# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1930_S35
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1930. 35

a certain consensus between itself and the Reformed Church, it has yet no less recognized such between itself and the Roman Catholic Church. Beside this, however, it has also always stressed the difference in principle from both churches, the 'other spirit' that separates it from the Reformed no less than from the Roman. . . . A churchly union with the Reformed Church is possible for the Lutheran Church only if the latter would give up its error precisely in the distinguishing doctrines and accept the Lutheran Confession. . . . Though a church government of another faith may under circumstances have to be borne, it can nevertheless never be regarded as something normal, but only as something unhealthy." With right an English Lutheran also points to difficulties that cannot be so easily removed: [Printed in English.] "True church unity . . . will not be brought about by an easy accommodation of our practises and usages to those of others. To bring about this desired consummation leads one on a more rugged road than an agreement in outward practise which is of a piece with the shallowness of the age in which we live." (*Lutheran*, 30 March 1930.)

To close this thesis, one more word from Luther, in which he stresses that the striving for a merely outward unity, no matter with what pomp this takes place, serves only further uncertainty and thereby finally disruption and offense, as we indeed have before our eyes in the Papal Church. He writes: "For now I ask: How does it stand today, when all stand under the judgment of the one Pope? Where is the unity here unimpaired? Is that unity kept unimpaired when one unites under the outward name of the Pope? . . . Where there is no certainty, there is also no unity. Therefore under the Pope there is indeed an outward show of unity, but inwardly there is nothing but the most horrible Babylon, so that no stone remains upon another and no heart agrees with another, so that one sees how finely human presumption with its ordinances knows how to advise in spiritual matters. One must therefore seek another way to the unity of the Church. And that is the one which Christ gives in John 6:45: 'They shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard of my Father cometh unto me.' The inner Spirit, I say, alone brings it about that people dwell together in one mind in the house; he teaches one to believe, judge, perceive, test, teach, confess, and follow the same things. Where he is not, it is impossible that there be unity. And where it somehow is, it is only an outward and whitewashed one." (Luther's Answer to King Henry VIII of England, vol. XIX, 345.)

6.

Schismatics and separatists also offend against the unity in the Spirit.

As unionism first demands recognition, then equal rights, then precedence, so also separatism. Indeed, the latter likes in addition to pose as a martyr in order to arouse pity. Unionism chooses with preference as its motto: "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity" [Printed in English], but reduces in so doing only too often the essential to the minimum of essentially Christian knowledge, while it demands the maximum of love and of tolerance