# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1860_S36
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

36 Preface to the Volume of 1860.

a man fervently zealous in earnest Christianity. Misled, however, by the
observation that so many merely trifled with repentance, thinking that
falling from grace was not so serious a matter, since one could always
repent and regain grace, Stenger wrote a tract under the title:
"Emphasizing Two Useful Points Belonging to True Christianity" (1670).
In it he said, among other things: "The great repentance is not repeated
by the true children of God as often as some imagine; rather, the true
children of God, ordained to eternal life, either never need that great
repentance at all, or certainly not a second time, still less a third, or a
tenth, or a hundredth time." (p. 1.) "Whoever falls back a third time
into willful sins will hardly be renewed to a true repentance. Should this
nevertheless happen, and should one clearly observe it from the wholly
different, holy walk that now shines forth in the penitent, this would
have to be called something quite unusual, something extraordinary."
Upon being confronted about this, and upon objections raised by the
theological faculties at Wittenberg and Jena and by the ministerium at
Frankfurt,*) he outwardly yielded; but when he was again publicly
attacked, he returned to his opinion and declared: "I side with those
who commonly credit the elect with no more than a single lapse."
("Reply to Hartnack's Slander-Book.") Stenger expressed another error
thus: "Whoever, at his final end, does not also have the good testimony
of a walk conducted in this world in holiness and according to Christ's
commandments, dies unblessed and does not (speaking of what
ordinarily and regularly happens) enter the kingdom of God."
("Emphasizing.") In another writing he remarked that, although it does
not follow from this proposition that one merits eternal salvation by
piety, yet "those who repent late are not saved in the ordinary way and
manner." ("Book for Those Who Wish to Learn to Understand Their
Christianity Better," p. 239.) A third point was Stenger's assertion: that
there is a difference between the laws of Moses and of Christ; 1. Moses
forbids also original sin and human faults, Christ only willful sins; 2.
the Law of Moses concerns the unregenerate, that of Christ the
regenerate; 3. whoever transgresses the Law of Moses is not on that
account condemned, since there is no man who does not transgress it,
but whoever does not keep the Law of Christ will be condemned.
Fourthly, finally, he taught concerning willful sins: "Whoever observes
in himself such sins as are not found in other pious Christians may
conclude from this that they cannot be common sins, but must be gross,
willful sins." ("Book for Those," etc., p. 17.) In doing so he declared all
sins of the unregenerate not only (rightly) to be mortal sins, but also,
altogether, to be willful ones, while David's sin, however, he declared
not to be a willful one but a merely human misstep, and later granted

*) In the latter of which J. Musäus and Spener had wielded the pen.