# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1861_S287
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ecclesiastical-Contemporary Notes. 287

reviews in the Weimar Sonntagsbote and in the Berlin Evangelical Kirchenzeitung have expressed themselves about it with joyful appreciation, and Pastor Tümpel of the Gotha region sets it forth in a treatise of his own. The second part, which is to contain the liturgical acts, has not yet appeared.

Constantinople. Here a so-called evangelical service is held every Sunday in thirty locations and in eight different languages — English, French, German, Spanish, Greek, Armenian, Hebrew, and Turkish. The services in English and Armenian are attended by about 200 people. The native Protestants number about 600 souls, who gather in six places for various forms of worship. The foreigners, mostly English and German, may be estimated at 5000 souls.

The Doctrine of the Church in Its Symbols. The sharp criticism which the pamphlet "Minister von Raumer" has undergone in Kliefoth's theological journal (in the article "Caricatures of Conservative Churchliness") seems to have thrown Dr. Hengstenberg somewhat off balance. In his Evangelische Kirchenzeitung of June of this year there appears a counter-critique, in which we see him carried away into counter-declarations such as we would scarcely have expected from his mouth. He himself expresses himself on this as follows: "We are of a different opinion here, and, in attempting to set it forth, we find ourselves at first in a certain astonishment at ourselves. We are not otherwise in the position of contending against Lutheran endeavors, and have always held it our task to strengthen them in their just struggles for the historical" (no longer?) "right of the church. But our opponent has put us in this position, and the true freedom of scholarly movement and ecclesiastical development is too dearly bought a good for us not to feel obliged to defend it, even against him." And now follow declarations such as the following: "Pure doctrine is not identical with orthodox doctrine.... It is a weakness of our confessional writings as such, and particularly of the otherwise so excellent Formula of Concord, that they have not kept entirely free of theological elaborations. We are thereby placed in the position of not being able simply to dispense with the admittedly questionable quatenus [insofar as] with respect to them; and now this naturally does not mean that they are to be valid only insofar as they agree with Holy Scripture." (Then what does it mean? — H. continues:) "That is the well-known rationalist evasion, by which the whole content of faith they contain, and with it their whole ecclesiastical significance, is done away with. Rather, the meaning is this: that they are binding and obligatory only where they present to us the confession of the church in the proper sense, that is, the fundamental truths and fundamental facts of the Gospel, where they offer us properly articles of faith." (That is the well-known Löhean quatenus — but what guarantee remains, then, that the theologian really regards himself as bound by "the confession of the church in the proper sense" and is not making a subjective selection?) Dr. H. writes further: "Furthermore, pure doctrine, as it is symbolically fixed, is not therefore already, under all circumstances, the complete and sufficient doctrine. We must not overlook that the Lutheran confession was formulated in a very stormy time and amid severe struggles with fierce opponents. As a consequence of this circumstance it has come about that the doctrine then in dispute was pushed into the foreground, while others, by no means indifferent to the well-being of the church, if not passed over in silence, were nevertheless given less attention. New circumstances raise new questions, and we shall not always find the fully sufficient answer in the symbolical writings. The doctrine of the last things, of the descent of Christ into hell, which is not unimportant for the right insight into the total truth of the Gospel; the doctrine of the sacraments, their relation to the Word of God and their specific efficacy; the doctrines concerning the church, its office, and its constitution, which have recently come so much to the fore, are only inadequately treated." "It is remarkable that H. here calls precisely those loud 'disputed doctrines' of the time when the symbols were composed — doctrines which are therefore all treated ex professo in the symbols — while he himself