# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1859_S277
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Judgment of a Norwegian Lutheran on the General Synod. 277

is that it should be tolerant wherever it cannot fully understand or share the views (opinions!) of the Kirketidende; then the Kirketidende will most obsequiously tolerate all the lies and errors of the General Synod and "continue earnestly and sincerely to work together with our American brethren."

Oh, humbug! Is that what it means to follow one's Lord and Master — to be content that the truth is merely tolerated? Would the Lord have been crucified if he had only demanded toleration from the Pharisees, "wherever they could not fully understand or share his views"? Did he, for the rest, enter into a fellowship of faith with them and vow "to work together with them earnestly and sincerely"? No — had he said "dear brethren!" to them all, and for the rest regarded his teaching merely as "peculiar views" and let them undisturbed keep their own, they might perhaps even have made him president of a district synagogue, or professor at one of the district universities (— for as General President or General Professor they would no doubt have wanted a "free-born" American) and they would surely have called him the "most evangelical and faithful man." But the Lord would not regard his teaching as a mere set of views that could tolerate anything else as "equally entitled" beside it; rather he saw his teaching as the one and only truth, which is a consuming fire against everything else. This he testified without reserve: that these "others" were children of the lie, of their father the devil (John 8:44). Therefore they crucified him. And in order that one may follow in the Lord's footsteps here, one must, in such a decisive exposure of all falsehood, soon become a partaker of the fellowship of his sufferings. All the world can tolerate us if we proclaim the truth merely as our own "views" and respectfully grant everyone else the right to have their "views." In that way one can have peace and honor. But if one says, on the contrary: the doctrine we hold is truth, and truth is only one, and everything else is a lie, and its advocates are apostles of the lie — then friendship is at an end. The Kirketidende therefore seems to have chosen the easy, but by no means the right, part.

For people who think that everything is about equally good, "so long as it is not too outrageous," it is naturally not so dangerous that the General Synod holds Reformed doctrine; rather this is for them more a recommendation of the General Synod, that it tolerates almost every kind of doctrine in this way; but to those who, on the contrary, regard the Augsburg Confession as a right and correct interpretation of the Word, and therefore accept it unconditionally, it must appear a contradiction that the General Synod calls itself Lutheran and yet, by its constitution, permits the rejection and denial of Lutheran doctrine in almost the most important points.

Now I well know that not only individual teachers, but also whole district synods, disapprove of this practice, or rather this malpractice, of the mingling of religions, and themselves teach and believe according to the Augsburg Confession, indeed demand its unconditional acceptance, even with the addition: