# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1862_S313
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

313

Literary Intelligence.

(Continuation of the notice of the pamphlet: "Thoughts on Christian Liberty.")

According to others, evangelical freedom of faith is supposed to be the right of free inquiry into Scripture. Not much objection can be raised even to this account, once the concept of free scriptural inquiry is rightly defined. For that precious liberty in fact moves within the bounds that Scripture itself has drawn. Unfortunately, however, this great principle of free inquiry into Scripture is not seldom carried only for show, and the scriptural inquiry of those who have it most often on their lips is nonetheless frequently the least free of all. Under the seductive title of presupposition-less scriptural interpretation, one seeks—while ostensibly leaving Scripture its full standing—to rid oneself of it by way of interpretation. In the shadow of a free-thinking exegesis, amid the cry: Not the letter, the spirit does it! The letter kills, the spirit gives life!—Scripture is bound and set aside on every hand. What the words themselves give appears spiritless. One calls now on accommodation, now on allegory, now on criticism, now on the natural sciences and so forth for help, in order to fend off the fetters—admittedly burdensome to the natural man—in which a sober and simple reading of the scriptural text strikes down one's own notions (1 Corinthians 2:14-15).

But it is not the case that the spirit of Scripture, so to speak, hovers above the letter. It is not left to the reader's gift of divination to determine what the word of Scripture says and does not say, nor can everyone make the holy prophets say what suits him. Scripture is, thank God, so written that, as far as the main matters are concerned, it needs no artificial levers, no authoritative interpretations by men, no appeal through instances to authorities, judges of faith and courts of faith, no glossators, in order to hit upon the true sense of the words. It is a book that stands entirely on its own feet, that has the center of gravity of its explanation within itself, and that sufficiently interprets — interprets itself. So much in it is clear that a humble, simple mind cannot be in doubt as to what it teaches and what it does not — at least in all the points that are necessary to know without harm to salvation. It is not merely a book for the learned, but for all the world, and its content opens itself to the unlearned by the same way as to the learned. Prayer, reflection, and trials lead into these holy halls, not learning, rhetoric, or antiquarian scholarship. In particular, trial teaches one to attend to the Word (Isaiah 28:19). To the weary and burdened, to the terrified conscience, to the timid and despairing, its door opens to its treasures; to the secure, the proud, the self-righteous, and the hypocrites it remains forever a stranger. But well for