# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1856_S105
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Obligation to the Church's Confessions, etc. 105

toward doctrines not yet churchly established. The dogmas are not merely
churchly articles of faith, but also the proven results of theology, so
carefully worked out and so sharply tested that even those members of
the congregation not learned in theology can perceive their agreement
with Scripture. Together with other results of theological labor, such as,
for instance, the collection of the biblical books, theology regards the
dogmas as the scholarly edifice which it has erected in the course of the
ages. Were it to set these aside, it would thereby tear down its own
edifice, destroy its own history, and deny that there has, until now, been
any theology at all, or that Christian truth has been scholarly recognized.
In vain would it claim that it wished to throw away only the dogmas, and
not Holy Scripture; there is no faith that embraces Holy Scripture alone
and not, at the same time, doctrines that stand upon its foundation: along
with the dogmas, it would soon have to give up Holy Scripture as well. In
vain would it claim for its own doctrinal propositions the authority of
truth; one would see in them precisely what it itself sees in the theological
labors of the past: contingent opinions, destined to hold good for a
couple of years, or perhaps decades, only then to be declared old-
fashioned rubbish in their turn. Theology would in this way become
Neology, that is, a science of one's own private pleasure. "Would
become," I have said — it did become that, around the middle of the
previous century, when the churchly dogmas were cast aside. Töllner tore
the doctrine of the active obedience of Christ out of the article of faith
concerning justification, and in doing so also invented the arbitrary — and
arbitrariness-satisfying — distinction between the Bible and the Word of
God within the Bible; Semler denied the churchly dogmas any significance
whatsoever for the individual Christian's own faith — he who, in the
history and theology of the past, saw nothing but human follies; setting
out from the rejection of churchly dogma, Neology made of the Bible a
plaything of loose arbitrariness, until, through Bruno Bauer, it declared
Holy Scripture to be a fool's work, and, through Feuerbach, declared
theology to be nothing but chatter about man's self-deification. Theology
would destroy itself were it to annihilate the churchly dogmas — the
proven results of its own labor, accepted by faith; in doing so it would
destroy the very object of its own labor, faith itself; it would thereby
destroy its own edifice, which it has erected, amid toil and struggle,
throughout the history of the ages. To preserve this edifice, and to carry
it forward according to the standard of Holy Scripture by which it was
built — that is theology's own proper task; that lies in its innermost
nature.

Theology acts in accordance with its own nature when, in its labor, it
presupposes the content of faith set forth in the confessions of the Church.
In this her conduct, therefore, she is genuinely free. She herself thereby
determines, as the boundary or limit of her labor, the faith of the Church
proven from Scripture, which she must expect of her disciples, and whose
conceptual