# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1860_S114
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

114 From the Wisconsin Synod.

and pantheistic views go together. Among the rationalists, sin is
faultiness, according to which "the power of the drives and of
sensuality is stronger than the power of reason's better knowledge."
Schenkel's view is the same, except that in place of reason he always
puts spirit. With his denial of the biblical doctrine of sin, redemption
through Christ of course likewise falls entirely away. Instead, the
Schenkelian Messiah seems to consist in that "increase of spirit" by
which the All-Spirit inspires the spirits emanated from him, so that
"in spirit" they overcome the mighty stimulus of matter.

Now that we have thus come to know the foundations of Schenkel's
dogmatics, we can be in no doubt as to what sort of system will arise
upon it, if one can even call by that name a product of the spirit which
brews together the mere copy of the most ordinary rationalism with the
decoction of pantheism. At the same time we can gain from this some
approximate notion of how Herr Kirchenrath Dr. Schenkel, who at present,
as one of the chief choragi [leaders] of the rationalists in Germany,
speaks with a loud voice, is disposed to counsel the Church.

H. Fick.

(Submitted by G. Schick.)
From the Wisconsin Synod.

In the November number of this journal an article from the Observer
was communicated, in which it was related that the Wisconsin Synod had
sent two delegates to the Synod of Northern Illinois with the charge of
negotiating with it concerning the establishment of a German
professorship at the Illinois State University at Springfield. On this
occasion, on the strength of that article, the double-tonguedness of
the spokesmen in the General Synod — who in one breath confess the
symbols of our Church and deny them — and at the same time the
lukewarmness of the Wisconsin Synod in the confession of the wholesome
truth revealed by God and taught by our Church (a lukewarmness that
shows itself precisely in the fact that that Synod is taking steps to
establish a professorship in Springfield) were, in keeping with
brotherly love, rebuked with all earnestness. Thereupon one of those two
delegates had a long article printed in the Herold and in the
Kirchenbote, in which he seeks both to fend off the reproach against the
Wisconsin Synod grounded on the report from the Observer, and also (as I
expected nothing else) does not exactly thank the writer of this for
having rebuked the brethren of the Wisconsin Synod according to the
command of God's Word, but instead expressly calls him an "enemy" of his
Synod, whom he accuses in particular of splinter-judging, lovelessness,
fleshly hasty criticism, and the like. I therefore consider myself
obliged to answer as follows.