# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1863_S136
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

136 What the Apostles Say and What Christ the Lord Says to Our Catechism Controversy.

-kind, whenever they undertake a divine work — namely:

The Taking Off of the Shoes (see Exodus 3:5.)

Before Luther, in the service of Christ (see Matt. 10:18), stood "before princes and kings" and spoke his "Here I stand," he lay in his lodging at Worms upon his knees. The prayer in which he then poured out his heart before God is still found in his writings. It is full of complaints over weakness and sin and the corruption of this wicked world: for out of the depth of that sincere self-knowledge — the remedy for which had proven itself in the darkness of temptation and the soul's struggle, as Scripture testifies — the fresh spring broke forth which men now wish to muddy. We have, however, an old proverb, which says:

God's Word and Luther's teaching shall never now nor ever pass away!

V. Luther's Catechism a Confessional Writing of Our Church.

The reply contained in No. 172 to my "Marginal Remarks" (in No. 163) prompts me to lay the following upon the hearts of the esteemed readers of the Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung.

I had sufficiently explained that Luther's Catechism holds the standing of a confessional writing in the Church solely because nothing but God's Word is attested in it, and had in doing so appealed especially to our Reformer's calling and competence to draw out "the faith" (see Rom. 12:7), in a short summary, from the Bible according to its essential content and coherence. Accordingly this little book stands to the Word of God as wrought gold stands to the mine from which it was won. — Now, however, I am confronted in the reply in question with the objection that Luther's Catechism no longer holds this standing, that a contradiction with "God's Word" has been discovered in it, and that for this a few authorities are named specifically, while in general appeal is made to the newest researches in the exegetical field. — It is a matter of no small moment. Were a contradiction really present, nothing could be more burdensome to conscience than the royal ordinance of April 14 of this year. For the time being, however, that claim will surely stand in need of proof. Here only a few authorities are named quite in general, at the risk that they themselves might perhaps not even wish to say what they are being cited for. That is by no means a scientific demonstration. Granted that a portion of the theologians should justify the claim, there are on the other hand notable consistorial councillors, chief consistorial councillors too, and professors, who will decline to take up the same position. With the newest exegetical researches it is a peculiar matter. They contradict one another, rest upon hypotheses, and in part play into the hands of a bottomless skepticism. One finds, unfortunately, all too often among the professors confirmed what I wrote in the marginal re-