# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1859_S65
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre. [Doctrine and Defense.]
Volume V.    March 1859.    No. 3.

On Church Language.

It is an old principle: In verbis simus faciles, in rebus ipsis modo
conveniamus — that is: let us be accommodating in words, provided only
that we agree in the matter itself. This principle agrees entirely with
God's Word, for the Apostle writes expressly in 2 Timothy 2:14: "Charge
them before the Lord that they strive not about words (μὴ λογομαχεῖν),
to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers." On this Augustine
remarks: "To strive about words is not to be concerned about how error
is overcome by truth, but about how one's own manner of speaking of it
may be preferred to another's way of putting it."*) And Calov adds in
his Biblia illustrata: "Logomachies are not only of no use whatsoever,
but also harm the hearers, who through such wranglings are thrown into
confusion and begin to doubt what they believed; in this way their
faith is shaken and turned into skepticism." A Christian, and especially
a theologian, must never lose sight of what Jerome writes: "In sensu,
non in verbis est haeresis," that is: heresy lies in the sense, not in
the words. Were this not so, no one could be orthodox except one who was
not only himself a master of language, but also perfectly familiar with
the language of the model theologians; orthodoxy would then depend not
on belief but on speech. To this must be added that, according to the
history of the church, it has always been the heretics — who sought to
hide their false doctrines under ambiguous manners of speech — who first
compelled the orthodox teachers of the church to seek out, for the
correct sense of the faith, expressions behind which the heterodox
teachers could not conceal their false belief. Hence even the purest
teachers of the church, so long as certain heresies had not yet arisen,
spoke of the doctrines in question — as our theologians are accustomed
to put it — "securius," that is, more carelessly, less cautiously and
precisely, than did the teachers who were compelled by the heretics who
arose later to use such words as would prevent these latter from
concealing and spreading their poison under them. Thus even pure
teachers, for example, who lived before the outbreak of the Arian,
Nestorian,

*) "To contend about words is not to take care how error is overcome
by truth, but how one's own manner of speaking may be preferred to
another's." Lib. 4, de doctr. chr., c. 28.