# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1864_S117
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Why a So-Called Old Lutheran Finally Fled into the United Church. 117

from strict confessionalism, from Lutheran exclusiveness, it has in the
end arrived at a whole series of heterodoxies, for which it demands civil
rights within the church. To that end it must set the boundaries of the
church more broadly.

I come to the "Erlangen" direction. It is just ten years since "several
teachers of theology and of church law" protested against the confession
of the Berlin Kirchentag to the Augsburg Confession as against a
devaluation of it. Today those who were then united could not bring
about a common protest. They are among themselves in great discord.
Mejer against Baumgarten, Philippi and Thomasius against Hofmann,
Kahnis against all of them together. And they are all Lutheran
theologians, and have all professed Lutheranism. What does the
opposition of "Reformed" and "Lutheran," or even of "United" and
"Lutheran," mean, set against the differences that exist among these very
representatives of Lutheranism! I truly have no interest, say for the sake
of an apology for the Union, in exaggerating these oppositions. Philippi
himself writes against Hofmann: "If the presupposition of the
Scripture-conformity of Hofmann's doctrine of atonement and
justification were proven, I would instantly cease to be, not only a
Lutheran theologian, but even a member of the Christian church; for it is
precisely for the sake of the Lutheran doctrine of atonement and
justification that I am a Lutheran theologian, a Lutheran Christian, indeed
a Christian at all." Of Kahnis I may be silent. The movement that his
dogmatics has called forth is still in flux. Thomasius passes for a correct
representative of Old Lutheran orthodoxy. But his kenosis (doctrine of
self-emptying) threatens to endanger the deity of Christ. — Mecklenburg
is indeed supposed to be a stronghold of Lutheranism. Yet it has not
proven too difficult for Ströbel and Guericke to demonstrate that
Kliefoth's doctrine of the "means-of-grace office" is not compatible with
Lutheran doctrine. And I, for my part, am of the opinion that whoever
sees in the church an "organism of commanders and obeyers" ought to
renounce any claim to count as a representative of Old Lutheran doctrine.
— With great emphasis the Lutherans within the Prussian United church
have asserted their Lutheranism. But I do not know of a single one of
them who does not deviate from Lutheranism in some essential doctrine.
I need only recall Wangemann, Euen, the Silesians with their
anti-alcohol enthusiasm. In short, wherever I turned, to Löhe's direction
or to the Erlangen one, to Mecklenburg or into the camp of the United
Lutherans, everywhere I found a broken Lutheranism. So I have often
asked myself: what, then, is Lutheran?

No doubt you refer me away from these scholarly disputes to the
practical realm of the church. There, in your opinion and that of many,
is the unfolding of sound Lutheran life, and unanimity, as against the
disarray found precisely in the United church. Yet in this realm too I
believe I have perceived the same uncertainty. The consciousness of
Lutheranism in its exclusiveness I see everywhere