# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1859_S69
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On Church Language. 69

That the church is entitled to express the divine truths also in
other words than those used in Scripture — there can be no doubt about
that, for the prophesying necessary in the church for its edification,
that is, the interpreting of Scripture, is indeed nothing other than the
setting forth of the content of Scripture not only in a language other
than the original (for this is translation), but also in other words of
the same language, or in paraphrase. To this is added that the
heretics, again and again, despite their use of biblical words — indeed
under the cloak of the same — have spread abroad their false doctrines;
hence the church has seen herself compelled to devise such expressions
and to use them, under which no heretic could conceal his perversions
and misinterpretations of Scripture. Hence Luther writes, after having
shown how Arius's cunning had compelled the orthodox to use ever more
precise terms and finally to set against him the word homoousios (of
the same essence): "It is indeed true that one should teach nothing
outside Scripture in divine matters, as St. Hilary writes, 1. de
Trinitate. This means nothing else than that one should teach nothing
different. But that one should not need to use more or other words than
stand in Scripture — that cannot be maintained, especially in dispute,
and when the heretics wish, by blind tricks, to falsify matters and
pervert the words of Scripture; then it was necessary that one should
gather the meaning of Scripture, as set forth in many sayings, into a
brief, summary word, and ask whether they held Christ to be homoousion,
as the meaning of Scripture is in all its words — a meaning which they
perverted among their own with false glosses, but had freely confessed
before the emperor and before the council. Just as if the Pelagians
wished to endanger us with this word: original sin, or Adam's plague,
because such words do not stand in Scripture; and yet Scripture
powerfully teaches the very meaning of those words, as that we are
conceived in sin, Psalm 51:7, that all are by nature children of wrath,
Ephesians 2:3, and that all must be sinners on account of the sin of
one, Romans 5:12." (Writing on the Councils and the Church, of the year
1539. XVI, 2703,4.) Even Calvin agrees with Luther on this point. He
writes in his Institutes: "What kind of godlessness is it, to reject
words that signify nothing other than what is attested and recorded by
Scripture? It would be better, they say, to confine not only one's
thoughts but also one's words within the bounds of Scripture, than to
scatter about foreign words which may become seedbeds of dissension and
wordy strife.. If they call that a foreign word which cannot be shown in
Scripture composed of just as many syllables, then they impose on us in
truth an unjust law, by which every interpretation is condemned that is
not patched together out of the words of Scripture.. But what forbids
explaining, by clearer words, that which is intricate and difficult for
our understanding, provided the same words strictly and faithfully
serve the truth of Scripture, and are used sparingly and modestly and
not without occasion