# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1864_S371
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Correspondence from Germany. 371

though drawn up with great caution, was nevertheless to be sanctioned
publicly, containing as it did all the false Breslau principles, with
an explicit prohibition of all opposing doctrines, including our own.
This gave rise to a new, two-day struggle. To be sure, some were now
found who had earlier voted for the acquittal of the Supreme Church
Council but who did not, after all, want such an enslavement of
doctrine as was involved in the establishment of a new Breslau
confession of faith. After heated debates the vote finally came out to
66 votes for the new doctrinal norm, 19 against, and 5 abstaining from
the vote. Yet with this the whole matter had failed, since the synodal
order requires the fullest possible unanimity in doctrinal matters. But
what happened? On October 14 the Supreme Church Council came forward
with a written declaration: the doctrinal norm that had been drawn up
had, to be sure, not been adopted unanimously, but the Supreme Church
Council saw in this doctrinal norm the only correct interpretation of
the Symbolical Books, and would therefore in future conduct its office
only according to this norm and decide accordingly in all cases
touching our doctrinal dispute. The majority of the synod received this
declaration with applause, and even resolved to have the doctrinal norm
printed at the synod's expense and distributed among the congregations.
(I will send it to you.) There was further debate, in the Breslau
spirit, over the separation of the Diedrich party; all the acts of the
Supreme Church Council in these matters were approved and commended,
and finally the synod declared altar fellowship suspended with all the
separated pastors and congregations, and this on the basis of the false
Breslau doctrine of the church. And yet they always took it with the
greatest indignation whenever we spoke of a "Breslau synod" and refused
to grant that this was "the Lutheran Church in Prussia," while at the
same time they also claimed the Diedrich party as still belonging to
the Lutheran Church, insofar as it had not publicly abandoned the basis
of the Lutheran Symbolical Books. — On October 15 we, the members of
the opposition, all departed from Breslau, having first announced our
protest against the doctrinal norm that had been set up, and reserved
to ourselves whatever further steps might need to be taken.

So the Breslau synod has run its course. That for the moment the
Breslau direction has swung itself up into dominance, and maintains its
dominance in the synod as well, is plain. Yet that does not rule out
that the future will nevertheless make many, who are now stunned and
held captive, sober again, and drive them to a new opposition against
the false doctrine. For us the decisive question now is, what is to be
done? That it must come to a break with Breslau, unless God, as if by a
miracle, again transforms the circumstances, is beyond doubt. The only
question is whether we should announce our separation from the Breslau
synod at once and without further ado, or whether we should wait until
the Supreme Church Council takes the first steps actually to put its
false doctrinal norm into effect and bring it into the field against
us. The latter will hardly be long in coming. So we shall likely, in a
short time, be entirely relieved of the trouble of seeking an answer to
that latter question. For we shall indeed