# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1862_S208
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

208 The Articles of the Christian Faith.

who could not do it better themselves, but also in order to guard against the enthusiasts and sects, as one sees and observes in the homilies at Matins,
that things were apparently much the same then. Otherwise, where spiritual understanding and the Spirit himself does not speak through the preachers (to whom I do not wish hereby to set a limit), the Spirit does indeed teach one to speak better than all postils and homilies do; still it comes to this in the end, that everyone will preach what
he pleases, and instead of the Gospel and its exposition, one is once again preached
moonshine. For this too is one of the reasons that we
retain the Epistles and Gospels as they stand arranged in the postils,
namely that there are few preachers gifted enough in spirit to be able to treat whole
evangelists or other books of the Bible powerfully and profitably." (Erl. A. 22, 238-239.)

(Conclusion to follow.)

The Articles of the Christian Faith.*)
(A work submitted to and discussed by the St. Louis Pastoral Conference,
by Pastor Otto Hanser.)

I.

The whole of Holy Scripture, as divine revelation, is an object of
faith. But among what it sets before men to be believed,
there is a certain number of doctrines that form a whole — and indeed such
a whole as is a living body, whose parts stand in organic connection both among
themselves and with the whole. This whole is the
sum of what man must believe in order to be saved, and
is called the doctrine of the faith (corpus doctrinae). Its individual parts or doctrines
are called articles of faith (articulus fidei).

Note. There is a distinction between the object of faith
and an article of faith. For while everything that Holy Scripture
contains — even the most inconspicuous thing, and one standing in no direct
relation to man's salvation — demands, as divine
revelation, the obedience of faith from man, one understands by "article of faith" only such a doctrine as is
necessary for the producing and preserving of saving faith in every
person, and by whose removal the body of doctrine
would be mutilated.

The individual doctrines are called "articles" (from the Latin
articulus, the small joint that connects several limbs) —
signifying, first, that although they are, in relation to the whole of the doctrine
of the faith, or in relation to the other articles, organic parts complete in themselves; and that they may accordingly, second, be
considered separately from one another, in that none is contained in another; yet, third, that among themselves as well as, in particular, with the whole

*) cf. John William Baier, Compendium Theologiae Positivae, § XXVII-XXXIV, pp. 41-56,