# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1863_S372
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

372 The Discords in the Lutheran Church of Prussia.

no one at home held himself to the far-reaching synodical resolutions, that
every pastor sought to come to terms with his congregation as best he could.
But that was unbearable all the same; such a conflict between church order
and actual life could not possibly continue indefinitely. — Then suddenly a
flash of lightning shot through the fog: it was Pastor Diedrich's pamphlet on
the worth and nature of church government, which appeared as preparatory
work for the general synod of 1860.

It is an undeniable merit of this little work of Diedrich's that it attacked
at the root the unspiritual and falsely legalistic character of the church
order, and above all the unevangelical concept of church government as an
office of command set over the Church with divine authority and governing
it, and clearly brought out the purely evangelical and spiritual nature of the
Church as the kingdom of Christ. But deeply to be lamented was the
harshness and abruptness with which Diedrich came forward, forgetting all
regard for what already existed, and branding the character of the synodical
resolutions and of the existing Breslau church government as "chiliastic,
papistic, antichristian." Still, a banner had now been raised, a fixed point
had been given, around which the spirits and the parties now divided for and
against. There followed the stormy general synod of 1860. It produced
little result; it formed only the opening skirmish, in which the opponents
came to know one another and measured their strength; the majority only
then began to inform and orient themselves more closely on the actual point
of dispute. Only a few — seven pastors in all — laid before the close of the
synod a declaration in which they offered, for the sake of love and order, to
comply outwardly as far as possible with the synodical resolutions in the
manner hitherto followed, while protesting against everything in them
contrary to conscience. Pastor Diedrich personally made public apology for
everything offensive "in outward form" that had lain in the attacks he had
made against the Supreme Church Council. On the whole the synod came to no
decision; it was left to the church government to proceed further in
Diedrich's case as it might deem necessary and proper. Finally people united
to found a new theological journal, the Synodalblatt, to whose editorship
Pastor Lohmann was appointed, whose purpose was to be exclusively the
discussion of the theological points in dispute.

An unfortunate fatality lay in the matter: namely, that the attack on the
synodical resolutions — however salutary and necessary the energy was with
which it was made — nevertheless proceeded from a man like Diedrich, who,
on the one hand, damaged his own cause so greatly by the offensive
abruptness of its form, and, on the other hand, was not himself free of
exaggeration in the matter itself. By both of these, the Supreme Church
Council in Breslau was provoked, indeed compelled, to disciplinary action
against Diedrich. For when Diedrich, as indeed happened, went on publicly
representing, in journals read in every congregation, the existing church
order, the church government, and its manner, as naked Antichristianity,
that could of course