# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1860_S44
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

44 Preface to Volume 1860.

fallen into this error, provided that, being otherwise devoted to the pure doctrine, they do not teach their error nor seek to spread it, and show themselves open to instruction, the brotherly hand and church fellowship shall not at once be denied them; it holds it, however, equally to be its duty to attempt everything in order to bring back such erring brethren to the pure confession on these points as well." (See the Ninth Synodical Report of the General Synod of Missouri etc. of the year 1857, pp. 25, 26, 42.)

Our Synod has hereby expressed itself on three matters: 1. what reprehensible and damnable chiliasm is,*) 2. that it denies the brotherly hand and church fellowship, after the example of the whole Lutheran Church in her best times, to all who decidedly persist in this error, and finally 3. that only those are to be regarded as decided, that is, obstinate, chiliasts in whom the attempts available to the Church to convert them from their error to the truth have been made and have remained fruitless.**)

To be sure, Ehlers now makes the concession: "If chiliasts offend against a real — not merely supposed — article of faith, and will not be taught and will not let go of their error, then church fellowship is to be withdrawn from them" — but what he gives with one hand he takes back with the other; for in part he does not wish to recognize as articles of faith the articles of faith against which the "decided chiliasts" admittedly offend, and in part he seems not to see that the chiliasts offend against articles of faith that are indisputably Christian. We perceive from this with deep sorrow how dangerous it is not only to hold an error, but also not to hate an error with

*) Our Synod expressly did not declare damnable the so-called subtle chiliasm, when it is defined as Dr. Aug. Pfeiffer has done. For this thorough theologian writes the following in his work "Antichiliasmus. Lübeck 1691" (2nd ed. 1729, p. 112): "We call subtle chiliasm the opinion of those who indeed hold that the thousand years of Revelation 20 are not yet fulfilled, but that the glory promised there still remains to be awaited, yet in such a way that they posit no visible return of Christ to an earthly kingdom, no personal reign, no double resurrection, etc., but only halcyonia (that is, a still, quiet time) and a peaceful condition of the Church, while leaving to God both the actual manner and even the time (how long it will actually last) — as Launäus, Rallius, Coccejus, Brenius, and others do. Such chiliasm we indeed hold to be false and erroneous; but because the fundamental articles of the Christian faith are not thereby touched, we do not consider it, especially when one treats it problematice (that is, as a question) and imposes his opinion on no one, to be heresy at all; rather, the question will now be of the middle chiliasm, which we call the gross kind, and of those gross chiliasts who defend it according to its principal circumstances."

**) That this concerns only such members of the Church as are capable of grasping the coherence of the doctrine, and, in the first instance, only the servants of the Church, the preachers — not simple laity who have fallen into confusion — surely needs no mention.