# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1860_S357
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The General Synod. 357

confession of the Augsburg Confession happens in the General Synod only so
that she may say: "we stand on the Augsburg Confession!" But it is clear that
the General Synod in truth stands on nothing else than her so-called doctrinal
basis. On this her members appeal on every occasion, just as we other Lutherans
appeal to our confessional writings. And what does she confess in it? That she
holds as Lutheran those "who confess the fundamental doctrines of the Bible as
they are taught by our Church (as the later provisions say, in the Augsburg
Confession)." Because here the more precise determination of what is to be
understood by fundamental doctrines is lacking, the General Synod in her
doctrinal basis actually confesses not the fundamental doctrines of Holy
Scripture as they are set forth in the Lutheran confession, but rather only the
freedom of the individual to regard, according to his own subjective liking,
some doctrines of Holy Scripture and of the Lutheran confession as fundamental
and others not, and therefore to believe or reject them. Her doctrinal basis,
the symbol of the General Synod, is therefore never a confession of faith, but a
confession of complete indifference in matters of doctrine and divine truth;
indeed, it is a confession of error and of falsehood, and a denial of the truth.
If one holds this confession together with the confession of the Lutheran
Church, of which the General Synod nevertheless wishes to be a part — with the
Augsburg Confession, whose doctrine is likewise set forth in the other symbols —
it is easy to see with what right the General Synod calls herself Lutheran and
gives herself out as a bearer of the Lutheran spirit. She belongs rather among
those to whom Luther said: "You have another spirit!"

But must one not now wonder at the inconsistency with which the General Synod
refuses to acknowledge the other symbols of our Church, in the same qualified
manner as the Augsburg Confession, as part of her doctrinal basis? For she
would then still only be committing herself to the doctrines in them which, in
the momentary conviction of her individual members, agree with Scripture — that
is, correspond to their own subjective opinion — and at bottom she would thus be
committing herself to nothing at all. But it does seem that even the party
hostile to the confession within the General Synod is not shameless enough to
carry on its sham fencing with its qualified acceptance of the Lutheran
confession so grandly and crudely as to extend it to the other symbols as well.
Therefore she lets the matter rest with the Augsburg Confession. For the fact
that the other symbols are voluminous (vast length of creeds), as Dr. Schmucker
says, can surely be no reason to reject them. If they contain the doctrine of
Holy Scripture purely and unfalsified, they must be all the more excellent the
more fully they set it forth on every side over against error. But if they
contain doctrines which are contrary to Scripture, then they are to be rejected
precisely on account of their doctrine, not on account of their length. Dr.
Schmucker will not take it amiss if one does not