17. Features of the Constitution.—The charge of Romanism, made especially by the Tennessee Synod against the General Synod, was not without foundation. The Planentwurf of 1819 provides: "Until, however, the formal permission and consent has been granted by the General Synod, no new established body shall be recognized among us as a ministerium, and no ordination performed by it as valid." This section was omitted in the constitution adopted 1820. The Planentwurf of 1819 furthermore provides: "The General Synod has the exclusive right, with the consent of a majority of the special synods, to introduce new books for general public use of the churches, as well as to make emendations in the liturgy." (Graebner, Geschichte, 1, 691 f.) This section was embodied in the constitution of 1820. According to Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution adopted in 1820, the General Synod reserves for itself the right of approving all such books and writings "as a catechism, form of liturgy, collection of hymns, or confession of faith," proposed for the use of the church. "No synod," the section prescribes, "and no ministerium connected with the General Synod shall therefore publish for public use any new book or writing of the kind mentioned without previously having submitted a complete copy to the General Synod, and heard her opinion, or criticism, or advice in the matter. Whenever the General Synod shall deem it proper, they may propose to the special synods and ministeriums new books or writings of the kind mentioned above for general or special public use. The special synods and ministeriums also shall duly heed a proposal of this kind, and if any one of them should not consider such a proposal appropriate, it is to be hoped that the reasons will be given to the next General Synod, in order that they may be entered in the minutes of the General Synod." (Proceedings, 1829, 51.) In the amended constitution of 1835, Article III, Section 2, eliminating the objectionable features, reads as follows: "Whenever the General Synod shall deem it proper or necessary, they may propose to the special synods or ministeriums new books or writings, such as catechisms, forms of liturgy, collections of hymns for general or special public use in the church. Every proposal of this kind the several or respective synods may duly consider; and if they, or any of them, shall be of opinion that the said book or books, writing or writings, will not conduce in the end proposed, they may reject them, and adopt such liturgical books as they may think proper." (Proceedings, 1839, 48.) The first report to the General Synod on the state of the Gettysburg Seminary begins as follows: "In presenting to the Supreme Judicatory of the Lutheran Church in America an account of the progress of the institution so recently founded," etc. (Proceedings, 1827, 13.) The constitution of 1829, framed and adopted for and recommended to the District Synods, provides for the expulsion and punishment of congregations that refuse to submit to the resolutions of Synod as follows: "If a congregation heretofore connected with a Synod should refuse to obey the resolutions of that Synod or the precepts of this formula [constitution], it shall be excluded from the connection with that synod as long as its disobedience lasts, and without special permission from the president neither any other synod nor a Lutheran pastor or candidate shall serve her." (Proceedings, 1829, 30.)
18. Doctrinal Features.—The Planentwurf states: "The General Synod has no power to make or demand any changes whatever in the doctrines of faith adopted heretofore among us." In the constitution of 1820, Art. III, Sect. 2, this was amended as follows: "But no General Synod shall be allowed . . . to introduce such alterations in matters appertaining to the faith, or to the mode of publishing the Gospel of Jesus Christ (the Son of God and ground of our faith and hope), as might in any way tend to burden the consciences of the brethren in Christ." (1829, 51; 1839, 48.) Interpreted historically, this section was evidently intended to make the General Synod safe, not indeed for loyal Lutheranism, but, on the one hand, for evangelicalism over against Unitarianism and, on the other hand, for confessional indifferentism and doctrinal freedom with respect to the distinctive doctrines of the Evangelical denominations. A. Spaeth remarks: "The Radicals, or New-measure men, who in their generation had not heard the Gospel preached and the