# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1863_S51
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the History of the Hanoverian Catechism Controversy. 51

by which they wish to grasp that which stirs and moves in the world under
the name of Christ. It may also be a myth, a fable, a poem of the yearning
human breast; one does not know. For the testimony of Scripture does not
count; it must itself first be set upon the unknown foundation. Just as
little do the witnesses of the symbolical books count. And these clergy,
who confess themselves to the foundation, must be compared to the Athenians
of old with their unknown god. When Paul speaks of the foundation,
Christ, which he has laid, then the Corinthians, and we who believe the
apostle's word, know whom he means; but the most eminent and loudest
spokesmen of the assembly at Celle have publicly overruled the apostle and
rejected precisely his laying of the foundation. They place the apostle
beside the foundation he himself laid, and set themselves, together with
him, upon another foundation, which they indeed call Christ but do not
know. What, then, does it mean to say, we stand upon the foundation that
is laid? Are they truly carried by this foundation, bound and ruled by it
inwardly and outwardly? But this foundation — equally unknown as to its
location, its nature, and its capacity — of which they speak, can bear nothing
at all; it is pliant clay which the masters shape and mold. It is, then, a
mere statesman's turn of phrase, meant to veil the real thought. But the
foundation on which a house stands lies down in the earth; one does not
see it, and in all one's doing and dealing in the house one gives it no
thought. So too here Christ is laid away in a dark place. Thus one has rest
before him, and full freedom and power even over the foundation on which
one claims to stand. Or is it perhaps a factual truth that those assembled
here stand upon one foundation? It is publicly known that among them a
thoroughgoing difference exists precisely with regard to the foundation,
and if one imagines that upon this foundation they mean to build the
Church, and from it to heal and save the Church, then one truly does not
know whether to laugh or weep over the deception. For what is this whole
confession? A glittering show of words, in truth an overthrow of the real
foundation. For the real foundation of the Christian Church is Holy
Scripture, the Word of God — for this Word from beginning to end is
Christ, his Word, his Spirit and life, his gift to us for salvation, his Church's
sole bond and banner; and we are to fear and love God, that we may not lie
or deceive concerning his name. We hold fast to Luther's Small Catechism;
but we regard no Lutheran clergyman or schoolteacher as authorized to
lay this catechism as the foundation of his religious instruction — that is
the sense of the second sentence. The second half of this sentence they
have perhaps spoken with conviction; the first half they have said, according
to openly evident facts, against their own conscience; at least all the
notable speakers of this assembly are sufficiently well known for not
holding fast, in this catechism, to the second article, the fourth and fifth
Chief Parts in their essential teachings, and much