# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1859_S287
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Kirchlich-Zeitgeschichtliches [Church and Contemporary History]. 287

...come to a conclusion: the founding of a fixed order through a mission church council, consisting of 3 missionaries with Cordes at its head; the improvement of the training schools for individual missionaries, catechists, and teachers, directed by Stählin; the founding of an institute for the dissemination of scholarly knowledge, literature for the Tamils, and so forth, directed by missionary Blomstrand of Sweden. The difference with the Breslau Upper Consistory was brought, in discussion with the Breslau deputies, to almost complete agreement regarding the mission's practice on the question of the Lord's Supper. The final decision, however, rests in the hands of the Breslau Upper Consistory. B.

Pastor J. Diedrich has, as we learn from Ehlers' Kirchenblatt, published a pamphlet of 24 pages (available from W. Schultze in Berlin) on "The Worth and Nature of Church Government," which is announced in the paper named with the following words: "In this writing, Pastor Diedrich rejects the opinion that the salvation of the church is grounded in church government. The congregation of Christ is indeed, according to God's order, to be shepherded through the preaching office; but this office is not an office of law, and the word which it administers exerts no compulsion against men, but rather aims to lead to freedom. Therefore the church is not a fellowship of those who command and those who obey, and is not to be governed in a manner similar to earthly states. Pastor Diedrich holds this opinion of his to be fully consistent with Scripture and with the confessional writings of our church. — As the author then directs his consideration more toward what is called higher church government, that is, toward what the consistories are in the territorial churches, which have oversight of a number of congregations, he says of such government that it has no power or authority after the manner of worldly authority, so that no churchly person may demand unconditional obedience for the sake of his office; for in the church there are only those who teach and those who learn, and so blind obedience does not hold good here, but conviction must be produced from God's Word. — Naturally, Pastor Diedrich thinks nothing of the territorial princes' government of the church, although he does not fail to recognize that worldly authority, as ruler of the church, has at times worked beneficially; but he holds that from the principle of justification by faith another church constitution ought really to have resulted than the one that has in fact come about through the dominance of the territorial lords over the church, and that to force a confession upon people by worldly power is tyranny. — Pastor Diedrich is likewise not satisfied with our constitution, which we adopted at the first General Synod of the Lutheran Church in Prussia in the year 1841 and which has since been improved and altered in individual points at succeeding synods; and our synodical resolutions he would most gladly, like Luther of old with canon law, commit to the fire. Yet he is not willing to do this just now, but intends, God willing, to bring forward his motions at the next General Synod."

Denmark. The well-known textbook by J. H. Kurtz, Christian Doctrine, was in 1857 also translated into Danish. The administration of the gymnasium at Viborg (Jutland) wished to make it the basis of instruction and sought for this purpose the approval of the royal ministry. The ministry first obtained an opinion from the theological faculty. This opinion first finds fault with the textbook for including "so much scholastic-dogmatic material" and employing so many "scholastic forms of expression," which it says is not suitable for a textbook meant also for those being instructed who do not intend to become theologians. The faculty then comes out still more plainly and remarks: "A textbook in religion must, to be sure, adhere to the confession of the church body, but the confessional basis may not be narrower than that given by the symbolical books of the Danish church. Kurtz's standpoint is the narrower Lutheran one, as it is determined by the Formula of Concord and the theological school-development founded upon it in the 17th century, and it must therefore be considered questionable to introduce into the Danish church a textbook composed from this standpoint, since that church does not acknowledge the symbolical authority of the Formula of Concord." — These are plainly rotten fish. It is not because in Denmark the Augustana, but not the Formula of Concord, has symbolical validity that the faculty is against Kurtz, but rather because