# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1856_S104
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

that do not disturb them in the satisfaction of the desires of the heart and
yet make them believe they are a religious person; to this "sound reason"
not a single theological concept corresponds, in truth. But suppose the
unbeliever really did demand philosophical proofs from theology; he
would obtain nothing of the sort from that either. According to all the
rules of logical, or consistent, thinking, theological concepts are indeed to
be formed out of the believed Word of God, but their proof rests solely in
the written Word of God; whoever, then, does not believe will regard the
object and endeavor of Christian theology as foolishness. Since theology
thus presupposes faith on the part of theologians, it means by this, among
other things, that they assent to the knowledge of faith, or to the believed
Word, as it has gained form and shape in the history of the Church and
has been expressed in the confession of the Church. The Church is
assured of this in the case of her members, and thus also in the case of
her theologians, whom she regards as her members and not as sectarians
or eccentrics. Were these theologians now to approach their scholarly
labor without presupposing the truth of the Church's confession, they
would first have to remove from their faith those very dogmas whose
scriptural character was clear to them prior to any theological study —
that is, they would have to put away their faith, which in earnest no one
would demand. We cannot take our faith off and put it on again like a
coat, nor is it possible to restrict its content to, say, the mere conviction
that Holy Scripture is infallibly God's Word, so that we might approach
theological labor with only that presupposition; just as little can we
dissolve again the dogmas that have come into being historically and
been proven from Scripture, and let stand only the facts and doctrines
out of which they were drawn, without thereby becoming sectarians
ourselves, or at least falling into a ruinous wavering and uncertainty of
faith itself. In short, that theologians bring to their scholarly labor the
faith of the Church, in its present form too, wholly and without
abridgment — this lies in the very nature of faith; it cannot possibly
destroy the freedom of theology; it is demanded by theology itself.

As a science of faith, theology cannot aim at destroying the dogmas of
the Church; it can do so as little as any other science can destroy its own
object. But, it will perhaps be objected to me, theology indeed has the
calling to subject everything belonging to the faith to the strictest
examination against Scripture. Certainly, certainly, I answer; God forbid
that I should ever wish to deny theology this right — nay, rather, this
duty! She has done so as long as there has been

Holy Scripture, and will and ought to do so until the end of days. The
dogmas of the Church, too, she will, without any further prompting,
always examine anew, both according to their individual parts and
according to their summation in a concept, by the standard of Scripture,
for her very nature and character demand it. Yet her stance toward the
Church's dogmas is a different one than toward