faith of the Church taught according to the pure Confession of Augsburg, might look upon any attempt to go back to that Confession and to stand by it as an 'alteration, and tending to burden their consciences.'" (1, 334.) It was to serve the same indifferentistic purpose when Article III, Section 5, declares: "The General Synod may give advice or opinion when complaints shall be brought before them by whole synods, or congregations, or individual ministers concerning doctrine or discipline. The General Synod shall, however, be extremely careful that the consciences of the ministers be not burdened with human laws, and that no one be oppressed by reason of differences of opinion on non-fundamental doctrines." (1829, 52; 1839, 49.) The original reading of this section, as adopted 1820, omits the clause "on non-fundamental doctrines" found in the constitution published in the minutes of 1829, thus granting absolute doctrinal freedom. (Graebner, 708.) For the words "human laws" the amended constitution of 1835 substitutes "human inventions, laws, or devices." (1839, 49.) Dr. Spaeth: "As the bulk of the confessional writings of the Lutheran Church was classified by the leaders [Schmucker, Kurtz, etc.] with 'human inventions, laws, and devices' or, at the very best, with 'non-fundamental doctrines,' any pastor or professor might feel perfectly safe in throwing overboard the mass of these symbolical books and their contents without fear of having to answer for it." (334.) Article III, Section 8, evidently intended to satisfy the craving for a closer union with the Reformed and other Evangelical bodies, reads as follows: "The General Synod shall . . . be sedulously and incessantly regardful of the circumstances of the times, and of every casual rise and progress of unity of sentiment among Christians in general, in order that the blessed opportunities to promote concord and unity and the interests of the Redeemer's Kingdom may not pass by neglected and unavailing." (1839, 50; 1829, 53.)— According to Article III, Section 2, quoted in the preceding paragraph, the General Synod claimed the right to propose to the special synods not only catechisms, forms of liturgy, and collections of hymns, but also a confession of faith. Appealing to this section, S. S. Schmucker, in 1855, claimed that he was within his constitutional rights in urging the General Synod to substitute the Definite Platform for the Augsburg Confession. Spaeth: "It was, with a good show of justice, claimed by the American Lutheran side in the General Synod that the very constitution of the body entitled it to make a new revision even of the Augsburg Confession!" (335.) It was in keeping with these principles as well as the conditions then prevailing in the Lutheran synods that the constitution adopted at Hagerstown contained no confessional basis whatever, not even a mere reference to the Augsburg Confession. Shober, probably in order to obviate the charges of the Tennessee Synod, made an effort to have a recognition of the Augsburg Confession incorporated in the constitution, but failed. That the omission was intentional is apparent also from the fact that the General Synod maintained its silence in spite of the vigorous protests of the Tennessee Synod and her refusal to join the general body, especially for the reason that neither the Bible nor the Augsburg Confession was mentioned in its Constitution. "With this constitution before him," says Spaeth, "the editor of the Lutheran Observer, Dr. Benjamin Kurtz, in Baltimore, was right in stating the case after this manner (Lutheran Observer, April 16, 1852): 'We admit that the General Synod never formally or by express resolution repudiated or abandoned the doctrinal basis (as laid down in the Augsburg Confession and the Catechism of Luther).' But did it ever either formally or tacitly profess belief in that basis? What necessity is there for a body formally to repudiate or abandon what it never received or adopted? It is a notorious fact that the symbolic basis had been abandoned in the Church, to a very great extent, before the General Synod was called into existence, and at its organisation special pains were taken to guard against all possibility of its future imposition upon the Church. In defining the doctrinal position of the General Synod, the manifest intention was to give to each other, and to establish for posterity, a pledge that the doctrinal basis should never be allowed to interfere with their consciences." (335f.)
EVALUATION.
