# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1858_S326
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

326 Ströbel and “Lehre und Wehre.”

As for the other objection Ströbel has raised against us, it is
contained in the following closing words of his review:

“As the second ‘currently burning question’ the prospectus names the
one ‘concerning the holy preaching office,’ and the periodical is opened
straightaway with an essay by O. Fürbringer (‘On the Doctrine of the
Holy Preaching Office’) against Wucherer's theology, grounded on the
Roman sacrament of ordination. (January 1855) Besides this, the
following also occupy themselves, directly or indirectly, with the
subject: ‘An Explanation by the Rev. Pastor Löhe’ etc., by Wyneken
(March 1855) — ‘Let Everyone Take Note!’ (same place) — ‘Gleanings
from the Periodicals of the Old Homeland’ (June 1855) — ‘Voices of the
Brethren in Germany’ etc. (same place) — ‘The Erlangen Journal for
Protestantism and Church’ (July 1855) — ‘Theses on the Church’ etc.
(December 1855) — ‘The Decline of the Church Does Not Overturn the
Doctrine of the Ministry’ etc. (January 1856) — ‘The Churchly
Informatorium,’ by Röbbelen (February 1856) — ‘Miscellaneous Churchly
News’ (June 1856) — ‘A Letter in Reply’ etc. (August 1856) — ‘The
Distinction of Estates in the Church,’ by Walther (very good! October
1856; along with it: ‘A Testimony of Martin Chemnitz on the Correct
Understanding of the Doctrine of the Three Estates,’ December 1856,
and, in the same place: ‘An Explanation Concerning the Doctrine of the
Church’) — ‘From a Letter of a Preacher of the Missouri Synod’ etc.
(February 1857). As is well known, the Missouri Lutherans hold the
pure, evangelical-Lutheran doctrine of the ministry of our symbolical
books; it is only greatly to be lamented that in the practical handling
of the ‘burning question’ they have let themselves be drawn away from
the right path. The opposing view, the crypto-papist doctrine that
nonetheless wants to pass for Lutheran, confronted them in incarnate
concreteness in Grabau, the head of ‘the Lutheran church that emigrated
from Prussia’ of the Buffalo confession. The manner in which they
carried on the controversy against him has caused them much
embarrassment, and I fear they are not yet at the end of it with it.

They unfortunately, right from the outset, took the measure of their
man wrongly. Grabau is the American bull*), a puffed-up innovator who
sucks his religion out of his own fingers, and whose whole strength
consists in forceful expressions behind which nothing stands. Instead
of taking hold of him from this side with all energy, the Missouri
Lutherans made the fateful blunder of negotiating with him as with a
fellow believer — which remains all the more incomprehensible since he
was able to demonstrate his ‘Lutheranism’ consistently only by a lucus
a non lucendo, namely by his papistic conflict over the ministry with
the Reformation. Oh, had the Lutheran Missourians only stood firm in
defiance against the fulminating blows and scoldings of their adversary,
instead of seeking a sham concord with him! In reality they will always
be, to the Buffaloers, nothing but ‘ringleaders’ and ‘wolves,’ those
they

*) “What wonder that he casts fond glances at his own German
facsimile? Similis simili gaudet [like delights in like]. Incidentally,
the Buffalo oracle has for its part placed me among the ‘Unionists.’
That is fine too!”