# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1863_S139
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

What the Apostles Say, and What Christ the Lord Says, to Our Catechism Controversy. 139

...pride has prepared such a defeat (1 Cor. 15:19; Rev. 12:12). On the other hand, there is a proverb that says: "Whomever the devil has, him he no longer looks at."

That in this respect the Bible can be reconciled with the ideas of an age averse to the personal existence of evil spirits only by a forced interpretation is granted even by those themselves to whom, for the sake of Questions 20 and 21 (p. 80), the new catechism gives offense — while even the old one (cf. Part II, Qu. 23–26) could not avoid touching, in passing, on this unwelcome doctrine. They therefore do not shrink from honoring with their mockery, in Voltairean fashion, the temptation of Christ and the host of exorcisms of which the Gospels tell — in short, the whole New Testament devil, as they are pleased to put it — that is, if one is to speak the next consequence out loud, branding Christ Himself and His disciples as narrow-minded fools: for all of these accounts themselves confirm that there exists a personal adversary of God and of His truth even among those who are invisible spirits, and they call him the devil.

It counts as settled, among these opponents of biblical revelation, that the notion of a being to be regarded as the principle of evil conflicts with reason. Now it is indeed true that reason in general has much to object to revelation, and hence also to this doctrine of it. It is another matter whether it does so with sufficient ground. Where one instinctively follows the "consciousness of the present age" and its prejudices, the objection to a supersensible truth — one not provable, for the time being, by observation — will of course always seem to carry the day. But that sober minds find nothing unreasonable in the doctrine of the devil — though it has its difficulties and belongs among the mysteries of religion — the present writer ventures to show in a few words.

Surely no one will deny that, in the graded series of beings from man up to the Supreme Author of the world, living intermediate members are conceivable. Call them what one will, the following definition of them is not opposed to the demands of sound reason:

In a higher degree than man, personality, freedom of will, and a certain fullness of power and might belong to them. If it enhances the nobility of human nature that it is granted the capacity to develop into a well-organized commonwealth, a political organism, and the like, then still less can the idea of a kingdom be separated from the concept of the greater perfection of these beings — to which, then, a sovereign lord also belongs.

Further, it does not conflict with the power, wisdom, and goodness of God to allow even to beings so constituted a certain measure of free movement. With this is connected the possibility of a kind of opposition. Its actuality, to be sure, is supposed to conflict with their higher endowment. But if that higher endowment does not protect man from passion, why then should a somewhat suicidal act, in the higher sphere of the world of spirits, altogether