19. Serving, in a Way, the Lutheran Church.—Apart from the name there was nothing of genuine Lutheranism in the constitution of the General Synod. "The name," said Dr. Mann in 1855, "is the most important characteristic of the General Synod." "Hatte man," he continues, "dem Leib die Knochen und die Eingeweide und das Herz herausgenommen, so konnte man in den leeren Balg hineinschieben, was man wollte, und der Name Lutherisch blieb ja." In a letter dated April 15, 1857, he said of the General Synod: "Wer kann dieses mark- und kraftlose Ding, dieses verwaschene, um jeden individuellen Zug gekommene Gesicht der lutherischen Kirche gerne sehen?" (Spaeth, W. J. Mann, 174. 180.) C. P. Krauth declared in 1845: "It cannot be denied that the name Lutherans in this country simply states an historical fact without giving in any case a sure index to the views, feelings, or practises of those who bear it." (Spaeth, C. P. Krauth, 1, 119.) Yet, even the mere name, the mere empty skin of Luther, was not without some value. It served as a constant reminder of the lost crown, and kept numerous Lutherans from joining the sects. The union of Lutherans into a general body gave a standing to the Lutheran Church among the denominations, and thus, in a way, strengthened the Lutheran consciousness. It diminished the threatening danger of a merger with the Reformed in Pennsylvania and with the Episcopalians and Presbyterians in North Carolina. And by inserting the confession of "Jesus Christ as the Son of God and ground of our faith and hope" into its constitution, the General Synod may also have acted as a check on the inroads of Socinianism. Furthermore, the General Synod created a certain interest in the Lutheran Church of America abroad, especially in Germany, and roused her energies at home. In 1825 the General Synod established a theological seminary at Gettysburg, Samuel S. Schmucker being its first professor, with a free dwelling and a salary of $500 for the first year. In the same year it was "resolved that an agent be sent to Europe without delay, in order to receive contributions in moneys and in books for the use of the Seminary; and that our beloved and honored colleague Mr. Benjamin Kurtz be such agent." (8.) The minutes of 1827 report that Kurtz had collected $12,000. (27.) In 1837 Schmucker made a similar tour in America, collecting from Congregationalists and others $14,917 for the Seminary Fund. Only if Gettysburg will nourish, said I. Oswald in the Seminary Report of 1837, "we can expect that the Gospel-trumpet will be blown from the Wittenberg in America with the result that the Germans who have settled in the various States and are scattered in our extended countries (some of whom are famishing for lack of knowledge, and by reason of circumstances are outcasts of the church) will hear and come to adore the Lord in His holy mountain." (1837, 61.) In every direction the General Synod developed a lively activity. In 1842, the year of the Muhlenberg centennial jubilee, the General Synod made strenuous efforts to raise a fund of $150,000 for its charitable institutions. (1841, 53 ff.) "What is this sum," it was said, "for a church numbering 100,000 members and more than 25,000 families? It amounts to only $1.50 for each member, and not even $10 for every family!" In 1857 the General Synod resolved: "That the churches in connection with the General Synod be recommended to observe our regular ecclesiastical festivals in commemoration of the fundamental facts of our religion, viz.: Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension Day, and Whitsunday, in the hope and persuasion that by the divine blessing they will be found to be, as they have often proved, occasions of reviving to our congregations." (32.) In 1866 the resolution was added: "That it be recommended to the ministers and churches in our connection to celebrate the thirty-first of October in each year in commemoration of the commencement of the Reformation." (42.) In 1879, the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Luther's Catechism, the General Synod resolved that we "reaffirm our appreciation of Luther's Smaller Catechism as the best manual of instruction preparatory to church-membership." (39.) In the same year the resolution was adopted: "That in view of the fact that 1880 will be the semicentennial of the Augsburg Confession, every pastor of the General Synod be requested to preach on that subject on or near the twenty-fifth of June in that year." (40.) The General Synod organized the "Parent Educational Society" for assisting ministerial students; the "Central Missionary Society" for domestic missions; the "Foreign Mission Society" for work in India; and established a "Pastors' Fund," a book company, etc. The General Synod was always on the alert to draw Lutherans in all parts of the country into her circles. Thus, e.g., when, in 1839, the Saxons had arrived in Missouri, the General Synod passed the resolutions: "1. That a special committee be appointed to open a correspondence with the companies of Lutherans recently arrived in the United States from Germany, and represented by Dr. Charles Vehse and others, and the Rev. Mr. Stephan; 2. that the committee write in the name of the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States, giving a sketch of the history and objects of this body, with any other intelligence which they may think it important to communicate, and requesting of Dr. Vehse and the Rev. Mr. Stephan and their respective associates any information which they may think proper to make relative to their own history, their present situation, and their future prospects." (19.)
