# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1858_S3
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Preface to the 1858 Volume.    3

-theranism — for which they also truly take themselves — to the great harm of the Kingdom of God. Remarkably, among them belong, before all others, precisely those who hold to the doctrine that the visible, rightly-believing Church is the Church in the proper sense of the word, to which alone belong all the glorious promises given to the Church of Christ — of uninterrupted continuance, of the possession of the keys, of the presence of Christ, of salvation, etc. We say: remarkably; for, were they only somewhat consistent, they would necessarily have to hold fast with us that the Symbols of our Church contain an entirely pure and clear presentation of the doctrines laid down in them. But it is, as has been said, quite evident that they regard, for example, the presentation of the doctrine of the Church given in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, and the development of the doctrine of the Ministry and the power of the keys contained in the Smalcald Articles, as highly defective — since, with evident and conscious violence, they do violence to the relevant passages, which in the most unambiguous words directly contradict their view on the points named, in order to twist them to their own sense. This inconsistency has without doubt reached its highest degree precisely in a man who is otherwise probably the most consistent of all theologians of this class — Prof. Dr. von Hoffmann at the University of Erlangen — who departs precisely on the heart-doctrines of the Lutheran Church: on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, of the Atonement, of the vicarious satisfaction of Christ, and of justification by faith — and who nonetheless places himself at the head of those who wish to stand up for the preservation of our Church's confession, and in doing so declares that he is merely following a new way of teaching the old truth!*) Others, who likewise, despite their deviations, wish to pass for faithful sons and servants of our Church, proceed more openly and confess that they cannot subscribe to the Symbols of our Church throughout. Among these belongs, alongside others, Dr. Rudelbach, who, for example, in his journal, in the first quarterly number of the year 1854, expressly declares that in the Smalcald Articles — according to which ordination is nothing other than a confirmation of the one called — "the concept of ordination does not come into its own." "Alongside Luther's conception," R. writes further, "another type formed in the Church, which in various ways appropriated to itself that which we can regard as the only proper presentation." In what follows, R. adopts the episcopalist doctrine of ordination, writing, among other things: "Most clearly of all, in our opinion, the Anglican Church has grasped the essence of ordination." Rudelbach's critique of Lutheran doctrine is, to be sure, with the year-

*) It was in the year 1854 that this same v. Hoffmann joined with several Lutheran-minded theologians to "defend the confession of the Evangelical Lutheran Church against the confession of the Berlin Kirchentag," as may be seen from a public protest, given to print, signed by the aforementioned.