# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 09 15_S5
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

[illegible — page-head ornament/running number]

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall not pass away, now nor ever."

Published by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 2.

St. Louis, Mo., September 20, 1845.

No. 2.

—

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at a subscription price of one dollar for out-of-town subscribers, half of which they must pay in advance, and they are responsible for the postage. — In St. Louis, each individual issue is sold for 5 cents.

(Submitted by Pastor O. Fürbringer.)

Rationalism and the Bible.
(Continued.)

That Holy Scripture, just like any other work handed down from antiquity, is entitled at the very least to an explanation based on language and history is self-evident; indeed, the very manner of its appearance, inasmuch as it presents itself as the word, as the letter, of the Creator and heavenly Ruler to his wayward human children, meant to lead them back to himself, to blessedness, to the Father's house, demands and requires all the more that one adhere to the plain interpretation of the words, since it can never be expected that one would arrive at their true sense by some other, more arbitrary way, when the question is whether I am to acknowledge the content as divine or not. Now, four things chiefly belong to a blameless interpreter of Scripture: first, that he know exactly the meaning of the words and expressions according to their particular usage, and understand their force and emphasis for the human mind; second, that he pay careful attention not only to the context of the biblical book he is reading, but also to the context, evident at a glance, of the holy Scriptures among themselves, from the first Book of Moses all the way to the Revelation of St. John — just as, with any other work, one attends to the author's system of doctrine (analogia doctrinae); third, that he also take note of the circumstances of the persons, of the time, and of the place; and finally, fourth, that he be able to recognize the falsity and abuse in other people's perverse interpretations. In this way one undoubtedly arrives at a more reliable result than if I approach the holy books with preconceived opinions, often out of blasphemous, godless profanity. — To be sure, these books also speak figuratively in many places; but that we are to understand them figuratively there is something that compels us to do — Scripture itself, which gives us the right guidance. From the comparison of so-called parallel passages I must come to understand the language of the holy writer, and thereby learn to determine where he is speaking literally. For when different expressions are used in different places for one and the same thing, the distinction between the literal and the figurative is quite easy; when the same word occurs in every passage referring to one thing, the expression is certainly not to be taken figuratively but literally; indeed, even then one must understand the expression literally when the same word is read of similar things that are closely connected with one another. All understanding of a figurative or metaphorical turn of phrase therefore arises either from the matter itself or from the usage of language. In all cases, then, where I am not directed otherwise by Scripture itself — especially in historical narratives that present themselves as such, and not as parables (which are, after all, charming pictures drawn from ordinary life, by means of which the hidden meaning of a doctrinal subject conceals itself) — I am compelled, if I do not wish to proceed against all the rules of sound interpretation, to accept the literal sense as it presents itself to me through the authors and their language, in the letter — unless here too a particular trope or figure of speech occurs.

Accordingly, the histories of Job, of Jonah, of the Fall, of the temptation of Jesus, etc., are by no means "parable-like or figurative narratives" (see Herr Münch's tract, p. 5), but facts, or historical realities, which must be grasped according to the analogy of Scripture indicated above,*) of which the analogy of faith is distinguished from it only as the particular is from the general. When God is ascribed eyes, ears, hands, repentance, etc. (see p. 4), the holy writers again just as firmly maintain the spaceless boundlessness and incomprehensible perfection of God, and thereby lead us to the most fitting representation of the divine essence and its attributes. If, indeed, in the tract of Herr M. (p. 5, above) the speaking and inspiration of God to the prophets and apostles is, on that occasion, to be falsely spiritualized away and rather denied altogether, then we must never lose sight of the fact that words are always signs of our thoughts, which are shaped according to the images of things impressed upon the soul from without. Since, then, the holy writers were to instruct us concerning mysteries hidden in the unfathomable God, these were, for the writers themselves, truths beyond utterance. They therefore had to be given, just as their own souls were given conceptions of heavenly things through earthly images, so also words placed in their mouths that could, to some degree, depict what was full of mystery. But these depths of God were revealed to them in connection with other truths, which reason, left to itself, could still discover —

*) That Scripture undeniably does not contradict itself (— whoever honestly seeks the truth and calls upon God for help in this will also be led by the Spirit of God into all truth —) is called the analogia Scripturae sacrae, that is, the relationship of kinship between its individual parts, their mutual harmony; from this it follows that the articles of faith drawn from Scripture can all the less contradict one another, and especially the fundamental articles, but rather explain and confirm one another all the more — the analogia fidei, that is, the concord of the articles of faith, the sum of the measure according to which they are bound together, called the similarity of faith (what in mathematics is proportion). But the chief sum of Christian doctrine — namely, the chief parts of the Christian faith, on which the analogy of faith necessarily depends, and which is gathered from the clearest and fullest passages of Holy Scripture — is called the rule of faith, and it is the standard according to which one is to believe and Scripture is to be interpreted. The third great theologian since the Reformation, John Gerhard, accordingly writes in his Loci Theologici II, 4, 61: "From the clear sayings of Scripture the rule of faith is gathered, according to which the explanation of the rest is to be undertaken; and even if we cannot attain the most proper, genuine sense of every passage, it is nevertheless sufficient to bring forward nothing against the analogy of faith in interpreting it"; and Dr. Luther himself admonishes us "not to depart from the plain words of Scripture, unless some article of faith compels us to understand it otherwise than the words read." From this rule of faith arises the secondary, normative authority of the symbolical books; wherefore the authors of the Formula of Concord place this heading before their treatises: "Of the Summary Concept, Basis, Rule, and Standard According to Which All Doctrine Is to Be Judged in Accordance with God's Word (juxta analogiam verb. Dei), and the Errors That Have Arisen Are to Be Christianly Explained and Decided." (Ed. Rechenberg, p. 256.)

On the historical accuracy of the account of the Flood, which Herr Münch denies on p. 6, compare Luther on Genesis, Lilienthal's Die gute Sache der Offenbarung, vol. V, Silberschlag's Geogenie, vol. 1, and, among more recent works, the writings of the celebrated natural scientist Hofrath von Schubert. It was Satan who first led our first parents away from the literal sense to an arbitrary interpretation and handling of the Word of God, Genesis 3. That is also why the rationalists cannot abide this account of the Fall.

[p. 15]