# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1862_S117
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

117

How Matters Stand with the Lutheran Church of Germany
in Respect to Doctrine.

Concerning this Dr. Münkel writes, among other things, the following in this year's preface to his Neues Zeitblatt:

"Among those who hold to the Lutheran confession there is indeed still found a common stock of doctrine, and one can see, more or less, from the shoots and growths, where they have drawn their sap. Yet nonetheless the diversity is very great, and of not a few products one might well ask: Friend, how camest thou in hither? Scarcely one doctrine remains that has not undergone reshaping, additions, and excisions to a considerable degree. Begin with the Trinity, proceed to the doctrines of the person and work of Christ, of faith and righteousness, of the sacraments and the church, down to the last things — one will scarcely find anything left in its old form and its former worth. Not infrequently it is so altered that only the old frame still recalls the old picture, and at times even the frame has been broken up as being far too narrow and old-fashioned. A small sample may make this vivid. Although, according to the doctrine of the church, Christ is true God even in his state of humiliation, he has now been emptied of the divine attributes without which the Godhead cannot even be conceived, or else his deity is allowed to be gradually worked into him only up to the resurrection. The death of Christ has had to submit to no longer being an atonement in our stead and a reconciliation with God. The righteousness of faith through God's justifying verdict is supposed to be wooden and merely external; in a somewhat disguised way, works are dragged back in again. Law and Gospel are once more mixed together. The Word of God and the sermon are set back, as though the sacraments did the main work, or at any rate had first to bring life into the church. The visible church again attains such importance as though it were the true church, the possessor of all God's promises. And what shall I say of the relation of the churches, of office and government, of chiliasm and eternal life? The points in dispute lie before everyone's eyes, and if the dispute had nothing to it, it would not be so fierce.

"Now I do not at all wish to inquire what, or how much, of this is right; I do not wish to dispute that theologians have a right to advance further according to God's Word, nor do I wish to inquire too closely whether they have the calling and the ability to do so; I wish only to hold fast to the plain state of the facts, and to ask what future it promises. I put the case that we were all agreed on all these deviations and alterations, enumerated or not: would that still be called Lutheran doctrine, or would one have the courage to call it a further development of Lutheran doctrine, when it sweeps out as old