20. Exaggerated Estimates.—After what has already been said, the following evaluations of the General Synod will be received with a grain of salt. In the "Pastoral Letter" of the General Synod, written in 1831 by David F. Schaeffer, we read: "No church had to contend with so great difficulties as we have overcome by the help of God. As the English language is the language of our fortunate country, the untiring endeavors of our fathers to retain the knowledge of the German language among the youth were futile. Many who spoke German were not able to read this language. The consequences of this state of affairs were pitiable. The religious books of the parents were of no use, and in many cases true piety was gradually lost as well as the love for our Zion. In the mean time some Christian denominations who held their service in the English language were ardently endeavoring to promote the interest of religion and the growth of their churches. But the God of an Arndt, Spener, Francke, and of many other renowned founders and benefactors of our Church still lives. In this most critical moment, when our Church, which is distinguished for the simplicity of its service, the purity of its doctrines, and the excellency of its church-discipline, was about to sink into oblivion, just at this important moment the General Synod was brought into existence, and through this body the Theological Seminary and College grew up which now are in efficient operation and in a flourishing condition. Now our children may be instructed in all the different branches of the sciences by pious and well-trained teachers of our faith. Now, by our Seminary, the Church may be supplied with learned and pious preachers, who are able to instruct their hearers in both languages. And from this institute they will always go forth as brethren, inspired by the same spirit and led by the same principles." (Proceedings, 1831,22.) In 1857, Krauth, Jr., defending the General Synod, said: "She is the offspring of a reviving Lutheranism, born in the dawn that followed the night which fell upon our Church in this land, when the patriarchal luminaries of her early history had set on earth to rise in heaven. When the General Synod came into being, Rationalism still was in the ascendant in Europe. The names of Gabler and Bretschneider, of Wegscheider and Roehr, were names which had been held high in honor in the Lutheran Church in Germany. That Church had become what such men might have been expected to make her. Where their influence prevailed, she had become rotten in doctrine, destitute not only of the power of godliness, but even of the decencies of its forms, and ready, at the command of a royal devotee of Dagon, for a conjunction which she once would have regarded as the adding of a scaly tail and fishy fin to the fair bust of woman; but the bust was as fishy as the tail now, and they were frozen into happy conjunction. But this was not the Lutheranism which the General Synod desired to plant and perpetuate in the New World. When the Lutheran Church looked around her in her adopted land, she saw ignorance of her principles and prejudices of every hue prevailing against her. When she looked to her native land, all was thick darkness there. What was there on this side of the Atlantic or beyond it to inspire hope? Why not abandon the experiment as a thing foregone, and yield to the process of absorption into surrounding sects? It was at this crisis that the life of the Church displayed itself in the formation of the General Synod. The formation was a great act of faith, made, as the framers of her Constitution sublimely express it, in reliance 'upon God our Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit in the Word of God.' The framers of that Constitution should be as dear to us as Lutherans as the framers of our Federal Constitution are to us as Americans. When the General Synod became completely organized by the acknowledgment of the doctrinal Articles of the Augsburg Confession as a standard of faith, it was the only voluntary body on earth pretending to embrace a nation as its territory, and bearing a Lutheran name, in which the fundamental doctrines of Lutheranism were the basis of union. The General Synod was a declaration, on the part of the Lutheran Church in America, that she had no intention of dying or moving, that she liked this Western World and meant to live here. And she has lived and waxed stronger and stronger, and the General Synod has been a mighty agent in sustaining and extending her beneficent work, and is destined to see a future which shall eclipse all her glory in the past. Heaven pity the fate of the man who looks upon the General Synod as having been a curse to the Church, or an inefficient worker in it—who imagines that Lutheranism would be stronger if the General Synod were weaker, or that truth would be reared upon the ruins of what she has been patiently laboring for nearly forty years to build." (Spaeth, 1, 383.)
