# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1860_S42
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

42 Preface to the Volume of 1860.

still less do we claim for ourselves the power to deny church fellowship
to a Christian on account of one or another answer to these questions.
We would rather let these questions remain what they are — theological
problems, about which one may dispute in utramque partem [on either
side] without danger to the soul.

It is, of course, a different matter with those fundamental articles of
the faith which are clearly and plainly revealed in God's Word.
Concerning these we do indeed require complete agreement, if
we are to enter into church fellowship. We require it, however,
because, according to God's Word: 1. there is only One Church (John
10:16); 2. because this One Church is built not on human thoughts, but
solely on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, that is,
on Christ and his Word (Ephesians 2:20); 3. because there is only
One Faith, which the Church has and through which she is One Body
and One Spirit (Ephesians 4:4-5); 4. because even the seemingly
smallest error, like a little leaven, can corrupt the whole otherwise
pure doctrine (Galatians 5:9); and finally, 5. because every error
concerning an article of faith is a departure from God's Word and
command, and therefore is also, every one, a grievous sin, which can
never, under any circumstances, be granted any legitimacy in the
Church, since it says rather: "Truly I say to you: Until heaven and earth
pass away, not the smallest letter, nor one stroke of the Law, will pass
away, until all is fulfilled. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these
commandments, and teaches others to do so, shall be called least in the
kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them shall be called
great in the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 5:18-19, cf. James 2:10. All
this shows so incontrovertibly that agreement in all the articles of the
faith is the necessary condition of church fellowship, that Pastor Löhe
himself wrote ten years ago: "Within one and the same confession one
rightly demands agreement not only in the fundamental articles, but in
all those articles on which the confessions have reached a settled
conclusion.*) Here belongs what we read in the Formula of Concord,
Article 10, Epitome: In doctrina ejusque articulis omnibus" (this
word Löhe too has printed in spaced type) "et in vero sacramentorum
usu sit inter ecclesias consensus, that is, in doctrine and in all its
articles, as well as in the right use of the sacraments, the churches shall
be of one mind." (See Our Ecclesiastical Situation. Nördlingen, 1850, p.
18.) If, however, Löhe here adds the qualification, "on which the
confessions have reached a settled conclusion," then this addition — if,
as follows from the context, it is meant to contain a limitation — is
evidently

*) Even where Löhe demands agreement in non-fundamental articles, he means
by this, in any case, the articuli fundamentales secundarii [secondary fundamental
articles].

**) The Declaratio states: in omnibus illius partibus, that is, in all
its parts.