# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1859_S49
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

From the General Synod.                                                    49

...blasphemies against the faith of the Church you are called to serve, and
against the members of the same, who recognize this faith as their own
treasure in life and in death. Further: from your "address," it appears
as though the "Symbolists" were, as a rule, without "living piety." But is
not the work that our Synod does in the service of Jesus — the pure
preaching of the Gospel in churches and schools, to mention only the main
thing — an irrefutable testimony of living faith? Is the General Synod,
then, so much richer in good works, in genuine fruits of "living piety,"
that your Professor Weiser can say of the Missouri Synod that its
"symbolic orthodoxy" destroys the same? It is indeed to be wondered at
where Professor Weiser gets the courage for such a conscience-judging
condemnation of the state of faith of an entire synod that confesses the
pure faith in word and deed. If such a manner of fighting against the
"Symbolists" springs from his own "system of living piety," then one must
certainly admit that "symbolic orthodoxy" seeks to destroy that system from
its very foundation. For truth and falsehood, Christ and Belial, are and
remain mortal enemies.

Moreover, it must not be overlooked that Professor Weiser's polemic
against the Missouri Synod may well spring, in part, from ignorance. How
could one credit a man who can slander the "Symbolists" so, with having
even read through the symbolical books of our Church at all — let alone
studied them with earnest prayer and conscientious comparison with Holy
Scripture? If you truly have not done so, then do it now, Professor
Weiser; and if the Holy Spirit does not deny himself (which is
impossible), you will recognize with horror that your fight against
"symbolic orthodoxy," against the theology of the Lutheran confession, is
itself a fight against the Lord Jesus and his holy Word; and that the
symbols contain nothing other than the doctrine of Holy Scripture, since
they are simply expositions, required by particular occasions, of the
faith of the Church of God as drawn from Scripture. They are the Church's
answer to the speech of the Lord in Scripture. In Scripture the Lord
speaks to us, and in the symbols the Church confesses: we believe what the
Lord says. Then your judgment of those Christians who find in the symbols
the expression of the faith that lives in their hearts will also become a
different one. Do not despise this well-meant counsel, however hateful it
may appear to you in this connection.

I cannot close without drawing attention to yet another shameful
contradiction in which Professor Weiser and the people of the General
Synod generally stand with themselves. What they reject and hate in the
"Symbolists" is, after all, the very resoluteness with which these confess
and defend the confessional faith they have recognized from God's Word.
How does it come about, then, that the "tolerant" gentlemen of the General
Synod also stand up so resolutely for their own faith, al-