# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 02 08_S45
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall pass away neither now nor ever."

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 1.

St. Louis, Mo., February 8, 1845.

Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the subscription price of one dollar and twenty-five cents for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay half of this in advance and bear the postage themselves. — In St. Louis, each single number is sold for 6¼ cents.

The Evangelical Church in North America.
(Continued.)

In the last number of our paper we set forth from God's Word the reasons that move us, for our part, to renounce a churchly union that does not consist in a coming-together in faith and doctrine, but rather, as is now happening, is brought about by agreeing only on a few important points of doctrine, while for the time being overlooking and passing over the other doctrines (regarding which, therefore, a part of the new church may still believe and teach contrary to God's Word). Now since the members of the "Evangelical Church Union in the West," in the statutes of the Christian church that they have published, have likewise set forth their reasons why, on the contrary, they intend to promote that union by every possible means, we consider it our duty to state as well why the reasons given by those men for their union cannot satisfy our conscience.

The Union has, in its statutes, expressly given four reasons in particular. It states there that they had considered it good to form such a union, first:

"In consideration that, according to the promise of the Lord, the time shall come when all Christendom shall be but one flock under one shepherd."

This beginning of the statutes has, we must confess, set us in no small astonishment; for are we to believe that the founders of the Union placed this hastily and thoughtlessly at the head of their document, when they meant to step forward before the whole Christian church to give account of a step so important for the weal or woe of so many souls, and for the whole church, especially here in the West? May we assume that men to whom the holy preaching office is entrusted had not first duly considered whether those words of our most highly praised Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, actually carry the meaning that is here imputed to them? — And yet it is quite evident that the members of the Union interpret those words of our Lord entirely contrary to their true meaning, thus merely misusing them for their own purpose. Far be it from us to judge the hearts of the Union's members; rather, as Christians, we hope for the best. But the truth, out of love, we certainly cannot deny! — Let us consider the passage in its context. It reads in full, John 10:16, as follows: "And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." We are indeed not unaware that these words are cited in support of their opinion by all those who hope for a future thousand-year kingdom on earth, in which Christ will reign undisturbed together with his believers; we know well that all champions of union regard this passage as their iron wall, just as Zwingli regarded the words, "The flesh profiteth nothing"*) — but we ask every impartial reader: by what right? Is it even in the slightest probable that the Savior meant to point to anything of that kind with these words? By no means; Christ here speaks first to the Jews of other sheep that are not of this fold (the Jewish church); by this Christ quite plainly means the Gentiles, or heathen, of that time. Of these he further says that he must bring them, that they too would hear his voice — that is, accept his word — and that thereby at last the division would be abolished and there would arise one flock under one shepherd. What, then, is this one flock under one shepherd? It is nothing other than the Christendom gathered, out of Jews and Gentiles, in the New Testament. Thus, from the very moment when the former dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles fell, and the apostles turned with the Gospel to the Gentiles as well, that promise of Christ concerning the one flock under one shepherd began to be fulfilled. St. Paul clearly expounds that prophecy of Christ in this way when he writes thus to the Ephesians, converted from among the Gentiles, among other things: "Remember that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, — that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, — but now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometime were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one (one flock), and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us. — Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God." (Ephesians 2:11–19.) The holy apostle expresses the same thing in Romans 10:12 thus: "There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek (Gentile): for the same Lord" (shepherd) "over all."

*) Zwingli maintained, namely, in order to dispute the Holy Supper, that by the words "the flesh profiteth nothing" (John 6:63) Christ's own flesh was meant — which is indeed a dreadful blasphemy, but one which, unfortunately, one must still hear here and there even now. Of his flesh Christ says: "The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." (John 6:51.) And is that flesh supposed to profit nothing?

Therefore, when the members of the Evangelical Union, as they say, came together on the assumption that, according to that promise of the Lord, the time "is yet to come when all Christendom shall be but one flock under one shepherd," they were mistaken in this; for this time is not yet to come — it has already come. Even now there is but one shepherd of Christians, Jesus Christ, and but one flock, namely the invisible congregation of the saints scattered over the whole face of the earth, the holy Christian church. Of this it is said that it is one body and one spirit, and has one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father, who is above all its members, and through them all, and in them all. (Ephesians 4:4–6.) This one flock has already existed for 1800 years, and preserves its unity even when the carnal eye of the spiritually blind sees in the church nothing but a house of discord, because it sees such great dissension among its teachers.*) But whether it will one day also come to pass

*) What a perverse judgment a man must form of the unity of the true Christian church when he judges it by what his eyes see, Mr. Oertel provides a sad proof of in the recent numbers of his Wahrheitsfreund. There he draws, namely, the following conclusion: because there was much strife among the theologians, therefore the church to which they professed to belong lacked true unity! What sort of concept must a man have — who can write in such a way — of the true church, of true unity, of the actual nature of the kingdom of God on earth, etc.! Matthew 13:12.