# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1860_S34
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

34 Preface to the Volume of 1860.

manner of speaking was in any case offensive and therefore to be avoided.
So wrote, for example, the Tübingen and Stuttgart theologians Jak.
Heerbrand, Steph. Gerlach, Matth. Hafenreffer, Luk. Osiander, Felix
Bidembach, and others, who had been called in by the Wittenbergers to
help, to Huber: "As for the universal election, finally, of which you speak
and which you claim was approved by us, we can solemnly testify that we
never approved of this new and unsuitable manner of speaking (which you
had already employed in your first theses). For the universal love of God,
according to which he set forth his Son as a reconciliation for the sins of
the whole world, extends much further than his election, according to
which he has chosen in Christ the believers alone, and indeed only those
who persevere in believing; yet since your sincerity was known to us, and
since you declared the word 'election' (taken in a broader sense) to be
equivalent to the word 'universal love,' and therefore yourself carefully
distinguished between universal love and specific election, we at that
time let it pass, interpreting your manner of expression in the best
possible way, so that you might remain of your own mind. But since we
now see that a dispute has arisen over this matter, we unanimously advise
and admonish you that from now on you wholly refrain from that turn of
phrase, which could become a bone of contention, even among the
like-minded, and that in speaking and writing you follow that manner of
expression which produces neither ambiguities nor disputes among the
orthodox. For that old rule cannot displease you, that one must often
keep the sense and yet improve the wording. For we cannot bring
ourselves to believe that you, after having been so brotherly admonished
both by your own colleagues and by us, will persist in the defense of a
private opinion. For colleagues so pious, so orthodox, so faithful, and
finally so learned and so thoroughly practiced in theological
controversies are surely to be given a fair hearing, or at least not to be
despised. The spirits of the prophets are to be subject to the prophets.
Contentiousness, which is wholly unworthy of a theologian and most
dangerous in theological exchange, must be entirely driven out of the
mind of one devoted to the truth. The pattern of sound words (so to
speak, the sinew of theological concord) must be used and held fast with
both hands. Who does not know how much the praiseworthy consensus of
teachers, both in doctrine and in manner of speaking, contributes to the
spread of God's honor, to the advancement of students' studies, and to
the fruitful defense of the truth — especially the consensus of those who
occupy the high professorial chairs of the academies and who have the
duty both to avoid the slightest suspicion of disagreement and also to
defend one and the same truth with one voice and, in the end, with the
same pen? And the more glorious the office that has fallen to you by
God's gift, the more you must take care to promote the honor of God, the
welfare of the academy, and the peace of the Church, in