# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 07 19_S197
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Lutheran.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching will never now and nevermore pass away."

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States.

Volume 4.

St. Louis, Mo., August 8, 1848.

No. 25.

Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at an annual subscription price of one dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who must bear the postage themselves. In St. Louis, each single issue is sold for 5 cents. Only letters containing contributions for the paper are to be sent to the editor; all others, containing business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent here under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

On the Friends of Light, by Wilhelm Redenbacher. (Dresden, published by J. Naumann, 1846.)

There will not be one of my esteemed readers who does not know of the so-called Friends of Light. Yet the appearance of this movement in the midst of our evangelical Church is nothing gladdening, but something very grievous, something very troubling. Therefore I have undertaken — may God grant grace for it! — to make my dear evangelical people more precisely and plainly acquainted, in the simplest way, with the opinions and assertions of these people and with what follows from them, and faithfully to warn against what is pernicious. For many do not actually know how matters stand with the Friends-of-Light movement, and even better souls are not safe from being led astray.

The Friends of Light, or, as they also call themselves, the Protestant Friends, have since 1842 held their main assemblies in Köthen, a small town in the heart of Germany. Here they gathered twice yearly in considerable numbers. They also held meetings in other places. In these they spoke out rather unabashedly; they also occasionally had things printed; I can therefore give you a reliable report of their wisdom.

Now, what then do the Friends of Light believe? But, beloved readers, we do better to put the question differently; for they speak not so much of what they believe as rather of what they do not believe. Well then, what do they not believe? They do not believe in the holy, divine Trinity, that in the one being of the Godhead there are three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; therefore they also do not believe that the eternal Son of God became man and that our Lord Christ is true God and man in one person; they do not believe that human nature has been corrupt and full of evil lusts since Adam's fall; they do not believe that Christ shed his blood for the atonement of our sins — a doctrine which some of them flatly declare to be blasphemy; they do not believe that man is justified before God without the works of the Law, by faith alone in the crucified Savior; they do not believe that man is incapable, without help from above, without the assistance of the divine Spirit, of thinking or doing anything truly good. I could go on for a while longer reporting what they do not believe; but it is enough; here we have named precisely the chief doctrines of Christianity which they reject.

But this we must add: they renounce the Augsburg Confession, which from the Reformation down to this present day has held good as the chief confessional writing of our Church, in which we bear witness before everyone of our holy faith as we have drawn it from Scripture. They also turn away from the Apostles' Creed (the three articles of faith in the Catechism), which from the time of the apostles until now expresses the common faith of all Christian churches. Finally, they also no longer accept Holy Scripture, which we have always held to be the sole, pure source of divine truth, as the true and infallible Word of God; although, they say, much that is true, beautiful, and good is contained in it, yet it is nevertheless full of superstitious, Babylonian notions, full of fables and tales.

It is really only their own reason to which the Friends of Light grant the right to vote in matters of religion. This sits enthroned among them on a high chair; whatever it says must be right, at least for today, and whatever it denies must be false; woe to him who contradicts it! He must at the very least put up with being called an obscurantist. To be sure, they talk a great deal about spirit, which they even sometimes call the Holy Spirit; but whoever thinks thereby of the Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son would be greatly mistaken; this "holy spirit" of theirs is nothing other than the thoughts, the fancies, the vapors of their own head and — vain heart. They say: "We have come much further than people were 300 years ago; the old faith was good for our gloomy forefathers, but for us enlightened ones it no longer serves; away with the outdated errors!" It is astonishing how much these gentlemen (and ladies) talk about the progress they have already made and are unceasingly making, so that one might think they must have gotten very far and would soon reach the very zenith of all wisdom and knowledge.

Now it is above all my concern to say a few words to you, my esteemed evangelical people, about reason, so that you form no false notion as though I, or the doctrine of the Church, despised dear reason. This is indeed a noble gift of God, without which we would have become, say, fish, or cattle, or apes. Indeed, it would become all our eyes if we were, like that shepherd, to look upon a toad and weep tears of gratitude that God made us into rational human beings and not into toads. Reason raises us above all other creatures of the earth and makes it possible for us to know God, and makes us capable of immortality. Reason is the light of this temporal life; in it, reason can govern, order, create new things, and master everything. And when it has been taught and made wise from God's Word, then it may also judge in the realm of religion — according to God's Word. But reason, after Adam's fall, is by itself, or by nature, as far as divine things are concerned, blind, full of error, delusion, and deceit, as we clearly see among the heathen, who also have reason just as good as ours, and often a very gifted one, as for example the New Zealanders, and who nevertheless, because they have hitherto gone their own ways, worship wretched idols. And when reason no longer wishes to be a humble pupil of the divine Word, as with our devout evangelical forefathers, but instead rises up as judge over this