21. Spaeth, and Jacobs on the General Synod.—After referring to the unionistic, rationalistic, and Socinian degeneration in the Pennsylvania and New York Ministeriums prior to the organization of the General Synod, A. Spaeth continues: "With this powerful influx of rationalism, and with the tendency of the remaining positive elements of our Church to assimilate and unite themselves with the surrounding 'Evangelical Denominations,' there was evident danger for the Lutheran Church in America of losing her historical connection with the fathers, and surrendering the distinctive features for which they contended, and as a religious society becoming simply a member of the Reformed family. At this point of threatening disintegration and dilapidation, the first steps were taken toward the establishment of the General Synod, which was certainly an honest effort to improve the state of affairs, to gather the scattered members of our Lutheran Church, and to preserve her as such on this Western Continent. Viewed in this light, the formation of the General Synod was 'an offspring of reviving Lutheranism,' as Dr. Krauth called it. But the difficulty and danger arose from the fact that two conflicting and irreconcilable elements tried to unite in it with a sort of compromise, the one, latitudinarian, un-Lutheran, unwilling or unable to prize the treasures of the Mother Church of the Reformation, and overanxious to exchange them for Puritan legalism and Methodistic 'new measures'; the other, conservative, holding on to the inheritance of the fathers, and hoping almost against hope to bring the Church back to their good foundation. If the former element succeeded in keeping out of the General Synod's original constitution any direct and outspoken reference to the historic confession of the Lutheran Church, the latter might have thought themselves secure in the provision which denied to the General Synod the power 'to make or demand any alteration whatever in the doctrines hitherto received by us.' But the first-named party, at the outset, had the popular sympathy on its side; it was the 'American' over against the 'foreigner'; it was aggressive, and had the advantage of having able and determined leaders, and thus, during the first twenty-five years of the General Synod's history, easily ruled the day, while the Lutheran consciousness of the second party slowly awoke from its slumbers, and those that were to be its leaders on the day of battle were quietly maturing from boyhood into manhood." (1, 320.) H. E. Jacobs, endeavoring to view the origin of the General Synod in its historical context, writes: "The General Synod must be regarded as a very important forward movement, and its influence as beneficial. It necessarily was not without the weaknesses that characterized the Lutheran Church in America at that time. One who ignores the entire historical development will find much to criticize and condemn, when examined from the standpoint of what is demanded by consistency with accurate theological definitions and clear conceptions of church polity. But he will find just as much that incurs the same judgment in the proceedings of the synods that united to form it. The faults peculiar to each synod were lost, while only the common faults of them all remained. The General Synod was a protest against the Socinianizing tendency in New York and the schemes of a union with the Reformed in Pennsylvania and with the Episcopalians in North Carolina. It stood for the independent existence of the Lutheran Church in America, and the clear and unequivocal confession of a positive faith. It failed, as its founders in the several synods had failed, in specifically determining the contents of this faith. It was not ready yet, as these synods were not ready, to return to the foundations laid by Muhlenberg and his associates, and from which there had been a general recession from twenty-five to thirty years before. Lament defects as we may, the General Synod saved the Church, as it became anglicized, from the calamity of the type of doctrine which within the New York Ministerium had been introduced into the English language." (History, 361 f.)
DOCTRINAL BASIS.
