# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1857_S82
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

82   On the Distinction between the Essential and the Non-Essential in Doctrine.

that their deviations concern not the essential but only the non-essential. With this, not only the united church on this side and on the other side of the ocean consoles itself for the discord in matters of faith prevailing within it; with this the so-called General Synod of the American Lutheran Church here also imagines it can quiet its conscience over its apostasy from the Church whose name it bears.

This, however, is an empty comfort. It is indeed true that a distinction is to be made between the essential and the non-essential in the doctrine taught by men. But this distinction consists solely in this: that whatever God has not clearly revealed in His Word must, provided it does not conflict with God's Word but is in accordance with the faith, be recognized as something non-essential; whereas, on the other hand, everything that the great God has clearly revealed to men through His holy prophets and apostles, and which belongs to the members of the whole body of divine revelation, is always something essential, however unimportant and incidental it may still seem to our reason.

Ordinarily the question regarding the essential and the non-essential in doctrine is confused by asking, in this connection, after those doctrines the knowledge and acceptance of which is absolutely necessary for every person for the realization, existence, and continuance of saving faith, and, conversely, in ignorance or even denial and rejection of which true justifying faith is nevertheless still possible. That in this respect a distinction also holds among the doctrines clearly revealed in God's Word is undeniable. It follows of itself from the imperfection of the knowledge of Christians here below and from the various stages on which Christians stand with respect to knowledge; daily experience proves this incontrovertibly besides. Only it will, to be sure, always be something highly hazardous when men wish to determine exactly how many such doctrines there are that must necessarily be known and believingly accepted if saving faith is to enter a heart and remain there, and, conversely, which doctrines are those the knowledge of which a person may lack — indeed, whose correctness he may erroneously deny — without thereby making the generation of saving faith and its life in his heart impossible. But it is plainly perverse to draw from this the conclusion that a poor mortal man may make a selection among the doctrines clearly revealed in God's Word, accepting one as something essential to be sure, but rejecting and repudiating another because it is supposedly something non-essential.

In the July and August issue of the Erlangen "Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche" of last year, some fine citations on this subject are to be found from the writing of the great Jena theologian Johannes Musäus,*) bearing the title "Tractatus de syncretismo," and from the

*) Born 1613, died 1681.