# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1861_S233
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

What Is Reported of Us, True and False. 233

Here it should in fairness have been added by way of explanation that the
congregation (including of course its pastor), to which indeed, also according to our
confession and in accordance with God's Word, the final and highest judgment belongs,
nevertheless exercises this office of judging and deciding only in unconditional subjection
to the general chief judge of Christendom, namely
Holy Scripture; for God's clear, self-evident Word alone rightly has
the first and last decision in all church courts, just as in general the Lord Christ conducts the government
over His church essentially through His Word alone, and demands of shepherds and teachers the same obedience
toward it as of the sheep and hearers. The written
Word of God is therefore the true vicegerent of the Lord of the church, who is present only invisibly; and all superiors set in place
according to human order have to subject themselves unconditionally to its pronouncements. But no
such superiors, be they called popes, bishops, consistories, presbyteries,
upper church councils and so on, have any right, alongside, apart from, or even against Holy
Scripture, to bind the consciences of Christians by their laws and ordinances.

Only in a derived manner and within the sphere of Christian liberty can
an obedience take place, where a greater or smaller number of Christian
congregations — each of which according to God's Word possesses the power of self-government,
nowhere limited by human power and authority, under the
sole rule of Holy Scripture — transfers its power to certain individuals or boards
chosen and called by it for that purpose, to administer
this or that right and office and property essentially belonging to it, in its
stead and on behalf of the fellowship, according to God's Word.

The erroneous thing which, in connection with the true things above, Prof. Fritschel
next asserts of us is this: "In it (the Missouri Synod)
it is especially the idea of Christian liberty which strives to realize itself
and has already produced a very definite peculiarity in the whole congregational and churchly life."

It might now be somewhat difficult for the reader to arrive at a clear
conception of what the contributor actually means by these words.
But fortunately toward the close he has explained himself more exactly;
for here it is set forth what position the Iowa Synod occupies between
the Buffalo and the Missouri Synod, or rather above them both;
"for it is the one which seeks to bring the basic features of congregational organization to general acceptance not by the
way of church-governmental ordinance (as Buffalo), but also not by
absolute surrender to the arbitrary will of the congregations (as Missouri),
but by the way of devoted education of the same."

But this assertion is thoroughly erroneous and a mere fancy
of this worthy son of his spiritual father, Pastor
Löhe, who likewise loves now to play with thoughts behind which, for all the appearance
of thoughtfulness and wit, there is nothing at all, and now to set up antitheses