# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1858_S13
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Euen Theses. 13

-time into the particular doctrine assailed by error at that time. All articles of faith stand in a solidary connection. Whoever touches one touches them all. They therefore all stand for one, but also one for all, and it is each time the particular article of faith under attack that must answer for all the rest, and therefore steps to the fore. Depending on the particular kind of opposition, the center of gravity can shift into any particular point of opposition and make it a fundamental article. Apart from the opposition, all articles of faith are equally fundamental.

Gloss on 10. Luther: This knowledge of Christ is the sun. For the rest, compare on this the Church and School Gazette, No. 31. What is at issue is not a fundamental article of faith such as others also are, but a principle — which not every article can be.

11. The doctrine of justification is called the chief article in our confessional writings, not because only its emanations are to norm the churchly confession, but because in it lay the concentrated opposition to the false doctrine of that time. Apart from this opposition, according to the Reformation view — which is far removed from any theory of emanation — the article of justification stands in entirely the same line with every other article of faith. (Compare the three Symbols, or the Confession of Faith.)

Gloss on 11. According to the Smalcald Articles, the matter does not stand thus, that this article is the chief article because the Roman doctrines contradicting it are to be rejected; rather, these are to be rejected because they are "directly against this chief article."

12. In the theological scholarship of the evangelical Church, the doctrine of justification, in its particularity, has come to a settled conclusion and is no longer subject to any attack. It has therefore ceased to be a fundamental article in the Reformation sense.

Gloss on 12. As long as the question, What must I do to be saved?, remains the fundamental question, the doctrine that contains the answer to it will also remain the fundamental doctrine — that is, as long as there are people who are to be saved.

13. In like manner, it is at present no more fundamental for practical Christian life than other doctrines, for we are not dealing with people who purchase forgiveness of sin with ready money; nor is the harm of the evangelical people self-righteousness, which stakes something on wresting salvation from heaven through the merit of good works or of its fasting, but rather is the lazy false security which, for the sake of salvation, scarcely lifts a finger, and lets it come down to whether the Kingdom of God will of itself fall into its lap. Over against this opposition, the doctrine of the holy majesty of God is the fundamental article.

Gloss on 13. Whoever does not know that the deepest harm of the evangelical people as well is self-righteousness, from which the false security precisely flows, knows neither our people nor the human heart in general. And