The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

touches the five points almost purely on their practical sides, and on them
arrays itself against Calvinism, rather by the negation of the inferences
which result logically from that system, than by express condemnation of
its fundamental theory in its abstract form. It need hardly be added that the
Lutheran Church holds firmly all the doctrines of the pure Catholic faith,
and of our general Protestant and Evangelical orthodoxy.
Rule of faith and Creed.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church regards the Word of God, the
canonical Scriptures, as the absolute and only law of faith and of life.
Whatever is undefined by its letter or its spirit, is the subject of Christian
liberty, and pertains not to the sphere of conscience, but to that of order; no
power may enjoin upon the Church as necessary what God has forbidden,
or has passed by in silence, as none may forbid her to hold what God has
enjoined upon her, or to practise what by His silence he has left to her
freedom. Just as firmly as she holds upon the one hand that the Bible is the
rule of faith, and not a confession of it, she holds, on the other hand, that
the creed is a confession of faith, and not the rule of it. The pure creeds are
simply the testimony of the true Church to the doctrines she holds; but as it
is the truth they confess, she, of necessity, regards those who reject the
truth confessed in the creed, as rejecting the truth set forth in the Word.
While, therefore, it is as true of the Lutheran Church as of any other, that
when she lays her hand upon the Bible, she gives the command,
“Believe!" and when she lays it on the confession, she puts the question,
"Do you believe?" 110 it is also true, that when a man replies "No," to the
question, she considers him as thereby giving evidence that he has not
obeyed the command. Believing most firmly that she has the truth, and
that her testimony to this truth is set forth in her creeds, she is distinguished
among Protestant churches by her fidelity to her Confession. "During the
time of unbelief, the State Church of Holland, the Church of the Palatinate,
and the Reformed Synod of Lower Saxony, renounced all confessions of
faith. No Lutheran Church, however, ventured to do this.” 111
110 See Goebel, 122, note.
111 Do., 128.