# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1859_S2
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

2 Preface to the 1859 Volume.

of our day; but rather, evidently, this: to now present that doctrine
better, to complete it, to purify it, and to develop it further. This view
has become so current, especially in Germany, that — to cite only one
example — Pastor Löhe proposed to the Iowa Synod that the following
passage be included in the congregational constitutions themselves:
"Since there are nevertheless various directions within the truly
Lutheran church, we do not fail hereby publicly to side with those who,
on the path (!) of the symbols, guided by the divine Word, strive toward
a greater perfecting of the evangelical Lutheran church."*)

The more far-reaching and decisive for the future of our church this
principle is — one that is becoming ever more prevalent — the more
necessary we consider it that we, on the occasion of the beginning of a
new volume of our theological journal, should state our position on it.

We, however — to say it at once without circumlocution — consider this
principle to be thoroughly false; and that for this reason, that we
believe not only that there can be a visible church which holds and
confesses thoroughly pure doctrine, but also that our evangelical
Lutheran church is such a church, and we ground ourselves in this on the
word of the LORD: "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples
indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
John 8:31-32.

On the basis of this promise we believe, first of all, that the saving
truth is not a problem which man would first have to solve, but that it
is already clearly and plainly contained in Christ's word; not a kind of
philosophy in need of, or even merely capable of, eternal further
development, improvement, and refinement, but that it is something
already lying complete in Scripture; not a Tower of Babel at whose
construction theologians would have to labor until the last day, but
that it is a heavenly edifice long since completed, to which the
prophets and apostles have already put the finishing touch. Any
additions to it, any supposed supplements from whatever philosophical
discipline, are therefore to us nothing but drops of poison in the pure
well of heavenly truth, mindful as we are of the apostolic warning:

"Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after
the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after
Christ." Colossians 2:8. Indeed, we do not deny that there is also a
wholesome use of philosophy on the theologian's part. We do not agree
with the Helmstedt theologian Daniel Hofmann, who wrote: "The more human
reason is trained through the study of philosophy, the more well-armed
an enemy it becomes, and the more fiercely it turns against theology"

*) See Kirchliche Mittheilungen aus und über Nord-Amerika [Ecclesiastical
Reports from and about North America]. Vol. 1858, No. 8.