# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1859_S281
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Aus der Kirche [From the Church]. 281

...taken from pamphlets which the lecturers had brought back with them from Neuendettelsau. The thoughts are thoroughly Löhean, and if we do not now learn what the Iowans' own distinctive possession is, we do at least learn what possession is being distributed at Neuendettelsau.

The first lecture deals with the correct understanding of the symbols, or how far our confessional writings are binding. The answer runs: not everything is binding. One must distinguish and separate, within the symbols, the actual doctrine from the argumentation, the scriptural proof, the development, and the interspersed auxiliary propositions. The proposition which then remains as the actual result of the whole — that is the binding doctrine of the symbol. In the remaining incidental and subsidiary matter, errors may occur. But even these main propositions received their measure and their particular shape through the struggles and antitheses of their time, and therefore cannot simply be applied without further ado to another time with different antitheses. For example, the doctrine of the ministry and the church was developed in opposition to the papacy, and therefore no longer fits quite so well the newer controversies; the rejection of the thousand-year kingdom is directed against the Anabaptists, and therefore may not be applied to Löhe's teaching. Looked at from this side, church doctrine is something unfinished, which needs completion, further development, and correction — only in such a way that the essence of church doctrine is not thereby impaired.

They call this understanding of the symbols the historical one, because it demonstrates historically what binding doctrine is. They set it over against the dogmatic understanding — no doubt that of the Missourians — which, they say, does not first strip the leaves off the symbols, then peel off the bark, then split them and take out the core, and say of that: this is church doctrine. The Iowans are right that not everything in the symbols is of equal worth, and that not everything can be binding. It may well be doubted that even the Missourians go so far. But that does not in the least justify the Iowans' procedure. Their understanding deserves to be called Catholic far more than historical.

The foremost and most essential peculiarity of our symbols is that they intend to be pure scriptural doctrine. It matters far more to them to prove their agreement with Scripture than merely to set up bare, unproven articles of faith. Already the Augsburg Confession, in its brief articles, appeals to Scripture, and the confessions that follow devote most of their space to scriptural proof. For the scriptural proof is the most essential part of the symbols, which in Lutheran church doctrine must be placed first, because we do not wish to learn from the church what it teaches, but what Scripture teaches. Without scriptural proof the church cannot bind anyone to any of its doctrines. If the scriptural proof is erroneous, then what is derived from it is erroneous as well. The doctrinal proposition cannot be correct while the scriptural proof is false. Whoever now wishes to hold only to the church's actual doctrinal propositions and abandon their scriptural proof