# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1863_S345
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Real Canker of the German Church. 345

stood opposed to one another; rather, within each party, in the most variegated shadings, the members stood opposed among themselves as well, and their views crossed one another so strangely that many a man stood closer in this or that respect to his opponent than to his own friends. On the question of Chiliasm, in which a motion I had introduced was aimed essentially at having the Synod confess itself, in its very wording, to the 2nd and 3rd Articles of the Small Lutheran Catechism, people could not even unite on this plainly and simply. Therefore it seems to me an idle delusion when the Kirchenblatt of Nagel expresses the hope that, after the removal of the chief representatives of the Dietrich faction's opposition from the Breslau Synod, that same Synod may look forward to a time of peace; the Synod carries the theological points of controversy at issue unresolved in its bosom, and therefore it will hope for rest in vain. And is all this merely an accident? It is, without doubt, only the fruit and consequence of the entire state of our German theology and of all the various tendencies of spirit that dwell within the domain of our German Lutheran Church. These same tendencies naturally come to open eruption and collision within the Free Church; in the Free Church the existing principles step forth immediately, with their practical results, into the light, whereas the state churches leave the damage concealed behind the forms and bonds of the church's outward, civil order.

I have had to make still more painful experiences of the kind named in my own nearest circle of life. The Rhenish Pastoral Conference of separated Lutheran pastors, founded some ten years ago, consisted of seven to eight members. We honestly sought and wrestled to become united among ourselves on the ecclesiastical and theological points of controversy of the present day. For a short time it seemed to succeed; then the whole depth of the theological disunity and of the various tendencies of our age showed itself anew even within our own small circle, and the Conference has been dissolved these two years; despite the bonds of the most intimate, truly tender brotherly love that united us, our fellowship flew apart, and as many heads, so many different theological tendencies and forms of doctrine now stand almost opposed among us. These are signs of our time that reveal themselves in such facts; they are, even if only in the smallest measure, still pieces of our present-day church history. And in the face of such experiences, may we still doubt what the canker is that gnaws at the root of our Free Churches, at the root of our whole church life and existence in the present age? Or are we to suppose that we would be helped toward unity in faith and doctrine, and toward preserving the Church, by the "social substratum," that is, by the staff of worldly authority that governs our state churches, or by the crosier of episcopal constitution? Or that this staff and crosier could and should hold us together, despite all disunity in faith and doctrine?"