# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1864_S169
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Modern Theory of the Various Doctrinal Types of the New Testament. 169

...to oppose an abuse of grace that contents itself with a dead faith, and to hold against it the doctrine of good works. And as for the epistles of Peter, the passages 1 Peter 1:14–16; 2:9, 21; 3:6, 10–12, 15 (cf. Ps. 34:13–16; Isa. 8:13) show that this apostle, too, found the doctrine of the new obedience of believers in good works not only not foreign, but that such utterances occur in him just as frequently and come just as much to the fore, as the references to Old Testament words of promise.

Further, to touch briefly once more on the alleged difference between these two and the Pauline and Johannine doctrinal type: how utterly devoid of any real basis is the view that, while James and Peter attach themselves to the Old Testament, Paul and John, on the contrary, set themselves in opposition to it! How numerous are the references to the Old Testament in the Pauline epistles, in the Gospel of John, and in the Epistle to the Hebrews (which is also reckoned here) — references not in a contrary sense, but decisively in a sense that demonstrates the connection of both Testaments, and entirely in the same manner as in the writings of James and Peter! The passages are too well known and present themselves so readily at first glance that a citation would be superfluous! And the same thing appears also in the epistles of John, see 1 John 2:7; 3:12 — only more rarely, because there was no occasion for it, since these epistles are not properly doctrinal epistles but are predominantly hortatory in content. The only opposition between the old and new covenant that Paul and John establish in their writings lies in this: that the old covenant was the time of preparation for salvation through the law — which worked the knowledge of sin — and through a typological worship, whereas the New Testament, on the contrary, is the fulfillment; and in this very opposition, in which their connection also again lies, they teach altogether the same thing, neither more nor less, than the other New Testament writers as well.

And just as it stands with these principal differences between the various so-called doctrinal types, so it also stands with the subordinate doctrinal differences derived from them in their more detailed development: they are nothing but assumptions and hypotheses — cheap ones indeed, adopted without any cogent ground — which, before an unprejudiced exegetical comparison, prove themselves so baseless that one must be utterly astonished at such idle trifling; hypotheses which, however, betray a fundamentally unbelieving cast of mind, one that resists faith in the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture, which undermine the formal principle of the Reformation, and which, where they are accepted, lead to a shallowing — indeed, even if not immediately apparent, then by principle gradually — to the complete undermining of faith.

The most powerful proof, however, of the baselessness of such hypotheses, and the strongest weapon against all such attacks on our faith, is and remains the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit in the heart, the personal