# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1856_S167
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Obligation to the Church's Confessions, etc. 167

1. Christian theology, as the science of the Christian faith, has the calling to bring this faith, in all directions of its nature and its manifestation, to conceptual form, and therefore endeavors to know it according to its essence just as much as to preserve it. The light, power, and life of faith is the Word of God, which it holds within itself and which it brings to dominion in the believer, so that it is itself called "faith." This believed Word of God is, like faith itself, entrusted to theological labor, in order to be gathered by it into doctrinal concept — not, however, in order to be destroyed by it. Theology finds it present as doctrine in the preaching and instruction of the Christian Church, and indeed in such a way that within her it has, in part, already received a form of universal validity, and in part is being led toward such a form. Subject to the written Word as its rule, it is distinguished from that Word not in content, but rather in that it takes on the form of dogma or of a church article of faith. Church dogmas are concepts of Christian doctrine whose agreement with Holy Scripture can be recognized, in general, by all members of the Christian Church without further scholarly investigation; they have been worked out, by degrees, in the course of history, up to this completeness, by theology, and then examined and accepted by the Church, both being driven to this by their own peculiar nature and life, and guided in it by historical leadings. Accepted by the Church, and thereby also brought to a universally valid record, these dogmas constitute the church's confessions or symbols, through which the Church expresses her unconditional obedience to Holy Scripture in deed and in truth — just as, indeed, the believed and written Word of God, the church's confession, and Holy Scripture are at all times inseparably united with one another in the life of the Church, and are subjected to separate consideration only for the purposes of scholarship and instruction. The compilation of the dogmas recognized by the Church, or the scriptural confession, has nothing in common with the tradition of the Roman [Church], for it serves the Church as a key to the interpretation of Scripture only because it contains the scriptural summations of doctrine, such as are altogether necessary in order to let Holy Scripture interpret itself; it is the structure of doctrine which the Church, and theology within her, has erected upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, that is, of Holy Scripture, and which no one can destroy without destroying the foundation itself and becoming a sectarian. That theologians, prior to all scholarly labor, believe and confess with this confession, theology herself must expect, for it is the expression of the Word of God living in the faith of the Church, and her own most proper structure, with whose destruction she herself would perish: she acts according to her own nature — freely, that is — when she presupposes the doctrinal structure set forth in the church's confessions and faithfully carries it forward. She is free in this her limitation, because, in conformity with her own