# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S49
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 49 —

those, they thought, were what could make people devout Christians; and out of this arose rationalism, which little by little overran almost the whole Church, and under which we all grew up. In Saxony, the cradle of the Lutheran Church, one knew, in our own time, almost nothing anymore of a Christian preacher, and scarcely here or there could one still be found who would say that the Bible is God's Word. Here and there a Moravian [*Herrnhuter*] still remained, or some little band pursued by the police prayed and sang in secret, still clinging in faith to the Word. So it went on, until the Union came, and then, in reaction against it, a little life again became visible. In short, in our youth there was, for a time, no true Lutheran Church. A church such as existed in Luther's time, or in Gerhard's time, did not exist. Nor does it exist today. There are, to be sure, still a number that bear the name of Lutheran state churches [*Landeskirchen*] in Germany, but one that rightly bears that name no longer exists. Where is the Lutheran state church in which the church authorities, the consistory councillors, the state rulers, the ministry, hold the Lutheran faith purely, such that no open rationalists and the like are tolerated among them? There is none. That is dreadful beyond all measure! Notorious seducers, notorious blasphemers, and the like are nowhere prevented from spreading their poison among the people. In Saxony, in Hanover, in Mecklenburg, in Bavaria, some of the most shameless rascals stand at times in the pulpits and revile Lutheran doctrine, and when they are charged, they are at most taken to task if they have blasphemed grossly. But if they know how to handle a few generally Christian phrases, then they are taken under protection, and it is said: one must after all be glad that they are not wholly unbelieving. So there is nowadays no Lutheran Church in Germany such as existed in the time of Luther and Gerhard. Nor in Norway either — for although the corruption there has not penetrated as deeply as in Germany, even there rationalists are tolerated. But the very worst of it is this: that those who claim to stand at the head of a renewed Lutheran Church themselves neither believe nor teach that Church's own doctrine. Kahnis does not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that man no longer has a free will in spiritual matters, or that Christ's body and blood are truly present in the Lord's Supper, distributed there and received with the mouth — and yet he passes for a champion of the present-day Lutheran Church of Germany. Luthardt, though a learned man and held in great esteem, teaches falsely concerning the free will. He does not believe that man behaves *pure passive* [purely passively] in conversion — that is, that he is the object to be converted, but not the one who brings it about or has any part in his own conversion. That man can do nothing at all in this matter is regarded by the newer theology as an outrage altogether. And although Scripture plainly says, "the natural man receiveth nothing of the Spirit of God, for it is foolishness unto him, neither can he know it" [1 Cor. 2:14], they nevertheless give
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