# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1860_S161
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.

Volume VI.    June 1860.    No. 6.

(From the Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche, April 1860.)
From the Present State of the Church.

In the preface, in which Pastor Löhe seeks to acquaint his readers, or rather his women readers, with the tendency and content of his newest work, "Rosenmonate heiliger Frauen" ["Rose-Months of Holy Women"] (Stuttgart 1860), he speaks out about the exclusivity of the Lutherans of our day, among whom "some are given over to a harsh, indeed fanatical spirit, which, instead of seeking traces of grace beyond one's own confession, looks only with distrust and disapproval upon expressions of joy and satisfaction that the Lord has granted, and still grants, spirit and gift also outside the Lutheran Church." He himself, Löhe, fights with a good conscience against that exclusivity, since he is now, as before, a faithful adherent of the symbolically Lutheran propositions, and only "no longer" belongs to those "who confuse the symbolical propositions with the dogmatic explanations of the same as they are found in the 16th and 17th centuries, and hold both to be equally correct and important."*)

We do not believe we belong to those at whom this polemic of Pastor Löhe is aimed. We too are opposed to that confusion between the symbolical propositions and their later dogmatic explanations, and we rejoice that Pastor Löhe "no longer" belongs to those with whom we are at odds on this point. And although, as will appear hereafter, there are indeed still points on which we differ, this shall not hinder us from acknowledging spirit and gifts also on that side

*) The Löhean "direction" takes up a lofty position toward its opponents. It declares simply: the orthodox teachers and champions of the jewel of evangelical doctrine in the 16th and 17th centuries — not even excepting the authors of the symbols themselves — failed, in the doctrines with respect to which the new "direction, with its better, deeper, and fuller knowledge," departs from the older view, to understand the symbols; their explanations of them are not correct. And those Lutherans who in our time understand the symbols as the earlier teachers of the church did merely fail, in their simplicity, to distinguish the symbols from the interpretations of them. But whoever will not believe on the strength of mere authority alone, but wishes to be convinced by reasons, is put off by it with the explanation, repeated from year to year: "The proof that our doctrine accords with the doctrine of the Church will not fail to come." L. u. W.