OTHER ABBERRATIONS.
131. Reformed Tendencies.—In the Lutheran and Missionary, April 13, 1876, Dr. Seiss declared that it was an arrogance to make the doctrine that unbelievers as well as believers receive the true body and blood of Christ at the Lord's Table an article of faith. Nor was the Puritanic doctrine concerning the divine obligation of the Sunday, universally held in the General Synod, discarded by the synods and congregations constituting the General Council. The Reading Kirchenblatt, December 19, 1903, wrote: "On the second Sunday in Advent the Philadelphia Sabbath-Association celebrated its anniversary in the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Rev. C.L. Fry) in Philadelphia. Addresses were made by prominent Sabbath-workers. The leading speakers were the well-known John Wanamaker (Presbyterian) and the Methodist Rev. Dr. Mutchler…. Pastors of our own Synod foster un-Lutheran doctrine, and our superiors remain silent. Do they know of it? Certainly! All the dailies brought the news: first the invitations, then long reports. And what do our professors say to it? They keep silence…. But why do so many of our pastors hold a false, Puritan doctrine of the Sabbath? Because they have learned no better. If the students in our institutions would learn Luther's true doctrine concerning Sunday and sanctifying the holy-day, they could not, after becoming pastors of Lutheran congregations, take part in the fanatical doings of the sects. But, as it is, they go hand in hand with the sects, invite them to their churches, and permit them to present a false doctrine of the Sabbath to their Lutheran church-members." (L. u. W. 1904, 38; 1901, 85.) In his Catechist Dr. Gerberding teaches: "The law of one holy day of rest: its purpose is rest for the body and refreshment for the soul. All works of mercy and real necessity are allowed." In 1816 the District Synod of Ohio refused to discipline a pastor who did not believe that a child becomes a Christian, and is endowed with faith, in Baptism. (Luth. Witness 1918, 341. 356.) Rev. Brenner: "How long ago has it been considered a good policy in the General Council for its Mission Boards to agitate 'working together with the denominations about us for the best interest of our fellow-men,' and to 'agree on a program to lift the world to a higher level' by 'petitioning, demanding, and insisting upon special legislation for abolishing the saloon,' and doing a thousand other things which is the business, not of the Church, but of the State…. Individual synods have passed prohibition resolutions. Individual pastors have gone entirely too far in this matter. They are fanatical on the subject. Some have almost gone daft over the liquor problem." (L. u. W. 1917, 465.) The Home Missionary, December, 1916, declared that what the Lutheran Church teaches in reference to the separation of Church and State is "rot" and "fool" theology. (464.)
132. Qualified Confessional Subscription.—It was an ultrasymbolism, not countenanced by the Lutheran Church, when the Lutheran and Missionary maintained in its issue of September 27, 1867, that it was false, dangerous, and inconsistent to declare it the duty of Lutherans to compare for themselves the confessions received from the fathers with the Scriptures, and if found erring, to correct them; that this unbridled and radical theory, resting on the false assumption that private investigation of the Scriptures is the foundation of our faith, could not be proved by the Scriptures, and, reduced to practise, would endanger all purity of doctrine, and finally destroy all ecclesiastical communion. (L. u. W. 1867, 371.) In the Lutheran, March 5, 1908, however, Dr. H.E. Jacobs, defending the other extreme, wrote: "Some of the difficulties that men whom we esteem have urged against the acceptance of all our Confessions are due to a misunderstanding of what is involved in a confessional subscription. They conceive of the Confessions as an external law that binds the conscience to a mechanical acceptance of all [doctrinal matter] that may be found in these documents. What is properly confessional in these documents is their answers to the questions that rendered the framing of a confessional statement necessary…. We must study our Confessions as an organism, and appreciate the relation of each part to the other parts and to the whole Confession. Where the heart of each confession and of each doctrine confessed lies, must be the object of our search. To tear passages from their connection, or to represent isolated passages and merely incidental statements as having confessional authority is as unfair to the Confessions as it is to the Holy Scriptures." (Jacobs denies that all of the astronomical, geological, historical, and similar statements of the Bible are true.) The Lutheran World, commenting on Dr. Jacobs's statements, remarked: "But do not Dr. Jacobs's declarations sound very much like a quatenus rather than a quia mode of confessional subscription? For a long time we have not seen a theological statement that reminds us so much of the 'substantially correct' mode of subscription formerly in vogue in the General Synod. It certainly does not sound as stalwart as the General Synod's resolution in 1895, when she declared 'the Unaltered Augsburg Confession as throughout in perfect consistence with that Word'—namely, the Word of God." (L. u. W. 1908, 233.) In his Book of Concord, 1893, Dr. Jacobs declared that only the primary, not the secondary, arguments of the Confessions are involved in the subscription. "'The primary,' says Jacobs, 'are the dogmas set forth with the purpose of showing they are believed and taught by the Lutheran Church, the confutations of errors whereby it wished to declare that it contradicted them, and formulas of speech either expressly prescribed or proscribed.' The secondary are 'all those particulars introduced to confirm or illustrate the former,'" etc. (2, 13.)