is
ecclesiastical activity C.P. Krauth was a pronounced unionistic
theologian. He fully endorsed the indifferentistic principles of the
General Synod, whose champion he was till 1864. During the Platform
controversy Krauth was zealous to settle the difficulties on the
accustomed unionistic lines of the General Synod. He framed the
compromise resolutions of the Pittsburgh Synod in 1856 on the Definite
Platform. In the following year he wrote a series of articles for the
_Missionary_ in defense of the General Synod and its doctrinal basis. In
1858 he defended S.S. Schmucker against the charges of unsound doctrine,
preferred by J.A. Brown. In 1859 he offered the motion for the admission
of the liberal Melanchthon Synod. As late as 1864 he continued to defend
the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental articles in the
Augsburg Confession, and declared that the pledge referred to the
fundamental articles only, specifically excluding Article XI of the
Augsburg Confession from this pledge. In the _Lutheran and Missionary_,
April 7, 1864, Krauth declared: "Let the old formula stand, and let it
be defined." As late as 1868, three years after his public retraction of
former errors, and later, Krauth held that, exceptionally, non-Lutherans
might be admitted to Lutheran pulpits and altars. Dr. Singmaster writes:
"That the Definite Platform caused the secession of the Ministerium [of
Pennsylvania] some years later seems quite improbable, for the chief
promoter of the General Council, the Rev. C.P. Krauth, Jr., was at this
time an ardent defender of the General Synod. He made apologies for his
old teacher [S.S. Schmucker], and probably prevented his impeachment by
the Seminary Board when it was urged by the Rev. J.A. Brown." (_Dist.
Doctr_., 1914, 53.) In the _Lutheran and Missionary_, July 13, 1865,
Krauth published that remarkable declaration in which he, defining his
position as to fundamentals, retracted, as he put it, his former
"crudities and inconsistencies" on this point. Among his statements are
the following: "We do not feel ashamed to confess that time and
experience have modified our earlier views, or led us to abandon them,
if we have so modified or so forsaken them." "In Church and State the
last years have wrought changes, deep and thorough, in every thinking
man, and on no point more than this, that compromise of principle,
however specious, is immoral, and that, however guarded it may be, it is
perilous; a