# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1861_S240
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

240 A Good Student Confession.

school, fetched the guardians and educators of the theological youth, to whom
two Saxons have further attached themselves, one of whom has already been mentioned earlier in this
hall, while the other stands and has stood particularly close to Minister von Falkenstein.

"Almost the majority of young theologians have no sense for general
studies, which is why for the most part they understand little of philosophy, history, mathematics,
natural history (the sink of iniquity of the superorthodox party),
although knowledge of the last-named is of essential use for
practical life, and the clergy in particular could bring much benefit to country dwellers through chemistry, the mother
of agriculture. Concerning
the ignorance of many young people with regard to the general sciences,
the philosophical faculty has met, shaking its head and deliberating,
as to what is to be done about the ignorance of general studies which, unfortunately, often comes to light at the doctoral examination."

The speech had been delivered on May 7. Already on
May 17 there appeared in the supplement of the Leipziger Zeitung "a word of reply"
to it, signed by 127 students of theology (about half
of the total number). In it we read:

"Dr. H. derives the blunders in the education of the academic youth
from a misapprehension of the Protestant basic principle. We ask
him: from what historical source is his 'incontrovertible principle of
genuine and unadulterated (that is, presumably, originally Reformation?)
Protestantism' taken? And we set against him the unshakable fact
that the essence of genuine Protestantism, in the Reformation sense, consists on the one hand in justification by faith, and on the other
in the recognition of the sole authority of Scripture — not merely in the
subjective conviction obtained by bare reason. —

Another reproach of Dr. H. rests upon the assertion
that the one-sided education of the theological youth is furthered by a deliberate
neglect of general, and especially philosophical, studies.
We ask him to consider that even now many theologians
remain faithful to the custom of devoting a part of their academic training time
to general studies, without finding themselves restricted from any quarter in
the free choice of subject; further, that there can be no talk of a
deliberate neglect where even theological professors
give this branch of learning its due through public lectures and in
theological examinations. Is that too little done for the general
studies? And what other faculty — with the exception, of course, of the philosophical —
does more for them? Besides: how long would
a theologian have to study if as a student, alongside his theology, he were also
to satisfy all the demands of general scholarship and
yet lay claim to something more than a bungling dilettantism?
But we must call it a degradation of the concept of theological
scholarship when Dr. H. treats the lack