# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1862_S367
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Is Doctrine or Life More Important for the Well-Being and Salvation of the Church? 367

for the Church, since indeed manifold rending of the visible Church has in
fact followed upon the Reformation. Therefore it is irrefutable that, with
the exaltation of life above doctrine as found in the above statements of
Dr. Kahnis, sentence of condemnation is passed upon the German
Reformation and upon the Lutheran Church that historically arose from
it. If such propositions as are cited above from the writing of Dr. Kahnis
were written out into the world by papists and enthusiasts, that would be
sad enough. But that a member of our Lutheran Church, a learned
professor of theology who well knows what he is saying and understands
how to gauge the weight of his assertions and expressions — indeed that a
man who is regarded as a decided Lutheran can place himself in such
conscious opposition to the Reformation and to the Church which he has
bound himself to serve,*) and, instead of helping to build the walls of
Jerusalem, mixes himself among the enemy and storms against the city of
God: that is a horrible sign of the times.

Yet a Leipzig "specifically Lutheran" professor shall not lead us astray
from the Lutheran Reformation and the precious confession of our
Church. For we know that such assertions also stand in contradiction to
clear pronouncements of the Word of God. According to the Lord's
command: "Go into all the world and teach all nations, and baptize them
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," the
whole task of the Church on earth is the preaching of the Gospel, which
includes within itself the administration of the Sacraments. The Gospel,
however, is not its property in the sense that it might alter or shorten it,
but is a good entrusted to it by its heavenly Lord and Master, which it is
to distribute to mankind as perfectly, unabridged and unadulterated, as it
has itself received it. For every abridgment or falsification of this heavenly
good is, on the one hand, a contempt and blasphemy against the divine
majesty of him who gave it and wills it to be preached just as he gave it,
and, on the other hand, also a hindrance thrown in the way of the free
communication of God's grace in Christ — a robbery committed against
mankind, which can be justified and saved only through the pure Gospel.
Whoever therefore teaches people something other than this Gospel
makes himself guilty of the gravest sin against God and man, precisely
because, so far as it lies in him, he annihilates the greatest and most
glorious work of the living God, the redemption of mankind, and robs
mankind of the good acquired through the blood of the Son of God.
Hence St. Paul utters the solemn word, Galatians 1:8: "But though we, or
an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which
we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." And the Lord himself
warns his disciples against the leaven of false doctrine and

*) The conscious opposition is shown clearly and plainly by the second of the two
propositions cited above from the writing of Dr. Kahnis. D. E.