# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1860_S15
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Theology Then and Now. 15

and history must come, must certainly be shrewder than all his predecessors.

2. Formerly theory and practice were joined; now they are separated. —
Master Cleverclogs reproaches the theologians of Luther's time, and Luther
himself before all, with not really having been learned — which keeps many
who would gladly be or become learned from the study of their writings.
Now to be sure, by the standards of the world they were not learned, for
they shunned the unspiritual, idle chatter and the wrangling of the
falsely famous art, which some put forward while missing the mark of
faith, 1 Tim. 6:20-21, as once happened in the high schools with the
wisdom of Aristotle; they were, on the contrary, scribes learned unto the
kingdom of heaven, who as faithful householders brought forth out of
their treasure things old and new, that is, Law and Gospel, Matt. 13:52.

To many more recent scholars, with their writings teeming with citations
and annotations, the description fits that the Wandsbeck Messenger gives of
that professor who wore a great and frizzy wig upon his head, whose
learning was yet still greater and frizzier than his wig. Granted, then,
that the dear ancients were not learned enough for our time — yet in turn
the more recent theologians are often all too learned, so that the burden
of their learning has all but crushed some of them to the ground, until
one would wish to look about for those ancients who still possess youthful
vigor enough to help us up. A small measure of grain in the sack is
better against hunger on a journey than a great sackful that one must
leave standing.

In the writings of Dr. Luther and his fellow workers one can scarcely
read a single page on which the two questions are not answered: what is
this, and what use is it? By contrast, one can pore over many more recent
writings and soon rack one's brains over them, and must in the end still
confess, to the question, "what benefit, then, have you gained from all
this for your office and your Christian estate?" — with sorrow and
vexation over the lost time and labor: little or none at all.

The ancients, and Dr. Luther foremost among them, had tried out what
avails among people and what does not, Sir. 39:5; therefore their
writings are so rich in the most manifold experience that they enable even
the most inexperienced person who faithfully makes use of them to teach,
rebuke, and comfort out of a wealth of experience, so that all who accept
this must confess: yes, so it is and not otherwise! There is here no
running as though uncertain of the goal, no fighting as one that beateth
the air, 1 Cor. 9:26, but every course runs to a sure goal, every blow
strikes the enemy.

In many so-called devotional writings there is a want of laying the
proper foundation of doctrine, or a want of precision in setting it forth,
in that the matter is weighed only by hundredweights and pounds and not
by scruples and grains, or else they are leavened through and through with
all manner of false doctrine, so that no right edification can ever come
of it,