# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1856_S106
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

form, its own work, tested and acknowledged by the Church. But freedom
consists in this, that we ourselves set the bounds and limits of our activity
which have been appointed for us by God and which therefore properly
belong to our life and nature. Theology is not hemmed in by the dogmas;
for the fact that, little by little, ever more parts of the believed Word
become dogmas by no means removes them from the range of objects
with which theology has to do. If theology, in accordance with its calling,
is to gather them together into a system of doctrine, and for that reason
also to complete, in agreement with them, the doctrines not yet shaped
into dogma, then it must examine the dogmas most carefully, test them,
treat them, in short, in a scholarly manner; but it does this in any case,
because it is both its right and its duty. Nor is this labor of theirs in any
way in vain, notwithstanding that it carries with it the conviction of the
truth of the dogmas. For only the doctrine contained in the dogmas is
perfect, because it agrees with Holy Scripture; the form and expression
of that doctrine, being the work of men,

are complete and finished only to the extent that the need present at the
time of their composition required. As regards their form, only the chief
parts, or the most essential elements, of a dogma are perhaps gathered
together in the confession — that is, only the basic outlines are given. So,
for example, in Article 7 of the Augsburg Confession, two determinations
— namely, what the Church is, and by what she is infallibly recognized —
are joined together into the dogma of the Church; that was enough at
the time, for it showed that, on the evangelical side, the Church, in
accordance with Holy Scripture, is taught to be a fellowship not of this
world, yet by no means a mere mental construct, but rather a fellowship
within this world, quite recognizable indeed by certain outward marks and
signs. To seek out the other elements of this dogma, in agreement with
those already indicated in the confession — for instance, to determine how
the Church, as the fellowship of believers, relates to the outward,
manifoldly divided Christendom — that was left to theological scholarship,
which then also immediately made, in the Apology, an excellent
beginning toward the further development of the doctrine of the Church.
The expression, too, moreover, in which the dogmas are set forth, requires
constant further development through theology, as, among other
instances, the Athanasian Creed and the Formula of Concord (in Article
4, "Of Good Works") have given fine models for doing. To this is added
the fact that the individual elements of the dogmas are themselves in turn
objects of doctrine, containing a wealth of divine thoughts that perhaps
first become truly noticeable to scholarship in this connection with others.
In the dogma of justification, for instance, what it says concerning the
obedience of Christ, taken by itself alone, already invites thorough
theological investigation, which in turn enriches the whole dogma in
content, form, and expression, and indeed prepares the way for, and
gradually carries out, the formation of new dogmas. Nothing whatever
in a dogma, moreover, becomes,