Latest Defense of the State Church against the Free Church.
[by C. F. W. Walther]
At the end of the second main section of his defense of the conditions in the state church, Buchwald p. 14 poses the following question in a blocked text:
"Can I therefore not be sure of the forgiveness of my sins in the Lord's Supper because an unworthy person also partakes of the Lord's Supper? Must I, because unworthy enjoyment can and does occur, turn my back on my church, which has received me and educated me to this day?"
You can see from this that the Doctor philosophiae [Ph.D.] is sticking to his once popular tactic: he is changing the status controversiae. For he knows quite well that no truly Lutheran Free Church member will answer his question in the affirmative, and yet he presents himself as if, as a faithful guardian of his Zion, he had to take the negative answer to his question under his wing. He probably knew no other way to save his glorious state church; and that was the "good purpose" of his little book! —
In the last section, on pp. 14-16, Buchwald defends the fusion of church and state that took place in his state church. Here we encounter a piece of theological darkness that we otherwise only find in Richard Rothe [Wikipedia] and the Prussian Union theologians. There is no room here to show his theory of the relationship of the church to the state in all its nakedness. Nor is it necessary. First of all, Pastor Willkomm has expressly declared that if the demand for doctrinal and communion discipline had been complied with in the state church, which is intertwined with the state, there would have been no separation because of the constitution, although they, the Free Church, would prefer the Free Church constitution. The question of whether it would be better and more in keeping with the Word of God and our church Confessions if the church and state were separated from each other as far as the government of both is concerned, is not, on the other hand, of such a nature that one would say yes only on the one side and no only on the other, since all preachers of the state church who are even somewhat concerned about Joseph's damage [?] sigh over the yoke of the state, which is why the editor of the "Sächsisches Kirchen- und Schulblatt" (Saxon Church and School Gazette) in the number of the same of April 1 expressly says that, although Buchwald's writing is "on the whole <page 143> an excellent, quick-witted 1) answer", "one may perhaps disagree with individual passages in the writing, e.g. on the relationship between church and state". Finally, we have already dealt with this question in detail on other occasions, partly in our journals and partly at our synod assemblies, so that we may well refer our readers to them. There are only two things we would like to mention briefly.
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1) Buchwald's opus is certainly quick-witted, but it is a pity that it always misses the mark, only hits an enemy of its own making and leaves its own opponent unharmed or turns against God's Word and the Confession itself.
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