# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 02 22_S52
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

then it is not the one who stands firm on the truth who is the cause of the separation, but always the one who persists in his error. So long, therefore, as it is not proven that it is not the Reformed but the Lutherans who are in error on the points in dispute, so long the Reformed are and remain the disturbers of peace and order, from whom God will require the blood of all those souls who take offense at the great unresolved discord and are lost.

But why will you not let love prevail? We answer: We are glad to show the Reformed every love, since indeed we love them all from the heart; nor do we now judge them as severely as Luther once had to judge a Zwingli; we further do not wish to show ourselves quarrelsome, bitter, or eager to condemn toward them. But in church matters we cannot unite with them and partake of the Holy Supper in their fellowship, still less can we entrust our sheep to their shepherds, so long as they persist in their departures from the clear letter of the Word of God—whether they follow in this the seduction of a crude Zwingli or of a refined, polished, smooth Calvin. Through such a union we would deny the truth, confess ourselves to a false doctrine, strengthen those in error in their error, mislead orthodox Christians, give offense to the weak, betray our church, and open the door wide to religious indifference and hence to unbelief (rationalism, naturalism, and atheism).

As Christians we should indeed devote ourselves to love, but Scripture also tells us what true, God-pleasing love must be like; it says, "Let us be truthful in love" (Ephesians 4:15); love "rejoices in the truth" (1 Corinthians 13:6). Scripture further says, "Love truth and peace" (Zechariah 8:19); "we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth" (2 Corinthians 13:8). What use, then, is all the talk of love, of peace, of unity, when one does not mean the right love and the right peace? A love that one prefers to the truth is a spiritual fornication against which God's Word warns in so many places, and a peace that is not grounded in the truth is a false peace, since one thereby, as the Lord says through Ezekiel, misleads his people and says "Peace," when "there is no peace." Such union-makers are like the false builders who seek to remedy the cracks in a house without foundation by covering them over with loose plaster! What God's Word prophesies concerning such builders and their building, we find in Ezekiel 13:10–16, which the gentle reader may look up there.

There is, then, no other way to establish a true union than to preach the truth! Whatever will not be bound together by this bond remains unreconciled, no matter how one may paste, cement, and patch it together.

52

St. Paul says plainly: "There must be factions among you, so that those who are approved may be recognized among you." (1 Corinthians 11:19.) Christ further says: "I came not to send peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34.) By this Christ and his apostles certainly do not mean to say that he takes delight in discord, but that peace cannot possibly remain among men where the truth of his gospel is preached and held fast by some. Therefore Luther says: "Some clever fellows are now beginning to patch things up; they want to advise on the matter and settle the quarrel, proposing that both sides should yield and give way. We let them go ahead and try what they can do, and grant them the effort willingly; but if they can make the devil pious and make him one with Christ, then they will be the first to do it. But I hold that with such patchwork it is just as Sirach 22 says, as when one tries to mend potsherds together. And indeed there have already been many such cobblers who have attempted it, but who have likewise labored in vain and lost both thread and stitch." (Commentary on Psalm 110.)

We fear, however, that despite all these clear explanations, many will say: we see well enough that you only want to trouble Israel (1 Kings 18:17); you are contending in a merely carnal spirit; you make Christianity consist only in confession, indeed in disputing and quarreling; we wish to hear no more—convert yourselves and your congregations, that is the main thing which you forget over your quarreling. To such people, who by such judgmental verdicts prove rather poorly the very love that is always on their lips, we call to mind an Arndt, a Paul Gerhardt, and a Spener. These, surely, they will scarcely count among those who contended carnally for orthodoxy at the expense of an active Christianity! But how these men were minded we can see from the fact that, in the first place, Arndt, in order to concede nothing of the truth, in the year 1590 preferred to be removed from office rather than give up, in favor of those who were inclined toward the Reformed doctrine, so much as the ceremony of exorcism at baptism—although his prince, George of Anhalt, had commanded him to do so. Arndt knew very well that the exorcism was an optional ceremony, but he feared that by yielding on this point he would thereby deny and endanger the Lutheran truth.

Of the anointed hymn-writer Paul Gerhardt it is known that he too, in the year 1666, preferred to be removed from his office as archdeacon in Berlin rather than obey the royal command to refrain, at least, from naming the Reformed by name from the pulpit when refuting Calvinist errors. He was thus unwilling to do even the smallest thing that might raise the suspicion that he sided with false teachers, or that he had yielded to them in the least to please them (Galatians 2:5). We see his comforted heart in this from his glorious hymn "Commit Thou All Thy Griefs" [Befiehl du deine Wege], etc., which he composed for his wife's comfort on the journey following his expulsion. Even a Spener, finally, who has certainly never been regarded by any party as a man who insisted less on Christian living than on pure doctrine — even this man, who if anything was too yielding, writes as follows concerning Reformed persons of genuine Christian mind: "Although I hold no ecclesiastical fellowship with such people in communion, public worship, and the like — for while in this or that person I may hope for, or even in some cases be assured of, true faith, I nevertheless cannot at all approve of their church body or stand in full fellowship with it — I can still commend the good in such a person." (Bedenken III, 203.) In another place the same man said: "Thus I also readily acknowledge that we must seek unity in every conceivable way. . . . Even if such a union could be purchased with my own life (I mean specifically between us and the Reformed, and all the more so if it should also embrace still others), I would not know how it could be better spent; but I think that in seeking unity and peaceableness we must take care that this does no harm whatsoever to the truth, and that we accordingly show all love and gentleness, from the depths of our soul, to those who err in religion, yet at the same time take care that this causes neither, on our own side, an ungrateful undervaluing of the truth granted to us before God, or even the danger of departing from it, nor, on the other side, a strengthening of them in their error — either of which would offend against conscience. Further, that in guarding against giving offense to those who are in some sense outside, we do not thereby give even more dangerous offense to those who stand within our own congregation, whom we ought to spare all the more, and that, while imagining we are healing the breach between ourselves and the Reformed, we do not thereby cause still more and wider breaches among ourselves." (Letzte Bedenken I, 434.) So testified a Spener, whom even the Evangelicals regard as a man of their own party.

If many Evangelicals, and with them like-minded New Lutherans, now immediately brand as dead, unconverted word-wranglers those who still insist today on an unimpaired confession of the pure doctrine, then we ask them: must the theologians just named, on account of their conscientiousness in confession, likewise be regarded as such people?

(Conclusion to follow.)

The "Lutheraner" can always be obtained at the residence of the carrier, Mr. Gräber (South Fifth Street, opposite the oil mill), further from Mr. Quast (Olive Street, between Second and Third, below the theater), and from the publisher.

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