# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1855_S130
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

130 Lutheran-Theological Pastors’ Library.

[illegible], even more than his other works, bears the stamp of impartiality and sobriety,*) and only rarely might one wish for a less lenient or at least more complete judgment, for example, of dangerous writings such as those of Gottfried Arnold, Thomasius, and others. The book is such a rich treasury that a Lutheran preacher will surely seldom search it in vain for anything that might be sought in a learned introduction to the whole of theology from that period. This book, too, should therefore rightly be found in the library of every Lutheran pastor who has at least some command of the Latin language.**) For anyone, however, who is completely ignorant of that language, we know of no better substitute for Buddeus’s work to recommend than a book by the editor of Luther’s works, Johann Georg Walch (who was Buddeus’s son-in-law), entitled: “Introduction to the Theological Sciences. Jena, 1737.” This work comprises 436 quarto pages and provides an introduction: 1. to divine jurisprudence (natural law, the doctrine of divine law, casuistry); 2. to polemical theology; 3. to dogmatic theology; 4. to Christian ethics; and 5. to the church history of the New Testament. This table of contents admittedly shows that Walch’s work does not contain much that Buddeus provides in his Isagoge. Nevertheless, this book, written in German, does provide a thorough introduction to the disciplines named, sets forth their scope and principles, and, while identifying the necessary literary resources, gives instruction on how to undertake a fruitful study of each of the branches of theology discussed. It is noteworthy—to cite only one statement—that Walch already exclaims here: “It should rightly be regarded as a disgrace that some teachers and preachers who call themselves followers of Luther have read either nothing or very little of him.”

As we now turn to writings that contain theological methodology, or instruction concerning the method to be followed in the study of theology, this indeed brings us to a class of writings composed not so much for pastors as for those who are only about to begin their theological studies;

*) Rudelbach also rightly says of Buddeus that his relationship to Pietism was “that he gathers its fruits.”

**) We do not, however, deny that Dr. Rudelbach is also correct when he faults our work for not presenting the individual disciplines in their organic connection. But whether any more recent encyclopedia is therefore to be preferred to that of Buddeus because the more recent ones make it their principal task to present theology as a system and all its individual parts as members of an organism—that is another question. It seems to us that, in pursuing this aim, theology is often transformed into a philosophical system, or else a thoroughly lifeless, meager skeleton is produced. Cf. Rudelbach’s Journal, 1848, first quarterly issue, “On the Concept of Theology,” etc.