# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1862_S209
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Articles of the Christian Faith. 209

of the doctrine of the faith stand in so intimate a connection, just as the
limbs of a body do among themselves and with the body, that none of them can be
taken away without mutilating the whole.

II.

Articles of faith arise solely from Holy Scripture and cannot
be established by reason; but insofar as the content given in them
differs among themselves in that one part consists of truths
known only through divine revelation, and another part of such
as are also, to a certain degree, attained by natural knowledge; and insofar again as not all the truths contained in it
are of equal importance for our salvation, nor stand in an equally close connection
with it, the articles of faith can be distinguished:
1. as pure and mixed (puri et mixti), 2. as fundamental and
non-fundamental articles (fundamentales et non-fundamentales).

Proof: That articles of faith arise only from Holy Scripture is clearly taught
by the following passages: Acts 26:22: "And I say
nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would
come to pass." 1 Corinthians 1:17: "Christ has . . . . sent me
to preach the Gospel, not with clever words, lest
the cross of Christ be made void." (cf. vv. 18, 19, 20, 21.) 1 Corinthians 2:
1: "And I, dear brothers, when I came to you, came not with lofty
words or with lofty wisdom to proclaim to you the divine testimony."
V. 4: "And my word and my preaching were not in the persuasive
words of human wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit
and of power; (5) so that your faith should not rest on human
wisdom, but on the power of God." V. 13: "Which things also
we speak, not in words which human wisdom teaches, but
in words which the Holy Spirit teaches."

Here belong also all those passages of Holy Scripture in which it is expressly
said that God's word is folly to natural reason: 1 Corinthians 1:18, 19, 21, 23, 25; 2:14; 3:19.

Antithesis.

It is accordingly altogether erroneous, and contrary to God's word, to want to bring
articles of faith to evidence, that is, to want to prove them from reason, as
the Wolffian philosophy has attempted to do (cf. Guericke, Church History III,
p. 474, 8th ed.) — or to want to develop the doctrine of the faith from some
supreme first principle, as is the aim of the newer theology; — or
to want to establish articles of faith by the human authority of the pope or of the so-called church,
as the Roman church presumes to do.

III.

Pure articles of faith are those whose content is known only through
divine revelation, e.g., the article of the Trinity of
God, of the incarnation of the Son of God, etc. Mixed