# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1863_S122
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

122 What the Apostles Say and What Christ the Lord Says to Our Catechism Controversy.

the above question, since he is at a loss for a title. May it alone, then, do more than the content of this little pamphlet to help bring it about that one reflects more earnestly than before on whom and what one is thereby acknowledging and rejecting in the doctrine of Luther's Small Catechism, on what is at stake in the controversy under discussion, and on what loyalty the Lord of the Church now demands of all those who are stewards of his mysteries and not servants of a crowd that, church-robber-like, claims for itself, for the old man, and for the world, what the Lamb's blood has won for faith alone and for the new man.

I. Marginal Notes on the Complaints Concerning the New Catechism.

1. Over against the fluctuating religious and irreligious opinions of the age, the Church has a firm ground in the word of him who says: Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever!

2. Luther, in protesting, confessed himself to Christ and Christ's truth. Standing on this firm and certain ground laid by God, he opposed the adversary of the Gospel, the Roman pope and his following. Yet just as sharply as he opposed the Antichrist on the seven hills, he also opposed all who departed from the Word of God, and therefore entered into no church fellowship whatever with any falsely-believing sect (not even with the Reformed of Switzerland, who err in the doctrine of the sacrament and in other articles of faith). And as this founder (so far as it is proper to ascribe a work to the instrument) of the truly Protestant congregation did, so in the year 1529 our fathers protested solely on the ground of the Word of God, and for its sake, against encroachments of human power. — From this it follows that Protestant Christendom does indeed have its authority, namely Christ and his Word, and is only then in a position to protest when this authority commands it, according to the apostolic rule: One must obey God rather than men!

3. Our Lutheran Church is, as is well known, further confined, even in the domain of civil jurisprudence, within the bounds of the Confessions, by which and for the sake of which it won the right to be recognized in German lands as a religious body. Among these Confessions belong, besides the Augsburg Confession of June 25, 1530, above all Dr. M. Luther's Catechism.

4. It is this Catechism of Dr. M. Luther's that is now to be reintroduced in our land, after having previously been pushed very much into a corner, and impaired in its doctrinal content, by the territorial catechism. For that very reason it goes without saying that the authority in question is entitled to do so. Whoever raises complaint against this, however, sets himself in opposition to an essential confessional document — to the constitution, so to speak, of the Lutheran Church — not to mention that he violates the well-grounded jus ecclesiae repraesentativae [right of the church to be represented] set down in its own statutes.