# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1861_S137
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

What Dr. Heinrich Kurtz of Dorpat Teaches Concerning Faith. 137

-mata — that is, concerning the faith that is supposed to receive its proper
kind and shape from love. For faith alone makes righteous, which lays
hold of Christ through the Word and is adorned or decorated with him,
and not the faith that encloses love within itself. For if faith is to be
certain and constant, it must lay hold of nothing else, nor cling to
anything else, but Christ alone. For in distress of conscience it can stand
on no other ground than on this precious pearl alone. Therefore, let the
law terrify a person, and let the burden of sins press upon him as heavily
as it ever can; yet, where he has laid hold of Christ through faith, he can
nonetheless always boast that he is nevertheless righteous and godly. But
how does this come about? and by what is he so righteous? Answer:
Through the precious treasure and pearl that is called Jesus Christ, whom
he possesses through faith. Our adversaries simply cannot come to terms
with this; therefore they cast away this pearl, Christ, and put love in his
place, saying that love is the precious, noble pearl." — The same, in the
Theses on Infused and Acquired Faith, 1520, Walch XIX, 1736: "That
some do not understand how faith alone makes righteous is because they
do not know what faith is, and have never experienced it; but let
themselves imagine that faith is a quality hidden in the soul. But when
the Word of God resounds, as the truth is, and the heart holds to the
Word through faith, then the heart is filled with the truth of the Word
and made certain through the word of truth. So it is as when one holds a
cold piece of wood to a glowing iron: it is kindled by the iron and begins
to burn. When, then, the heart is thus filled with the Word, soon all
powers and members are likewise transformed. For what the heart does,
all the members also do, inclining wherever the heart inclines, whether it
be good or evil. And thus it is reckoned to the person as righteousness,
for the sake of faith in the Word." — Instead of citing still more passages,
I challenge Dr. Kurtz and everyone who shares his view to point out even
a single passage in the writings of our old, orthodox theologians teaching
that use of the means of grace and a godly life belong to the essence and
concept of faith. They will search for it in vain. For in Dr. Kurtz's
definition, the pure doctrine that makes up the first component of that
definition has, in a horrifying manner, through the addition of the
second and third points, become the fides formata of the Roman church,
condemned by our faithful theologians as contrary to Scripture and
antichristian. For the Council of Trent has indeed declared Dr. Kurtz's
doctrine of faith to be the correct one, as is shown in particular by its
condemnation of the pure Lutheran doctrine in the twelfth canon, which
reads: "If anyone says that justifying faith is nothing other than
confidence in the divine mercy, which forgives sins for Christ's sake