# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1855_S115
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lutheran Antitheses. 115

not as a particular form of the Gospel, but as error, and never regard you as fellow believers, but as enemies of Christ. — — Forgive me, Evangelical Lutheran reader; that was admittedly nothing “in the form of theses”; but variatio delectat.

78) “We ask you earnestly: Do you really want to bring back the good old days when the symbolic books carried more weight than the Bible? When the Wittenberg faculty went to a ball and danced in corpore, as a demonstration against the Pietists? When Fecht refused to call the blessed Spener beatus?” (Thes. 203). What are you thinking? We yearn even more fervently than you for those golden future days of the church, when neither the Christian symbols nor the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures will have any authority any longer, but instead another confession of faith and a new Bible, containing in three testaments “thinking speculation, exegetical reading since 1746, and history”; — when all dance halls will be transformed into deaconess houses; — when the new Kaiserswerth people’s-calendar saints will be joined by a St. Pelagius, St. Ischarioth, St. Pilatus, and St. Beelzebub, — all canonized and beatified by that great saying of the future Bible: “The one faith, Ephesians 4:5, extends precisely as far as the one Lord” (Thes. 17).

79) “We ask in alarm: Where is this supposed to lead us back to? — We ask the others: Why do you not punish them? — We ask with ever greater alarm: Is this really the only true Spirit of the Lord? — We ask you anxiously: What will happen in the second generation? — We ask you boldly and bluntly: How can you expect us to,” etc. (Thes. 204–208). Do not take offense: coming from theologians and addressed to theologians, your questions sound exceedingly naïve. Have you not understood the history of Christ’s suffering and resurrection? Your predecessors, the Rationalists, had crucified and killed Him; then you came along with the Union, which laid Him in the grave, rolled a heavy stone over it, sealed it, stationed ample police and military forces before it, — and went away, firmly convinced that the corpse would decay in the grave. But what happened? The seven thousand who remained, who had not bowed their knees before your Baal, prayed without ceasing: “Bring their schemes to nothing, Lord! Let the evil thing overtake them, and cast them into the pit they dig for Your Christians. Then they will surely recognize that You, our Lord God, still live and mightily aid Your host, which places all its trust in You.” And behold! Christ broke through stone, seal, and guard; “He has risen like a flash of lightning and confounded the cunning of His enemies.” Is that not an exceedingly vexing and inconvenient matter for the “work of the Union”? If only the Risen One had at least slipped away quietly! But He intends to prove that He lives and “joyfully waves His little banner here and there, like a hero who retains honor and victory.” What is to be done now? Say, “While we were sleeping”? (Matthew 28:13.) You are trying in this way to suppress Christ once again; “this weed,” you say in Thes. 117, “is