# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1857_S212
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

212 On Bunsen's Idea of Freedom of Conscience, of Religion, and of the Church.

...points" there is one, and indeed the one most important for Bunsen, at which even the commonest understanding is made to see where the much-vaunted freedoms and rights are meant to lead: "the point concerning church property. "We maintain," says Bunsen, "that the congregation is the general bearer of church property, the highest as well as the lowest. The bearer of local property is neither the state nor the church in its generality, nor the church-community, but the local congregation." (II. 61 f.) Well then, does this not place the outward freedom and independence of every congregation, over against both state and church, in a very favorable position? For in outward things free disposal over the nervus rerum is everywhere a chief condition of independence! "Free disposal?" No, gentlemen, that is not how Bunsen meant it. Only listen further: "I believe I may here (he says, II. 59 f.) lay down, as generally acknowledged by the teachers of law, the principle that church property is holy, but not in the way that private property is, without regard to the use which is made of it. The present possessor has no right of disposal over it; he has the enjoyment of it, and that under certain conditions and for a public purpose. If the purpose is not attained, if the conditions are not fulfilled, then the state has not only the right but also the obligation to withdraw the property from the holders or from the corporation: yet, so far as possible, only for the better attainment of that same purpose and not for the enrichment of the treasury." — Is that more, or less, than the independence of a minor? Obviously less; for the property of such a one may be taken over neither by the state nor by his guardian. Only the property of those declared outlaws was confiscated in earlier times; Bunsen's "Christian congregation" is in any case just such an outlaw. And on top of that we are told "church property is holy." Ha, ha, ha! But how does Bunsen arrive at this,

...mers, as though according to ancient Christian law and usage the spiritual act constituted the contracting of the marriage instead of blessing it"; and soon afterward it runs: "What the Lutheran theologians bring forward against civil marriage furnishes only a new proof of the complete incapacity of this estate to move in clear legal concepts and to understand the reality of things. Beaten on the historical field and pressed from the political standpoint, they fall back upon the religious feeling of the people." (I, 194, 199.) And what, then, is the Reformation's Lutheran fundamental view of marriage? The answer of the Marriage Booklet: "Since wedding and the married estate are a worldly business, it is not for us clergy or ministers of the church to order or govern anything in it, but we let every city and land keep therein their own usage and custom, as they go..... All such things and the like I let lords and council arrange and manage as they will; it is no concern of mine. But if it is desired of us that we bless them before the church or in the church, pray over them, or also join them in marriage, we are bound to do that." — — How does the Eighth Commandment run? You shall not falsely lie about your neighbor, betray him, slander him, or give him a bad name. But that stands only in the "Lutheran" symbols; therefore it is false. But does it not also stand in Holy Scripture? Certainly! Only probably not in the Japheth Bible.