# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1858_S368
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

368 Lutheran Theological Pastor's Library.

is sufficient,*) we now wish to call attention only to a few literary aids of
a subsidiary character, which we still count within the first class, namely
among those that should in any case be found in the library of a Lutheran
pastor. We mean, namely, that in such a library a more detailed good work of
world history, a good history of philosophy, and finally as complete a
dictionary of the German language as possible should not be lacking.

As regards world history, given our limited insight into the profane
historical literature that has now grown so rich, we do not venture to name
the work that seems to us most recommendable; we content ourselves here with
having pointed out the necessity of such an aid.

Of works that present the history of philosophy with compressed brevity and
yet with the thoroughness needed for understanding, there are not so many
that the choice would not be easier here. We do not hesitate to recommend
the following to our brothers in office: "W. G. Tennemann's (formerly
professor of philosophy at Marburg, d. 1819) Outline of the History of
Philosophy. Fourth edition by Amadeus Wendt (formerly professor of
philosophy at Leipzig). Leipzig, 1825, by J. A. Barth." 8vo. After a general
introduction to the history of philosophy, the author gives, in a separate
section, a brief survey of the religious and philosophical views of oriental
peoples and of the oldest Greek culture — in which, admittedly, the theology
of the Old Testament people must also submit to being ranked among the
philosophemes of men. The actual history of philosophy is then divided into
three periods, of which the first is that of Greco-Roman philosophy (600
before Christ to 800 after Christ), the second that of the Middle Ages or of
prevailing scholasticism (800 to 1600 A.D.), and the third that of more
recent philosophy up to Hegel (from 1600 to 1823). Whether the work has
since gone through further editions with continuations, we do not know. The
third and fourth editions, prepared by Wendt, have considerable advantages
over the first two. Not only do the former contain important corrections and
continuations (e.g., the account of the philosophical views of Newton,
Hamann, Schleiermacher, Herbart, Hegel, Wagner, and others, which was not
yet possible or had not yet been made in the 1812 and 1815 editions) —

*) To which is further added, that our works on church law partly, like
those of Carpzov, contain so much local material and go back so little to
principles that an American preacher in particular finds little profit in
them for himself; and partly that precisely the works which give a system
of the discipline of church law, such as "Mosheim's General Church Law of
the Protestants," Helmstädt 1700, and "Pfaff's Treatise on the Origin of
Church Law and Its True Character," Frankfurt 1722 (a translation of the
"Origines juris eccl.," Tübingen 1719) — not to mention at all the relevant
works of Titius, Böhmer, Pertsch, Fleischer, and others — develop, amid much
that is excellent, dangerous principles as well, and extend their in part
necessary criticism of certain principles that have become current and
customary in this field to church doctrines that are founded firmly and
unshakably in God's Word.