# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1861_S133
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

What Dr. Heinrich Kurtz of Dorpat Teaches Concerning Faith. 133

falsifying it. Therefore it is also now one of the highest duties of a
Christian to bear witness against false doctrine, as against the most
terrible and most dangerous of the sins now prevailing in this age. We
Lutherans in particular, who carry the faith of our fathers in our hearts
through God's unmerited grace, must bear witness against false doctrine
within our own church. For when one's own house is on fire, one does not
look around for long to see where else there might be opportunity to help
put out fires. And then there is also the hope that of our fellow believers,
who wish to stand with us on the same foundation of Holy Scripture, our
testimony will be received in its right sense sooner than by others.

The purpose of this essay is now to demonstrate a most serious error in
a doctrine that belongs quite properly to the very heart of the Christian
confession, namely, in the concept of faith. The error consists in this: that
one does not let the faith that saves be solely and exclusively the confident
laying hold of the grace of God in Christ, as that grace is offered in the
Gospel, but rather regards sanctification and the pious life at the same
time — not, as both truly are, merely as the fruit of faith, but as an
essential component of faith itself. This false doctrine is found expressed
particularly clearly and unreservedly in the writings of Dr. Heinrich Kurtz
of Dorpat, and from the fact that these writings have found an
extraordinary circulation, and that Dr. Kurtz is revered by many
Lutheran Christians as a witness of pure Lutheran truth, one may also
conclude at the same time that this error is both widespread and
recognized by few, which is why a more thorough refutation of it should
not be without use.

Dr. Kurtz gives, in his "Christian Doctrine of Religion According to the
Teaching of the Evangelical Church, Mitau 1851," the following definition
of saving faith, which is likewise to be found, almost word for word and
entirely agreeing in sense, in his "Textbook of Sacred History, Königsberg
1850": "Faith is worked by the Holy Spirit by means of the Gospel, in
that the Gospel points us to the Redeemer out of all the misery of sin. To
right, living faith also belongs a threefold thing: 1) knowledge of the
grace of God in Christ, which, when it is of the right kind, is not without
approval and confidence; 2) the trustful going to Christ to obtain grace
(that is, diligent use of the means of grace ordained by him: Word and
Sacrament), and finally 3) willing and thankful acceptance of the grace
offered, as well as conscientious use of the grace received, unto a godly,
Christian life."

It must, however, be remarked here that Dr. Kurtz, immediately after
such a definition of faith, both correctly describes justification and
correctly distinguishes it from sanctification, when he says in § 274 of the
"Doctrine of Religion": "Justification is the acquittal from the punishment,
which