# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1859_S8
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

8 Preface to the 1859 Volume.

knowledge both of the subject and of the predicate, and indeed also of
the connection in which the two stand; but now, in mixed questions,
philosophy knows neither of the two terms, the subject and the
predicate, nor the connection between them. Thus a mixed question is:
whether Christ's body can be in only one place. The resolution of this
question cannot be derived from philosophy, because philosophy, although
the concept of place belongs to its domain, nowhere treats of the body
of Christ; of the natural body it does indeed treat, but Christ's body
is not a merely and purely natural one, but a glorified body — indeed
the very body of the Logos himself — in respect of which its
constitution is unknown to all human reason, and therefore also to
philosophy. Nor does it help to distinguish between a philosophy
considered by itself alone and one illumined by the light of grace,
because a philosophy illumined by the light of grace no longer judges
theological questions from its own principles, but from God's Word, and
recognizes that it must judge in precisely this way. And philosophy does
not make use of theology as a science subordinate to it; rather, on the
contrary, philosophy is subordinate to theology and is taken by it into
obedience. The light of nature does not perfect the light of grace, but
the light of grace perfects the light of nature."

"In the refutative use one abuses philosophy in many ways: 1. when one
takes philosophical axioms (propositions universally true within
philosophy) to be universal and sets them against the mysteries of
faith, whereas they are in fact specific and contain truth only within
their own sphere. Thus the physicist teaches: a natural body cannot be
in several places at once; which is true within the sphere of physics,
namely when it concerns a natural body and natural capacity. But if the
Calvinists wish to object from this principle that Christ's body is not
present in the Holy Supper, they take a philosophical axiom to be
absolutely universal and erroneously set it against a mystery of faith.
2. When the judgment concerning a true contradiction in the mysteries of
faith is left to human reason. It is indeed true that God does nothing
absolutely and utterly contradictory,*) and hence it is also certain
that no absolute and so-called utter contradiction obtains in the divine
mysteries; but from the principles of reason it neither can nor may be
decided what, in the articles of faith,

*) The Scholastics prove this as follows: Since God is the highest and
most perfect being, and everything that acts produces something like
itself, God's action cannot extend to something that has no being. But
in every contradiction there is something that has no being, because in
every contradiction there is a true and a false element, and the false
has no being. But that which does not have this is opposed to God and
has no likeness to him. If God could do what involves a contradiction in
itself, he could make a false proposition true. But now falsehood is
opposed to God, because he himself is the truth.