# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1864_S346
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

346 On the General-Synodist Confession concerning the Augsburg Confession, etc.

deny that the great purpose of having touchstones of doctrine is to find out quickly what faith a man holds. If the subscription to a confession is limited to its fundamental doctrines, then it is indispensable, both for the complete honesty of the subscriber and for the complete security of the church that accepts the subscription, that there be a clear understanding of the meaning of that expression. There is only one suitable way to determine what is fundamental in a confession, and that is the confession itself, according to its letter and according to its history. Only in this way can it really be established whether, on the part of its authors, a confession was meant to contain anything beyond fundamental doctrines, and if so, what they regarded as non-fundamental. We say this is the only correct way; for it is far, far better to set a confession aside entirely and put a new one in its place than to define "fundamental" in contradiction to the confession itself. To say that only so much of the Augsburg Confession is fundamental, and no more, as agrees with the articles of the so-called Evangelical Alliance of the World's Convention, is ridiculous: it would then be better to set the Augsburg Confession aside entirely and adopt those articles of the Convention as a confession of faith. To press and force the Augsburg Confession into a Definite Platform is still worse. To wish to make the confession of our fathers serve to uphold the very errors against which they set it up as a bulwark is, by its very nature, a fraud and a deception. The formula of subscription and the confession subscribed to ought to contain within themselves the elements for deciding what relation the former was meant to bear to the latter. If the formula limits itself by the word "fundamental," then it is obligated either to define the word, or to refer to some authority deciding on its meaning, or to leave the decision to the confession itself. Otherwise the subscription means nothing; it is a wretched deception, a "pious farce," as Dr. Krauth of Gettysburg expressly called it in his memorable speech before the General Synod at Charleston, for which he had to endure being reviled, absurdly enough, as a "Symbolist" and an "Old Lutheran." The matter is too self-evident to need proof. If everyone is to be allowed to decide for himself what is "fundamental," then after such a subscription we know nothing at all about his views. If a subscription is to mean anything, its purpose is to indicate, in the most solemn and authoritative manner possible, precisely the doctrinal position of the one who gives it; but in the case assumed above, a confidential conversation of three minutes with the man would give an insight into his position that his subscription can never afford. By such a subscription one does not know, and cannot know, anyone's position. What is the most authoritative and decisive proof that, for example, Dr. Hodge is a Presbyterian? This: that he has given a definite doctrinal subscription ex animo. What proves that