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Suggested Principles For A Hermeneutics Of The Lutheran Symbols, Arthur Carl Piepkorn

Concordia Theological Monthly

The Symbols have various intended uses. They can serve as a legal club, in order to enforce conformity with their teaching by a clergyman or instructor who has solemnly committed himself to teach and practice according to them, under pain of dismissal for having obtained money or other emoluments under false pretenses. But this is certainly an opus alienum. Their proper office includes serving as a norm of teaching and of administering Sacraments, to which an individual solemnly and voluntarily committed to them strives conscientiously to conform; as a Symbol, that is, an identification among Lutherans, since they are the …