# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1859_S26
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

26        On the Right Conduct of the Office of Discipline.

—Lutheran theology transplanted into this land from Europe and
especially from Germany, meaning by that its development on American
soil and within local conditions, that would indeed be a strange kind
of development of Lutheranism, one by which it loses its distinctive
character and denies its principles. That is never a development, but
rather a destruction and an apostasy. Just as the papacy is not the
Western development of Christianity, but rather the unfolding of the
antichristian lie within the Christian church, so too the falsely
so-called Lutheranism, with its denial and rejection of the
unadulterated and uncurtailed confession of the Lutheran Church, is
not a development of Lutheranism, but only the unfolding of Calvinist
error within the Lutheran Church of America. For just as there is
only one single gospel, so too can there be only one single
Lutheranism, since Lutheranism, at bottom, is nothing other than the
sincere, unreserved confession of the pure, unadulterated gospel. How,
indeed, could it be otherwise, since Lutheranism takes its name from
Luther, and is thus the faith and doctrine of Luther? But when one
confesses views that Luther rejected and fought with all his strength
his whole life long, no honest person can hold or represent these as
Lutheranism. Let us hear, then, how little Luther himself considered
any alteration of his doctrine, as it has been received into the
confession of our church, to be necessary. He himself says, in his
judgment on the Diet of Augsburg of 1530: "Moreover we must confess
that the doctrine preached and presented at Augsburg is the true and
pure word of God, and that all who believe and hold to it are
children of God and will be saved, whether they already believe now
or are enlightened only afterward; which confession shall endure
until the end of the world and to the Last Day." The true American
Lutheranism, therefore, can be none other than the German, Norwegian,
Swedish, Danish, or Dutch. Lutherans in different lands may well,
according to the particular gifts and needs of their people, make use
of different methods in the exposition and grounding of pure
doctrine, as well as different forms of church polity and of the acts
of worship, but their faith and confession is one and the same.
Therefore only those are the "American Lutherans" who, in this land,
carry the confession of the Lutheran Church in their hearts, and it is
wrongly that those assume this name who are, in their hearts,
Calvinists and rationalists and who therefore also reject the
Lutheran confession.

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On the Right Conduct of the Office of Discipline.

The Ministry of Lübeck was once asked for counsel by preachers
concerning the right conduct of the office of discipline. To this it
gave