# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1864_S154
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

154 Church-Contemporary Affairs.

laws of the Gospel in many churches that are now robbed of them. (Poor
church, that must lean on the crutches of military power!) The day is no
longer far off when loyal men will take the pulpits so often profaned by
treasonous utterances." C.

New Proposal for Widening the Doctrinal Basis of the General
Synod. The more the decayed structure of this church body threatens to fall
to pieces, the more its wise master-builders exert themselves to hold it
together still. To be sure, the path they have taken to do so is a very
slippery one. The doctrinal articles on which one is still supposed to be
united grow ever fewer, those left free ever more numerous. This is shown
by the latest number of the Observer, of April 8 of this year, where such a
would-be-clever counselor expresses himself thus: "We should be one in the
doctrine of faith, which comprises the capital doctrines of Christianity,
while with respect to other matters we should have love. By fundamental
doctrines we understand those, and only those, which are necessary to make
a person a true child of God. A tree must have certain life-sucking roots
in order to grow and bear fruit; so also certain doctrines are essential in
theory and practice to make dead hearts alive and to plant spiritual life
in the soul. Who can be a Christian and deny the being and existence of
God, of Christ, and of the Holy Ghost, who are equal to the Father in His
natural and moral perfections? Who can be a true child of God and reject
the atonement, the doctrines of repentance and faith in Christ, the
necessity of justification before God and of the renewal of the heart? or
the moral law as the rule of life, the doctrine of immortality and of our
future destiny? Precisely these doctrines, which are essential to faith and
the Christian life, are fundamental and should be heartily accepted and put
into practice; while all other doctrines (indeed?) may be more or less
necessary to make the Christian character complete and symmetrical, but do
not touch the heart of true religion. It seems to us that in all the
fundamental doctrines of the Bible there is sufficient agreement within the
Lutheran Church to form a church united for all practical purposes. There
may indeed be a difference of opinion on some non-essential points, which
may to a certain degree disfigure and stunt our Christian character; but
that does not go so far as to destroy our eligibility to the holy
citizenship of the kingdom of Christ. In the fundamental articles there
should be unity, but also love in the non-essential matters. While the
church should insist on the acceptance of the doctrines that are essential
to true Christianity, it must nevertheless allow and guarantee liberty of
conscience in all matters of lesser importance. On this basis we would like
to build up a church of desirable unity and harmony, cherishing the
fundamental doctrines of the Bible as our faith and as essential to true
religion, while practicing love with respect to the less important points."
Well, just go on building like that — your Babel will soon be quite
finished. C.

II. Abroad.

Grundtvigianism. Concerning this Romanizing and fanatical party within the
Scandinavian church, which is estranging itself from the truth more and
more, the "Maanedstidende" learns from a Norwegian church paper that Provost
Ingjer, a zealous Grundtvigian, has come forward with the assertion that it
is a harmful and damnable "bad custom" for the preacher to call his sermon
the Word of God. At the same time it learns that a no less fanatical
Grundtvigian in Denmark, Pastor Christiani, has written a booklet, "Word and
Scripture," in which he maintains that Scripture too should not be called
the Word of God, for "that it is not." (For the Grundtvigians, only the
confessing word in the mouth of the church, the Apostolic Symbol, is
properly speaking the Word of God.) Mr. Christiani, in another writing,
gives the ground of his assertion, where he says: "The doctrine of
inspiration is an entirely arbitrary invention." No other inspiration is to
be thought of than that which all