# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1860_S88
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

88    From German Reviews.

of the judges, where every man did what seemed good to him. But, says someone, will there not then be division without end? We say: yes indeed, until the end, as Christ has foretold. And the division is already under way; others will follow on their self-chosen paths, and the Union will get a spectacle, just as it likes to have.

From German Reviews.

I. In a review of the "Grundlinien zum Religionsunterricht an den oberen Klassen gelehrter Schulen" [Outlines for Religious Instruction in the Upper Classes of Learned Schools] by Dr. G. Thomasius (3rd edition, 1858), Ströbel writes: There is one serious fault I could have wished away. In paragraphs 7 and 9 the "divine determinations of essence" are distinguished, as a "trinitarian unfolding" of the Godhead, from the "relative" attributes of God, which are supposed to arise only from his relation to the world: eternity, immutability, omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, wisdom, righteousness, goodness, faithfulness. This theological conception is incorrect in more than one respect and draws after it, with inner necessity, a christological error, which appears formulated thus in § 23: "The μορφὴ θεοῦ [form of God] is not the divine essence itself (of that the Son has not emptied himself), but rather the form of glory corresponding to the essence of God which belonged to him as the eternal Son; μ. δούλου [the form of a servant] is the limited, creaturely-human mode of being. The former he freely renounces in order to appear, live, and suffer in the latter; exinanivit se humanam formam subiens [he emptied himself, taking on human form]." Were that really so, then in Holy Scripture the μορφὴ θεοῦ would stand opposed to the μορφὴ ἀνθρώπου [form of man]; but then the unavoidable consequence would also follow, that Christ either still today finds himself in the state of self-emptying, or that he has ceased to be man. According to the apostolic conviction, as it is clearly and fully repeated in Article 8 of the Formula of Concord, it can only be said: Jesus Christ exinanivit se servilem formam subiens [emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant]. That phrase "humanam formam" [human form], on the other hand, leads us straight into the Calvinist view, which first exchanges the concept of the God who became man for that of a man who became God, and then, as Ebrard's Christology has recently shown again, through the distinction of absolute and relative attributes in the Godhead, makes the Godhead itself into an absolute-relative being capable of "reduction" and re-augmentation. Caveamus istas Calvini speculationes! [Let us beware of these speculations of Calvin!]

II. In a review of the "critical-exegetical handbook on the Epistle of James by Dr. J. E. Huther, pastor at Wittenförden near Schwerin," from 1858, Ströbel writes: The undeniable worth of Huther's "Handbook" lies in its precise grammatical exegesis — its weakness lies in the development of concepts, no less than in a criticism resting on preconceived opinions, or visibly steering toward them. In