# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1856_S143
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Is This, Then, the Theology of the American Lutheran Church? 143

...made into a ground of faith, so that one might get around Word and Sacrament — but Christ remains with Word and Sacrament. To ground one's faith upon any of those human and earthly things — even upon the mightiest of them, prayer — to ground one's faith upon anything other than God's Word and the Holy Sacraments, this is the very essence of fanaticism, and especially of Roman Catholic and rationalist fanaticism. As Samson's foxes were bound together by their tails, so all the false teachings — the Roman Catholic, the Anabaptist, the Methodist, the rationalist, and so forth — run into one another, and unite in the undertaking of setting up a self-chosen ground of faith and a self-invented Christ. Therefore let those who will not acknowledge Holy Baptism, and with it the Word and the Holy Supper, as the ground of faith, rail against the Romanists as much as they please — at bottom they are no different from the Romanists, differing only in the shape of their ground of faith: Protestants they are not.

— Hear, friend Protestant: upon what do you ground your faith that the Lord Christ is yours, and that in him you have redemption through his blood, namely the forgiveness of sins? Upon the Word, which declares to me the Lord Christ, his blood and righteousness. What do you hold concerning the Holy Sacraments? They are means of grace, like the Word; upon them too my faith is grounded, for they were instituted by the Lord Christ for this purpose, and indeed they do not differ essentially from the Word, since in them, by God's will, the Word joins itself with an element or visible sign, and in this way gives the Lord Christ and his grace to me as my own; even in the Sacrament, the Word is the chief thing. But do you not, besides this, also ground your faith upon prayer, the preaching office, the experience of God's goodness in the fortunes of this life, the great deeds of Christ in the history of the nations, and other excellent things? No, for God has not appointed these as means of grace; prayer is the fruit of faith in Christ by virtue of Word and Sacrament; the preaching office has the public ministry of Word and Sacrament as its charge; God's goodness, the glorious deeds of Christ in history, the sweet feeling of God's grace that is now and then granted to us — all of this must help to strengthen my faith in Word and Sacrament, but the ground of my faith is and remains God's Word and Sacrament alone. Upon this principle rests the very essence of Protestantism, for by it Holy Scripture is acknowledged as the rule in all matters of faith, just as the doctrine of justification is thereby expressed — that we are not made righteous and blessed through any human work or other human thing, but solely through the righteousness of the Lord Christ, offered to us in Word and Sacrament, and received by us through faith in them. Not to ground faith upon Word and Sacrament is, in general, fanatical; in particular, Roman Catholic, Methodist, and so forth (compare Eph. 2:20, Matt. 16:18, and many similar passages).