# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1859_S10
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

10 Preface to the 1859 Volume.

Scripture speaks otherwise: With God nothing shall be impossible. If,
then, someone disputes or denies what is set before us to believe in
Holy Scripture, on the ground that it surpasses our grasp and seems
impossible and therefore contradictory, he arrogates to himself judgment
over God's power, and impiously holds that God can accomplish no more
than human reason perceives can be accomplished. 3. Human reason has
been blinded by the fall and, since the fall, remains wrapped in vanity,
errors, and darkness whenever it wishes to judge of divine and spiritual
things. It is therefore dangerous to grant it the judgment concerning
contradiction in the mysteries of faith. Indeed, it is found that even
in natural things it sometimes gropes pitifully in the dark like a
straggler in the night; how much less, then, can it render an infallible
judgment concerning divine things! 4. We are commanded to bring reason
captive to the obedience of Christ, 2 Corinthians 10:5; therefore we may
not grant it the office of judge over the contradiction in the articles
of faith. The connection of this inference is evident. For if reason
could or might judge concerning true and false, and likewise concerning
the contradiction in the mysteries proclaimed, to what purpose would it
then be commanded to bring it captive to the obedience of Christ? 5. If
judgment concerning matters of faith and the contradiction within them
were to be assigned to reason and to its guide, philosophy, it would
pass condemnation on many mysteries of faith revealed in Scripture. From
those principles — "As many as are distinct in respect of person, so
many do not have one and the same being numerically. If the Son is
begotten of the Father, he will also depend on him and therefore not be
God," and so forth — from these and similar philosophical statements, I
say, reason will render the judgment that the Trinity in the Godhead is
to be denied. According to that principle, "The finite cannot contain
the infinite within itself," it will judge that the mystery of the
Incarnation is to be denied. If it is said that a reason or philosophy
illumined by the revelation of the Word and by the working of the Holy
Spirit can explain all this in such a way that no contradiction remains,
I answer briefly that among those who have learned the mystery of the
Trinity from Scripture and accept it with firm faith, those answers and
qualifications readily find room; but the opponents, who dispute this
mystery from those principles, always find something to object, and are
never satisfied by those explanations and qualifications. The safest
course, therefore, is to refer the philosophical propositions brought
forward by opponents against the mysteries of faith back to their own
sphere, and to think and treat of those highest mysteries of faith
solely from Holy Scripture, which is the one and only principle of
theology and which alone offers an unchangeable and infallible
foundation. Chrysostom writes in the fifth homily on the epistle to the
Corinthians: