# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1863_S339
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report of the sixth ordinary synodical convention of the Norwegian Evang. Luth. Church. 339

—dom in accusing him of this, since he had always represented the institution of Sunday as a gift, not as a commandment or a compulsion, and wished the day to be kept in accordance with that.

On the other hand it was observed that Clausen's ground was so loose that the best counter-argument from our side could scarcely have more effect than Clausen's own uncertain line of proof. He ought to try to show us a commandment of God, but neither he nor anyone else could find one. Instead of a clear, definite word of God, one gets only hints; but to found one's faith on that is mysticism. It is said: God rested on the 7th day; but must we therefore do the same? Then we would also have to rise from the dead on a Sunday and ascend into heaven on a Thursday, for Christ did both these things on those very days. Clausen does not stay with the Word, but takes his opinion out of his own head, where the highly learned people of our day find so much; God's Word is not clear enough for him in itself. That is why he so carefully avoids the Word as well, when he is supposed to explain Romans 14:5 and 6. He maintains that when the apostle says "all days," he excepts Sunday; but where is that written? Instead, the apostle says that no one should judge us regarding days — indeed, he fears he may have labored among the Galatians in vain, because they made a distinction among days — yet Clausen maintains that it is a commandment, dating from the time of creation, that is also to hold for us, namely, to make precisely such a distinction among days. And while he admits that this commandment is not contained for us in the 3rd Commandment of the Old Testament, since he must find a commandment in the New Testament, he can find none other than that the apostle preached on a Sunday, etc. Clausen wishes to appeal to the fact that Luther said nature itself points to a day of rest. Indeed, he goes so far as to add that Luther even said Adam in Paradise was to have had a day of rest. But Luther himself never intended to teach this as an article of faith, and even had he intended to, it should not concern us; for it has no ground in Scripture, and neither Luther nor anyone else knows anything about it. — To Clausen's attempt to clear himself of the charge that he comes into contradiction with the 1st thesis of the report, it was answered that this did not hold up. For Clausen wishes, straightaway from creation, to make the keeping holy of a particular day, and the observance of it, a duty for all, and accordingly a moral commandment; and since the 3rd Commandment lays this obligation upon the Jews, the same commandment, as a moral commandment, must surely concern us Christians as well — which is exactly what Clausen, by his assent to the 1st thesis, had denied. It does him no good to say that the day of rest is a gift; for every gift carries with it an obligation, a commandment, to use it rightly. Thus the body is a gift; but for that very reason I am also obligated to preserve it and, moreover, to use it as God wills.

From another quarter it was especially emphasized that Clausen, in the above statements, seems to be ascribing to human interpretations a significance—