# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 03 30_S87
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

word, he shall never see death," the unbelieving adversaries broke out with the words: "Now we know that you have a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets, and you say, 'If anyone keeps my word, he shall never taste death.' Are you greater than our father Abraham, who is dead? And the prophets are dead. Who do you make yourself out to be?" By this the Jews mean to say: "We have the religion of Abraham and the prophets, of which we know that it is right; we therefore need no new or better one. Now Abraham and the prophets are dead, and you give the promise that whoever keeps your word shall not die: that is enough for us to reject you as an arrogant fanatic." When at last Christ further declares: "Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad," the Jews said to him: "You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?" By this they mean to say: Do you think, then, that we have no reason? For would it not be unreasonable to believe that you have seen Abraham, who lived two thousand years ago, when you yourself have not yet lived even half a century? No, we are not such fools, such blind believers, as to let ourselves have imposed upon us as articles of faith things that are plainly absurd and contrary to reason.

What, Luther thought, those Jews here give as the just cause of their unbelief, unbelievers have always likewise put forward, and by it they still, to this hour, most commonly seek to justify themselves. Even now unbelievers commonly answer the question "Why do you not believe?" by saying: "Do we not say rightly" that the Bible is a human book like all others, and therefore of course not free from errors, fables, and untruths? "Do we not say rightly" that Christ was a man like all others, only more pious, more gifted, and more enlightened than his contemporaries? "Do we not say rightly" that Christ's death was merely a martyr's death for the truths he taught, and not a sacrificial death reconciling God for the sins of the world?

And just as the Jews once appealed to their ancestral religion, with which they wished to content themselves, so unbelievers now appeal to natural religion — the religion every person brings with him into the world, which stands already written in his heart by nature, and which a person draws partly from the contemplation of nature, partly from the truths of reason innate in him. Unbelievers say: without any special revelation we know the main point of religion, namely the principles: "Do right, fear no one; give everyone his due; what you would not have others do to you, do not do to them." By this we go, and with this we have enough, and need neither a Bible nor a Savior. And just as the Jews also appealed to the fact that they could not believe what was contrary to their reason, so too all unbelievers still now give as the reason for their rejection of the Bible that it contains so much that they cannot comprehend and that entirely contradicts reason. They say: who can believe that the whole Bible of the Old and New Testaments was given word for word by the Holy Spirit? Who can believe that God consists of one being and yet of three persons? Who can believe that Christ is God and man in one person? Who can believe that man is reborn of the Holy Spirit in holy baptism through a few words and a little water? Who can believe that communicants receive the true body and the true blood of Christ under a small piece of bread and a few drops of wine? Who can believe that the decayed bodies of all people will one day rise again on the last day? Who can believe that God could be reconciled with sinful mankind only through the suffering and death of his own Son, that now man is to become righteous and blessed before God through faith alone, and that, on the other hand, whoever does not believe — and thus so many millions of people — should be lost and damned? No, such articles of faith could well be believed in the dark, superstitious ages of old, in times of the utmost ignorance and crudeness, but now we are too far advanced in the general cultivation of human reason to still accept such propositions as divine revelations. Some unbelievers make as if they would gladly believe, but that, however much they wished, they simply could not; they say: If there is a God, then reason too is a gift of God; but if it is a gift of God, then God cannot, in a revelation, command us to believe anything that our reason cannot comprehend or that plainly contradicts it!

However often unbelievers persuade themselves and others that these really are the true causes of their not believing in Christ and his Gospel, it is just as certain that they thereby deceive only themselves and others. The cause of unbelief lies, in the first place, by no means in the fact that man could really content himself quite well with his natural religion and needed no further revelation. Whoever truly has a longing for religion — that is, whoever would gladly know whether there really is a God and another life; what man is in the world for; how he may please God and ought to worship him; how he may attain his eternal destiny, namely how he may come to God and be saved — whoever, I say, truly carries in his heart a longing to know this, will never be able to content himself with his natural religion; he will find gaps everywhere which he longs with all his heart to see filled and completed; he will lament that man by nature has no certain answer to the most important questions of his heart, that he languishes in an impenetrable, nightlong darkness as far as his soul is concerned, and that he has the most urgent need of an immediate divine revelation.

Yet the true cause of unbelief also does not lie, further, in the fact that unbelievers are too clever, too rational, too enlightened to be able to accept the Christian religion, which teaches so much that is wondrous, incomprehensible, and apparently contrary to reason. Whoever truly directs himself according to the laws of his reason and not according to prejudices will admit that the domain of reason has certain limits, so that there can indeed be certain things not subject to it. Whoever denies this — whoever says that what my reason cannot grasp, what it cannot reconcile, cannot be true either — makes himself into a god, and by such an assertion only makes himself ridiculous, since there are, after all, a thousand kinds of things even in the visible world which every person plainly sees and therefore must believe, and yet which he cannot comprehend or explain. But if a rational person admits that his reason has its limits, how can he then wonder at or take offense that in a religion which is supposed to be a divine revelation there should be found a thousand kinds of incomprehensible mysteries? Must not a rational person, rather, conclude thus: precisely if the Bible contained no incomprehensible mysteries, precisely then I would have to doubt whether the Bible were a special revelation of God at all — for what need would there be of a Bible, if it contained nothing more than what reason could already tell us? Every rational person must admit that something can be above reason without being against reason. Who takes offense that one cannot see music, and that one cannot hear sunshine? Why, then, should one take offense that reason, however glorious a gift it otherwise is, is nevertheless not given so that man may comprehend God and his mysteries?

Indeed, more than that! If a person will not believe the mysteries of the Bible, he must believe mysteries far more incomprehensible still. Would it not be far more incomprehensible if there were no God, and the world had come into being by chance out of itself, than that, according to the Bible, there is a God who created the world? Would it not be far more incomprehensible if there were no providence, and the world preserved and governed itself, than that, according to the Bible, there is a divine providence that preserves all things and governs them most wisely? Would it not be far more incomprehensible if God had not revealed himself to mankind, but had cast them out upon the earth as orphans, as it were, into a foreign land, seeing that they need a revelation of God so greatly, than that, according to the Bible, God has revealed himself to mankind and given them a clear disclosure of