# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1859_S275
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Judgment of a Norwegian Lutheran on the General Synod. 275

doctrines? Yes, I think of the matter thus: if someone first holds the opinion that regeneration is not really effected in Baptism, and that in the Holy Supper the true body and blood of Christ are not truly present, then he has thereby taken away and denied the very essence of these sacraments, and so regards them only as symbols and signs of lesser importance, and can therefore easily say that the doctrines of the sacraments are no chief doctrines. Or if they submit to the Lutheran assertion that Baptism and the Lord's Supper belong among the chief doctrines, then they have another way out: Very well, they say, we call the doctrine of the sacraments a chief doctrine, but regeneration in Baptism and the true presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Supper are not, in our "view," the essential thing in it; we can therefore keep our word with regard to that reception-formula, even while holding this opinion, for we have only obligated ourselves to hold the doctrines of the Confession to be substantially correct. That in which we deviate from it is only such as is, in our opinion, non-essential, in which we have freedom under the formula to believe and teach as we please.

Thus in the General Synod, by appeal to constitutional right, teaching is given in several chief doctrines flatly against the Augsburg Confession, and the Synod sanctions this appeal when it tolerates these teachers and their body instead of expelling them. To overflow the measure, I will further cite the following words from the Evangelical Review, July 1858, a journal of the General Synod. There it says, after much boasting that the wavering and indefinite doctrinal basis of the General Synod is the only safe and "expedient" one, as follows: "Fidelity to the principle of the General Synod (!) is the only guarantee for a peaceful and flourishing church" (so the flourishing they want to have in the church is to be purchased by a principle that tolerates false doctrine!) and further: "Let it be said to the strict Symbolist in the General Synod: you have united yourself with others on a foundation which requires no definite acceptance of the Augsburg Confession, which permits difference in certain points, namely in the sacraments; while you confess that you except nothing, that you believe the regeneration in Baptism and the true, essential presence of Christ in the Supper just as this is set forth in the Formula of Concord and by our older theologians, you have nevertheless consented to stand in fellowship with those who do not hold this faith." (See Lehre und Wehre, Sept. 1858.)

See, that is pouring out clear wine! Here it says, then, outright, that in the General Synod he has just as great a constitutional right who denies the regeneration in Baptism and the true presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Supper, as does he who believes this according to Scripture and the Augsburg Confession; and that he who has the truth cannot, on the doctrinal basis of the General Synod, say to the advocates of such errors: "You are no Lu-