# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1861_S135
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

What Dr. Heinrich Kurtz of Dorpat Teaches Concerning Faith. 135

Christ laid hold of in faith, God should also look upon our good works with
grace and, out of fatherly goodness and mercy, appoint to them an
unmerited reward of grace. It is therefore clear that no works whatever —
that neither the use of the means of grace nor the sanctification of life —
are the organ by which we lay hold of Christ, and thus can in no sense be
regarded as essential components of faith.

Therefore it stands by the definition of faith as it was given by our old
theologians and has always been acknowledged as correct in our church.
According to it, faith consists of, and makes up the whole essence of, only
knowledge, approval, and confidence — and confidence as the true and
proper chief component, whereby a person is made righteous and saved.
The first two components, namely, are only preconditions of the last, and
Scripture ascribes grace and salvation to them only when, and insofar as,
confidence is joined with them. For a kind of knowledge of the truth
contained in the Gospel, and a kind of approval of it, an unrepentant and
unconverted person can also have; indeed, these two components are even
found in the devil himself, but there separated and emptied of confidence,
as Scripture says: "The devils also believe, and tremble." Therefore
knowledge and approval, without which confidence itself is never present,*)
are the two preliminary stages in the human heart by which the Holy
Spirit leads a person on to the actual laying hold of and personal
appropriation of Christ's merit, that is, to confidence. But then it must
also be the case that confidence in Christ's merit — precisely because it is
the actual laying hold of and personal appropriation of it — and this
alone, to the exclusion of everything else, that is, of the diligent use of the
means of grace and of the sanctification of life, makes one righteous
before God and thereby saves. For if anything besides confidence were
still necessary for this, then Christ's merit alone would not be sufficient to
procure for us the forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation. But since
Dr. Kurtz himself declares, in his definition of justification, that Christ's
merit alone is its cause, he cannot, on logical grounds, possibly deny that
solely that which lays hold of and appropriates Christ's merit — namely,
confidence — is the true essence and chief component of justifying and
saving faith, with which the two other components, knowledge and
approval, are always necessarily and inseparably united.

By this, however, it is by no means to be said that living faith, that is,
confidence in God's grace in Christ, could ever exist and grow without use
of the means of grace or without sanctification. As true as it is that we
are made righteous and are saved by faith alone, without works, so true is
it also that without sanctification no one shall see the Lord — but only
for this reason: because faith shows itself in good works

*) Naturally what is spoken of here is the faith of adults [adulti].