# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1864_S1 # AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) Lehre und Wehre. Volume X. January 1864. No. 1. (By Pastor Fürbringer.) Some Remarks on the Teaching of the Supreme Church Council [Oberkirchencollegium] of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia Concerning the Church, Church Government, and Church Order. *) The occasion which called forth this testimony, set forth in the following pages, is not a general one but a particular one. Several members of a parish of the Lutheran Church in Prussia had requested a preacher from our Synod of Missouri (and other states). They were answered that they should, for the present, press the matter with their existing pastor and congregation, and arrange to hold a colloquy between the Missourians and their own preacher, etc. They had inquired of their supreme church authority whether it would consent to such a conference, and this authority had not refused it, but had considered it necessary to require of the Missourians beforehand a statement of the points which they held to be erroneous and at the same time so important that (if persistently maintained) they would justify a division before God and all pious Christians. In this connection it had pointed in particular to the doctrine of the Church, as contained in the theses which were drafted by the highly deserving Director, the Consistorial Councillor Dr. Huschke, and laid as the basis for the negotiations for which they had, authorized by their Synod, convened a commission to Berlin in 1861. Since this reference had been made by the Oberkirchencollegium itself, it seemed advisable — if the points in dispute between it and the Missourians are to be stated — above all to enter more closely into these theses with regard to the discussions concerning them; and therefore also, after the doctrine of the Church has first been discussed, to take up the disputed question of church government and church order, on which that doctrine of necessity and conditionally rests, following the twenty-seventh and some of the following theses, so far as they were debated. As for the composition *) In order to make room for this article at once, we let it take the place of our Preface for this year. We believe we may do this all the more readily, since it deals with the most burning question of the day within our Church at present. The Editors. 1