# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1863_S152
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

152 Church and Contemporary History.

Christ will have his day of resurrection. So it may well be that that holy
fire, which once blazed up in Germany in the days of the Wars of
Liberation, will indeed be extinguished in a not-too-distant future, that
that period of grace has spent itself — nevertheless, this is certain to
us, that upon every Good Friday night a joyful Easter morning is promised.

Church and Contemporary History.

I. America.

"On the Theory of the So-Called ""Missourians."" Under this heading
there appears in Räthjen's Kirchenzeitung of March of this year an
article by Pastor Diedrich, which clearly shows that Diedrich knows
nothing of Luther's biblical doctrine of the relation of the spiritual
priesthood of believing Christians to church authority, but that he also
has the most confused notions of how we "so-called Missourians" carry
out and apply this doctrine. He holds the following against us, for
example: "God's Word teaches us that at all times the tares are found
along with the wheat, and there is no guarantee that among those who,
specifically as members of the congregation, publicly give their
judgment (that is, women, children, and the like excepted) the
majority will always be truly believers. . . We fear that there
underlies the theory of our opponents too high a conception of the
works of men, and thereby precisely a misapprehension of justification
by grace, through faith alone. . . By their insistence on pure doctrine
the Missourians wish to prove that they are capable Lutherans and
spiritual priests who can open and shut heaven and hell in God's name.
From this we feel ourselves very greatly repelled. — What these
""priests"" allegedly decide by majority vote in the Holy Spirit now
counts again to them as a divine act without further ado, so long as
the order is observed in the process, or at least seems to be. . . We
(Christians) have had, in all that is good, no small struggle still to
overcome, and afterward our confessing and acting is still very lame
and often stained. Who then can derive from his priesthood rights over
others? . . So then the preacher is not the servant of the priests, for
those who already understand and exercise the priesthood need no
teacher for their service — rather he is the servant of the poor, the
sick, the foolish, who do not yet find themselves skilled enough for the
priestly office." And so the article goes on with nothing but blows
struck at thin air, which strike not us but a phantom to which Pastor
Diedrich has given our name. Whoever appears as a church reformer within
the Lutheran Church ought above all to have studied Luther's teaching
better, and to proceed more conscientiously in his judgment of other
ecclesiastical communions. We think this is no unreasonable demand.

"Why Have the Methodists Outstripped Us?" So asks a "Lutheran" of
the General Synod in the Lutheran Observer of March 27, and gives a
twofold answer to it. He finds the first reason in their confession, the
other in their zeal for revivals. As to the first, he writes: "Their
confession contains, in simple language, only the fundamental doctrines
of our holy religion, and with that they are content. They do not
expect, or at least do not require, of their preachers that they furnish
every t with its little stroke and every i with its little dot in every
theological question. They seem to be content with a heartfelt assent
to the fundamental doctrines of the Bible. The result is that unity
exists among them, and that one does not consume another in hateful
strife over non-fundamental doctrines. — So it is not with us. The
confessions of our church are of far greater extent. They attempt to
explain what is not clearly revealed, for example the manner (sic?) of
the presence of the