22. First Statement on Doctrinal Position.—The "Address of the General Synod to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States" of 1823 contains the following reference to the doctrinal attitude of the General Synod: "An acquaintance with the history of the Christian Church in the past ages, as well as a knowledge of her present condition throughout the world, establishes the fact that mankind are prone on this subject to fall into contrary extremes; some maintaining that if our external conduct be correct, it matters not what we believe, and others contending that as long as our creed is sound, the Church has little to do with private deportment. But the principle which the General Synod conceive to be taught in Scripture, and which they would recommend to the Church at large, is this, that we should view with charity, and treat with forbearance, those who have fallen into an aberration of non-fundamental importance either from the faith or the practise of the Bible and the Augsburg Confession; and on the other hand, that we are bound 'not to eat with a fornicator, or a covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner,' but to 'put away from among us such wicked persons,' and that 'a man that is an heretic,' who denies a fundamental doctrine, a doctrine essential to the Christian scheme, we are in like manner bound 'after the first and second admonition to reject.'" (14.) A fair analysis of this document yields the propositions: The General Synod receives the Bible and the Augsburg Confession. It distinguishes between fundamental and non-fundamental doctrines and aberrations from both. It holds that some of the doctrines of the Bible are not fundamental. It also holds that some of the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession are not fundamental. It enumerates neither the doctrines of the Bible nor of the Augsburg Confession regarded as non-fundamental. It defines fundamental doctrines as doctrines essential to the Christian scheme, hence, non-fundamental doctrines as not essential to the Christian scheme. Indirectly it admits that a doctrine essential to the Lutheran scheme is not necessarily a fundamental doctrine or a doctrine essential to the Christian scheme. It admits the inference that not all of the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession are essential to the Lutheran scheme. It denies that all the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession are essential to the Christian scheme. It holds that non-fundamental aberrations from the Christian scheme are not subject to church discipline. It also teaches that denial of some of the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession is not a matter of church discipline. In brief, the General Synod, according to the Address of 1823, held that there are errors subject to discipline, while others are not, but defined and enumerated neither the former nor the latter. It failed to draw a line of demarcation between the doctrines which may, and which may not, be denied with impunity. Indeed, the Constitution adopted 1820 speaks of "Jesus Christ as the Son of God and ground of our faith and hope." (Art. III, Sec. 2.) Possibly, however, the General Synod was not ready in 1823 to enforce the ban on Socinianism. That the sentiment against it was hardly as pronounced as is frequently assumed, appears also from the fact that the General Synod, in 1825, appointed a committee to prepare a hymn-book, liturgy, and a collection of prayers, in the English language, "adhering particularly to the New York Hymn-Book and German Liturgy of Pennsylvania as their guides." (11.) The New York Hymn-Book referred to was Quitman's and the Pennsylvania Liturgy the one of 1818, both tainted with rationalism. In the resolutions, however, adopted in the same year with respect to the Gettysburg Seminary, Jesus is confessed as "God over all, blessed forever." (5.) And the Pastoral Letter of 1829 declares that the Church is in need of a confession of faith in order to protect herself against the Socinians. (17.)
23. Gettysburg Subscription Limited.—At the time of organization of the General Synod, Samuel S. Schmucker and F. C. Schaeffer of New York apparently occupied a relatively advanced confessional position. According to a letter of Schmucker, dated Princeton, February 20, 1820, they had promised each other to labor with all earnestness that the Augsburg Confession should be raised again from the dust, and that every one subscribe to its twenty-one articles, and declare before God, by his subscription, that they agree with the Bible, not quatenus, but quia. (Singmaster, Dist. Doct., 44.) In 1826 Schmucker wrote, in defense of the Lutheran doctrine of the Person of Christ: "Only lack of insight and of clearness of intellect can mislead an honest opponent to impute a contradiction to the doctrine when it denies that the glorified body of Christ has the properties and is subjected to the laws which we call properties and laws of matter." (Lutheraner, April 12, 1852.) When, in 1825, the statutes for the government of the Seminary at Gettysburg were adopted, it was at the instance of Schmucker, the first chairman of the faculty and for nearly forty years a teacher at the Seminary, that the General Synod declared "that in this Seminary shall be taught in the German and English languages, the fundamental doctrines of the sacred Scriptures as contained in the Augsburg Confession of Faith," and that any professor may be removed "on account of error fundamental doctrines, immorality," etc. (5.) Article I, Section 2, of the Constitution of the Seminary, drawn up Schmucker and adopted by Synod, states that the Seminary is designed "to provide our churches with pastors who sincerely believe, and cordially approve of, the doctrines of the Holy Scriptures as they are fundamentally taught in the Augsburg Confession." Another article requires every professor-elect to publicly