# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1860_S358
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

358 The General Synod.

impute to him the folly of not accepting the other symbols on account of
their length. But it is a reproach to him that he does not honestly and
decidedly declare: "I do not acknowledge the Lutheran symbols, including the
Augsburg Confession, because in my conviction they contain errors which
contend against Scripture." For that Dr. Schmucker stands toward the Augsburg
Confession as a symbol exactly as he does toward the other confessions is
clear not only from what has been said above about the qualified acceptance
of the former, but also from the fact that the other confessions contain
throughout the very same doctrine as the Augsburg Confession, so that no one
could possibly accept the one and reject the others; rather, whoever rejects
the others thereby also rejects this one. It is in fact an unholy game which
Dr. Schmucker, and through him the General Synod, plays with the precious
confession of our Church. This qualified acceptance of the Augsburg Confession,
or of the fundamental doctrines of the Bible as taught by the Church, is a
dishonest policy by which one wishes to preserve a unity that, according to
God's will, can be preserved only by the Holy Spirit through the Word — and
indeed through the pure, unfalsified word of genuine Christian doctrine, 1
Corinthians 1:10. To those members of it who carry the Lutheran faith in their
hearts, one says: "the General Synod does indeed confess the doctrine of the
Lutheran Church and the Augsburg Confession"; to the liberals, on the other
hand, one says: "with us there is no compulsion of symbols, we have complete
freedom of doctrine, for the doctrine of the Church and the Augsburg Confession
hold good only insofar as they agree with Scripture." How will Dr. Schmucker
and his like-minded associates justify themselves before God and the Church
against the charge of un-Lutheran and unchristian double-tonguedness? That
seems a matter of indifference to them, so long as it is achieved that the
members of the General Synod "recognize one another mutually as Lutherans"
and live and work together in outward harmony.

From all this it is now also clear what is to be made of Dr. Schmucker's
assertion that the General Synod stands on Luther's great principle, which
makes Scripture the sole infallible rule of faith and life, and that she
recognizes his chief doctrine, namely justification by faith alone, together
with everything that hangs together with it as necessary antecedent or
consequent. By this assertion Dr. Schmucker wishes to present himself and his
party as the rightful successors of Luther. But how can anyone acknowledge
Scripture as the sole infallible rule of his faith and life who rejects
fundamental doctrines of it — and indeed fundamental doctrines which not we
Missourians, but Luther himself and the whole Lutheran Church, as the
confessional writings show, hold to be such? And how can he in truth
acknowledge justification by faith alone as the chief doctrine, together even
with its antecedents and consequents, who, as regards the doctrines of the Law
standing in the closest connection with it — as, for example, in the