# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 07 11_S89
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall never pass away, not now nor ever."

Published by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 2.

St. Louis, Mo., July 11, 1846.

No. 23.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the subscription price of one dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay half of this in advance and bear the cost of postage. — In St. Louis, each individual issue is sold for 5 cents.

(Submitted by Pastor Schieferdecker.)
The Apostles' Creed and Its Different Interpretations.

This famous confession — the oldest that we have, for although it was probably not composed by the apostles themselves, its age nevertheless reaches back almost to the time of the apostles — contains, if not all, then certainly the foremost articles of Christian doctrine; and whoever holds these up against Holy Scripture must become convinced of the most perfect conformity of this confession to Scripture.

And if one were to judge by the general acceptance that this confession has found even among the falsely-believing churches and sects, one could easily be led to think that there was essentially no difference in doctrine and faith among all the various churches and sects.

But this would be a hasty conclusion; for what matters is not the mere words, which can also be paraded for mere outward show, but chiefly the sense in which the words are understood. The Catholics, the Reformed, and others do indeed likewise accept the words of this confession, but in a different sense than the Lutherans do. And indeed the words themselves are not to blame, as though they permitted such a double meaning; rather, the evil will is to blame, which forcibly twists the words toward error, in order thereby to conceal that error from the eyes of the simple — just as the sectarians do with the clear and plain words of Holy Scripture itself. That the sense in which the Catholics and the Reformed take the Apostles' Creed is totally different from the sense of the true Church, the following comparison can demonstrate. It has been adapted, somewhat abridged, from an original by the learned Johann Conrad Dannhauer, professor of theology at Strasbourg, who died in 1666.

I. The Apostles' Creed in the Sense of the Orthodox Church.

I believe — out of a living, powerful conviction which God has worked in me through his true Word, which is contained in the canonical Scriptures (that is, those which the true Church has at all times recognized as divine) of the Old and New Testaments, and which is the sole rule and standard of my faith — in God, in him alone and in no other creature, neither angel nor departed saint; in a triune God, in whose one divine essence there are three persons. I believe in God the Father, who was neither created nor begotten by anyone, and who, as Father, indeed shows himself toward all men through countless benefits, but has chosen as his children and heirs only those who persevere in faith in Christ to the end; almighty creator of heaven and earth, who has called forth me and everything that exists out of nothing, but who is by no means an author of evil.

I — by nature a child of wrath, turned away from God and his enemy, in the prison of sin and of Satan, unable to save myself or to make myself blessed — believe in Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father's essence from eternity, who has taken our nature, body and soul, upon himself and has become a true man. Through him the fallen human race has been raised up again, and salvation has been won anew for each and every individual, in that he gave himself as a sacrifice for all and rendered, for the sins of the whole world, full and complete satisfaction to offended justice. Not only original sin but also every actual sin has been blotted out and atoned for through him. He has fulfilled the Law in our place and freed mankind from its curse. I believe in Jesus Christ, in whose one person two natures — the divine and the human — are so intimately united with one another that, although without any mixing or fusing together, they can nevertheless never be separated from one another. In this communion of both natures, each indeed retains its own distinct essence, but neither acts without the other, so that when the man Jesus suffers and dies, it is nevertheless not a mere man who suffers and dies, but he who is true God. In this communion of both natures the human nature makes use of the divine majesty, omnipresence, omniscience, and judicial power so fully and unrestrictedly, as though these divine attributes were its own possession. I believe in Jesus, the one mediator between God and men, to whom all the prayers, sacrifices, and promises of the ancients pointed, and our Lord according to the right of redemption; who in a supernatural manner "was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary, the mother of God, suffered under Pontius Pilate. Was crucified" — the deepest humiliation of Christ, in which he freely emptied himself of divine glory — "died" — not merely in appearance, but truly and actually, without the communion of the two natures being torn apart or interrupted even in death; which death was the sacrifice of atonement for the sin of the whole world — "and was buried. He descended into hell," as God and man, after the soul had been reunited with the body, in order to hold his triumph as conqueror of hell. "The third day he rose again from the dead," by his own power, with a transfigured, glorified, and spiritual body. "He ascended into heaven" — into the heaven of the blessed, where he is not so confined within the limits of a single place that he could not at the same time be present in different places on earth. "He sits at the right hand of God the almighty Father" — not a spatial sitting, but the most glorious exaltation of the human nature in Christ, the God-man, who now, not merely as God but also as man, is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and has infinite and eternal dominion and power over everything that is in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. And this presence, by which Christ, even according to his humanity, is with all his creatures, is no spatial extension, but a true, grace-filled presence, according to which he dwells in us, and according to which his body and blood are also truly and essentially present in the Holy Supper, and are distributed together with the bread and wine. "From thence" — from the heaven of the blessed — "he will come" publicly and visibly, in the glory of the Father, "to judge the living and the dead."

I, wholly unable by the powers of my own reason — which regards God's revealed counsel and will as foolishness —