# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1860_S257
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.

Volume VI.    September 1860.    No. 9.

A Word on the Bad Habit of Turning Articles of Faith into
Open Questions.

"The Word they still shall let remain,
And no thanks have for it."

It can have escaped no one even moderately informed about the present state of the Lutheran Church that there are, in our time, Lutherans who declare certain articles of the Christian faith to be "open questions," who find ever more adherents for this declaration the longer it goes on, and who seek to spread this error under the guise of a more advanced knowledge. As far as the writer's experience reaches, the testimony of the truth has not yet been raised sufficiently to help, by God's grace, ward off the spread of this spiritual plague. The following few lines are meant only to give a pointer to the matter at hand, in order, so far as possible and necessary, to draw the attention of all lovers of the divine Word and of our holy faith whom they may happen to reach to that dangerous bad habit, and to remind those who are capable of wielding the weapons of the Spirit against this new assault as well — this height that raises itself against the knowledge of God — of their duty and calling.

A decided judgment in this matter is not possible without insight into the meaning of the expression "open question." But we must look for the meaning of that expression among those who have introduced this bad habit into the church and who maintain it.

We begin with Löhe. He writes, in his treatise "Our Ecclesiastical Situation, etc." of the year 1850, the following: whether ordination is an essential part of the regular call or not "may fittingly be regarded as a still pending matter, as an open question within the Lutheran Church." (p. 109). "The old teachers are not agreed, the Symbols contain no comprehensive, thoroughly sufficient determinations, Scripture is not understood unanimously in the relevant passages — and the doctrine of ordination is precisely one of those... toward whose unanimous understanding one must first work through thesis and antithesis." (p. 112). "As to what is unclear — whether ordination is universally commanded, that is, divine, or not — let one take one's time in coming to a conclusion.