# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1863_S322
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

322 Some Remarks on a New Apology for the Reformed Church.

Presumably Mr. K. will know no less that there is no theological writing recognized as pure in our Church in which this principle is not acknowledged in its full extent. It is true, indeed, that in the previous century there were Lutheran theologians who, in mistaken zeal against the laxity of Pietism on the point of public church confessions, let themselves be carried away to the assertion that the symbolic books of our Church possess a "mediata θεοπνευστία," a mediate divine inspiration; this was maintained, among others, by the well-known orthodoxists Samuel Schelwig and Johann Georg Neumann. The former writes in his "Synopsis controversiarum sub pietatis prætextu motarum," among other things, as follows: "Can the symbolic books be called God-inspired [θεόπνευστοι]? — Since the question is understood of mediate inspiration, we affirm it." *) These and similar assertions, however, as the Licentiate must know, were at once contradicted by the other theologians of our Church — and indeed not only by Spener and all the Pietists, but even by the most determined opponents of the same, for example by a Val. E. Löscher.**) And not only this: again and again all our orthodox theologians have not hesitated to concede, without reservation, that only the doctrinal content of our symbolic writings is eternal truth, whereas, by contrast, their form — the literary and historical remarks occurring in them, and even their manner of proof — partakes of the imperfection that clings to all human works, and that the obligation to the symbols is therefore, of course, only an obligation to the doctrine contained in them. Thus, for example, the spirited Johann Conrad Dannhauer — who, as is well known, wrote such powerful polemical writings against the Reformed — writes: "Granted that such [symbols] do not bind one to hold fast to all the circumstances, modes of speech, proofs, and citations, yet the doctrinal content (the substance of the doctrine) must be held fast, just as it is set down in writing, and not merely insofar as it may seem to private judgment to agree with Scripture; in which manner one could indeed subscribe even to the Koran." †) What, then, must have brought Mr. K. to charge our Church with symbol-worship? Doubtless nothing other than that

*) "Can the symbolic books be said to be θεόπνευστοι, that is, inspired by God? Since the question is understood of a mediate θεοπνευστία, we affirm the same." Loc. cit. Art. 5. q. 4. p. 60. See Neumann's Theologia aphoristica. Wittenberg. 1710. p. 105.

**) See Unschuldige Nachrichten [Impartial Reports]. Vol. 1707. pp. 117, 118.

†) "Granted that these [symbols], being of this kind, do not bind one to hold to all the circumstances, phrases, proofs, and allegations in them, yet the substance of the doctrine itself must be held, just as it is written, and not only insofar as it may seem to agree with the sacred writings by private judgment; by which reasoning one could subscribe even to the Koran." Liber conscientiae apertus. 2nd ed. Vol. I, p. 258.