# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1860_S41
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Preface to the Volume of 1860. 41

best times of our Church required, but also that this "cannot exist
without a continual crumbling and dissolution of the Church."

We now admit that there is indeed a measure of agreement whose
demand necessarily crumbles and dissolves the Church. The proper
measure is, namely, evidently exceeded, first, when one requires as
necessary not only agreement in the doctrine of the Gospel and in the
administration of the sacraments, but also in ceremonies, customs,
constitution, and the like. However great a fondness we ourselves have
precisely for the ceremonies, customs, and constitution handed down to
us by our fathers, we are nevertheless far from making uniformity in
these things a condition of church unity. We confess rather, with a clear
voice, together with our fathers, in Article VII of the Augsburg
Confession: "For this is enough for the true unity of the Christian
churches, that the Gospel be preached therein harmoniously
according to a pure understanding, and the sacraments be
administered in conformity with the divine Word. And it is not
necessary for the true unity of the Christian churches that ceremonies,
instituted by men, be alike everywhere, as Paul says in Ephesians 4: One
body, one spirit, as you are called to one hope of your calling, one Lord,
one faith, one baptism." Although Löhe calls the "It is enough" of
Article VII "the great — for our times perhaps the greatest — word of
the Augustana" (see the preface to the first edition of his Agende), a
comparison of the practice of our synod and of that synod whose "very
existence has no other purpose than to represent Löhe's tendency in
America" (see the previous issue, p. 4) would soon show that our synod
is in any case in no less earnest, or rather in greater earnest, about that
word of the Augustana than the Löhean one is.

But, secondly, we heartily concede this as well: that the proper measure
of necessary agreement is also exceeded when consensus is made a
condition of church fellowship even in non-fundamental articles. By this
we mean all such doctrines as do indeed come into question in the
discussion of the fundamental ones, but which are neither clearly and
plainly revealed in God's Word, nor necessary consequences of what is
clearly and plainly revealed. Among these we count, among others, the
following disputable teachings: on which day of the week of creation the
angels were created; in which particular sin the fall of certain angels
consisted; in what manner human souls originate after Adam, whether
by direct creation, or by propagation by means of generation (per
traducem); whether the visible world will perish at the Last Day in its
very substance, or only in its accidental constitution — that is, whether it
will be annihilated, or only transformed and glorified; whether Paul, or
Barnabas, or some other apostolic man was the author of the Epistle to
the Hebrews, and the like. We concede to no man, and we claim for