# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1858_S40
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

40 "Luther or Arndt!"

considered, this seems to us to be the most dangerous thing: that in such a book many scriptural passages, which the dear Dr. Luther rightly applies in order thereby to strengthen "the comfort of faith," are drawn instead toward life and righteousness of life. In this way an unsound exegesis is promoted for the common people; indeed, in this way the specifically Arndtian tendency is carried into the dear Bible itself. 4.) Against those who say that Arndt's manner finds its justification in the struggle, so necessary in his time, against dead orthodoxy, we maintain that Dr. Luther drives the doctrine of righteousness of life far more sharply and forcefully than Arndt was ever able to, a) because such teaching and admonition flows livingly and rightly, in accordance with Scripture, out of the ground of faith, and b) because he recognized the necessity of unceasingly applying God's law according to its third use just as well — indeed, without doubt, better — than Arndt did. Let one recall here only the blessed and lofty struggle of the dear man of God, Dr. Luther, against the Antinomians, and ask oneself who drives the doctrine "of vocation" more diligently and practically in sermons and other writings than that same old Reformer, unsurpassed in this respect as well. 5.) Let us also say with all our heart, together with Neumeister, of the author of "true Christianity": "he was a pious, blameless, godly theologian, and it probably never entered his heart to write anything erroneous"; let us also duly praise the fact that "before he would deviate a hair's breadth from the truth, he preferred to let himself be persecuted and hounded by the Calvinists"; indeed, let us even hold him up, with regard to his confession-faithful humility, as an example and model to the "Buffalo mischief"-mongers, "the crypto-papists" (as has been done in the "Lutheraner"), since Grabau, quoting from Neumeister's own mouth, writes thus: "When he was likewise reminded of suspect turns of phrase, he took it in a gentle spirit, admitted the faults (!!!)" — yet this too cannot be passed over in silence — as everyone who begins earnestly to study Luther must confess along with us — namely, that Arndt's whole manner of teaching does not agree with the good, old, church-Lutheran manner. His phrases and modi loquendi are different. He lacks the language of the Church. So it is, in our humble opinion, not unjust to trace the wide dissemination of Arndt's "true Christianity" at least in part to that legalistic tendency which, to be sure, better suits the natural man, although one may fairly interpret, in a mitigating sense, the eagerness of sects and fanatics for Arndt's six books by saying that such bumblebees seek in Arndt only what is their own, and not the whole of Arndt. Should this judgment strike one reader or another as truly too harsh, let him only begin in earnest to search into the matter; let him become a disciple of Dr. Luther and sit at his feet, and he will himself confess, "it does not really rhyme with Arndt's manner and way" — or rather, turned about: "the latter does not rhyme with the former." That is our first battle against Str., in which we