# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1857_S238
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

238

A Lutheran-Theological Pastor's Library.

(Continuation.)

In accordance with our plan of naming for the present only those works absolutely necessary to a Lutheran pastor, we let the matter rest with those already named for the polemical discipline. Before we go further, however, we have, in accordance with a promise given in the previous volume, p. 51, to acquaint our esteemed readers somewhat more closely with a larger polemical work, which can scarcely be dispensed with, at least if one is to gain a more thorough insight into the theological controversies that have already occurred. We fulfill this promise of ours all the more gladly the more we, precisely here in America, in the land of the sects, have need of immersing ourselves in the history of the church's struggles against every sort of error in a better age. This history not only gives us in general a model of how error is to be recognized and overcome, but also — since, precisely as regards the attacks upon the truth, Solomon's saying, "There is nothing new under the sun," finds its full application — sets before our eyes in particular most of our present struggles as struggles already once fought out. The work we mean is the following: "Historical and Theological Introduction to the Religious Controversies. Edited by Dr. Johann Georg Walch. Jena, 1724–1739." Ten volumes. The author is the well-known editor of Luther's complete works published at Halle. He was born at Meiningen, in the Saxon duchy of that name, in the year 1693, was a pupil of the well-known Leipzig theologians Gottfried Olearius and Adam Rechenberg, and worked from the year 1718 until 1775, the year of his death, at Jena — first as professor of archaeology and philology, from the year 1724 also as a teacher of theology, and later at the same time as church and consistorial councilor. To Buddeus, with whom he was already intimately bound by a common theological direction, he was also joined by the tie of kinship, having become his son-in-law in the year 1718. As thoroughly as Walch treated polemical theology in particular, so far was he from any love of quarrels; alongside his thorough and comprehensive learning, especially in respect of philology, antiquities, and history — above all the history of philosophy and literature — he was distinguished precisely by a great love of peace, an exceptional moderation and modesty of judgment, and altogether by an unfeigned, living, and zealous godliness. The work described above falls into two main parts. The first main part, comprising the first five volumes, treats the controversies outside the Evangelical Lutheran Church. The first of these volumes forms a whole in itself, whose contents we have already given in the second volume of this journal, pp. 50–51. The second volume treats more fully and specifically the controversies with the Roman church, and the third those with the Re-