pronounce and subscribe the following declaration: "I believe the Augsburg Confession and the Catechisms of Luther to be a summary and just exhibition of the fundamental doctrines of the Word of God." And when Schmucker, September 5, 1826, was inducted into the "professorship Christian theology," D. F. Schaeffer, who delivered the charge, said: "As the Lord has signally favored our beloved Church, as her tenets are Biblical, and her veriest enemies cannot point out an important error in her articles of faith, no more than could the enemies of the truth at the Diet of Worms prove the books of the immortal Reformer erroneous, therefore the Church which entrusts you with the preparation and formation of her pastors, demands of you (and in her behalf I solemnly charge you) to establish all students confided to your care in that faith which distinguishes our Church from others. If any should object to such faith, or any part of it, or refuse to be convinced of the excellence of our discipline, they have their choice to unite with such of our Christian brethren whose particular views in matters of faith and discipline may suit them better. I hold it, however, as indispensable for the peace and welfare of a Church that unity of sentiment should prevail upon all important matters of faith and discipline among its pastors. Hence I charge you to exert yourself in convincing our students that the Augsburg Confusion is a safe directory to determine upon matters of faith declared in the Lamb's book." (Spaeth, 1, 336.) Accordingly Dr. Jacobs interprets the Gettysburg pledge as follows: "It was a pledge to a distinctively Lutheran position. Such an affirmation could never have been enforced in the proposed Lutheran-Reformed seminary which the ministerium [of Pennsylvania] had had in mind. It could not have been exacted of those who believed the confession to be in error on those points which divide the Lutherans from the Reformed. In justice, however, to those who might seem to have been acting a false part in making this affirmation while they believed the confession to contain errors, it must be stated, on the other hand, that the full force of the declaration was not so clearly apparent in a period directly following one when, as we have seen, the greatest living theologian of the Lutheran Church in America could distinguish no difference between the Augsburg Confession and the formularies of the Church of England." This interpretation appears to be in agreement with the solemn charge of Schaeffer, according to which the pledge refers to that faith which distinguishes our Church from others." However, Schmucker and his successors viewed the phrase "fundamental doctrines of the Word of God" as a restriction, limiting the subscription to the doctrines confessed by all evangelical denominations, thus eliminating from the pledge distinctive Lutheran doctrines. And the historical correctness of this view has never been satisfactorily refuted. Schmucker declared time and again: "The Augsburg Confession was not to be followed unconditionally; its binding force was expressly limited to the fundamentals. The professor's oath expressly limits our pledge to the Augsburg Confession to the fundamental doctrines of the Scriptures." He wrote: "After the abandonment of the General Synod, in 1823, by the Synods of Pennsylvania and New York, that body was chiefly sustained by the zeal and activity of younger men, in connection with a few beloved fathers who remained with us. At the very next meeting of the General Synod, in 1825, I had the pleasure, as well as honor, to introduce, for the first time in the history of that body, the recognition of the Augsburg Confession. At that time there were none amongst the friends of the General Synod who did not reject several tenets of the Augsburg Confession, such as private confession and absolution, as we all still do. Accordingly, the assent to the Augsburg Confession, expressed in the statutes for the Theological Seminary presented by me, was a qualified one; it should and was intended to bind only to the fundamentals of the Scriptures as taught in the Augsburg Confession. The language was well understood then, and was deemed clear and satisfactory; it has always been interpreted in the same way since, except by some, of late, whose predilections would incline them to find in it, if possible, some support for their more rigidly symbolic views." (Spaeth, 1, 338.) In the Evangelical Review, April, 1851, Schmucker declared: The General Synod established her theological seminary "not for the purpose of teaching the symbolic system of the sixteenth century,—for her leading members had all relinquished some of its features,—but, as her Constitution, adopted in 1825, explicitly declares, to prepare men to teach, not all the doctrines or aspects of doctrine in the Augsburg Confession, but the 'fundamental doctrines'; and not those aspects of doctrine which might be considered fundamental peculiarities of that Confession, but 'the fundamental doctrines of the Scriptures' those aspects of doctrine which Christians generally regard as fundamental truths of the Word of God. The symbolical books of the General Synod and the seminary at Gettysburg are the Bible and the Augsburg Confession, as a substantially correct exhibition of the fundamental truths of the Bible. To this the professorial oath of office in the seminary adds a similar fundamental assent to the two Catechisms of Luther. For the professors to inculcate on their students the obsolete views of the old Lutherans contained in the former symbols of the Church in some parts of Germany, such as exorcism, the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, private confession, baptismal regeneration, immersion in baptism, as taught in Luther's Larger Catechism, etc., would be to betray the confidence of those who elected them to office, and to defeat the design of the institution." (Spaeth, 1, 338 f.)
