# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1863_S328
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

[the Reformed division] is to be taken as the only correct one, and because he understands the words, "Lead us not into temptation," solely of satanic temptations, he therefore supposes that the words grammatically joined with them, "but deliver us ἀπό τοῦ πονηροῦ [from the evil one]," must likewise necessarily treat again of Satan — that τοῦ πονηροῦ is thus to be taken not as neuter but as masculine. But that presupposition is just as arbitrary as this inference. To understand, under the temptation from whose turning-away Christ bids us pray without restriction, only a single species of it, and under τοῦ πονηροῦ — which is likewise restricted neither by any qualifier, nor by its grammatical form, nor by that of its article, as masculine — only a single species of evils, is sheer arbitrariness; but it is thoroughly in keeping not only with the rules of language, but also with the analogy of faith and of Scripture (cf. 2 Timothy 4:18), as well as with the position of this petition as the last one, to understand here every kind both of temptations and of evils, of which the "last" according to Scripture is not the devil but death, 1 Corinthians 15:24-26. Hence not only does Luther, following the precedent of Cyprian and Augustine, take πονηροῦ as neuter, but newer exegetes, and not of the lowest rank, agree with him in this. To name only one of them, Tholuck writes: "If we now understand πειρασμός more generally, of every state of temptation, so that it includes the θλίψεις (tribulations), then πονηροῦ must also be taken as neuter, for only then does a fitting antithesis arise, when πονηροῦ designates the whole domain of the πειρασμοί. So we take it, then, together with Luther in the Small Catechism, and indeed in assuming that the meaning 'evil' [Böses] and the meaning 'ill' [Uebel] flow together here in the Greek word, just as also in the Hebrew and Latin, just as indeed in πειρασμός likewise the ill and the evil are expressed for us at once."*) (Philological-Theological Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, 2nd ed., pp. 434-435.) If, moreover, Mr. K. even appeals here to Luther's Large Catechism, in which the same is supposed to have "rejected" the translation of πονηροῦ as "evil" [Uebel], "since under the poneros of Matthew 6:13 he understands the wicked one, the devil," then our Reformed champion here seems to be relying on hearsay. For Luther says in his Large Catechism only this: "In Greek the little clause runs thus: Deliver or guard us from the Wicked and Malicious One; and it looks just as though he were speaking of the devil, as though he wished

*) Hence Tholuck also decides in favor of the sevenfold number of the petitions of the Lord's Prayer. He writes: "If one understands the devil by πονηρός, then the second clause would indeed positively express what the first clause expressed negatively, and the whole would be a single petition. But precisely from this a new reason arises for us why we do not understand the devil by πονηρός: it is most fitting, in this brief prayer, to admit as few tautologies as possible" (we would say: to acknowledge no real tautologies at all in Holy Scripture); "such a one would arise here, in that the second clause would state nothing different from the first. But if we understand by τοῦ πονηροῦ the whole domain of ill and of evil, then this clause is more comprehensive than the preceding one, which then also justifies speaking of seven petitions." Loc. cit.