# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1863_S15
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

15

Five Theses on the Theological Axiom:

Theologia est habitus intellectus θεοςδοτος practicus per verbum a Spiritu Sancto collatus.

Theology is a God-given practical aptitude of the understanding, imparted through the Word by the Holy Spirit. *)

Preliminary remark. — Since the proposition before us is set forth not as a theorem but as an axiom, the theses aim not at proving its correctness but at a clear and distinct exposition of its content. — The axiom is especially important for our time, if only because our so-called scientific theologians attempt to rob the name of theology, and the dignity attached to it, from those to whom both properly belong. But just as a man is no physician who has merely acquired, according to some fixed system, a general physiology, pathology, and therapeutics, or who works out some new system, so likewise he is no theologian who has merely learned to spin out webs of speculative theology, whether resembling those of the spider or those of the silkworm.

I. The word theology is here taken in its proper sense, namely as the particular constitution of a person who is occupied with God and divine things. To be distinguished from this are:

1) A narrower meaning of the word. Thus those who were especially able to convince men of the nature of the divine being, or of the deity of the person of Jesus, have been called theologians.

2) The meaning transferred from the person to the subject matter. According to this, the system of religious doctrine, or its oral or written presentation in scholarly or popular form, is called theology.

II. The essence of theology, or of that quality which makes a person a theologian, is not described by the axiom as it is in and of itself. The description applies only to the particular form of it which belongs to the condition of the present earthly life of men. From it, therefore, the following are to be distinguished:

1) The theology of God. It is not merely a constitution attaching to the being of God, but the divine being itself. It is at the same time the archetype of the theology of intelligent creatures, and from it this theology has its high dignity.

2) The theology of the human nature of Christ. It is distinguished above the theology of all other creatures by the effects of the personal union with the divine nature and of the anointing with the Holy Spirit in fullest measure.

*) Communicated here at the request of the Fort Wayne Preachers' Conference. A friend proposes as a translation of habitus intellectus practicus: "a formation of the mind aimed at practice."