# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1860_S261
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A Word on the Bad Habit of Turning Articles of Faith into Open Questions. 261

The foregoing will suffice to show what is at issue here. Whoever turns articles of faith into open questions lays hands on the sanctuary of Christian doctrine, breaks pearls out of this diadem of the church in order to throw them to doubt as its prey, and attempts, if not by conscious intent then by the very act, to pull the church down from the rock on which it is built: from the Word of the living God, which is revealed to us in Holy Scripture.

We set the following propositions against this:

1) It is utterly ridiculous to say: doctrines held by the church from the beginning to be articles of faith have therefore never yet been articles of faith, because some people at present have not been able to become clear about these articles.

2) It is a slander against the Christian church to say that up to this hour she has not known what she is; and a slander against the whole line of orthodox shepherds and teachers, whom the Lord has given the church from the beginning, to say that they have, without exception, not known what their office consists in.

3) It is something monstrous to assert that ignorance is now the teacher of Christendom, which is to determine what is an article of faith and what is not. But if someone were to hold his own doctrine not as an uncertain "opinion" but as divine truth, and accordingly demanded equal standing in the church for the contradiction raised against it, that would be accursed malice.

4) This assertion, too, is a monstrosity: that because the opposite illustrates a truth, the church must therefore, at least in part, hold this opposite to be true for a time and represent it in her life, before she can recognize the truth.

5) It is an insult to the Holy Spirit to say that no enlightened Christian can understand His words in Holy Scripture without the church's decision.

6) To turn articles of faith into open questions means to transform revealed doctrines into problems of reason and the Christian faith into a heathen search for truth. Hence the perversity of placing doubt and uncertainty in articles of Christian doctrine higher than simple faith and the firm holding-for-true of revealed doctrine.

7) It is theological folly to speak of a "finishing" of articles of faith.

8) It is a grave error of Lutheran theologians to undermine the sole authority of Scripture, which interprets itself, in matters of faith, and to put the church's authority in its place.

9) It is a delusion destructive of faith to make the certainty of faith and the knowledge of the truth dependent on the future deci-