# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1864_S159
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church-Contemporary Affairs. 159

synod, on the motion "that those cases in which the clergyman is obligated
to refuse honorable burial be exactly specified," the resolution had been
passed that the synodal board should weigh this difficult subject carefully
and thoroughly, in order to bring it before the next synod once again. This
deliberation, on the part of that board member who had been charged by the
chairman with working out the subject, had led to the following result:
"Church burial is to be refused in all those cases where the incontestable
criterion is present that the deceased, so far as men can judge according
to the clear and unambiguous statements of the divine Word, passed from
time into eternity without repentance and faith, in unrepented and
unforgiven sin, that is, in a state of damnation. This is the case: 1. with
all who, by means of an act sinful in itself, with full consciousness of
what they are doing, deliberately and intentionally put an end to their own
lives. These are the actual and accountable suicides, from whom are to be
excluded those, after all, unfortunate persons who, in a state of physical
and mental derangement establishing their unaccountability, that is, in
madness or in the heat of fever, bring death upon themselves. In those
cases where the accountability or unaccountability of the suicide is
doubtful, the clergyman must obtain certainty by means of a medical,
officially certified attestation. 2. With all who, during the commission of
a manifest sin, or in a state immediately following such a sin in which no
repentance is any longer possible, are called away from the time of grace
by a sudden death. For example, when a thief suffers a fatal fall during a
theft, when a drunkard gives up the ghost in his drunkenness, when an
attacking murderer, robber, and so on, is killed by permissible
self-defense. To this belongs, in my judgment, also the case when someone
is killed in a duel, inasmuch as the most important church authorities of
all times have judged the duel to be a manifest sin against the fifth
commandment. But those cases do not belong here where someone, during
participation in the so-called adiaphora — for example, during dancing or
at card-playing, and so on — suddenly gives up the ghost, since such cases,
however dreadful and shocking they may nevertheless be, still leave open
the possibility of a blessed death. 3. With all who for years have not only
lived in manifest sins and shame, but have also either excommunicated
themselves from public worship and the Lord's Supper, or been
excommunicated by the ordained way through the ministerial office, and are
thus to be regarded as members who are cut off from the church outside of
which there is no salvation, provided, namely, that they die without having
first, before the ministerial office, shown themselves as penitent sinners
and reconciled themselves with the church through partaking of the holy
Supper." The synod agreed, first of all, that by a church burial is to be
understood one at which the church in some way cooperates, and by a
dishonorable burial, by contrast, one at which the church withholds every
cooperation — namely, the official accompaniment of the clergyman and the
teacher, the singing of the school, the ringing of the bells, and so on. As
regards the question of whether honorable burial is also to be refused to
those fallen in a duel, the stricter view — according to which duelists are
under all circumstances to be regarded as gross and manifest transgressors
of the fifth commandment — unfortunately prevailed only in the minority of
the assembly. Eleven votes to four declared that there could indeed be
cases in which someone might not be able to avoid a duel. In other
respects, the synod concurred with the motion.

Hanover. The following church law, proposed by the majority of the members
of the pre-synod, concerning the renunciation questions at holy baptism,
has been issued by the King of Hanover: "We issue, after deliberation with
the pre-synod for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the country, convened
by Our decree of April 29 of last year in execution of § 23 of the law of
September 5, 1848, the following church law: In congregations in which holy
baptism is administered with the use of renunciation questions, baptisms
for which the omission of the renunciation questions is desired by the
father or his representative shall be administered according to the
following formula. Baptismal Formula. (Beginning at the point where one
steps up to the baptismal font, following the