# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 10 13_S26
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

secondly, not the believing Christendom of all places, for apart from the members of the Roman Church, no Christian believes in her infallibility. Let this suffice as to the great understanding of the nobleman. As for the Roman priest, the correct judgment of him already follows from what has been said above; but what indeed is one to say to the fact that a priest, with whom a layman wishes to converse about the way of salvation, knows nothing more important to do than to confound him regarding Holy Scripture? Was it not enough, in order to let the Bible stand as arbiter, that it was recognized as Holy Scripture by both contending parties? Is it foolishness or malice when the Roman priest, in spite of this, still demands proof that the book laid before him is Holy Scripture? What indeed should we say if the holy Philip, when he found the eunuch from the land of the Moors reading in the prophet Isaiah, had not asked him, "Do you understand what you are reading?" (Acts 8:30), but instead had said, "How do you know that this was written by the prophet Isaiah and is God's Word?" It is indeed inconceivable, even in worldly disputes, that two contending parties should declare a third person fully qualified to act as arbiter between them, and that nevertheless one of the disputants, with a good conscience as to the rightness of his cause, should demand of the other that he prove why he too holds that third person to be a fitting arbiter. But indeed, it seems that the Roman priest's conscience was not particularly well disposed in this matter; he apparently did not feel man enough to refute the Protestant layman from Holy Scripture, and therefore shifts the matter onto other ground. Or did the Roman priest merely not wish to accept the Protestant's presumably Lutheran translation of the Bible as arbiter? Why then does he not say so plainly? There does seem to lurk behind this a piece of Jesuitical trickery. The Protestant of much understanding might in the end have understood Greek as well, and one could then have made use of the original text. At bottom, however, the matter is this: if the Roman Church cannot first obtain from a person that he acknowledge her infallibility, she cannot then so easily saddle him with her other false doctrines, because these contend against God's clear Word. But once she has that first concession, she muddies, with her highly vaunted authority and testimony, the clear well of the Word of God, and whoever then still wishes to wash his eyes in it naturally gets enough sand along with it that he can no longer see clearly. Here the proverbs apply: "It is good fishing in troubled waters," and "In the dark it is good to whisper."

For the sake of clarity, we wish also briefly to answer the question: what assurance does a Roman Christian have that the Bible is Holy Scripture, and what assurance does a Lutheran Christian have?

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1. As for the Roman Christian, he has no other assurance than the affirmation of his Church. But here a conscientious and earnest person must necessarily ask: who assures me of the infallibility of the Roman Church? And he will all the less allow himself to be put off with the simple assertion that she is simply infallible, since the Roman Church, insofar as she can presently bear witness, consists of human beings, each individual of whom is capable of error. He will rather rightly demand proofs, and indeed such proofs as are not themselves mere assertions that would themselves first have to be proven. To furnish such necessarily required, unassailable, self-evidently convincing proofs of her infallibility, the Roman Church is not only unable to do, but one can easily demonstrate to her that she has often erred and has set herself in contradiction both with herself and with the Church of the first centuries. Thus, to cite but one example, the Council of Laodicea (between 260 and 264 A.D.), the greatest host of the most eminent Church Fathers (e.g., Origen, Eusebius, Melito, Athanasius, Hilary, Gregory of Nazianzus, Epiphanius, Rufinus, Jerome, etc.), and even the most revered theologians of the Roman Church down to the time of the Reformation (e.g., still Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, Peter of Cluny, a friend of the famous Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugo of St. Cher, Lyra, etc.) did not count the apocryphal writings — the Wisdom of Solomon, the Book of Jesus Sirach, the Book of Judith, the Book of Tobit, the Books of the Maccabees — among the canonical Scriptures, that is, not among Holy Scripture in the proper sense, not among the revealed Word of God inspired by the Holy Spirit, but recognized them only as writings that could be read with profit for edification. Nonetheless, the Roman Church saw fit, at the Council of Trent (1545 to 1563), to declare the aforementioned writings to be parts of Holy Scripture, and to pronounce a curse upon anyone who does not agree with her in this. How does this square with the infallibility of the Roman Church? Can an upright Christian still, with a good conscience, rely upon her testimony? Must he not be beset by the fear that the Roman Church, sooner or later, might again hit upon the idea of admitting into the canon of Holy Scripture some books hitherto held and recognized as uncanonical, and passing them off as God's Word — which he would then likewise have to accept on good, blind faith?

But if even a Christian must have such misgivings, what indeed is a heathen to say, of whom one cannot at all expect that he believe from the outset in the existence of an infallible Church, and for whom it can only ever be a consequence of his crudeness and ignorance if he nevertheless lets himself be moved to it before he has come to know Christianity itself according to its true nature.

2. As for the Lutheran Christian, he has, as the supreme and altogether decisive assurance of the divinity of the Bible, the testimony of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, he knows that the Bible is God's Word because he has experienced its divine power in his own heart, in keeping with Christ's instruction: "If any man will do his (God's) will, he shall know whether my doctrine be of God, or whether I speak of myself." John 7:17; compare also 1 John 5:6, 1 Thessalonians 1:5-6, and 1 Thessalonians 2:13. In other words: the testimony of the Holy Spirit here denotes the supernatural working of the Holy Spirit which we experience as a result of attentively hearing or reading the Word of God, in that the Holy Spirit, through the divine power indwelling in the Word of God, strikes, opens, and enlightens our heart and bends it to the obedience of faith, so that we, thus enlightened, through the inward urging of the Spirit, become inwardly assured and certain that the Word set before us is truly God's Word, and therefore assent to it out of inner necessity. But there can be no doubt as to whether the Spirit thus testifying is really the divine Spirit and not perhaps a demonic one, since, on the one hand, the whole change that has taken place in the person who experiences that testimony, and the consequences given along with it — the certainty of his state of grace, his adoption as a child of God, his good conscience, his peace with God, his godly walk, his struggle against the devil, the world, and his own flesh, his joyfulness in tribulation, and so forth — prove that it is a divine Spirit that works this; and, on the other hand, Holy Scripture itself testifies that it is a divine Spirit and that its sealing is infallible. The latter, however, contains as little a circular argument as it might appear to a superficial observer, just as little as it is a circular argument when Moses and the Prophets bear witness of Christ and Christ bears witness of Moses and the Prophets, or when John the Baptist testifies that Christ is the Messiah, and again Christ testifies that John is a prophet.

To this most important testimony of the Holy Spirit — which for the individual is, in the last instance, altogether decisive — the Lutheran Christian has, in addition, a great number of highly significant proofs, both inward and outward, for the divinity of Holy Scripture.

Among the inward testimonies belong, among others: the majesty with which God testifies of Himself in Holy Scripture; the simplicity and earnestness of biblical language; the loftiness of the divine mysteries which Holy Scripture communicates; the complete sufficiency of Holy Scripture for salvation. These testimonies, especially taken together, certainly carry no small weight.

Among the outward testimonies belong: the antiquity of Holy Scripture; the very special en-