# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1858_S296
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

296     What Is Now Understood by the Further Development of the Doctrine of the Lutheran Church?

-kind required. Your depotentiated God-man could likewise bring forth only a depotentiated redemption.

This, however, is only the one side of your system; another must likewise be considered. You say in §46 that the immanent relation of the three persons to one another suffered no interruption through the Son's becoming man; that must be regarded as impossible. Only an inner modification had taken place, for in the Son's becoming man the human nature entered into the innermost depth of the trinitarian life, and the reciprocal intercourse between the three persons became an intercourse of the Father with the man Jesus in the Holy Spirit. You observe in §47: the appearance that the Son, in the state of his humiliation, is excluded from the inner-divine trinitarian union because he no longer governs the universe as omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, would be resolved by the fact that the world-redeeming activity is the center of the world-preserving and world-governing activity. But to answer this last point first, I must observe — however beautiful and profound the thought may be — that the Son nevertheless remains excluded from the almighty government of the world, because in the state of his humiliation he ceased to govern the world as almighty God. For the government of the world requires not only the redeeming and merciful love of God, but also his almighty power. But the Son did not have omnipotence in the state of humiliation; therefore he did not govern the world. Add to this that in the state of humiliation the redemption was in any case still in the process of becoming, whereas Christ's government of the world was an absolute one; but since that ceased when he was occupied with introducing the redemption, there remains in fact nothing for the government of the world but — an interregnum. Or does the Redeemer, from the very moment of his entrance into the world, already see the redemption as completed, so that in the process of his speaking, acting, and suffering he has the redemption before his eyes as accomplished, and governs the world in consequence of this redemption foreseen as accomplished? But then that would simply not be your God-man, who, as a real and limited man, could not know his goal beforehand. In his case there had even to be the possibility that he might not succeed in accomplishing the redemption, for that indeed belongs to full humanity: hence he could not, as Redeemer in the state of humiliation, govern the world proleptically either; only the Father could, who saw all things completed before him.

But as regards the trinitarian relation in which the humiliated Son of God is supposed still to stand, what first strikes my eye is the artificial bridge by which you establish, between your humiliated God-man and the Father, the trinitarian commercium through the Holy Spirit. This bridge seems to me so artificial that I scarcely dare venture my thoughts upon it. To what end, indeed, do you build this makeshift bridge, when you have taught quite intelligibly that the Logos does not exist, and exists nowhere, outside the flesh? The alleged dualism of the church,