# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1863_S16
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

16 Five Theses on the Theological Axiom.

3) The theology of the good angels and of the blessed. It is distinguished from that of all intelligent creatures belonging to temporal life by the vision of God.

4) The theology of the first-created. It was created in them together with the divine image, and is distinguished thereby.

5) The theology of the prophets, apostles, and evangelists. It has been distinguished by the immediate illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

6) Natural theology as well; for it is far surpassed by the theology here described, and is in and of itself insufficient.

III. Theology is a practical aptitude of the understanding, a practical habitus, which is rooted in the intellect and can exist only within it. Now where the understanding is active, there appears a knowledge of the general and the correct subordination of the particular under the general. To this habitus of the understanding, then, there belongs:

1) The steadfast possession, ready for application at all times, of the clearly and purely grasped revealed doctrines concerning the divine being; the will, the promises and threats of God; the person and work of the Redeemer; the sin of man; the grace of God and the means of grace.

2) That mobility of mind which is able, without failing effort, to connect with the doctrines named above the manifold demonstrations of God in word and deed revealed in Scripture, the various states of soul of men so far as these become accessible to the theologian's insight, the various teachings and opinions of men in divine matters and their works, and whatever at any time moves the mind of the theologian — so that he can judge and see through all of this in accordance with those doctrines.

If, however, the understanding is active only in this way — whether because the person thereby satisfies a theoretical need, because these subjects give him material for thought, because the expansion of his knowledge and the ordering and correct arrangement of his thoughts, or the objects themselves, please him, or because ambition or the enjoyment of certain advantages make such an activity of the understanding necessary — then the person places himself in opposition to the divine doctrines, which are not revealed for the sake of mere knowledge, but with the intention of bringing about in man a transformation, corresponding to them, of his knowing, willing, and doing. They contain, for everyone who knows them, the inescapable demand to realize and exhibit in life the salvation offered in them. So little, now, should that unnatural inner division of man's mind — through which the divine doctrine received into the understanding is hindered and its proper efficacy nullified — [be given] the name of theo-