# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 05 16_S73
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Lutheran.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall not pass away, now or ever."

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 2.

St. Louis, Mo., May 16, 1846.

No. 19.

Terms: The Lutheran appears once every two weeks, at a subscription price of one dollar for subscribers living away from St. Louis, half of which they must pay in advance, bearing the postage themselves. — In St. Louis single copies are sold for 5 cents each.

Holy Absolution, Vindicated against the Slanders of the Methodists.
(Continued.)

If it were taught in the Lutheran Church that the outward speaking and hearing of the words of absolution worked forgiveness ex opere operato (merely because the act is performed), then Mr. Nast might not unjustly claim that the doctrine of the divine validity of absolution "attacks at the root the work of the Holy Spirit, who alone brings grace." One would hope, however, that Mr. Nast at least knows* that it is taught in the Lutheran Church that no one partakes of absolution without a true, living faith, even if it were spoken to him a thousand times a day, and that this true faith in the word of absolution is likewise worked solely through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is therefore not the working of the Holy Spirit that is "attacked at the root" by the doctrine of absolution, but rather — the spirit of Methodism. One root of Methodism is that the spirits are not tested; every crude enthusiasm however coarse, every outburst of an overheated imagination, every daydream of one's own heart, so long as it merely bears a spiritual appearance, is esteemed and passed off as a work of the Holy Spirit. Hence one must, of course, be hostile to the doctrine of absolution, which affirms that the Holy Spirit works only through the Word, and that therefore any spirit that comes without the Word and contends against the Word must be a false spirit. Another root of Methodism is this: it despises the outward testimony of the Holy Spirit given through the Word and the holy sacraments, and separates the inner testimony from it. It does not teach terrified sinners how they must ground their faith on the outward testimony, so that the Spirit of God may then also bear witness in their hearts; rather, it does the opposite, warning souls against believing the outward testimony sooner than they have vividly felt and sensed the inward one. It thereby drives souls into a false reliance on their own efforts and instructs them how they must win and fight for grace themselves, whereas according to God's Word the attainment of grace is not won by struggle; rather, once a person has obtained grace, then the striving and pursuing begins and continues until one has entered through the narrow gate, until one has attained the goal of blessedness. (Luke 13:24; Philippians 2:12–13; 3:13–15.) For none of these works does a person have any strength at all until he has received the new life from God through grace. Whoever wants to fight his way to grace fights against grace; for, says the holy Apostle, "if it is by grace, then it is no more of the merit of works" (of struggle and the like), "otherwise grace would no longer be grace. But if it is of the merit of works" (won by struggle), "then grace is nothing, otherwise merit would no longer be merit." Romans 11:6. The setting up of one's own righteousness and one's own doing that lies at the bottom of this is the true root of Methodism; whoever does not see through this, his fight against Methodism is but shadow-boxing. But the doctrine of absolution strikes Methodism precisely at this root, and that is why such dreadful slanders are poured out against it: one senses that it is a fight for one's life. It is only too plainly seen that where the doctrine of absolution is believed, Methodism cannot take up residence; it is noticed that absolution, rightly understood, overturns at a single stroke the legalistic peddling, the mourner's-bench mongering, the spirit-driving, and the whole soul-quackery of Methodism;* it is noticed that absolution would make it plain that it is hypocrisy when the Methodists say that they too teach that a person is justified and made blessed before God through faith alone, for through absolution a person is directed away from everything of his own and pointed to the Word alone, and it is called out to him:

Though it may seem as if He would not,
let that not frighten you,
for just where He is closest to you
is where He does not wish to show it.
Let His Word be more certain to you
than even if your heart cried out, "No!" —
so do not let yourself be dismayed.

The Methodists will, of course, want to draw from this the conclusion that Lutherans wish to know nothing of the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit — indeed, that being carnal people they can know nothing of it, and in their blindness must regard it as foolishness.† (1 Corinthians 2:14.) We answer: We too teach — and every true Lutheran experiences it in his own heart — how the Holy Spirit bears witness to the spirit of believers that they are children of God; how they carry the Holy Spirit in their hearts as the pledge of their state of grace and are sealed by him, and how he cries "Abba" sweetly within them. (Romans 8:15–16; 2 Corinthians 1:22; Ephesians 1:13–14.) What we censure in the Methodist manner of teaching is only this: that they insist a person may not ground his faith on any outward means of grace and pledge ordained by God, but must instead disregard the dead letter and sign, must strive after the inner testimony, and may by no means believe that his sins are forgiven him until he has vividly

* We would gladly attribute it to the boundless ignorance — so peculiar to Methodist preachers and documented in nearly every issue of the Apologete — that Mr. Mulfinger sets forth the Lutheran doctrine as follows: "Here it is only necessary that a person feel remorse and sorrow over his sins when he goes to confession, with the resolve to do better, and as soon as the priest has spoken a few words, he is free from the guilt of his sin. ... Should he fall back into sin, he need only use the same medicine again." Is Mr. M. not ashamed to have such lies about the Lutheran Church put into print, and Mr. N. to reprint them? What sort of description must these gentlemen give their hearers in private about the Lutheran Church and its teaching!

* It goes without saying that we do not by this in any way deny that the Holy Spirit also does his work among the Methodists. The Methodists do not, after all, preach only Methodism. But where they truly preach God's Word, it does not return to them empty either, but accomplishes that for which God sent it. Isaiah 55:11. To speak against the real workings of grace of the Holy Spirit which follow through the Word even among them, and which therefore also agree with the Word, we would consider blasphemy against God. We fight against Methodism, not against the Methodists; God has his seed even among them.

† Thus already the enthusiast Weigel, mentioned above, railed against the Lutheran Church. He writes in his "Golden Grasp," p. 75: "The gainsayers (the Lutherans) deny the inner testimony of the Spirit, or the anointing, in us all." To this the Wittenberg theologian N. Hunnius replies: "Who has ever heard such a thing in our churches — that the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit is rejected, and that it is not confessed that the Lord Christ must dwell in us through faith and destroy the work of Satan? This is what he (Weigel) himself does, in that he rejects the outward testimony from which the inward testimony grows and arises. For it comes from hearing the Word of God, Romans 10:18, not from that which God, according to Weigel's interpretation, is supposed to speak into the heart without means." (See: Hunnius's Examination of Weigel's Theology, Wittenberg, 1622, p. 213.)