# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1856_S204
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

204 Is One to Be Held a Heretic or Dangerous False Teacher, etc.

Is one to be declared a heretic or a dangerous false teacher who does not hold and declare all the books contained in the collection of the New Testament to be canonical?

We are led to this question by the fact that the Reverend Pastor Röbbelen, on the occasion of the glosses on the Revelation of St. John that he published in the "Lutheraner," at the same time made the admission that, with Luther, he does not hold the "Revelation" to be canonical. This has, as we hear, given great offense here and there. We too, to be sure, cannot agree with our dear brother Röbbelen on this point, being convinced that the precious book of Christian and churchly comfort that is the Revelation belongs to the canon. Nevertheless, we believe that it is unjust, and likely also rests on ignorance of the matter, when an otherwise unimpeachable theologian is for that reason regarded as a dangerous false teacher who renders God's Word itself suspect — this in the case of one who indeed holds all the Homologoumena (the universally acknowledged books) to be canonical with all his heart, but doubts the canonicity of this or that Antilegomenon (a disputed book). This would also be thoroughly un-Lutheran, since our dear fathers in the faith, almost without exception down to the drafting of the Formula of Concord, held and declared either all, or at least some, of the Antilegomena not to belong in the canon — and this not out of rashness and carelessness with regard to the Word of God, but on the contrary out of great conscientiousness with regard to it. Luther's judgments concerning the Antilegomena are so far from being a "disgrace" to our Church that they rather bear witness to how exactly people in our Church once took the matter of what is to be the rule and standard of our faith and life; and the summary decrees of the papists and the Reformed, that all the Antilegomena too must be accepted as canonical by every Christian on pain of the loss of his salvation, are so far from being a testimony to a high regard for the Word of God in those communions that they rather show how easy it is for those to admit something into the canon who wish to have Scripture interpreted either in blind charcoal-burner's faith according to the pleasure of the church (that is, of the Pope), or according to the principles of reason.

We think, then, that it may not be out of place here to communicate to our esteemed readers a few testimonies concerning the opinion of our fathers, particularly in the sixteenth and in the first half of the seventeenth century, on this point — not because we ourselves share this opinion for our own part, but solely in order to demonstrate that doubt as to the canonicity of the disputed books can also be found among those to whom no Lutheran would deny the reputation of orthodoxy