# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1844 11 02_S19
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

must submit, how then does it come about that its papal decrees sound so different one from another? You are, after all, such consistent thinkers — so resolve for us, then, our modest doubts as to whether one can really rely so firmly on the judgments of reason, seeing that the new philosophers do not agree with the old, indeed that neither the old nor the new can agree even among themselves? You yourselves say that whoever asserts what others have already asserted is a wretched parrot; you must therefore surely take great delight in the admirable diversity found in the assertions of all the great philosophers; your heart must beat three times faster in astonishment at the depth and richness of the human spirit, when you see that there are exactly as many opinions as there are heads, and just as many different results of research as there are researchers. We do not envy you for this, but we do ask for an answer: how does it come about that even the three German oracles of reason in America contradict one another in their answers, just as once the three oracles Dodona, Claros, and Delphi did in Greece? You all say indeed: "Thus speaks the infallible popess, Joan — that is, the most holy mother Reason; let no one here dare to contradict, unless he wishes at once to be publicly branded a model of utter stupidity, to eternal disgrace and shame in our eyes and in the eyes of all the great wise men on earth" — and thus, indeed, the philosophers of former times have also spoken. Terrified by this stern judgment, we beg you great spirits only to help us out of our labyrinth and to tell us which of you we are to believe. — We already hear the answer of you all: from every side it resounds in our ear, "Me! Me! Me!" But we must confess to you that this does not help us out of our predicament; for if we believe the one, we must let ourselves be scolded a fool by the other, and so on. What, then, shall we do? We know no other counsel than to wait with our decision until all those who set reason upon the judgment seat in matters of faith have come to agreement among themselves. — Is that not fair? Is that not reasonable, dear sirs?

But joking aside! If we are asked what we think of the value and use of reason, we cannot put it better or more concisely than the blessed Luther does in his Church Postil; there it says (Halle edition XI, 630): "I let it be, I exalt and praise reason and the natural light as highly as you like, but this I will reserve for myself: that I need not rely upon it." The Word of God teaches us to hold all of God's gifts in high esteem and to use them faithfully and gratefully. Among these we also count reason. We value it highly as a precious, priceless gift of God, which, although now deeply corrupted through sin, is still worth more to us than all the treasures of the world. Through reason man is set high above the beast; through

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it he is conscious of his humanity and personhood; through it he is capable of receiving into himself the idea that there is a God, and other supersensible objects, of recognizing the mutual relations of things, and thus of cultivating the fields of art and science. All Christians gladly grant this much to reason, and it betrays only the greatest ignorance, and the most shameless and ridiculous presumption, when more recent scribblers charge Christians with contempt for reason, and call all those who believe and have believed the Bible fools. History sufficiently refutes such twaddle, and shows that it was precisely alongside true Christianity that art and science always flourished, that the crudeness and rudeness of nations gave way to culture, civility, and humaneness, and that tasteless superstition yielded to the bright light of the Gospel. History shows us that when, in place of the Christian religion, a papal one came to rule, learning vanished along with Christianity — but that it returned when God, through the Reformation, gave the Gospel back to the world. History preserves for us countless examples of men who were humbly believing Christians, and who at the same time, in acuteness of mind, richness of spirit, and a store of human knowledge, stood equal to the greatest philosophers — indeed, who often far outshone them all in this respect. They remain the admiration of every age; their names stand inscribed indelibly in the annals of history and in the hearts of all noble persons of every age. They are, therefore, far too exalted to be disfigured or disgraced before the world by the spittle of some newly misshapen dwarf of the intellect. They need no defense of ours against such petty little spirits, no more than it is necessary for our hand to draw back the curtain of night so that the world may behold the rising sun in its splendor. So let people in our day go on seeking to gain a certain notoriety by showing the courage to revile great men even in the grave, when they themselves can never become great; the immortality of their own name will consist only in the immortal contempt of posterity, which will weigh upon them more heavily than it did upon a Herostratus, who once sought the immortality of his name in the destruction of the most beautiful work of architecture.

Yet we rein ourselves in, so as not to stray too far from our goal. We maintain that the friend of the Bible need by no means become an enemy of reason, and this precisely because the Bible teaches nothing that contradicts reason. If it were, of course, sufficient to refute this claim that an unbeliever merely utters a bare assertion of authority against it, then we would indeed have to give up our case at once. For all the papers of the scoffers and blasphemers of biblical revelation are now full of just such bare assertions, and the ignorant masses pray them back in obedient faith and worship them blindly as the untouchable pronouncements of their gods. But asserting and proving are as far apart from one another as darkness and light. Whoever, then, has no desire to be a mental slave of people who peddle the fancies of their diseased imagination as irrefutable truths of reason — people who sit upon the professorial chair of reason as the Roman bishop sits upon the throne of Peter — we ask him not to accept what they say unexamined, not to let himself be made a fool of by the tinsel of wit in which they wrap their assertions in place of proofs, and, above all, always to check for himself in the holy book of the Bible whether it really says there, and means, what those self-styled priests of the goddess Reason claim.

Let it suffice to cite just one example here. When the scoffers wish to prove that the Bible teaches contradictory things, so that only unreasonable people could believe it, they usually cry out: how is it possible that a reasonable person could accept the doctrine of the Holy Trinity! They do not consider it necessary at all to enlarge specially upon this subject: they simply appeal, without more ado, to the common sense of all people — Christians, Jews, Turks, and heathen — and say: who can believe that three times one is only one? With that they consider themselves finished; with that, as with one great mathematical blow, they have — in their own minds — overturned the whole edifice of Christian doctrine, filled with the noonday brightness of their great thoughts the thousand-year night in which countless millions have hitherto languished, exposed the folly of all the scholars who never suspected this astonishing wisdom, and given the Christian Church its final deathblow forever. There follow then a few patriotic sighs that this dear land of liberty still has not built any madhouses for the rabble of Christians!! For had that already been done, we poor Christians, whether we liked it or not, would have to be marched off to a local insane asylum right upon our arrival in this free state, on the dutiful report of some such champion of equal rights and enlightenment. Truly, a lovely prospect for immigrant Christians, should such heresy-masters of the new inquisition court of reason ever come to power!! — What are we to say to this? Should we laugh more at the simplemindedness, or grow more angry at the malice? It is plain that these great philosophers have formed for themselves such a notion of the Holy Trinity as, say, the untaught child of a poor charcoal-burner draws from the woodcuts it finds in its ABC book. Let the reader only note that this is the usual mode of combat of many scoffers: first they fashion an enemy for themselves, purely in their own heads, give it whatever shape they please, and then, eager for battle and most valiantly, march out against it