# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1858_S63
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Correspondence. — Old and New Theology. 63

...and antithetical determinations, which every article states and establishes over against falsehood and error. On the other hand, not every line of argument, every explanation, etc., which properly is an accidental feature within a confessional writing, may be turned into an article of faith binding the conscience. Symbolic validity belongs to what the symbols intend to establish symbolically, and this lies, for anyone who reads it in the light of history, plainly evident in every article.

6. We do not, indeed, believe that with the age of the Reformation the doctrinal development of the church came to its end; we believe that further doctrinal conflicts can arise, and perhaps will arise, which could not find their resolution in the age of the Reformation. On this too rests the statement in our church order, that we confess ourselves "to that direction of the Lutheran church which, by way of the symbols and by the hand of the Word of God, strives toward a greater perfection of the Evangelical Lutheran church."

We are of the firm conviction that the doctrine of the church and of the ministry as well, so far as it has found its determinations in the symbols (over against the Roman opposite), is in accordance with the Word of God, and we recognize the symbols, in this matter as in all others of which they treat, as our norma docendi.

Correspondence.
Birmingham, February 5, 1858.

Most esteemed Professor!

The recommendation of Augustine's Confessions for the Lutheran theological pastors' library in the December issue of "Lehre und Wehre" prompts me to ask whether you might not, in addition, name a truly excellent edition of this admirable work; I mean: Sancti Augustini Confessionum libri tredecim, edited and annotated by Karl von Raumer. Stuttgart, published by S. G. Liesching, 1856. The Oxford edition is taken as its basis; the linguistically difficult passages — and there are indeed not a few of these in Augustine, even for a practiced Latinist — are well explained, and the content itself is elucidated by parallel passages from Augustine's other writings. Only since I have used this edition has this precious book become fully clear to me, and I wish the same blessing to a good many fellow ministers.

With cordial greeting and wishes of blessing, yours

Herm. Gilbert.

(Submitted.)
Old and New Theology.

A new theologian imagines that from his lectern he has looked into the inmost being of the Holy Trinity and grasped its personal properties, and says that, "for a figurative representation of the trinitarian process, he would paint a fiery circle as a symbol of the Father's fiery will of love, and within this circle a sunlike center as a symbol of the Son, [representing] the whole infinite depth of the divine being of love's illuminating aim of love; and, proceeding from this sunlike center out to the periphery of the fiery circle, a fullness of rays as a symbol of that which, proceeding from the Father through the Son, and