# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1859_S43
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Preface to Volume 1859.                                                    43

...would draw toward their salvation, and on the other hand, that in this
respect too the members will follow their Head; for the disciple is not above
his master ... Just as clear, dogmatically and historically — but the true
doctrine of Christ's descent into hell is bound up with the question of the
fate of the heathen who have not heard or received God's Word*) ... If, as
always in revelation, so especially in the doctrine of Christ's descent into
hell, the light of divine mercy is wedded to that of truth, then this is by no
means to be extended to the fate of those who have despised the gracious
invitation through the Gospel, and who without doubt go "to their own place"
just as surely as the rich man who despised God's call to him through
Lazarus; still less are we thereby entitled to assume an intermediate state in
the sense of purgatory; but we may well not simply dismiss as unfounded the
prophetic hope that an extraordinary, grace-filled provision, similar to that
evangelization of the dead at Christ's journey into Hades**), might be made
for those who have heard nothing of the Word of life, and who thus at least
have not entered into any express relation to the Light that has appeared to
all men." (pp. 145–156).
Sad, among other things, is furthermore the effect that the new discoveries
in the field of the natural sciences have produced even in those who
otherwise wish to remain faithful to our Church. Most of them have now
believed they had nothing more urgent to do than to try how the Bible might
be brought into accord with the supposedly irrefutable results of research in
the field in question. This has become, then, the road to the most
monstrous assertions. Thus, to cite only one example, Kurtz — at that time
in Mitau, whose name otherwise has such a good ring among Lutherans —
writes in his work "Bible and Astronomy. A Contribution to Biblical
Cosmology. Berlin, 1849": "We already have, in a pre-human age, an earth,
and no less a history that has unfolded upon it and around it. The prophet
of primeval history beheld this earth as a waste

*) Already at the beginning of the treatise Rudelbach had written: "It cannot
be denied that a soft, sentimental, Pelagian interest often hid behind the
question of the salvation of the heathen, particularly in the eighteenth
century . . .; all the more reason, therefore, that it be given its rightful
Christian due, and recognized in its true meaning."

**) Scripture does not say a single word about an "evangelization of the
dead" at Christ's descent into hell. 1 Peter 4:6 does not speak of a
proclamation of the Gospel made to the dead in death, but of one made while
they still lived; and what preaching is meant in 1 Peter 3:19 is easily
inferred from Colossians 2:15. In the interpretation of these passages, too,
it is only right not to violate the analogy of faith, Romans 12:7, and to
avoid "private interpretation," 1 Peter 1:20, just as one avoids hell itself.
Luther writes on 1 Peter 19–22, after having given his own interpretation:
"But I cannot rightly believe that Christ descended to the souls and
preached to them there; for Scripture is against this too, and says that
each one, when he arrives there, will receive according to what he has
believed and how he has lived." Likewise Luther writes on 1 Peter 4:6: "I
cannot accept the notion that the Gospel is to be preached to the dead and
departed."