24. Doctrinal Statements from 1829 to 1835.—The Pastoral Letter of the convention of the General Synod in Hagerstown (Haegerstadt), 1829, contains the following statements: The object of the General Synod is not to introduce absolute uniformity also in non-essential doctrines; such a unity did not exist in the early Christian congregations; it is sufficient to adhere to the fundamental tenets of the Reformation; every teacher and layman is entitled to use his Bible without being bound by any human confessions; the General Synod merely demands acceptance of the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel as taught in the Augsburg Confession, and leaves everything else unlimited; but she does not agree with those who absolutely reject all confessions of faith; the Church is in need of a confession in order to protect herself against the Socinians; most of the confessions, however, have lost themselves into minute (spitzfindige) and doubtful dogmas, and thus encouraged the spirit of superstition and schism, and naturally must continue to do so, the longer, the more; in every one of the different orthodox [evangelical] denominations, frequently, indeed, in the same congregation, there are persons who differ as much in their opinions as the confession of their Church differs from that of other Churches; accordingly, there is no reason why synods bearing the name of Luther should not unite with the General Synod, though differing in their views as to non-fundamentals; the General Synod has no power to call members of individual synods to account for aberrations in doctrine or life; the most it can do is to admonish such a synod to investigate the matter; however, a synod refusing to demand orthodoxy in fundamentals can be expelled from the General Synod; in brief, the four synods now constituting the General Body are so many independent ecclesiastical jurisdictions, united only in order to promote brotherly love, and to combine their forces in the execution of such things as are of general benefit, and which no individual synod could perform. (16.) "The General Synod therefore," says the letter of 1829, "only demands of those who are connected with her that they hold the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel as they are taught in the Augsburg Confession, and leaves all other things unlimited." "Why, then," the letter continues, "should not all those synods of our country that bear the name of our immortal Luther, and have always yet retained the chief traits of this sublime Reformer, be united by the tender bond of the General Synod, notwithstanding the different opinions which they may entertain in; some points which do not touch the foundation of the Augsburg Confession?" (16.) It was in accordance with the sentiments expressed in this letter when the General Synod at the same convention in Hagerstown adopted for its district synods a constitution with a form of licensure and ordination containing the questions: "Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God and the only infallible rule of faith and practise?" "Do you believe that the fundamental doctrines of the Holy Scriptures are taught in a manner substantially correct (wesentlich richtig) in the doctrinal articles of the Augsburg Confession?" (43. 45.) Prior to 1864 the General Synod as such, however, was not in any shape or manner committed to the Augsburg Confession constitutionally. In 1835, when the Constitution was amended, Synod as such remained non-committal. The doctrinal basis then adopted and embodied in the Constitution does not mention the Augsburg Confession. It reads as follows: "All regularly constituted Lutheran synods holding the fundamental doctrines of the Bible as taught by our Church, not now in connection with the General Synod, may at any time become associated with it by adopting this Constitution and sending delegates to its convention, according to the ratio specified in Art. II." (Proceedings 1839, 49.) Evidently this deliverance, though marking an advance over the Constitution of 1820, intentionally omits a direct reference to the Augustana. Till 1864, then, the exact constitutional basis of the General Synod as such was not the Augsburg Confession, but the indefinite phrase: "the fundamental doctrines of the Bible as taught by our Church." All other confessional deliverances of the General Synod till 1864 may be summarized as follows: The fundamental doctrines of the Bible, i.e., the doctrines in which all evangelical (non-Socinian) Christians agree, are taught in a manner substantially correct in the doctrinal articles of the Augsburg Confession.