# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1862_S185
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Literary Announcements.    185

published at Dresden by Heinr. Fröhlich, house chaplain and director of the Deaconess Institution at Dresden. Boards, in illustrated wrapper. Price 20 groschen.

Published this year by Dörffling and Franke in Leipzig:
Dr. Kahnis: Testimony Concerning the Fundamental Truths of Protestantism, Against Dr. Hengstenberg. P. 135. 16 groschen.

Of this pamphlet Dr. Münkel gives the following notice:

Dr. Kahnis has, on account of the doctrine of faith discussed by him in No. 4 of the periodical, been attacked from two sides: in the preface of the Ev. K. Z. by Professor Hengstenberg, and by Professor Dieckhoff in his theological journal. The first has charged him with having been seized by the spirit of the age, so as to be driven toward the abyss of the crudest rationalism; the second has charged him with falling away from the truth of the Lutheran confession; both, that he has thereby prepared an offense for our church and a triumph for its enemies — of which, given the many voices that have since become loud, there can, in particular and in public, no longer be any doubt. Kahnis complains that many have thereby become confused about him, and that he therefore considered a defense necessary, and indeed not merely for theologians. For, "after Dr. Hengstenberg and Dr. Münkel, in an altogether unwarranted manner, have brought the matter before a wider public, I have in this writing had to address myself, at the very least, to a wider circle than the readers of my Dogmatics — while nevertheless keeping always in view theologians and theologically educated laymen."

Nothing new — that is, nothing gladdening — will one glean from this writing. Dr. Kahnis asserts and defends his way of thinking entirely as it was set forth in No. 4, except that this time he passes over or conceals some things, while bringing others more clearly to light. Thus, for example, it can no longer be doubted that Dr. Kahnis has given up the Lutheran doctrine of the Supper and is looking across into the promised land of the Union. Whereas in No. 4 it was granted to him that he taught rightly on justification, that must, in view of the coherence of his teaching, still remain an open question. He is right only in this, that the freer handling of the divine inspiration of Scripture and departure from the doctrine of the church are the order of the day, and that no one has the right to punish him more than others if he goes further than others along the path already entered upon. The corrupted humors of our modern scientific theology have drawn together in Kahnis into a single abscess — and that would be a good thing in itself, if only it served to cleanse the body.

Very distressing, on the other hand, is this "testimony" of Prof. Kahnis with regard to his own person, for it is less a testimony to the fundamental truths of Protestantism than to the convulsive agitation in which he finds himself. May he not fall upon the path of Baumgarten, who, since his own struggle, seems to have fallen into a true derangement. It would be a pity for the noble gifts and powers of this richly endowed theologian. That I do not say too much, let a passage stand for many from his