# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1862_S315
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary Affairs. 315

must miserably starve. I am glad that Zoeller has given this its due weight; I only wish that, with respect to the Prussian territorial church, he had drawn the distinction between congregations in which Lutheran doctrine has been set aside, and those in which it is merely clouded or threatened. One can acknowledge the latter without acknowledging the Union. One must acknowledge it, unless one wishes everywhere to press toward divisions and, in practice, to cultivate the error described above.

The error becomes still worse, as the author shows, when one makes the whole congregation of the called, or the so-called visible church, into the essential, proper church itself. Then everything that belongs to its temporal, human, and changeable constitution is drawn into the essence of the church, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is grounded on a divine right. From there the author treats church government and church order, with which I can only agree, though with one reservation. The right of the ban has, with good reason, been made dependent in the territorial churches on the church government, on the principle that the whole church — thus not merely the pastor, but also the congregation and the church's representation — should be heard in the matter. The pastor is not left alone with the execution of the ban, for he is heard together with the church government. How it is to be handled in the Free Church depends entirely on the agreement of the congregations.

Church and Contemporary Affairs.

I. America.

Buffalo logic. A sample of it is given by the "Informatorium" of September 1. It says right at the outset: "The Missouri priest exercises his office 'on behalf of the congregation,' thus in fact 'not on behalf of God.'" That is logic of the following kind: The apostle Paul says to the Corinthians, "If I forgive anyone anything, I forgive it for your sakes, in Christ's stead" — thus not for God's sake. Or: the apostle Paul says to Timothy, "In doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you" — thus not Christ. Or the papal logic: baptism saves, thus not faith alone. This is the famous elenchus oppositionis which one is taught to avoid already in the primary schools.

Spiritualism. From the "Evangelist" we take the report that there recently appeared in New York, in the English language: "The New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Revised and Improved by the Spirits. Printed by the Owners." After the title page come some four pages of explanations, dictated by Jesus Christ. It is precisely in these explanations that the spirit who is doing the dictating gives himself away: No. 11 reads: "Adultery. The word adultery in the New Testament is used for a Greek word which means the worship of idols." Certainly not without reason the "Evangelist" concludes from this definition that the book is meant to serve the adherents of so-called Free Love, whose tendency is to turn the whole world into one great brothel. In their New Testament the Epistle to the Romans has only 7 chapters, Revelation 6, and the Epistle to the Hebrews is struck out entirely.