# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1859_S276
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

276 Judgment of a Norwegian Lutheran on the General Synod.

therans," and demand that they be expelled; rather he must, as it is put elsewhere, himself withdraw, if he can no longer tolerate the lie's being given, according to the principle, the same right as the truth — indeed a greater right, for while it is no loss or sacrifice to the lie and the error to tolerate the truth, it is a great sacrifice, indeed a contradiction, when the truth must tolerate the lie and say to its advocates: dear brethren! — and that is what truth must do in the General Synod. And many worse statements of this kind can easily be cited from the writings of the General Synod, from that wing which never conceals it, but openly confesses to it, indeed insists on it as proof of proper "liberality and tolerance."

This, then, is the principle of the General Synod: in this way it factually carries out its reception-formula, which already says nothing in itself, and thereby proves that the whole thing is nothing but a solemn farce (fencing with mirrors), in other words, that it is confessionless.

Therefore: not merely on account of the weakness of individuals (who hold false doctrine), nor merely on account of unclarity or weakness in the doctrinal discipline of the fellowship, such that this is tolerated, but because the Synod lets it be openly declared and practiced, by individuals as well as by whole district synods, that its confession gives a right to such false doctrine — for this reason the General Synod is unconditionally un-Lutheran in the eyes of every true Lutheran; it is "unionistic," for it gives, by its constitution, equal right to the lie and to the truth. And however the tangled affair with Hartmann's unionistic synod may hang together — which I leave to those actually involved to settle — this neither adds to nor takes away the least from the matter; the General Synod, on the grounds set forth above, considered as a fellowship, is up to this moment unionistic, and has no more right to call itself Lutheran than Mormons have to call themselves Christians; indeed, since it steals the name in order to lure the unwary, it is even worse than the Union Church in Germany, which at least is not guilty of such a false game with the name "Lutheran," by which simple people are deceitfully led astray. To answer Dr. Harkey's eulogy, that "the General Synod is the best Lutheran synod in the world," it is manifestly the most wretched synod of the Lutheran name known in the history of the day, because it believes everything and nothing, because it is at bottom a principled and grandiose revival of the old lie: "Everyone is saved in his own way" — because it demands, as a matter of its constitution, that the truth tolerate the lie as having equal right, whereupon the lie is graciously willing enough, in turn, to tolerate the truth. But what could be conceived more un-Lutheran and more unbiblical than such a mingling and union of truth and lie? From No. 2 of the Kirketidende of the previous year one further sees that the only thing it demands of the General Synod