# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1857_S122
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

122 The General Synod of the Lutheran Church in Prussia of the Year 1856.

therefore also maintain the Union in its right. But if we are subject, we
should not be so for the sake of our own favorite cause, but for the sake of
God's Word. —

Dr. Lindner joins himself to the view of the minority in the commission and
demands that Dr. G. must first furnish proof of his renunciation of the
Union, since ecclesiastical fellowship without fellowship at the Lord's
Supper is indeed unthinkable.

Pistorius likewise takes this up, since the establishing of an ecclesiastical
fellowship is not, in the churchly sense, a confusing matter, and if the
thesis is already difficult, the antithesis becomes far more difficult
still. He therefore proposes the alternative: if Dr. G. wishes to combine
occasional communing with us with occasional going to communion in the
territorial church, with the Lutheran societies, or with some individual
congregation that seems Lutheran to him, then a refusal of his request must
follow; but if he abolishes fellowship at the Lord's Supper with the
territorial church altogether, then he may not be turned away. To be sure,
standing under the united church government cannot be permitted along with
this; for the sin of the Union does not become manifest in doctrine, nor in
the sacrament, but in the church government. The heresy of the territorial
church is that it first posits itself and then seeks the faith, thus
constructing from without inward, whereas all correct and healthy
development goes the reverse way.

Dr. Besser says that if what is meant by the petitum (the request) of Dr. G.
is that he wishes to remain in fellowship at the Lord's Supper with the
territorial church, then his request is to be refused as manifestly against
God's Word. But if some connection with the territorial church should still
remain, apart from fellowship at the Lord's Supper, then acceptance is
possible. For by abolishing fellowship at the Lord's Supper, the communio
externa (outward fellowship) of the church is broken. We would call this
withdrawing; Dr. G. simply does not wish to call it so.

Dr. Kahnis expressed himself on the matter as follows: he had from the
outset regarded this request of Dr. G. as a deeply lamentable event, since
the synod must say No, and must utter that No precisely toward this man. It
is already most painful that Christians must refuse fellowship at the
Lord's Supper to other Christians; but Lutherans can do no other, when one
cannot say Amen to their confession. It is still more painful where the
other also holds the Lutheran confession. That one Lutheran must now refuse
this to another, because his position toward the Union is a different one,
can scarcely be demonstrated from the nature of the Lord's Supper or of the
church, but rather from the position of the Prussian Lutherans, who find
themselves, precisely in this respect, in actu protestationis (in a state of
refusal) against the territorial church. An affirmative answer is not
possible without immense consequences overturning the whole position. A
negative answer is necessary, but it must be justified briefly and clearly,
and the letter must at the same time express the deep pain over it.