# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S57
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1894. 57

does as if the Word of God had to be made living and powerful through participation in the work of mission, that is a mischief. To lose heart at home over the confession of the outward Word and of heavenly doctrine and to roam into the distance, in the belief that the Church has to be rescued and revived by mission, that is fanaticism. This was once testified even at the Basel mission festivals by a Beck, but it caused great vexation. The zeal of Martha, however, is no substitute for the good part that Mary has chosen.

b. Pietistic Fanaticism. The more sanctified, the more Spirit, is the basic direction of Pietism. It is fanatical subjectivism to think that Spirit and life flow from our personal sanctification of life. We do not produce life; we live from what God gives. "The words that I speak are Spirit and life," says the Lord. If everything is to depend on piety, then in the end everything will be absorbed by it, Val. Löscher had already said with justice, meaning thereby that if Spirit and life are made dependent on our works, then by this false doctrine all the Word and work of God will be swallowed up and destroyed. It is a sad experience that pietistic work-driving and the method of sanctification have taught people to undervalue God's Word, pure doctrine, truth and Gospel, and have opened door and gate to indifferentism.

c. Church-government Fanaticism. Many people want the congregation to be helped not with the Gospel but with a stiff church government. They admire the church-governmental organism of the papacy, and even say that if we had so magnificent a structure, we would be helped. Yes, with what will people not try to help the Church up?! Music and liturgics are also supposed to serve as medicine to make the dead Church alive. What is to be thought of such notions, Luther says, XV, 575: "Now someone might ask what kind of government that is, and how it can stand, when there is no head, and those in office are all equal, and none is to have more authority or power than the other? For reason regards such equality as a misshapen and harmful thing. On the other hand, where there is a head to whom others look and by whom they may direct themselves, reason holds such order to be useful and good; and it concludes from this: If things in the Church are to go right, then it must also be so, or there will be a sheer confusion, that is, disorder. And this is the reason that still holds many sensible, wise people captive. For although they are enemies of the pope, and see the public offense, they nevertheless think that there must be an order and church government, and therefore will not hold with those who tear such order apart and will acknowledge neither pope nor others as a head."