# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1862_S36
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

36 Preface to the 1862 Volume.

might well be taken as a euphemism for regeneration) "of these doctrines from Scripture." *).. The definition, arising from the camp of mediation theology, of Jesus Christ as the personal apex of humanity, which in essence amounts to the archetypal man in Schleiermacher's sense, carries a great truth in itself, but does not arrive at a Savior to whom the Christian can speak in worship, as Scripture teaches and demands: My Lord and my God. On the other hand, it has become especially clear through Thomasius that the old-church theory of a divine personality who, as man, remains in the full use" (which ought properly to read: full possession!) "of his divine attributes and powers, allows for neither a personal unity nor a truly human development of life in Christ. In that elevation of the man Jesus to the generic Son of Man, and in this self-emptying of the Son of God, lie the premises for a grasp of the person of Christ that is not only deeper and more vivid, but also more biblical.**) What led the Reformers to the Augustinian doctrine of sin and grace was the protest against the righteousness of works of their age, which protest was the fruit of a deeper experience of salvation and of an immersion in Scripture, especially that of Paul. But that the Augustinian doctrine of grace working all in all has its shadow side was shown by the Charybdis of predestination, to whose fateful whirlpool Calvin surrendered himself in his doctrinaire logical consistency, while the German Reformation happily steered clear of it.. But when, in polemic against the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, it was openly declared that the rejection of salvation has its ground in the human will, one could all the less conceal from oneself that this negative determination demands a positive one, since one had to admit that, if indeed only the faith that perseveres to the end leads to salvation, and this perseverance is unthinkable without the cooperation of man, then the recognition of a human factor as a condition of salvation becomes unavoidable. Here the whole one-sidedness of the doctrine of predestination comes to light, which, granting (!) that the laying hold of salvation is the work of grace alone, forgets that only he is crowned who fights rightly, and thus, since fighting surely also includes an act of man, does his own part."***) But just as the Augustinian

*) So then, even over the pure doctrine of the holy Trinity, the battle within the orthodox church is not yet fought out; the case is not yet closed; it was reserved for the learned theology of the present day to finally convey to the church the correct concept of it from Scripture! The idea of ecumenical symbols was a sweet dream! L. u. W.

**) What headway the theory of Thomasius makes at this point toward a "more biblical" formulation has already been shown in earlier issues of this journal — a headway, namely, that consistently ends by taking from us the comfort that God has lived and suffered for us. L. u. W.

***) The man, otherwise so acute, seems not to think at all of the fact that Scripture says first of all: "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth