# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 11 16_S50
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

salvation, they consider not to be progress but regression, not building but tearing down and destroying.

It is another reproach when the Book of Concord is called a human ordinance, and subscription to it a yoke upon the conscience. Human ordinances, in the bad sense, are commandments devised by men that are set alongside the commandments of God. But this concept of human ordinances does not apply to the Book of Concord in the least, for although in its outward form it was composed by men, its content was not devised by men but taken from the source of eternal truth, Holy Scripture, and thus its content is God's Word itself. Just as every Christian is obligated to accept God's Word, so the Lutheran Church makes it the duty of its members, and especially of its teachers, to confess the faith set down and made known in the Book of Concord, because she is convinced of its accord with Scripture. No one is compelled to this faith; everyone has complete freedom. But whoever rejects the Book of Concord and its content can lay no claim to membership in this church, nor be tolerated as a teacher of this church.

Equally without weight is the objection that one needs no confessional writings, that the Bible alone suffices, and that the conscience should be bound to it alone — as though the Lutheran Church wished to place her Book of Concord alongside the Bible, or thereby give the Bible a prop. Far from it! The Bible is sufficient, both for salvation and for the essence and continued existence of the church. Only the circumstances have made ecclesiastical confessions necessary. For because many appropriate to themselves the name and reputation of the church, appeal to Holy Scripture, and yet, under the cloak of Scripture and church, spread dangerous errors, the orthodox church has been compelled to draw up confessions of the true faith, partly in order to distinguish herself as a body from falsely believing churches, and partly in order to have a mark by which her members may know one another. Whoever keeps this in mind will find in the Book of Concord neither a human ordinance nor an unnecessary thing.

We come to a third reproach: the Book of Concord is said to be a book of dead orthodoxy, written by dead orthodox believers, and an obstacle to living Christianity. Those who make this claim certainly do not know what orthodoxy is. Orthodoxy means as much as pure, scriptural doctrine. Just as Holy Scripture cannot, without great blasphemy against God, be called a dead letter, just as little can orthodoxy be so called. There can indeed be dead orthodox believers, who know the pure doctrine but stifle its power within themselves and lie in spiritual death; heterodoxy, that is, false doctrine, is indeed a dead, even a deadly word; but orthodoxy is never dead — it is, rather, the source of spiritual life. But to revile the authors of the Book of Concord as dead orthodox believers proves, at the very least, a total ignorance of true, living Christianity, or that one confuses a crippled Christianity of mere feeling with true Christianity. We appeal to all who read the Book of Concord with a heart desirous of truth and salvation; they will confess that it speaks of the inner life of faith exactly as all true Christians experience it within themselves.

Furthermore, the Book of Concord is accused of harboring a loveless, condemnation-hungry spirit, and of being a cause why the sad rift that has arisen between the Lutherans and the Reformed still continues. Especially in these days, when "union" and "unification" are on everyone's lips, that part of the Book of Concord called the Formula of Concord is a hated book to all friends of union. Since this subject has already often been treated at length in the "Lutheraner," we shall, in answer to this accusation, only summarize once more what has been said. The Book of Concord is no enemy of harmony; its whole purpose, as its very title indicates, is to establish true concord among Christians. The rift that arose between Lutherans and Reformed was not caused by the Book of Concord, but by those who, through the stubborn defense of dangerous errors, tore apart the unity of the faith. The Book of Concord is hostile only to a false union or unification — one resting on indifference toward heavenly truth, on overlooking dangerous errors; but this is no reproach to it, rather it is a great merit. As for the judgments of rejection and condemnation which the Book of Concord, and particularly the Formula of Concord, pronounces upon false teachers, it is by no means the intention to condemn simple persons who err out of weakness, or whole erring churches in which children of God are nevertheless found; rather, only the error itself and its stubborn teachers and defenders are condemned. In doing this latter, however, it acts in accordance with the command and example of Christ and his apostles. However great, finally, the rift may be, the Book of Concord does not make its healing and a reunion of the separated churches impossible, but it sets forth the conditions under which alone this can happen: a sincere renunciation of the errors hitherto maintained, and an unfeigned, heartfelt, unreserved union under one confession of faith — namely, that very one which is set down in the Book of Concord. After this explanation, who would wish to join in that accusation?

Finally, the Book of Concord has been accused of all sorts of errors; this has been done by the papists, by the Reformed (which cannot surprise us), as well as by certain other quarrelsome people who have torn individual words out of their context and then sought to forge an error out of them. Against these charges we let the Book of Concord justify itself, and we are certain that it will prove itself, in the conscience of every truth-loving Christian, to be a pure testimony of the truth that leads to salvation. Let one only read the book with an attentive mind, test the truths presented in it against God's Word, walk oneself the way to salvation which it points out — the way of repentance and faith — let the Holy Spirit, who guides into all truth, work within oneself, and one will never lay it down without praise and thanks to the Most High, and the Holy Spirit will himself bear witness in the heart that the Spirit is truth. We therefore once again commend this precious book to our dear readers, and we ask those who do not yet possess it not to let pass unused the opportunity which Mr. Ludwig in New York offers them of obtaining this treasure. The more lively an interest the publisher finds for his praiseworthy undertaking, the more he will hasten to carry it out.

(To be continued.)

(Submitted by Dr. Sihler.)

The Lutheran Observer on Our Synod.

In No. 1 of the 15th volume of the Lutheran Observer — known to be the periodical of the so-called Lutheran General Synod — mention is also made of our synod and its first convention this year. Since, however, not only a few brief excerpts from the historical facts of both our synodical constitution and our first synodical report are given, but also certain views are expressed which betray a distorted and erroneous conception, partly of our disposition in general, partly of individual arrangements of our synod, it will hopefully not be out of place to help correct these views, God willing.

This instruction, however, is given chiefly for the sake of our own people and the closer readers of the "Lutheraner," since it is to be feared in more than one instance that this or that person either shares that conception or is still in considerable ignorance regarding the subject in question.

1. The contributor of the aforementioned article in the Lutheran Observer, named Hermann, introduces it with the following words:

"This new synod is composed of genuine 'Old Lutherans' — the truly spotless orthodox, whose theology is as straight and direct (straight) as the symbolical books can make it, and whose religious customs are as stiff as such thoroughly trained (thorough-bred) old-school people could only wish them to be."

In view of this, we must first of all again protest against the designation forced upon us, "Old