# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1863_S18
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

18 Five Theses on a Theological Axiom.

...the Holy Spirit. That does not mean it is acquired without human diligence and labor. The possession of theology demands, on man's part, unremitting earnest study, the curbing of the thoughts toward persistent learning, the gathering and deepening of the spirit, manifold attentiveness, the application of all mental power and gift, careful deliberation, faithful use of what is given, the self-denying surrender of all that hinders it, and the persevering lifting up of the mind to God. It is given by God, for

1) it is not an invention of the human spirit, like the arts and sciences, but stems from heaven, arising directly from the wisdom of divine love, which willed to raise man to the eternal enjoyment of God.

2) it draws its knowledge and insight, by which it attains its exalted purpose in the human soul, not from the spring of human reason, but from the heavenly well of divine revelation in the word of Holy Scripture.

3) it cannot be acquired by human diligence alone, but only under the illuminating and quickening assistance of the Holy Spirit, as an answer to prayer and a divine gift for the edification of the church.

False or counterfeit theology is accordingly that which employs opinions and convictions drawn wholly or in part from reason or fancy, in place of the divine revelations of Scripture, as theological insight and divine doctrine.

V. From the above description of theology something like the following may be sketched as the picture of a theologian. As the light of the sun, as an inexhaustible source of life and joy, activity and enjoyment, spreads itself over the earth, and, interweaving with earthly matter, produces beauty and fruitfulness, calls forth motion and activity through its shining and warming wherever a capacity for life is present, and makes the earth into a temple of God — so has the heavenly light of divine revelation spread itself in the spirit of the theologian: setting heavenly joy and the life from God and in God in the place of the desolation and rigidity of spiritual death; bringing forth, in connection with all, even the most secret, thoughts and stirrings, the manifold moral beauty of love, of righteousness, of truth, of chastity, of humility, of peace in God; enabling the spiritual powers for the fight against sin and for the working of the divine, and so making the spirit of man a temple of the Holy Spirit. This received light of divine love and grace in Christ has wrought in him the firm resolve to direct his whole spiritual activity — his thinking, willing, doing, and suffering — toward one fixed goal, to which all else must be subordinate: namely, now also to lead other men, who without this light are going under the curse and wrath of God toward eternal ruin, through that same [light] to