# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S58
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

[p. 58]

—recognized more clearly and was preserved from a *papistic* tendency, that is, from priestly [*pfäffisch*] ways, from relying on outward things, on the *opus operatum* [the mere performance of the rite], from false obedience toward men who are supposed to have a special power because of their office, and the like. Even those who joined the Saxons were caught up in various popish things, but that fell away like tinder. For the one thing stood firm for them: the confession. They had simply always looked at it through tinted glasses. When they took these off, they saw and said: Luther was right after all. He tore Christendom from the claws of the priests, and transformed the mere sham-church of the pope into the Christ-church of the Savior. — Moreover, God has given back to our Synod, as its most precious possession, the pure doctrine of the justification of a poor sinner. From this it followed of necessity that, by God's grace, it has remained free of every Romanizing tendency, for that tendency cannot coexist with that doctrine.

Regarding the words "far from a unionistic tendency," it was said: here one should understand not so much the crude union that exists today between the Lutheran and Reformed churches, but rather that subtle unionistic tendency within the Lutheran church itself, namely where one permits "open questions" in clear articles of the faith, or advocates pulpit and altar fellowship with those of erring faith. From this subtle unionistic tendency, too, our Synod has been preserved by God's grace — certainly a great blessing. It has rightly been said: union is the grave of the Lutheran church. The unionistic spirit is so dangerous because it acknowledges error as having equal standing with truth. Where that happens, truth must go under. But God has given us courage and joy to rebuke error from God's Word and to flee it. May God keep our Synod in such a mind.

Here the question came under consideration: does God will that there be a church that is truly the bearer of the pure Christian faith, or does he will that his church be a fellowship that merely strives to recognize the truth ever better? If the latter is the case, then the church is only a philosophical — or, if you will, a *christosophical* — school. But no! The Lord founded the church as a pillar of the truth. It is to bear the truth and be borne by the truth. But does such a church exist? We Lutherans say: Yes, and our Lutheran church is that church. We assert this confidently. Refute it, if you can. Show us an error in our confession, and then we will no longer maintain that it is the church as Christ has willed it to be in this life. — It is unionistic to say: all churches are sister churches, and the Lutheran is merely the best of them. If that were true, then it would also be right to let a Presbyterian into one's pulpit and a Reformed believer to the Lutheran Supper; for