# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1863_S137
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

What the Apostles Say, and What Christ the Lord Says, to Our Catechism Controversy. 137

...as I have said, that to the "scribes" the Bible is a sealed book when they have unlearned and lost the childlike simplicity above their scholarship — to whom more is promised than the lifeless patchwork of anatomically dissected doctrinal systems, which — now belong to history. Spare the church such authorities, the house of the LORD built upon the eternal, unshakable Rock. The church is more than a science: only consistorial councillors serve it, like professors. "My sheep hear My voice, and flee the voice of strangers!" says her invisible Head. This voice is not that of human wisdom and reason. Outwardly it is the sign that is spoken against, a folly to those who ask after wisdom. But it is manifest in the unanimous testimony of the apostles and prophets to the soul that — believes, and thereby has let itself be betrothed to Christ for eternal life. If one wishes to disregard this unanimous testimony in the Bible, one can find much in it. Broken into pieces, a church bell will indeed furnish material for a murder weapon. It matters to the church that it remain whole — that, for example, the Law not be detached from the Gospel in order to found a system of morals to which Christ and His redemption are foreign and remote, and just as little that the Gospel be shifted out of the place assigned to it in the context of revelation, which has the Law as its preliminary stage, and so forth. For this reason she holds fast to a body of doctrine that corresponds to her consciousness, in which every believing Christian joins, in which he finds again what lives in him, insofar as he is born again, a temple of the Holy Spirit and a child of God. Such a body of doctrine is itself God's Word, is more God's Word than a single book of the Bible considered apart from the whole: it is God's Word not on paper, but on the living tablets of the heart, and at the same time has broken forth as the fruit of the lips in constant confession, has withstood the fire of danger and persecution, and bears the seal: "proved sevenfold in the earthen crucible." To attain such a body of doctrine in time required a warrior of Christ, one who experienced the Word of God in himself through the Holy Spirit. It presupposes a history that has, at its center, an act of faith in God the Lord. On it clings the blood of faithful witnesses. For this the Lutheran Church recognizes her catechism. It has grown together with her. She did not choose it: in it and with it she was born of God out of the Word. She must first be dragged to the ground before anyone may rob her of this jewel, before such a stone may be broken out of her foundation wall!

In a question such as the present one, which concerns a confessional writing given to the church by God in and with her, the right of a single generation recedes: for to the church, which stands and falls with such a writing, the coming generations belong just as much as the one that happens to be alive at present. It is possible that at some time only, say, children still standing in the grace of baptism are rightful members of her before God. What could individual voices then avail? If, moreover, as now,