# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1858_S4
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

4 Preface to the 1858 Volume.

-s become ever bolder, but already in his "Introduction to the Augsburg Confession" of 1841 he gives one to understand, not obscurely, that the doctrine of the Augsburg Confession concerning Sunday is not correct. (p. 186.) Alongside Rudelbach, in this series, stands also Pastor Löhe in Bavaria. He writes, among other things, in the tract "Our Ecclesiastical Situation" of the year 1850: "I also believe, quite without prejudice to my insistence on confessional unity, that I may here and there wish for a more well-rounded, purer formulation of some proposition expressed in the Symbols. Thus, for example, the locus de ministerio was by no means sufficiently considered in the Reformation period; the decisions of the Symbols, so far as such exist, suffer from some deficiency." (p. 19.) "I distinguish in the Book of Concord between what is said confessionally and what is not said in that way — and I distinguish still more. *) It does not occur to me to cling to the letter. . I have often shown my plain opinion regarding the Smalcald Articles. — The Smalcald Articles were written by Luther, and indeed entirely in that originality which governed him, above which scarcely anything ever raised him. In this free venting of the hero, the objective style so desirable for a confession is entirely lacking, and a quatenus [an "insofar as"] might sometimes recommend itself very well here; for who can be bound to suppress the seal upon every original utterance, even one of a Luther? What sense, indeed, would it make to wish to make originality and individuality symbolical [i.e., binding as confession]? **) .. One will rightly hesitate," (with the Smalcald Articles) "to say: ' 'The Pope is the Antichrist.' ' . . It is similar with some other passages of the Smalcald Articles, in which — e.g. p. 233, 341, f. — it is asserted that Christ gave the keys not to one person but to the Church, and that a Church may, in case of necessity (?), appoint bishops or pastors for itself. If one takes these passages one-sidedly, one comes into difficulty, for Christ did indeed also give the keys to individual persons ***), and Paul not only appoints elders himself, but also commands his disciples to do so. But for those passages, after all, only the most extreme case of necessity is to be assumed, where the Church would have to be thought of as without a pastor. So long as pastors belong to it and are to be had, the other passages hold good, in which to the pastors the

*) Mr. Pastor Löhe therefore does not wish to subscribe to everything that is "said confessionally" in the Symbols, either.

**) Löhe is evidently angry here with our Church, because it has, after all, made symbolical — that is, declared to be doctrine, and its own doctrine, which it will hold fast against the devil and all the world, so truly may God help it — what he calls Luther's originality and individuality.

***) Mr. Pastor Löhe does not here quote the words of the Smalcald Articles as they actually read, and hence arises the misunderstanding. The actual words of the Symbol admit of no misunderstanding, for the passage cited states expressly: "Over and above this one must indeed confess that the keys belong, and are given, not to one man alone, but to the whole Church."