# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1856_S67
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

67             The Obligation to the Church's Confessions, etc.

...is free, when it takes place in agreement with the essence of theology. Our task is to show that it corresponds to the essence of theology when its work is carried out on the basis of the faith set forth in the Lutheran confessions. Everything, then, depends on our proceeding from a correct concept of theology, one that, where possible, is also acknowledged by those very theologians who warn or object. Christian theology is the science of the Christian faith: this the Göttingen theological faculty itself taught me, to which I confess myself everywhere bound by great gratitude; but my own theological, scientific, and practical work has only convinced me how fitting, simple, and true that definition is. Readers who believe in Jesus Christ will surely agree with me when I proceed from the concept of Christian theology as the science of the Christian faith.

To believe as a Christian means to receive the Word of God into the spirit in such a way that it governs and directs the whole life and being of the one who receives it — heart, mind, powers, and members. Through faith the will of God, both of grace and of the law, is received equally into the understanding and the will. Whereas in feeling and perception, on the one hand, our spirit receives the impression of a power pressing in upon it without recognizing its origin and true nature, and whereas, on the other hand, in comprehending and knowing the spirit works merely with the understanding, and so again one-sidedly, faith is an activity that embraces and moves all the powers of the spirit — a perceiving of the Word of God, e.g. of the Gospel, so that we become aware of the grace offered to us in it; an assenting to the Word of God, e.g. to the Gospel, so that we make the evangelical grace our own possession; a trusting in the Word of God, e.g. in the Gospel, so that for its sake we truly expect from God nothing but pure grace and mercy. Feeling, knowing, believing, the spirit lays hold (Hebrews 11:1 anticipates this) in the Word of God upon the future world of hope together with its graces and powers, as a present possession; but by mere feeling alone it would not have the certainty whether that glory has truly come to it, and not perhaps a mere semblance of it, feigned by the devil; by mere knowing alone it would not possess the invisible gifts of the divine Word as a treasure of the heart; believing, it knows with unquestionable certainty what it has, and has, as its very own treasure and true possession, what it knows — the Word of God, which firmly attests itself to it as truth itself. A feeling of the grace of God is a special gift of grace from God, granted now and then to the Christian for the strengthening of faith, but no one should count on receiving it in the hour of trial; scientific knowledge of the divine revelation is a special gift of grace [illegible], bestowed on and appointed for individuals as a handmaid of faith, so that one may attain a concept of the depths of one's own being and content, but let no one seek in it the power of entrance into the kingdom of heaven;