# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1862_S213
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Articles of the Christian Faith. 213

of the foundation without knowing, but which nevertheless cannot be denied without injury
to the foundation. Here belong the articles
concerning the characteristic properties of the divine persons, of the personal
union and communication of the two natures in Christ, of
original sin, of justification by faith alone to the exclusion
of any works, and so forth. Although knowledge of these articles is not, strictly speaking, required of every simple Christian
in order to be a believer, the denial of them nevertheless cannot coexist
with the faith and salvation of the one who denies them; unless it be that his
extraordinary simplicity and ignorance of the logical consequence, by which the denial
overturns the ground of faith, are joined with a heart that
is terrified at such an error and open to better instruction.

The secondary articles are properly speaking more component parts or
explanations of the primary ones than special, self-standing articles distinct
from the other articles. But they are rightly called
fundamental articles of faith in a wider sense, insofar as they belong to the faith
and are connected with the ground of salvation. Thus, for example,
in the article on the Person of Christ there are three parts concerning the three modes
of the communication of properties.

The difference between the primary and the secondary articles
lies, then, in this: that the former may not only not be denied,
but must all be known in order to attain saving faith —
whereas one can have saving faith without knowing the latter.
But they may not be denied, since their denial always involves an error
that, by logical consequence, overturns the foundation of faith.

The reason why one need not, strictly speaking, know the secondary articles
in order to be able to be saved does not lie in this, that
by accepting the primary articles one thereby also unconsciously accepts the
secondary ones — for example, that if I believe that Jesus Christ
is God and man, I thereby also implicitly believe the three modes of the
communication of properties — that would be the Catholic charcoal-burner's
faith! — Rather the reason lies in this, that these secondary
fundamental articles do not necessarily belong to the producing of saving
faith, as the following examples will show.

The article concerning the characteristic properties of the three persons
in the Godhead is a secondary article, for a simple Christian can
believe in and worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the one true God,
without knowing or thinking about how person is distinguished from essence, or the personhood of the Son from that of the Father,
and so on. But conversely: whoever wished to deny the characteristic
properties of the divine persons, by which they are distinguished from one another,
would thereby be denying the divine persons themselves; for the divine persons are constituted precisely by these