# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1858_S9
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Euen Theses. 9

-fession of the Church, in all the individual cases which concern doctrine or worship or Christian and churchly life in all its manifold expressions, come ever more to prevail in the congregation, so that it show itself in all members of the congregation as the true forming and governing power, and produce, preserve, and further the true Christian and churchly congregational life.

Every other way, however — be it that of the power-dictates of pastoral official authority under a mistaken or deceptive invocation of God's Word, or the ascendancy of the civil authority, or of partisan-minded voters — can and naturally will never and nowhere achieve such fruit; rather, instead of such a truly healthy congregational life, there would come to light, in the first and second case, only the artificial sham-life of an automaton, and in the third a misshapen thing convulsively agitated by the fever of partisan interests and purposes.

So we should now, in these four articles, have attempted — though only in outline — to answer, as far as need required, the above question of the founding and rearing of truly Lutheran congregations, with regard to the hierarchical-legalistic and confessionalistic-pietistic aberrations of our time. May the gracious and merciful God grant His blessing thereto, for Christ's sake, Amen.

(From the Saxon Church and School Gazette.)
The Euen Theses,

which were presented and debated at the spring conference, held at Naugard on May 13 of this year, of the Evangelical Lutheran Society within the Union in Pomerania, are too characteristic of a certain tendency of the present day for us to be permitted to leave them unregarded, especially since they were also repeatedly mentioned at the Leipzig Pastoral Conference. They did, indeed, meet with considerable opposition at that conference at Naugard, from the standpoint of sola fide; on the other hand, from other quarters, no less numerous approval. The Nathusius Volksblatt and Hengstenberg's Evangelical Church Gazette print them without contradiction. The reporter in the latter (No. 49 of this year) recommends them "urgently for attention," and holds that they "at any rate proceed from a need that clings to Lutheran dogmatics and has for some time been felt, deeply and ever more deeply." Even if one might have reservations about some of Euen's statements, he must nevertheless, "for Articles 5 and 6, surely be granted the full consensus of the Lutheran Church." We let the theses themselves follow, with brief glosses.