# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1858_S325
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ströbel and “Lehre und Wehre.” 325

one really wanted merely to gather together the “Lutherans of North
America standing on One ground of faith,” one could never refuse what
was already demanded in the March number of 1856, p. 85, by an
unnamed writer: “Participation in the conference must be conditioned
upon unreserved assent to the Book of Concord of 1580, or, what
amounts to the same thing, to the unaltered Augsburg Confession, taken
and understood in the sense of the remaining confessional writings from
the Apology on down to the Formula Concordiae” — here Ströbel simply
does not know our churchly circumstances here. In the first place,
there are here many upright men who have never become acquainted with
any confessions other than the Augustana, in particular not with the
Formula of Concord, who therefore, although they accept the Augustana
in its true sense, that is, in the sense of the whole Concordia, cannot
honestly sign a book still unknown to them, even though they are often
more sincerely devoted to the faith laid down in it than many who,
being frivolous as they are, unhesitatingly submit to the formality of
a signature to be rendered. Shall those, then, be excluded on account
of their lack of theological knowledge from a conference whose
intention is to lead back to, and to strengthen, true and deep unity on
the basis of the churchly confession? It is precisely they, indeed, for
whose sake in particular such a conference is a necessity. In the
second place, there are here synods which have only the Augustana as
their confessional basis, which in itself takes from them the character
of Lutheran synods no more than it does from other national churches
standing on the same basis, for example the Norwegian. If it is indeed
to be lamented that, precisely here in the land of the sects, so many
synods have not also expressly made their own those confessions which
once became necessary through confusions similar to those now
prevailing here, then the very holding of our conference is meant to
serve to introduce those upright men more deeply into the confessions
of our church, and thereby to promote it, so that ever more synods
calling themselves Lutheran may recognize and make their own the jewel
that our church possesses in its extensive confessions. To want to
anticipate this is to posit a condition as though it already existed,
without which no conference would be needed at all. In the third
place, what is demanded actually does take place. Since everyone who
accepts the Augustana without reservation cannot accept it otherwise
than as it is “taken and understood” in the confessions that follow, up
to the Formula of Concord, it has therefore in fact continually been
the practice of the conference, in seeking out the true sense of the
Augustana, to take counsel with the confessions that follow and to
follow them unconditionally as writings in which the authentic
declaration of the confession of 1530 on the part of our church is
contained. We think that this is precisely the right way that we must
go in our circumstances. And would to God that one went this way in
Germany too, and abandoned the insistence on “legal standing” and on
formal recognition and signature! — But let this be enough on this
point. —