# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1862_S365
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Is Doctrine or Life More Important for the Well-Being and Salvation of the Church? 365

the foundation of their faith, and this delusion is held to be the right
enlightenment of the Holy Spirit not only by the adherents of the Union,
but it has even found entry into the camp of the Lutheran Church, indeed
into the ranks of those who stand before the world as champions of true
Lutheranism. From this it is evident that this delusion is one of the
spiritual plagues of our time, against which Christians cannot be too much
on their guard. And it therefore seems an inescapable duty of love again
and again to point out the danger and to warn against it, again and again
to expose that delusion of the age in its sinfulness and folly, so that its spell
may vanish and the souls of the redeemed may become free of it.

In the most recent time, as regards the question before us, the statement
of a Lutheran professor in Leipzig, Dr. Kahnis, is striking, found in a
recently published writing of his which bears the title: "Testimony
Concerning the Fundamental Truths of Protestantism, against Dr.
Hengstenberg." He says therein, among other things, that the Lutheran
faith can have a future only "if it takes up into itself the truth of the
Union, namely, first, the basic conviction that Christianity, in its innermost
essence, is life, communion of the individual with God; secondly, a
heart for the whole of Christendom, a catholic disposition; and thirdly, a
living striving to draw ever nearer to the unity of the faith and the
knowledge of the Son of God." He further says: "In the sixteenth century
the awareness that it was doctrine on which everything rested was still
very strong. But in that very age men also recognized how great the
danger was of resting everything on pure doctrine. Every doctrinal
controversy always lifted the Church off its hinges. Every significant
theological question at once put the whole Church in question.... Pure
doctrine, when it is made in this way the sole point of unity, does not
unite, but divides."

When one reads these words, one must at first wonder how, among
German scholars, logical thinking falls out of use. For the Leipzig
professor says Christianity is life, namely Christian life, whereas
Christianity, according to universally valid usage, can only denote
Christian doctrine — only that which Christ and the Christian Church set
forth as the content of faith and the task of life. Christianity is nothing
other than the Christian religion, just as heathendom and Judaism are
nothing other than the heathen or Jewish religion. Religion, however, in
and of itself denotes only the objective system of thought concerning
belief and action which is the root of the subjective life of individual
professors of such belief and action and which sustains that life.
Christianity and Christian life are therefore distinguished from one
another as theory and practice, science and art, doctrine and exercise
— which, to be sure, ought to go together, where things are as they should
be, but whose confusion is a peculiar logical error. Just as, for example,
Platonism or Rationalism, so too does