# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1859_S271
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Judgment of a Norwegian Lutheran on the General Synod. 271

one must naturally consider such a fellowship more or less weak, though not outright un-Lutheran; — but what entitles one to call the General Synod unconditionally un-Lutheran is 1) the obligation to the Augsburg Confession, which takes place only conditionally and with reservation, 2) the manner in which this reservation is explained in its interpretation and actually made use of.

1) The obligation demanded by the General Synod reads thus: "Do you believe that the fundamental doctrines of the word of God are taught in a manner substantially correct in the doctrinal articles of the Augsburg Confession?" From this one sees, as one of its leading men expresses himself in the Missionary of May 7, 1857, 1. that not the whole Augsburg Confession is meant in the obligation, but only the 21 articles that treat of doctrine (it is thus not required that one accept the following seven remaining articles!); 2. that the obligation applies only to the chief doctrines; and finally 3. that with regard to these it is only required that one hold that they are taught substantially correctly in the Augsburg Confession. From this everyone will at once see that a former president of the General Synod remarked, with good reason, in an annual report, that such an acceptance amounts to the same thing as none at all, or is only a solemn piece of fencing with mirrors (farce). For here everyone is left free to decide for himself what he wants to regard as chief doctrines, and likewise what he wants to understand by "substantially correct."

One can therefore say that the General Synod actually has no confession at all that states definitely what it believes and teaches; indeed Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, etc., could readily agree to that obligation, and the only objection they could have would, in my opinion, have to be that they consider it beneath them to have anything to do with such a piece of fencing with mirrors — that one should adopt a confession in name only, which, instead of confessing a definite faith, in fact covers over and conceals the faith and leaves it a matter of complete indifference what each one, for his part, believes and teaches. The General Synod thereby becomes not merely un-Lutheran, because it is altogether a peculiar mark of the Lutheran Church, as the true biblical church, that it openly and definitely confesses its faith, indeed even with the express rejection of everything else; rather, the General Synod thereby sinks, confessionally considered, lower than any of those Reformed sects who at least know what they believe and what doctrine they require in their fellowship. The General Synod, by contrast, neither knows nor troubles itself to know what it believes and teaches; it does not know at all what truth is, nor what its various teachers hold to be truth, but leaves it to the arbitrary discretion of each one to believe and teach as he pleases, "if only it is not too outrageous." In short, it is completely colorless, completely a mingling of religions. In any case