This is a continuation of a yesterday's post, written by my husband, about the importance of clinging to and teaching correct Lutheran doctrine.
If we seek to be a Biblical and confessional church, error must not be allowed to get even a foothold. This is especially true in a congregational polity such as we have in the AFLC where these battles will be fought, not in synods or districts, but in local congregations. That means that pastors and other church leaders must have a firm grounding in Scripture and in why the Lutheran church has the purest expression of the Gospel as found especially in the Augsburg Confession and the Large and Small Catechisms.
Krauth fought vigorously against the concerted attempts to water down Lutheranism in America by focusing attention on catechesis in the church. In other words, teaching what Luther and the generations following have always taught about such things as baptism, the Lord's supper, and salvation. We should vigorously teach correct doctrine, not just because it is Lutheran, but because Lutheran doctrine is Biblical doctrine.
I'll close with another Krauth quotation, one which sums this up better than I can. "No particular church has on its own showing, a right to existence, except as it believes itself to be the most perfect form of Christianity, the form, which of right should and will be universal. No church has a right to a part, which does not claim that it should belong to the whole."
For more about Lutheran doctrine see these posts:
Charles Porterfield Krauth on the Importance of Doctrine
Lutherans Explain the Trinity
A Reformation Reading List
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