# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 06 28_S87
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— in doctrine, discipline, and life; — therefore we ought, as it goes on to say, "utterly to reject no communion that still has a share in the apostolic confession of faith." From this "holy Christian Church," Mr. N., following Mr. Stier, then in what follows distinguishes "the congregation of the saints," which he calls "the proper, true Church of the Lord." —

A deep glimpse into Mr. N.'s views of the Church is given by a long citation from a writing of a certain Mr. Saxer, with which Mr. N. adorns his own work from the very outset. Saxer there himself says, among other things, that the final conclusion of his investigations into the development of the Church is this: "that at the time of the Reformation the Church came to an end" (p. 9), whereas "up to the time of the Reformation it had developed ever more gloriously." (p. 8.) Of the age of the Reformation, Mr. N., following Mr. Saxer, further says: "The whole condition was, after all, simply one without constitution; but the Church is a (outwardly?) well-ordered organism, in which all the members interlock with one another. The invisible Church had thus become visible in such a way that it was nevertheless unable to constitute a true Church." (p. 11.) At the same place, the view of the Reformed Church is not obscurely endorsed, namely that the various sects are merely "different forms of appearance" of the true Church. (Ibid.)

We must confess that, however hard we labor to form for ourselves, from such statements, a clear picture of Mr. N.'s thoughts about the Church, nothing becomes entirely clear to us except Mr. N.'s own lack of clarity — concerning which he has here, with uncommon boldness, drawn up a written record. Mr. N. will, of course, excuse himself by saying that, as to the main point, he did not write it himself, but only gave excerpts from the writings of famous men of our time on the subject. But if Mr. N. did not trust himself to present, in his own words, what he wished to prove and what actually mattered in his book, he ought at least to have first examined to some extent whether the borrowed material agreed with the very principle he himself had laid down. This, however, Mr. N. did not do. Thus, according to the statements cited above, his confession concerning the Church reads, among other things, as follows:

"I believe, according to the Third Article, in two churches, a visible and an invisible one, namely: 1. the holy Christian Church, and 2. the congregation of the saints, for these must not be merged together. (p. 6.) The invisible Church is the multitude of believers in the whole world, which alone has the promise of retaining the unadulterated doctrine of Christ. (p. 27.) The visible Church is the totality of all who outwardly profess the doctrine of Christ, although they depart from it very greatly. This visible Church did indeed possess, before the Reformation, the true form of the Church of Christ,

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especially when, in the fourth century, the Emperor Constantine, and later the Pope, united it into one great organic whole, under which most favorable circumstances it developed ever more gloriously and remained the one great phenomenon of world history in which Christ revealed himself and his glory to the world." (p. 8.) But alas! at the time of the Reformation the Church was, "by God's just judgment, stripped of all its glory and beauty, and its lofty, majestic form was shattered. The Church is no more! It has been rooted out from the earth, just as Christ himself was once rooted out." (Ibid.) The blame lay with "the condition without constitution"; the result of this was "this: the old Church was shattered and split into sects." (p. 11.) Among all these sects, the Roman Church has "maintained the character of the Church more than the other ecclesiastical parties." (p. 10.) The other sects do indeed depart more or less from God's Word, yet it would be wrong (as the Pharisaic, rigid Lutherans would have it) not to honor them all with the title of orthodox churches, because they are all institutions of God for salvation, founded on Christ and the Gospel, and are merely different forms of appearance of the true Church — which, though not all to be regarded as fully equal, nevertheless confess the faith purely and fully, just as much as the Lutheran Church does; for what belongs to a right confession is not that one hold the pure doctrine of the Gospel, but merely that one confess Christ. (p. 32.) The best among all the churches — which I have chosen for myself, since I have so great a selection — is finally the new Evangelical Church, "which has again taught the Gospel most purely," though unfortunately those who belong to it must still "strive ever more completely to rediscover the first true foundation of the apostolic Church." (p. 26.) —

That is Mr. N.'s confession of faith concerning the Church. Let the reader open the book himself, and he will find that we have distorted nothing, but have merely arranged what is said here and there in Mr. N.'s writing so that the picture he himself has drawn might become somewhat clear and easy to survey. From this the reader will see, first, that Mr. N., contrary to God's Word, makes two churches, by separating the invisible Church from the visible, whereas according to God's Word there is only one true Church, which has one Spirit, one faith, one baptism, etc., and which becomes visible or manifest through nothing else than God's Word, or the confession of the truth. It is indeed true, according to Holy Scripture, that heretics and sects also stand outwardly in the midst of the true Church, in which, according to St. Paul himself, the Antichrist sits; but, we repeat, this does not mean, as Mr. N. concludes, that the sects are the Church, that they therefore belong to it, and are a part of it! For the kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of light and truth, not of darkness and error.

The reader will see, secondly, that from this false separation of the visible and invisible Church there has arisen in Mr. N. the error that there is either no orthodox church at all on earth, or that one must concede to all parties in Christendom the honor of being one; and hence Mr. N. does the latter, wishing to have every sect acknowledged as a part of the true Christian Church. By this public confession, Mr. N. has entirely justified, by his own admission, our charge that the Evangelicals wholeheartedly pay homage to indifferentism (indifference toward religion) — that is, that they attach no importance whatsoever to the distinction between pure and false doctrine. All that remains is for Mr. N. to add that there is also no difference between Christians, heathens, Jews, and Turks, so long as they only "strive after" and do not merely "creep after" sanctification (p. 56) — and then the foundation is complete for the great temple of union built over the whole world, toward whose construction the "Evangelical Protestants" (which now means, in plain German: such people as protest against the Gospel) are already supplying the preliminary labor.

But what does Mr. N. now say to the following admonitions: "Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned, and avoid them"? (Romans 16:17.) "For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch"? (Acts 20:29–30.) Or when the Lord says: "There shall arise false prophets, and shall deceive many. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect"? (Matthew 24:11, 23, 24.) Why does Mr. N. answer nothing to such passages, and others like them, which deal with the false church, and which we had cited? Why does he pass them by, as a fox passes by a spot where he scents a trap? Ah, ah! it is a very bad sign that Mr. N. loses not one word about this, and in his book conducts himself in no other way than as though those warnings against false doctrine and the sects thereby produced were, for the gentlemen Evangelicals, as good as absent from the Bible! Yet that was precisely the point at which Mr. N. should have proven his case, and shown either that there can be no false church or sect at all, or that at least the Evangelicals do not belong to one. But if they, for easily understandable reasons, pass over in silence the warnings against false prophets and their fellowship — warnings so frequent in the Bible — and try to keep them as much as possible out of their readers' sight,