# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1857_S29
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church-Contemporary-History. 29

criticism is to be recommended to all who, because they fear the power of the truth, "make lies
their refuge and hypocrisy their shelter." Isaiah 28:15. We shall wait and see whether the
man mends his ways; otherwise we may no longer expose our theological journal to
temptation by him.

"The Sower." This is the title of a religious paper about to be published by "a society of German
preachers of the Dutch Reformed Church of North America," of which the specimen number
has reached us. It is to appear, beginning this year, at first
monthly, at a price of 25 cents. It may be obtained at the address:
Pastor H. A. Friedel, 337 Greenwich Street, New York. It is intended to serve the church
named. The specimen number states: "It (the Sower) shall and will set forth the doctrines of the
church as they lie before us in the Word of God and our Symbols, presenting them — dogmatically,
historically, practically, edifyingly, without yielding a hairsbreadth. What occurs in other confessions
shall, as far as possible, be reported historically, but not contested except in the greatest need.
We will never don the armor against sister churches." We shall
wait and see.

II. Abroad.

Dr. von Hofmann. We have already reported last year that Professor
Philippi of Rostock has borne testimony against this theologian's (a professor at Erlangen) doctrine
of the atonement and justification, and that the former thereupon answered with extreme bitterness
in the Erlangen journal. Thereupon a rejoinder by Philippi has appeared under the
title: "Herr Dr. von Hofmann in Opposition to the Lutheran Doctrine of Atonement and Justification.
Frankfurt am Main and Erlangen. Published by Heyder and Zimmer, 1856.
(76 pp. in 8vo.)" Hofmann, on the other hand, has now issued a so-called "Defense," which,
as Philippi writes, "is couched in a tone in which I neither wish nor am permitted to answer.
To me it is," Philippi continues, "a sign that he feels himself struck. Just as
he denies the substitutionary satisfaction, so he likewise denies what, given the inner
connection of these doctrines, follows of itself — the imputation of the righteousness of Jesus Christ...
Faith, according to his view, justifies man as an ethical
comportment toward God and his word of salvation. I am conscious of having written against Hofmann's
doctrine of atonement and justification for no other interest than
that of the church of Jesus Christ, which is the congregation of believers, in order to preserve for it, so far as lies
in me, unshaken and unimpaired, its one comfort in life and in death, resting on the scriptural and
reformational foundation of salvation. I am also confident that
unprejudiced readers, eager for the salvation found in the atonement and forgiveness of sins in the blood of the Lamb
of God who bears the sin of the world, will have received no other impression from my
writing. I look with confidence to the judgment of all theologians who faithfully hold to the Lutheran church's
doctrine of atonement and justification, and
hope that they will no longer keep silent. — We too hope or wish
at least this much, for indeed it is scarcely to be explained how so many, whom God has appointed
watchmen of the church in Germany, have hitherto been able to keep silent about the perversions of Lutheran doctrine
as they are found so numerously in Hofmann's writings amid the bold assertion of agreement,
indeed of a deeper grounding of church doctrine; all the more since through Hofmann's
imposing pseudo-Lutheran doctrinal system so many young theologians have already been dazzled
and led astray. May the Lord bless the dear Philippi for his faithful testimony.
On the occasion of discussing Philippi's struggle against Hofmann, a German
theologian writes to Guericke: Once the catholicizing doctrine of justification has joined hands with the
catholicizing doctrine of the ministry and the church in our midst, we shall
probably be able to seek the work of the Reformation on earth without finding it. —— Yet
the Lord God knows how to preserve his church despite its theologians."

Berlin. In a report on the (united) Berlin pastoral conference held last May,
it states among other things: "When recently a Berlin clergyman, in the baptismal
address, very definitely set forth the office of godparent and the inward requirements needed for it,