# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1864_S216
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

216
On the Church Conflict of the Lutheran Free Church in Prussia.

This year brings the approach of the General Synod, which will have to decide the pending church conflict — if it is able to. The struggle has already lasted over four years; a quarter of the pastors have thereby been pushed with their congregations out of the church and stand in hostile opposition to the Breslau church government, so that altar fellowship has been suspended; and perhaps more than another quarter wavers uncertainly between staying and leaving, but is already bracing itself for a sad parting. Under these circumstances the General Synod is awaited with tension; its decision may become fateful for the church for a long time to come. Both sides are therefore working with all their might to gain prior acceptance for the doctrines or views they champion, and so to win a favorable position. For naturally the General Synod will not be permitted to render a doctrinal decision, but it will nevertheless have to declare which doctrine is the correct Lutheran one, and perhaps also which is to hold good accordingly. Since this happens by majority vote, under some circumstances nothing might remain to the minority but submission or withdrawal.

Besides the two conferences held for mutual understanding and contention, several polemical writings, too, have set their hand to the work, two of which have been noticed earlier. Two others have now followed: one by the Privy Councillor Dr. Huschke, "The Disputed Doctrines Concerning the Church, the Church Office, Church Government, and Church Orders" (Leipzig, Dörfling and Franke), and the other by Pastor Brunn in Nassau, "A Simple Confession in the Matter of Our Church Conflict, Laid Down in the Name of Many" (Leipzig, Naumann); the former a learned, detailed work, the latter a simple, modest testimony of only 18 pages, directed against the former. As was to be expected, Dr. Huschke has, in his work, gathered and worked up material with great acuity that can be of use even to those who do not share his opinion. Brunn, too, acknowledges this, and must in particular praise the fact that Dr. Huschke has victoriously demonstrated, against Diedrich, that church government and the ordering authority over the pastors are Lutheran.

Now that the parties have spoken their minds, it would be of interest to become acquainted with their mutual relationship. But that is not yet possible at this time. For example, there is no doubt that the view which Dr. Huschke has set forth is only his own view, and would probably be shared, in its full extent, by only very few. Likewise we remain in doubt as to how Lohmann and Brunn stand toward each other, and how both relate to the rest of their party. That the same is the case with the Diedrich party, or that very great differences are to be found there, is well known. The whole mass of the controversy is, so to speak, still in ferment, and a firm precipitate is only gradually forming.

It is always risky to choose short designations for such tendencies that, as catchwords, hit the nail on the head, but that can, incidentally, also bend the nail crooked. Were that not so, I would call Diedrich's church a pastors'-church, Brunn's a congregation-church, and Huschke's an episcopal or government-church — namely, with an eye to church government. But as for the latter two, Huschke wants no actual bishops of the old style. He wants only the governing office of the old bishopric, by virtue of divine command, to be firmly maintained in the church; this governing office, however, is, as a matter of substance, episcopal. Brunn, on the other hand, with his congregation-church, wishes neither to abolish a supreme government, which he holds to be necessary, nor to deprive the preaching office of its divine right or exclude it from the congregation. He merely locates church power in the congregation of believers, and regards this as the sustaining foundation and root of the visible church. Since, then, church power originally rests for him in the believing congregation, he places himself in decided opposition to Huschke, who lets church power rest originally in the governing office, insofar as this has to do with the constitution, order, and direction of the church. Here the office governs the church by God's command; there the believing congregation governs through an office instituted and filled by itself.

On this ground the two views diverge completely, and indeed in such a way that one recognizes their wholly different nature. For Brunn, the believing congregation is the first thing, which in the second instance forms itself into a visible church and into