# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1863_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Five Theses on a Theological Axiom. 17

-ology can rightly be applied, if it is not to become a lucus a non lucendo, then just as surely does the following belong to theology as a practical skill:

3) that abiding disposition of the spirit in which those divine teachings gain rule over the willing and doing of man, so that the persevering striving arises to bring forth what they contain as requirement or incitement — not only in one's own person, but, as those teachings require, in others as well. The final goal of this striving is the eternal enjoyment of God, and the striving itself is love toward God and neighbor.

Since those divine teachings are the means by which men are to be led to the eternal enjoyment of God, and this enjoyment takes its beginning only with faith and in faith, so that the goal of theological activity would be unattainable, and the activity itself a vain endeavor, without the skill of using that means according to its purpose, it belongs to theology as a practical skill:

4) the ability by which one succeeds in convincing men of the truth of the divine teachings, in weakening the opposing teachings, opinions, and habits in those who are not willfully resistant, in planting, nourishing, strengthening, and preserving faith. This ability presupposes, first: a manifold knowledge, such as is necessary for the attainment of the purpose of theological activity among men found in the most varied conditions — namely, in particular, the manifold ways of teaching, exhortation, warning, and comfort which Scripture holds forth for instruction and embodies in its mighty examples, and which is enriched from the experiences the church has made, and still makes, in her theological activity. Then, a facility gained through practice, of applying — in an effective manner, that is, with the necessary clarity, earnestness, power, patience, wisdom, and perseverance — what has been rightly and duly selected according to the need of the soul.

Theology is accordingly not a display of pious gestures, or the habit of speaking in pious phrases; not the mere knowledge of divine doctrine; not the fervor of religious feeling; not the theological speculation of the philosophers, or the religiously excited fancy of enthusiasts, or the activity of rationalist moral preachers; not the so-called creative reproduction of doctrine; nor the effort to "pave the way" toward a solution of supposed or real open theological questions; nor the diligence of those who, having first learned from God and divine things, afterward seek, by deduction from some arbitrarily chosen principle, according to the demands of philosophical knowledge, to arrive at and thereby think they can prove the whole of divine doctrine with scientific rigor.

IV. Theology is given by God, through the Word, from the