# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1859_S37
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Preface to the 1859 Volume. 37

new man, or of sanctification, needs, so the Church as a whole needs a constant reformation of life, until she leaves the battlefield of this world and triumphs in heaven. They knew well that the ongoing reformation of life belongs precisely among the indispensable vital symptoms of a true church, and that the Lutheran Church in particular, as far as life is concerned, has all the more need — the greater the grace she enjoys with respect to doctrine — to adorn that doctrine the better through her life than had hitherto been done and was being done. Nevertheless, our fathers never conceded that our Church was therefore also impure in doctrine. "There is indeed a great difference," writes Luther, "between doctrine and life, just as there is a great difference between heaven and earth. Life may well be impure, sinful, and frail, but doctrine must be pure, holy, sound, and constant. Life may well fail to keep all that doctrine requires; but doctrine, says Christ, Matt. 5:18, must not fail by so much as one jot or tittle, even though life should fail by a whole word or 'riege' (row, line) in the doctrine. The reason is this: doctrine is God's Word and God's own truth, but life is [a matter] of our own doing as well. Therefore doctrine must remain wholly pure; and whoever fails and is frail in life, there God can well have patience and forgive; but the doctrine itself, according to which one is to live, to change or abolish it, that he cannot and will not tolerate, nor should it be tolerated. For that touches His own high divine Majesty; there no forgiving or having patience avails — unless one lets it be and leaves it unmastered." (Glosses on the supposed imperial Edict of 1530, XVI, 1029f.) But our fathers did not merely voice purity of doctrine in the Church, as opposed to purity of life, as a demand; they also unconditionally vindicated it for our Lutheran Church — and this, indeed, even those who otherwise complained with particular earnestness of the decline of our Church and pressed with great zeal for a new reformation. Thus, for example, Andreas Kesler, died 1643, the author of the hymn "None Has God Forsaken," writes in the preface to his (German-written) Prudentia christiana: "Many zealous theologians have indeed until now cried out vehemently for a Christian reformation of life, and not without cause. As for the doctrine of the Gospel, however, we have it, through God's grace — for which be everlasting praise and thanks — pure and sound, and there is no need of any reformation there. But as far as concerns the administration of the office and the life of Christendom, which ought to be found alongside the pure religion, there reformation according to the divine Word is highly needful in every estate." In like manner the old Strasbourg theologian Conr. Dannhauer expresses himself; in his Casuistry he poses the question, "Is there anything in our churches that needs reforming?" and answers: "More, in truth, than can be said or enumerated. To be sure, the substance of the articles of doctrine is so pure that nothing more can be desired, but the method of doctrine