# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1856_S71
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Dr. Seyffarth's Corrections, etc.             71

...Egypt to Canaan) asks the opponents of God's miracles, with the confident assurance that they must fall silent: "Do you really know why water flows downhill, why fire rises heavenward? How a mighty oak tree grows up out of an acorn — how bread nourishes you, how your own heart beats day and night? Can you even answer truly and thoroughly the smallest question about creation, as thoroughly and truly as God himself would answer it? Do you not recognize that such an answer is not possible for man, who dwells in regione dissimilitudinis [in the region of unlikeness]?" — We must therefore, reasonably, content ourselves with, and hold fast unshaken to, what God has revealed to us about the beginning, namely that the world and all creatures were created out of nothing, by the word of Almighty God.

From this it becomes clear, then, what position natural history must take toward the Word of God. It knows the present state of things only approximately, and the beginning only through the revelation of the Word of God; hence it can stand toward that Word only in a serving relationship, and may not presume to master the Word of God. For however splendid its results may ever be, the whole of natural science can bring no one to faith and salvation — at most as an intermediary, when its results agree with the revelations of Holy Scripture, in a certain sense predisposing the natural man toward the acceptance of faith, insofar as it helps to overcome the means by which his obstinacy against the Word of God is furthered, and helps to silence the loose, unbelieving scoffers against the Word of God. So far, unfortunately, only a few natural scientists have arrived at the right understanding of the task of their science; to them their science is not a science for the glory of God but a means of attaining glory for themselves, and at best, when they are concerned only with their science as such, they consider it a dishonor to their science to be asked to be a handmaid of theology. Yet why should one complain of the natural scientists for not recognizing the true position and task of their science, when even many respected theologians of the present day do not know what place they ought to assign to the other sciences?

Many well-meaning theologians, instead of standing fast by the simple Word of God, believe that at every new phenomenon in science, at every new assertion that appears even somewhat well-founded, they are duty-bound to bring Holy Scripture into agreement with science. This they generally carry out in such a way that they form opinions based on the results of some science, bring these opinions with them ready-made, and impose them upon Holy Scripture. Because of such a procedure, which has unfortunately become quite fashionable in recent times, I am, for that very reason, distrustful in the face of new findings that overturn something old and long-received, since I fear it might