# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 03 30_S86
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

long, great, large, or broad, but only in the word of God, which alone is infallible. (Luther's Answer to King Henry VIII's Book. See: Works, Halle edition, XIX, 424–27.)

In another place Luther writes on the question of whether laypeople may themselves depose a preacher who has fallen into heresy, as follows: "Perhaps they (the false prophets) will also put on a show before the simple common people and other unwitting persons, since they are not yet recognized by the church as wolves and false teachers, but are still held to be true Christians. Yes indeed, that is a wise and fine way of speaking! If the sheep were not to flee from the wolves until the wolves, through their own Christian council and public verdict, told the sheep to flee, the sheepfold would very soon stand empty, and the shepherd would in one day find neither milk, cheese, butter, wool, meat, nor even a hoof; that would then be called tending the sheep! What, then, has Christ our Lord done, when he commands and bids us to guard ourselves against the wolves, without waiting for a council of the wolves? For it is not only the whole flock of sheep, but also every single sheep for itself alone, that has the right and the power to flee from the wolves wherever it is at all able, as indeed it does, John 10:5: 'My sheep flee from strangers.'" (Luther's writing: Example of Consecrating a Bishop, of 1542. Works, Halle edition, XVII, 140.)

Sermon, delivered on Sunday Judica 1847 in Trinity Church of the German Evangelical Lutheran congregation of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession in St. Louis, Mo.*)
J.N.J.

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and in love, be with you all. Amen.

Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus!

To believe something means to hold something to be true on the credible testimony of another. Faith is therefore just as distinct from superstition as it is from knowledge and understanding. For superstition is the holding of a thing to be true without any credible testimony, or indeed without any valid ground whatsoever. But to know a thing means either to perceive the reality of a thing through the senses, or to be convinced of its truth through correct inferences drawn from other, incontrovertible truths.

*) We would never have ventured to lay this sermon, recorded in great haste, unaltered before a larger public in print, had it not been expressly requested of us by some of the hearers. The latter felt that, precisely now, when crude unbelief has become so prevalent in all classes, so simple a treatment of the present subject might also be of use to many a reader of the "Lutheraner." We therefore hope for indulgence, in that we have at last yielded to the request made to us.

There have been people in every age, and there are, especially in our own day, a great number of them, who maintain that not believing, but only knowing and understanding, is worthy of a rational human being; and that since the Christian religion rests on faith and above all demands faith, an enlightened man, one who has come to a consciousness of his human dignity, can never be a humbly believing Christian.

Yet however many allow themselves to be deceived by such pronouncements of the spokesmen of our age, these their assertions prove to be nothing but hollow phrases as soon as they are held up even briefly to the light of daily experience.

For daily experience teaches us that, even in earthly matters, faith is just as indispensably necessary to us human beings as knowing and understanding; that without faith human society could not exist at all; indeed, that even the greatest enemy of faith is continually compelled to believe, just as every living person is compelled to breathe the air, whether he wills it or not. Even the child, if it is to be raised and instructed, needs faith above all things; without the child's faith, upbringing and instruction are simply unthinkable. And when a person leaves childhood behind, he by no means then abandons the realm of faith and enters solely into the realm of knowledge; most of what a person says he "knows," he actually only believes — for it is faith on which most, and precisely the most useful, human sciences rest. On what, for example, does history rest? On what does geography rest? Who can know what happened centuries and millennia ago? Must not everyone, unless he wishes to say outright that there is no such thing as history, believe what is related? Who can know what the character of the land is in every place? Must not everyone believe the reports of most cities, mountains, rivers, and seas, without ever being able to come to knowledge of these things through his own observation?

And where is there a relationship, domestic or civil, in which faith would not above all reign and be absolutely necessary? Every day we take in food prepared by others — does this not happen in the confidence that the other person will not thereby poison us? We enter into some contract with another person; why? We believe his words. We form a bond of friendship; does this not require believing that the other is really our friend? We have immigrated here into a land far from our fatherland, separated from it by an ocean: would this have happened at all, had we not believed the reports brought to us about the new fatherland? A sick person takes the medicines prescribed to him by the physician; why? He believes that the physician will act according to his best judgment. A merchant, upon receiving a report, takes his measures accordingly, lays in supplies, and so forth; why? He believes the report. A magistrate demands an oath from those brought before its court; why? Because it then believes the testimony solemnly sworn before the all-knowing, holy Judge.

Take faith away from the world, then, and it will become clear to you that the world could not exist without faith. If no child believed its parents and teachers any longer; if no reader believed a book or a letter any longer; if no traveler believed his guide, no emigrant his ship's captain any longer; no friend his friend, no citizen his fellow citizen, no patient his physician, no judge a witness any longer; if no king believed his reporter, no government a message of war or peace any longer; in short, if no person believed anything any longer on the testimony of others; if everyone wished to hold true only what he himself had perceived with his own senses or had investigated and recognized through the inferences of his own reason — then the bond of all human society would thereby evidently be torn apart forever. Who, then, would wish to dwell even a single day in such a world without faith?

All this is so clear that surely even the greatest unbeliever will not deny this necessity of faith for the maintenance of every human dealing and relationship. Is it not, then, remarkable that one nevertheless harbors so great an aversion to faith in religion, in Christianity? Is it not puzzling that a person, although he sees himself compelled to believe in every possible relationship of earthly life, refuses to believe only in religion? Where might the source of this lie? Allow me now to answer this question.

Text: John 8:46–59.

In the Gospel just read, Christ not only puts to the enemies surrounding him the question: "But if I tell you the truth, why do you not believe me?" but he also answers it in what follows. Accordingly I will speak to you:

On the alleged and the true sources of unbelief:
1. what is commonly falsely given out as the cause of one's unbelief, and
2. where its true sources are to be sought.

1.

According to the account of today's Gospel, when Christ had once asked the unbelieving Jews: "But if I tell you the truth, why do you not believe me?" their answer was: "Do we not say rightly that you are a Samaritan and have a devil?" They thus wanted their unbelief to be regarded as entirely justified. But what the alleged cause of their unbelief was, we see from what follows. For when Christ had cried out: "Truly, truly I say unto you, if anyone keeps my