# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1858_S349
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Character of the Württemberg Church. 349

style resolves the task set for it, so that it reads just as pleasantly as it instructs thoroughly and brings peace of mind.

The casuistic works of Dannhauer and Bidembach, as well as the casuistic supplements to the dogmatics of Brochmand ("Systema universae theologiae"), and other small pertinent writings, we intend to mention when we come to the enumeration of the works of the second class belonging in a Lutheran-theological pastor's library.

(To be continued.)

On the Character of the Württemberg Church.

Under this heading the Freimund communicates, among other things, the following:

At the University of Tübingen there presently stand, in the theological faculty, two men of opposite tendency, who draw the theological youth to themselves in roughly equal measure and exert a particular influence upon them — the rationalist Baur and the Bible-believing Beck — yet both are alike in this, that each, in opposition to the Church, pays homage to subjectivism and instills it in the studying youth. In the rationalist this is not surprising, but lies in the nature of the case; all the more must it astonish one in the Bible-believer, and all the more questionable does it become precisely in his case, since in Professor Beck the power of an overwhelming personality is united with the weight of learning and the brilliance of presentation. For this reason a man standing at a geographical remove from the Württemberg Church, Dr. Liebetrut in Prussia, has recently found himself moved to open a series of polemical writings against Dr. Beck, and in them to set clearly before the eyes of everyone, but especially the members of the Württemberg Church, the danger of his manner of teaching.*)

Liebetrut briefly summarizes the content of a Reformation sermon by Dr. Beck on Matthew 5:1–14 as follows: "The basic idea of the Reformation address accordingly turns out to be this: Christ, with ruthless zeal, at the risk of leading his immature disciples to a like procedure, rejects the pious ordinances of the venerable fathers, even though they were not contrary to Scripture, but rather were meant to guard against apostasy and corruption; the evangelical Church rejects, with the same disregard, the ordinances of the Old Catholic Church — which appear, likewise, to be not merely pious but also scriptural — and renounces her: so it holds true now as well, in the renewed conflict between God's Word and human ordinance, not to limp on both sides, but rather — even though the weak in faith be offended, the pious

*) Dr. J. T. Beck, ordinary professor of theology at Tübingen, and his position toward the Church, particularly toward that of his own confession. (With the motto:) "Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste." Matthew 12:25. — No. 1. Occasioned by his most recent Reformation sermon, illuminated by Dr. Friedrich Liebetrut, Lutheran evangelical pastor, etc. Berlin: Schlawitz, 1857. 8vo. XV and 45 pp. (Price 10 silver groschen or 35 kreuzer.)