# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1864_S296
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

296    Two Documents from the Prussian Lutheran Church.

actually proceed in such a manner, or so wield the binding force of the synodical resolutions, that a calm discussion of the doctrinal questions in the theological realm is thereby made impossible; that, rather, under the pretext of a practical violation of church order, all who dissent from the view of the Supreme Church Council are gradually pushed further and further out of the Synod, and the Synod itself reduced to a party of the Supreme Church Council. We hold it to be simply a plain requirement of justice: if the doctrinal questions are for the present to remain theoretically undecided, that one not practically put a noose around the neck of conscience by forcing it into a church order bearing the stamp of one-sided, say Huschkean, principles. It therefore seems to us an indispensable condition of church peace that the Breslau synodical resolutions be so far altered, in the characteristic points to be designated by those concerned themselves, that men such as our pastors Lohmann, Frischmuth, Frommel, and others may move within them with a quiet and cheerful conscience and await the future. Indeed, such an alteration of the synodical resolutions appears to us to be itself a sacred duty of love toward those already separated from the Synod, Pastor Diedrich and those united with him, insofar as we thereby, so far as lies in us, again pave the way and extend the hand to them to return into our synodical fellowship. But we do the opposite; indeed, we heap upon ourselves before God and men the guilt of the ecclesiastical schism and of the gravest violation of brotherly love, if we would rather consent to so terrible a rending of our whole church fellowship than alter individual provisions of the outward church order that are a stumbling block to our brethren and must drive them to separate from us. Therefore, however little there can be any talk of a dissolution of all church order, so unavoidably necessary does a latitude in this realm seem to us under present circumstances — one that makes it possible for the various theological tendencies to dwell together in peace until our doctrinal struggle is brought to a satisfactory result. If we do not grant this latitude, we shall either retain a perpetual war in the practical realm, or else our church government must increasingly cast out everything that does not practically fit its principles. Therefore, in sum: if we wish to bring the dignity and the principle of church order to validity and recognition, then let us also make such an order as everyone is able to keep with a good conscience and in peace. If we do not do the latter, then the former is vain and a self-contradiction, an unevangelical compulsion of conscience.

Finally, we add,

d) that it not be made a duty for us to recognize the Breslau synodical fellowship in the sense of being the Lutheran Church of Prussia, such that we would have to regard those members of the Diedrich separation who have parted from it — apart both from all personal offenses and from