# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1858_S343
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

From the General Synod. 343

toward him. But it is not unjust, for it is precisely the General Synod that, through her teaching and practice, and thus particularly her leading men, who by their influence help to shape the same, has made this a duty; and it is not unkind, because it is precisely love that lays upon us as Lutherans and Christians the obligation to tell our brethren the truth, and to call their attention, with brotherly faithfulness, to whatever in their teaching or their life stands in contradiction to God's clear Word. This duty of love we shall also seek to fulfill in the future, because it is commanded in God's Word, although we run the risk of reaping ill thanks from men for it and of being decried as unjust and unkind.

When Dr. Reynolds, in his own vindication, points to the history of the Lutheran Church in the time to come, this seems to us a questionable matter. We hold that a Lutheran should, above all things, ground his vindication — the proof that he is on the right path — upon God's Word, and not upon future constellations in church politics; for suppose the case that the circumstances of the General Synod should take a favorable turn, this would still not vindicate Dr. Reynolds's position, since God also turns evil to good.

Dr. Reynolds further maintains that I did not understand the article of the Review which I translated and discussed in "Lehre und Wehre." He declares that nothing whatsoever is said in it, nor can it by any honest conclusion be inferred from it, that in the author's opinion the decided Lutherans in the General Synod ought to keep silent and not represent their views, as I had represented it. But how does the Herr Doctor arrive at such a claim? Honestly and plainly the article says that strict Lutherans, "according to the requirements of the basis of the General Synod," have no right to say to other members of the same who depart in their teaching from the Lutheran confession, "you are no Lutherans," but that their duty is rather to withdraw from the General Synod and join another synod or found one themselves (page 273, 274). Accordingly, the author of the essay in question does indeed wish, on the ground of the doctrinal basis of the General Synod, to dispute the decided Lutherans' right of free discussion to this extent, that he demands of them that they should not with decisiveness bear witness against error and reject it, as they must indeed do according to God's Word, but rather "part in peace." Now let the reader himself judge who has failed to understand the article in the Review, Dr. Reynolds or I. The Herr Doctor has evidently lacked the willingness to take the honest and clear words of his "colleague" as they stand.

But there is more still. I am supposed also to have misunderstood the expression "platform of the General Synod" and to have confused it with the "Definite Platform." That never occurred to me, Herr Doctor; rather I understood it pretty much as they themselves define it, namely that thereby is meant the direction