# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1862_S214
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

214 The Articles of the Christian Faith.

certain properties and characteristic properties, so
that with their removal the persons themselves are removed; and consequently, through
the denial of this secondary article, the primary article of the
Holy Trinity, and with it the ground of salvation itself, is overturned.

Further: the secondary article of the personal union
and communication of the two natures is contained in the primary
article of Christ the God-man. His merit necessarily presupposes
both. Whoever, accordingly, believingly accepts the person of Christ as the
God-man has saving faith,
even if he knows nothing of the secondary article of the personal
union and communication of the natures. Whoever, on the other hand, wished
to deny this article denies, by logical consequence, the primary article of Christ
the God-man, and sets up in place of the true Christ
two Christs, or one who is only God, or one who is only man.

Further: the article of original sin is a secondary one, for
someone can fail to know that original sin exists and yet, because he
believes that he is a sinner and needs the Savior, still stand in saving
faith. Whoever, on the other hand, denies the article would thereby
be teaching an inborn holiness and power to fulfill the divine
law, and hence a primary article, and would thereby overturn the foundation of
faith.

Further: Holy Scripture sets faith and works over against one another in
justification in such a way that the one excludes the other. —
Justification by works abolishes justification by grace,
Rom. 3:4. A denial is accordingly not possible here without injury
to the foundation. Nevertheless someone can believe in Christ
and through such faith obtain forgiveness of his sins, who has heard nothing of, and does not know,
the secondary article of justification by
faith to the exclusion of any works. This may particularly have been the case
in the time of the papacy before the Reformation.

Since, moreover, the denial of a secondary article overturns the ground of
salvation only by logical consequence, and this consequence carries no weight
where it is not grasped, it can, in a person for whom this is
the case, coexist with the ground of salvation itself. And since
the knowledge of such an article, when it is denied, is not absolutely
necessary for the producing and preserving of faith, its
denial, when it arises from pure ignorance and simplicity, can also
coexist with knowledge of the other articles that
are indispensably necessary for faith and salvation.

Antithesis.

Every error, then, by which either a secondary article of faith
is denied, or an article contradicting it is taught, is a