# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1859_S310
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

310 Does the Iowa Synod Really Strive, etc.

...rules and remains the most important is this: Look closely at your text! Most wrongly interpreted passages would at once disclose their true meaning if one only fixed a steady eye on them, pressed every word, and refused to find a preconceived opinion in them — in short, if one always kept in mind the truth expressed in the Latin text of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession: "Loci integri prolati plerumque secum afferunt interpretationem," that is, passages cited unmutilated (and duly weighed) mostly bring the (correct) interpretation along with them (Ed. Rechenberg, p. 117). Had Calvin, Zwingli, the Chiliasts, and others followed this rule, they would never have imagined they found, in the words of the institution of the Holy Supper, their doctrine of the absence of the body and blood of Christ, nor, in the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, their doctrine of an absolute predestination to salvation and damnation, to faith and sin, nor, in Revelation 20, their doctrine of a still-future glorious thousand-year kingdom.

(To be continued.)

(Submitted by P. Beyer.)

Does the Iowa Synod Really Strive, "by the Way of the Symbols, at the Hand of the Word of God," for a Greater Perfection of the Evangelical Lutheran Church?

For some time now, thanks to freedom of the press, a little book has again been in circulation bearing the title: "Synodical Report of the German Ev.-Luth. Synod of Iowa." Now there is nothing whatever to object to in this synod's having its proceedings and resolutions printed, like any other — or, if it seems more advisable, its proceedings without resolutions, or even merely the matters submitted for deliberation without proceedings and without resolutions; nor can anything be said against its calling itself the Synod of Iowa. But it does seem improper that it calls itself the "Ev. Luth. Synod." It is true, of course, that we live in a country where everyone may take whatever title he pleases, where therefore every fourth man is an "Esquire" and each of the other three either a General, a Colonel, or a Captain; yet even here there must surely be some definite rule, and perhaps it is this: that one keeps such a title only so long as one can make it good. That the Iowa Synod has picked out for itself the finest title in the world is beyond question, for "Ev. Luth." is a name that rings well before God and men, one that opens the churches and pulpits of the German congregations. But an old proverb says, "Dignities bring burdens," and whoever will not have the latter cannot have the former. And the very Synodical Report named above shows that the aim of that synod runs toward claiming the dignity without the burden — bearing the title while being, in fact, something other than what it professes. That the synod will be asked to furnish the