# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1858_S62
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

62 "The Position of the Iowa Synod on the Symbols of the Evangelical Lutheran Church."

...but also wish, under all circumstances, to remain devoted to the same, set forth their position on the Book of Concord. This presentation has particular interest, namely because it shows how differently our era's theme — that the church's confessions can no longer be accepted without qualification — allows itself to be expressed; further, because this Iowa Synod is a protégé of the Buffalo Synod; and finally, because it is precisely the Reverend Pastor Löhe's obedient little daughter, or at least is regarded as such by him and is therefore amply supplied with funds. For now we can only express our deep regret that the document does not show the honesty and sincerity of the Reverend Pastor Löhe, since the writers assure us, in one line, that they confess "without reservation" to the Concordia of 1580 — indeed regard it as norma docendi, the rule and standard of doctrine — while, on the other hand, they warn against a "predominantly dogmatic conception," declare themselves for a so-called "historical conception," and specifically disown, as not belonging to the confession, a number of the arguments and explanations found within it (for example, notoriously adhering to Chiliasm and, with Pastor Löhe, holding the development of the doctrine of church and ministry to be incorrect). But of that, God willing, more later, since we received the Iowa church paper's first and second numbers only just now, immediately before this issue went to press. The words under the above title read as follows:

1. We recognize the Concordia of 1580, in all its parts, as our confession, on which our pastors and congregations stand and, because they belong to the Lutheran church, must stand.

2. All our pastors are therefore, at their ordination and installation, bound without reservation to the Concordia of 1580. Likewise, all our congregations confess themselves, according to our church order, without reservation to the same. Congregations unfaithful to the confession are neither served by us as pastors nor received into our synodical fellowship.

3. We recognize the symbols for what they are and, according to the Formula of Concord itself, wish to be: as testimonies of the right and pure knowledge and doctrine of the Word of God, which God gave to his church amid the manifold controversies that arose before and during the age of the Reformation — testimonies which the church has held fast as its entrusted, saving truth and defended against falsehood and error. For this very reason they constitute the norma docendi, the rule and standard of doctrine.

4. Because the symbols are, for the most part, results of ecclesiastical conflict, and have as their purpose and goal the decision and settlement of that conflict, we can recognize only the historical conception as the correct one, corresponding to the nature of the confessions. For only from the particular controversy of each case can a confessional writing and an article of it be rightly understood and grasped. That predominantly dogmatic, unhistorical conception, which overlooks and misjudges the historical, and through which the confessional propositions set forth are in many cases first brought to light and given their proper limits, we must declare to be an incorrect and perverse one.

5. Since our confessional writings, in part, do not merely contain the simple results of the ecclesiastical conflict — that is, do not merely contain the confessing statements and the condemning counter-statements — but also explain, ground, and defend them, a distinction must indeed be made between what is essential and what is inessential in these writings. The proper confession, the norma docendi that binds the conscience, can only be the thetic