peace. In the "Luth. Observer" of August 22, a layman, P. S. of York, Pa., makes himself heard. He complains of the movement brought about in the American Lutheran church for the purpose of bringing the symbolical books back into force, and expresses the opinion that the ultimate purpose of this movement is probably none other than to procure for the pastor in America a rule over the laity similar to that which the pastor in Germany has; that the undertaking will in any case fail, however, and will result only in needless disturbances and bad relations. In conclusion, the writer therefore addresses to all Lutheran periodicals, and to "Lehre und Wehre" by name, the appeal to let the matter rest again; thus peace would come again and everyone could again live undisturbed according to his faith, whether he in his conscience holds himself bound to all the doctrinal articles of the Symbols, or believes only the fundamental doctrines taught in the Augsburg Confession. — To this we reply for now, briefly, only the following. The good man is thoroughly in error when he thinks that the symbolical books are a means for pastors to exercise a rule over the laity. Exactly the opposite is the case. It is precisely the Symbols that are the laity's guarantee that their pastor may not preach to them whatever he personally happens to hold true and claims to have exegeted out of Scripture. Where the pastor is bound to no Symbol, it is precisely there that the congregation is enslaved by the pastor. He can preach to them whatever he pleases, without being held to account for it. Further, the writer in the "Observer" is no less in error when he supposes that it is in any way the intent of a decided Lutheran to compel anyone, whether layman or pastor, in some way to accept the church's Symbols. The matter at issue is rather this: all those who have recognized the doctrine of the Lutheran church Symbols as the pu…

* One need only tell the civil authority that, by virtue of its station, it belongs to the church government, and the end of the matter will always be such as it is in Denmark. L. u. W.