# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S55
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

[p. 55]

—time. We deny only that the Lutheran church has a full moon; that it has its last quarter, we do not deny. That, to be sure, must also be stressed, so that no one should think we want fanatically to throw out the baby with the bathwater. We maintain only this: there is no longer a Lutheran church in Germany as there was in Luther's and Gerhard's time, when the whole Bible was held in all earnestness to be God's Word and the *Concordia* [Book of Concord] to be its pure, clear, and true exposition, and where, as soon as a preacher stirred who departed in a single point from the Word of God and the confession, he was brought to trial. We too are not yet such a church; but we would gladly become and be one, and we thank God that he has brought us this far. In our Synod no word shall ever be heard against our Book of Concord. Whoever lets such a thing drop, we resist at once. We want nothing new. We want the old church of our fathers. We would walk as they walked, believe as they believed, confess as they confessed, suffer as they suffered, and one day be blessed as they were, and triumph as they triumph, before God's throne.

At this point the concern was raised: however correct the explanation given of the adopted statement — "Because in Germany Scripture is not acknowledged without exception as God's Word, one cannot speak of a Lutheran church being present in Germany" — that statement might nevertheless easily be misunderstood by members of congregations who read it. It gives our enemies, who contest everything, occasion to decry us as the most arrogant of spirits; it could easily estrange from us some who are now kindly disposed toward us. This sentence should therefore either be struck out or have an explanation attached to it. But it was answered: one does not believe this sentence is easily misunderstood, if one only keeps well in mind the almost universal falling-away in the Lutheran church of Germany. To the objection that there are, after all, congregations in Germany standing independent, such as those of Pastor Brunn and Harms, and that one surely could not say of them that no Lutheran church is present, it was answered: We do not deny that there are very many Lutheran, indeed purely Lutheran, congregations in Germany. But this we say: insofar as false doctrine has free course in a church, to that extent it is no longer Lutheran. Luther makes a similar distinction. How often does he not say: we should distinguish between the papacy and the Roman church, between the Roman church and the Roman see! The Roman church, he says, is the best church in the world, but the Roman see is to be fled as the devil's see. So we too speak. We say: insofar as the so-called Lutheran territorial churches of Germany, in and with their professors, teach and tolerate false doctrine, they are not Lutheran — indeed not even Christian — and are to be fled. But by this we do not say that the Christian church, nor that the Lutheran church, is not present there. It is present, but corrupted.

After it was then resolved to proceed with the business,