# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1858_S238
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Professors Thomasius, Harnack, and Delitzsch, against von Hofmann. 238

"...your word, and keep your covenant." The manner of their approach can truly be called exemplary. They have not injured love with a single word, and yet have borne witness to the truth with full seriousness and, at the same time, with scholarly competence. The pamphlet "The Confession of the Lutheran Church concerning the Atonement, and the Doctrine of the Atonement of Dr. von Hofmann, by Dr. Thomasius. With an Afterword by Dr. Harnack," which confined itself to bringing to light the conflict between Dr. von Hofmann's teaching and that of the church, received an essential supplement through the second closing discussion in Dr. Delitzsch's commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews: "On the firm scriptural basis of the church's doctrine of vicarious satisfaction," in which the spurious "scriptural proof" is set over against the genuine one. We wish to extract here the words in which he presents his view in concentrated form: "If one keeps the damnableness of our guilt rightly in view, and lets stand, without quibbling, the three great saving truths attested by Scripture — 1) that God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that is, imputed our sins to him; 2) that Christ, the guiltless one, yet laden with our guilt, became a curse for us, that is, suffered for us the lightning-stroke of wrath that should have struck us — or, as Scripture also says, that God, in his Son, who took on our flesh and blood and gave himself up for us as a sin offering, as an atonement for sin, executed judgment upon sin; 3) that now, in faith, his righteousness is likewise imputed to us, that we may stand before God, just as he let our sins be imputed to him, in order to atone for them — then, so long as these premises remain unimpaired, it is as clear as the sun that he suffered and died vicariously for us, so that we would not have to suffer what we had forfeited, and so that, instead of dying, we might have life in the life he won for us through his vicarious death."

Dr. von Hofmann's answer to the pamphlet by Dr. Thomasius and Dr. Harnack forms the second part of his "Apologetic Writings for a New Way of Teaching Old Truth," Nördlingen [18]57, which compares favorably with the first in its milder tone. In it he seeks to prove that the confessional writings do not contain the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction, and that Luther and Melanchthon did not hold this doctrine. In doing so he has placed himself in a rather awkward position. If the "scriptural proof" already loses all its force once one has read it through and then considers, with open eye and reflective mind, the scriptural passages Isa. 53, Matt. 20:28, Rom. 3:25–26, 8:3, 2 Cor. 5:21, Gal. 3:13, Heb. 9:28, 1 Pet. 2:24 — then all the more are all exegetical "artifices" (Eccl. 7:30) applied in vain, once any unprejudiced reader, having set the "Apologetic Writing" aside, once more surveys the relevant passages of the confessional writings in their entirety, along with some of the principal passages of Luther and Melanchthon.*) This is—

*) The mere citing of a few passages will already suffice to prove what has been said.