# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1858_S327
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ströbel and “Lehre und Wehre.” 327

appear as a ‘priest-minded party.’ Would that, following the apostolic
injunction, they had simply let the heretics — admonished more than a
hundred times without effect — go their way in their gloom-darkened
obstinacy, and had, in any case, let their ‘Lutherans, curs, misers,
knaves' ears, moles, who emigrated from Prussia’ be excommunicated on
account of a horse- or cow-stall, or let the Buffalo party, which
regards God's Word with cow's eyes, that ‘company of Korah,’
proclaim that ‘the devil would carry them off body and soul on a
knacker's cart to hell.’ (Grabau's Second Synodical Letter, 1850, p.
32.) But instead, the Missouri theologians, through their ‘brotherly’
seeking of peace with those with whom, in deed and in truth, no
brotherhood of faith exists, have not only caused themselves much
fruitless trouble and toil, but have also given their controversy over
the ministry a completely false appearance, especially to those
standing outside — and, what is worst of all, have finally even let
themselves be pressed toward the proposition, which encloses an abyss
of misunderstandings and dangers: Symbola scripturam interpretantur
[the symbols interpret Scripture], by which the formal principle of the
evangelical Reformation, and this Reformation itself, is called into
question. (The opposite of that proposition is unconditionally to be
upheld; God's Word interprets all confessions of faith, but is itself
interpreted by no symbol and by no confession — I hold to that, despite
my likewise most unshakable conviction ‘that all interpretation of
Scripture that brings to light a different doctrinal content than that
laid down in our symbols is a false one, even should it have an apostle,
indeed an angel of heaven, for its author.’ The Missourians have
unmistakably taken their ominous proposition out of that Pandora's box,
already so calamitous for the evangelical-Lutheran church, from which
Flacius once borrowed the substantiality of original sin and Amsdorf
the harmfulness of good works: — out of the overstraining of a half
truth.) — May the heavenly hand that once delivered the Missouri
congregations out of the Stephanite confusion still lead them back in
time from the new labyrinth at whose double-winged gateway they already
seem to be standing.”

So much for Ströbel.

As for the reproach that Ströbel here makes against us, that we did
not break with Grabau completely sooner, and did not sooner give up the
hope of an agreement, we will let that rest on its own. But as for the
reproach that we let ourselves be pressed toward the proposition,
“Symbola scripturam interpretantur” (“the symbols interpret
Scripture”), we must reject this reproach in the most decided terms,
for never and nowhere have we set up this proposition. We have,
rather, expressly testified: “With good deliberation our synod did not
write: ‘Lutherans are to interpret Scripture according to the
symbols,’ but rather: ‘Lutherans as such.’” With this we have, we
believe, expressed ourselves clearly enough, that with that requirement
we did not intend to bind any man's conscience to human utterances as