# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 10 13_S15
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

just as little can it be brought against the Formula of Concord, which does nothing other than execute the Lord's verdict in a ministerial capacity. In this sense every orthodox Christian may, indeed must, reject all false doctrines and teachers and separate himself from them, partly to honor the truth of God, partly out of love for his neighbor, in order to warn him not to regard false doctrine as a harmless, indifferent thing, and false teachers as harmless people.

7. But we hasten to a close and will only point out further the worth and significance of the Formula of Concord for our time. However readily we grant that in language, expression, and form it is a human work, just as decisively do we maintain that its content is the one, unchangeable truth of God, and that, just as God's Word is unalterable, so too is the Formula of Concord in its content. Or has anyone yet shown, with good reason, that it asserts anything without or against God's Word? Must not even many of its opponents grant it the honor of being scriptural, even if they are dismayed by the sharp-edged sword it wields? We Lutherans are, to be sure, not so narrow-minded as Dr. Schaff takes us to be, as though apart from the Formula of Concord we recognized no pure doctrine, no true Christianity; he thus makes a very fruitless foray against the poor Lutherans, who know quite well that pure doctrine and true Christianity existed before the Formula of Concord came into being, and certainly still exist among many without a formal acceptance of it; but we are indeed not ashamed to maintain that where the articles of faith set forth and expressed in it are consciously rejected, there neither pure doctrine nor true Christianity is or can be present. Now if, two hundred and sixty-five years ago, eight thousand ministers of the Gospel — among them many men distinguished by learning and piety — had no hesitation in testifying by their signatures to their agreement with the Formula of Concord, should not we, their children, gladly gather once more around this banner, in order thereby also to attest the unity of our faith with that of our believing fathers? Or have the seductive doctrines that once made the Formula of Concord necessary died out in our century? Does not the Lutheran Church now have in its midst a multitude of Pelagians, Synergists, Anabaptists, Zwinglians, and Calvinists, all of whom bear the Lutheran name, carry the Augsburg Confession on their shield, and yet mock it in doctrine and practice? Is it not doubly needful in our disordered time that all genuine sons of the Lutheran Church, who abhor the fanatical excess or the Laodicean lukewarmness of today's Lutherans-in-name-only, should become one in taking up the Formula of Concord again into the circle of their confessions of faith? But in any case, with many there would first have to be a diligent, careful study of all the confessional writings; for the

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concern that many, even preachers, lack this is probably not unfounded. To stimulate this study shall be the chief purpose of this modest essay.

Submitted by Pastor O. Fürbringer.

Rationalism and the Bible.
(Continuation.)

We now turn from the mysteries of the Christian biblical faith to the miracles, which stand in the closest connection with them. How poor, small, and lowly is the thinking of the highest perfection in which Rationalism again shows itself here — this is not to be overlooked. Its God, dear reader, is a manufactured dream-image, a powerless idea, but by no means the true, living, invisible Creator and Ruler of all things. Only one of two things is possible: either God and nature cannot be separated from one another — which contradicts all natural truth — or nature is omnipresently permeated by the divine being, so that he can command its course as his wisdom requires. The author of our pamphlet, too, will hear nothing of a miracle-working God (pp. 6, 7, 10, 14, 15 above); yet these miracles (together with the prophecies of the men of God that came so visibly to fulfillment many centuries in advance) can never be explained away nor denied away, since even the enemies then living acknowledged the facts that occurred, and the testimonies of heathens and Jews confirm them.* If the wonderful fulfillment of prophesied events, which no creature could of itself foresee or even conjecture, convinced later generations all the more that the prophets had been deemed worthy of extraordinary gifts from God, then the miraculous works also opened the hearts of their own contemporaries to believing acceptance.

Even the nature of created bodies and spirits already has certain movements and effects that flow from hidden powers of the being imparted to them by God, powers which surpass all human insight — mysteries that one can only believe on the basis of experience, but never fathom. All of these are subject to laws that are perfectly known only to him who gave them. Even what happens contrary to the ordinary order of things is not therefore yet a miracle, if it proceeds from a created power whose connection with the rest of nature we cannot grasp; rather, only that is to be called a miracle which surpasses all the powers and capacities of the whole of created nature, and which is therefore wrought by a divine power as its cause. From this it follows that there is no creature in heaven, on earth, or under the earth that, properly speaking, can perform miracles; God the Lord alone is the one who works miracles. Psalm 72:18; 136:4; John 3:2; Acts 2:22, 10:38. When they occur, they indeed resemble an arbitrary, lawless intrusion into the course of nature; yet Augustine (City of God XXI, 8) already asked pointedly: "How can something be against nature which, according to the will of this great Creator, is the nature of every created thing?" His almighty word directs nature in its course wherever he wills, without disturbing or displacing it; its power rests in his power, whichever way it may take shape. A miracle, then, lies far above the knowledge that our reason has of the nature of things, but is by no means against the truth** itself, just as much in nature cannot be explained or grasped by us. (This the atheistic Earl of Rochester acknowledged even on his deathbed, as the English theologian Dr. Burnet relates in his biography of him.) A God without miracles and a miracle without God is an absurdity. Whether he works them mediately or immediately, he always has a divinely wise purpose directed toward blessing and benefit; and woe to the arrogance of the shortsighted man who dares to master the God who creates great things in the despised and smallest! (1 Corinthians 1:25.)

*) These are found collected in the work of the well-known Dutch statesman Hugo Grotius, Of the Truth of the Christian Religion — together with [his] Defense of the Christian Religion, etc., etc. — Book II, §3ff. The wondrous conversion of so many peoples through the instruments of Christ, the apostles, is indeed the surest guarantee for the historical certainty of the other, far lesser miracles (John 14:12).

**) Truth is and remains truth, whether it exists in God alone or also in man. Truth, as grasped by man, exists where there is agreement with other truths that can be known with certainty from the light of nature; contrary to this truth, and therefore contrary to all reason and also to divine truth, is that in which one clearly perceives a contradiction with previously recognized truths; but where neither agreement nor conflict is to be seen, the matter is above our reason, above our capacity for knowledge — we are unable to perceive the connection. What is not contrary to the divine reason is still less contrary to the human; for the natural-human truths of reason are indeed enclosed within the infinite connectedness of truth in God — it is only that the human power of mind cannot attain to that same connectedness. Our reason is only the finite, the limited one; the divine reason is infinite, without bounds. Thus the miracles, like the mysteries of God, may well be above human reason, inexplicable to it, but not contrary to it. That which is repugnant to these truths in us is neither the natural light nor the connectedness of truths recognized by it; it is error, sickness, ruinous prejudice, and darkness! (Compare G. W., Baron von Leibniz, Discours de la conformité de la foi avec la raison, Amsterdam, 1710. Der Lutheraner, Vol. 1, No. 8, "Contributions to..." [text breaks off].)

Ah, my dear fellow Christians, what a sad, comfortless false doctrine this Rationalism is! How dreadful things would look for us, how terribly we would be deceived, if we wished to accept this doctrine as the way to blessedness! Would you indeed dare to get along, in need and in death, in this often grief-stricken, ever-changing life, and in dying, without the wonder-working God? Suppose for a moment — as the author of that pitiable little pamphlet himself says — that the essence of the Christian religion, and thus of the teaching of Jesus Christ, is according to the