# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1863_S321
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.
Volume IX.    November 1863.    No. 11.

Some Remarks on a New Apology for the Reformed Church.
(Conclusion.)

To the question: "Why are we not Lutheran, but Reformed?" Mr. Licentiate Krummacher further answers as follows:

"The Reformed Church has broken completely with Rome, inasmuch as it lets only the Word of God — but the whole Word, and nothing but the Word — stand valid, while the Lutheran Church makes itself guilty of symbol-worship and of a certain tenderness toward the Apocrypha, which latter contain all sorts of gross errors that stand in the most open contradiction to the content of the canonical books, and which our Reformed Church has therefore decisively rejected as a source of faith."

Marginal remarks: The first reproach that Mr. K. raises here against our Lutheran Church is, then, symbol-worship [Symbololatrie] — symbol-deification, symbol-idolatry. A grave accusation indeed! He evidently means to say, as follows from the antithesis, that the Lutheran Church places its symbols beside God's Word and makes them equal to it. Fortunately for the accuser himself, he has let it rest with his accusation and has not even attempted a proof. He sensed, it seems, the insurmountable difficulties he would have had to overcome had he made this attempt. For he had presumably read what the symbols of our Church themselves say about themselves — as, for example, when the Formula of Concord (which is indeed precisely the dreaded bugbear of the Calvinist gentlemen) states: "In this way the distinction between the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments and all other writings is maintained, and the Holy Scripture remains the sole judge, rule, and standard, according to which, as the only touchstone, all doctrines shall and must be recognized and judged, whether they be good or bad, right or wrong. The other symbols, however, and the writings cited, are not judges, as Holy Scripture is, but only a testimony and declaration of the faith — showing how, at all times, Holy Scripture was understood and expounded on disputed articles in the Church of God by those then living, and how doctrine contrary to it was rejected and condemned.