# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1858_S223
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History. 223

...complaint to the Royal Ministry of Ecclesiastical, etc., etc., Affairs is available (§§ 124, 143, 113, l. c.). It is no different under the general concession of July 23, 1845, with regard to the Lutherans who have kept themselves separate from the fellowship of the evangelical territorial church. Against an exclusion resolved by an individual congregation, the excluded party likewise has available not the legal process, but rather, under the synodical resolutions binding upon the plaintiff as a member (p. 227), likewise only the path of appeal to the Supreme Church Collegium. This path the plaintiff did in fact take; the Supreme Church Collegium, however, by its ruling of June 30, 1853, rejecting his appeal, confirmed the earlier decision pronouncing his exclusion. This was thereby, according to p. 228, lit. d. d. ibid., declared legally binding."

We must confess: this decision strikes us as a ray of hope for church affairs in Germany. May the Prussian Lutheran church exercise the right of self-governing discipline hereby granted to it by the state always for its own welfare and for the honor of the LORD, according to His Word.

From Austria, April 22, the "Fr. Pstz." is informed: The latest news in the Protestant church sphere among us is word of the plan of the two consistories of the Augsburg and Helvetic confessions to require an oath upon the symbolical books. Up to now the obligation, as in several Protestant countries, has been only a conditional one, reading thus: "I vow that I will present the religion of Jesus to my congregation, in accordance with the content of Holy Scripture and the Augsburg Confession agreeing therewith, purely, clearly, and unadulterated, and that I will in general teach nothing that runs counter to the principles of the evangelical Lutheran church and its generally accepted and acknowledged doctrines, or that departs from its general tenets." — It is feared that the new ordinance will meet with great resistance among the subordinate clergy.

Johann Gossner, well known among the Christians of this age, died recently at the age of 85 years.

Baumgarten. Regarding his removal from office, the most contradictory judgments are being voiced in Germany. Even Prof. Dr. Luthardt of Leipzig declares, with respect to Dr. v. Hofmann, that he "has refuted the expert opinion with sufficient demonstration" — the opinion on the basis of which Baumgarten was removed from his office. Luthardt himself denies both that Baumgarten was dealt with correctly, and that the expert opinion judged his theology correctly, and he seeks, in a lengthy article in the Saxon Kirchen- und Schulblatt of April 1 and 8, to defend Baumgarten against the charge of heresy raised against him, across almost every article of the Christian faith. Almost everywhere he finds a misunderstanding of Baumgarten's statements. Of this, however, he says nothing: how pitiable it is when a theologian writes in such a way that it is possible for him to be so thoroughly misunderstood in every point even by sound theologians — for if Luthardt were right in his assumption that almost everything rests on misunderstanding, then a church government would be fully justified in removing from the academic theological teaching office a man who is either unable or unwilling to speak unambiguously about the articles of our faith. It seems to us that in Germany things go similarly in the theological sphere as they do here in the legal sphere, when our lawmakers, out of fear of themselves being caught by the law, wretchedly fail to make certain laws, or build certain back doors into them. It is indeed sad to see that a Luthardt can lend himself as the advocate of a theologian like Baumgarten, who among other things could write: Christ's cleansing of the temple was only a "trial," "to see whether the Son of David could and should gird himself with the sword, in order, in his majesty, to go about restoring the oppressed cause of faithfulness and righteousness, and, after the re-establishment of the inner order in Israel, to execute, at the head of his people, the divine retribution upon the enemies of the people of God." (See Baumgarten's Commentary on Zechariah II, 438.) To be sure, Luthardt adds to these words: "I wish he had never written this sentence." But what is distressing is the apologetic appeal added to it, that according to Baumgarten the present spiritual condition of the church is "not the full concept, or rather the last historical stage, of the kingdom of Christ, so that from the very beginning a kingdom of God involving power as well had also been contemplated, even as the promise began to be fulfilled." This is indeed defending one heresy with another — the doctrine of a Messiah uncertain of his own plan, with the doctrine of a crudely carnal chiliasm.