# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1855_S248
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

248 New Literature.

This is of especially great importance in the presentation of the philosophical systems of Cartesius, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Wolff, Kant, and the more recent pantheists. The present work admittedly does not meet all the requirements that, from the standpoint of the old Lutheran faith, we set for a work of this kind; and admittedly they could not be met by a Kahnis. For although he concludes his book with these beautiful and true words: “The watchword of our church in this struggle can only be: Hold fast what you have, so that no one may take your crown. Our crown is our confession”—only ten pages earlier he had written: “Protestantism stands or falls with the principle of the sole authority of Scripture. This principle, however, is independent of the doctrine of inspiration taught by the old dogmatics. To reinstate that doctrine as it was can be done only by hardening oneself against the truth!” We must confess that when we read these words, we were deeply and sincerely alarmed. Who would wish to go along with a new theology that presents itself as the further development of the old Lutheran theology, yet departs from the doctrinal pattern of our old church precisely in the doctrine concerning the principle of theology, concerning Holy Scripture—namely, concerning the ratio formalis scripturae, that which makes Scripture Holy Scripture? Moreover, Kahnis’s book also suffers from the almost universal defect of all more recent historical and polemical writings: in its objectivity it goes so far that even the pantheistic and materialistic philosopher who denies God is presented, together with his philosophy, not as a horrifying sinner who, in satanic pride, has made himself God and poisoned poor humanity with the venom of his blasphemous wisdom—or rather folly—in accursed defiance of the Almighty, but merely as the creator of the highest thing the human mind can produce. God, how will the learned theologians answer before God if they refuse to proclaim the word of judgment unto repentance to the wise men of this world, whom the despised little parson, with his weak voice in his little church, cannot reach? Do these gentlemen suppose that Paul was not a theologian whom they ought to take as their model? Compare 1 Corinthians 1:18–31; 2:1–16. Nevertheless, we by no means overlook the splendid confessions of God’s Word and Luther’s doctrine that, despite all this, are found here and there in the writings of quite a few recent theologians, including the present work; and we congratulate these dear men nonetheless on the considerable disgrace they must bear for the sake of this confession. May God, who in these days has already performed such great and unhoped-for wonders among the theologians, continue to help, lead them into the full truth, and once again grant them apostolic earnestness and boldness through the power of faith.

So that the reader may be enabled to see beforehand what he may expect in the book under review, we shall now also provide a