# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 11 15_S22
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

times long past?" (He jumps, namely, quickly from one matter to another, without holding to any fixed, orderly arrangement.) I can give him no better answer than to refer him back to the perfection of divine revelation and its conclusion, completed for all future ages, which I have already demonstrated above. As for the possibility and necessity of the same, instead of repeating myself, let a great philosopher and physician of recent times speak in his own words:

"In what does the work of redemption on earth consist, and by what is it to be recognized? By this: that the shepherd gives his life for the flock, that through his death he seals their life (?), and, as a sign of death overcome, rises victoriously from its bonds. Death and resurrection: this is the sum of the earthly work of redemption. In that God does not spare his Son, who has mercy on sinners, he shows himself as the Holy One; in that he gives them the Son, so that they may live in him and through him, he shows himself as the Gracious One, as the one who works through forgiving love. Do you find contradictions, indeed absurdities, in this working? Then change holiness, change the very nature of God and his eternal truth! Or else be content with what he has done for you according to his incomprehensible wisdom and goodness. So be it! Let it truly be incomprehensible how the Holy One regards the Holy One for the sake of sinners! Who has sat in God's council? Who has penetrated the depth of the holy necessity of his being? That love has paid the ransom which justice had to demand — this is, after all, conceivable even in a human way; why not in a divine way? Start from sin: it is there! Start from the holy commandment: it too is there! Where, then, is help to be found? Since it is not in the holy God, it can only be in the loving God. Therefore, once more: For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that all who believe in him should not perish but have eternal life."

Mr. Münch presents our Lord and gracious Prince of Life as an unforgettable teacher of the human race, and, as is right, presents "the pattern of his life as a model for imitation." But if he seeks to draw the strength to follow in Jesus's footsteps from himself alone, then I fear that he will — whether as a vicious man by means of abused freedom, or as a work-righteous man out of presumptuous self-conceit — withhold from God the one thing that is required of men after reconciliation and satisfaction have taken place, namely, a thankful heart and life. Unbelief and ingratitude shut us off from every spiritual gift, help, and assistance, and make us like Satan. But how can he describe the Lord Jesus as a teacher of truth and a model of a godly life, when he accuses him of a lying accommodation to Jewish prejudices and erroneous notions in accepting evil and good invisible beings or spirits, etc.? (p. 15.) If seductive thoughts arose in the soul of the All-Holy One himself at the time of his temptation, then an inclination toward them must have been innate in him; he was, therefore, not perfectly pure and holy, but sinful, and consequently he could not have satisfied the divine law in our place either. See Psalm 49:8ff, Matthew 16:26, Romans 5:18ff, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Hebrews 7:26ff. The temptation of our Lord is the counterpart to Genesis 3. That the serpent there is to be understood as the devil is taught by Christ himself in John 8:44. Compare Revelation 12:9. If there is no devil, then either God is dualistic, or man himself is the principle of all evil; in the latter case, all possibility of man's return to God, and thus all salvation, is cut off from him forever. — O accursed rationalism, which seeks to rob the Christian of the pious faith — inherited from child to child's child, and interwoven with the most intimate intimations and feelings of a higher governance — in those holy hosts who close about the pilgrim of life, surrounded by dangerous snares, like a wall of fire! Only become like the good, gracious spirits in heavenly disposition and purity, and you will no longer accuse their eternal Creator of a hypocritical concession to Israelite superstition. Why they no longer appear so frequently visible, one may suppose, is due to the same reason as the rarity of the gifts of miracles; we are to believe the written revelation and to set the necessary bounds to our presumptuous curiosity by it. Were apostolic heroic courage and power of witness still present, many miracles would again take place, which indeed were all the more conducive to the first spread and confirmation of the Christian teaching; it is one of the well-deserved judgments upon our age that God no longer allows so much to happen as he did, in these days of unbelief and apostasy, for the dear fathers and pious men of old. Compare Luther's Church Postil, Walch edition, p. 599, §25 (on the Gospel for Ascension Day).

Only that kind of accommodation is admissible to a truth-loving, sincere mind, in which the wise teacher does not burst in upon the inexperienced pupil like one bursting through the door into the house, but with fatherly care leads him step by step. But of that other (positive) kind, which conscientious rationalism defends — in Germany, notably for the sake of worldly provision, even by its own example (according to the naive avowal of the Weimar General Superintendent Röhr) — Irenaeus already wrote, in Against Heresies III, 5, as follows: "It is a fabrication when those seducers pretend that the apostles dissembled in their preaching, and adapted themselves to the capacity of their hearers, and in their answers conformed to the opinions and prejudices of those who asked. No — Christ, as well as the apostles, taught without lying, without pretense, without concerning themselves about the opinions of men. Otherwise it would amount to helping the blind, who stand at the edge of the abyss, straight on to their ruin." Compare with this Galatians 2:11ff.

What one is to think of the heaven and the hell* that Jesus and his servants teach, of this the pitiable state of soul of unbelieving sinners as they lie on their deathbeds, and the serene prospect of Christians as the gates of eternity open before them, give sufficient testimony. The sting of death has been broken by their Savior, in whom they believed, whom they loved, and whom they shall now behold, through his death-struggle and bloody sweat. Weeping may endure for the evening, but joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:6). We wish that the author might not come to experience the truth of divine revelation too late.

To such factual evidence of history we appeal once more, finally, at the close of our entire treatise. A religion resting on such reliable grounds of certainty that the hatred of the whole rest of the world against it — against the Master as against the disciples alike — is counted as nothing; a religion that has planted such a sublime virtue in the hearts of believers of every age that it filled even persecution-loving men with astonishment and undisguised admiration, and built the Church upon the corpses of martyrs — a sowing of blood of the most fruitful harvest, which repeated itself gloriously and brilliantly in the age of the Reformation; a religion that realizes, not merely in poetic fancy but in actual deed, the superhuman ideal of the most self-sacrificing love — love of God, of neighbor, and of enemy — this daughter of heaven, of which the enlighteners of today, as becomes plain day by day, are never capable; such a religion is eternal and imperishable, as perfect as he from whose bosom and heart its existence was born. Our age has not advanced forward, but has slid backward off the path on which even fools need not go astray. (Isaiah 35:8.) "If this counsel or work is of men — like rationalism, the scum of all heresies — it will come to nothing; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow it, lest you be found even to fight against God." (Acts 5:38–39.)

The Holiness of the Church.

Let it not trouble you when the factious spirits say: the scholars at Wittenberg can do nothing but preach and exalt the outward Word; therefore neither faith, love, patience, nor other good fruits follow among

* Supposing that what Scripture reports of hell were earthly fire — though Scripture determines nothing definite about it — this is no more unthinkable than it is possible that the soul resides within the far coarser substance of the body.