# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1859_S70
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

70 On Church Language.

be used? And for that there are quite a number of examples. But how
is it, now that it has been shown that the church is driven by the
utmost necessity to use the words Trinity and Persons? If then someone
finds fault with the newness of the words, is it not rightly judged of
him that he bears an aversion to the light of truth, as one who finds
fault only with this, that the truth is made intelligible and clear?
Such newness of words (if it is to be so called), however, chiefly
occurs when the truth must be maintained against crafty men who mock it
by the evasions they seek out — which we experience today more than
enough, we who especially have to do with combating the enemies of pure
and sound doctrine; for with their crooked and nimble twistings those
slippery serpents escape, unless they are boldly seized and, once
caught, driven into a corner. Thus the ancients, roused by various
struggles with godless doctrines, were compelled to set forth what they
believed with chosen clarity, so as to leave the godless no loopholes
and evasions by which they might turn the coverings of words into
hiding-places for their errors. Arius confessed that Christ was God and
the Son of God, because he could not set himself against the plain and
clear declarations of Scripture, and feigned along with the others a
certain agreement. Meanwhile, however, he did not cease to let it be
known that Christ had been created and had had a beginning, like the
other creatures. Now, in order to draw the man's supple cunning out of
its hiding-places, the ancients went further, in that they declared
Christ to be the eternal Son of the Father and of one substance with
the Father. Here malice broke out raging, in that the Arians began to
hate and curse the word ὁμοούσιος in the most ruinous manner. But had
they from the beginning sincerely and from the heart confessed that
Christ was God, they would not have denied that he was of one substance
with the Father. Who now would dare to revile those upright men as
contentious and quarrelsome, for having grown so heated in dispute over
a single little word and disturbed the peace of the church? But that
little word distinguished between the Christians of the pure faith and
the blasphemous Arians."*) In what follows

*) "What kind of dishonesty is it, to disapprove of words that
explain nothing other than what is attested and set down by the
Scriptures? It would be better, they say, to confine not only our
thoughts but even our words within the bounds of Scripture, than to
scatter about exotic words, which may become seedbeds of dissensions
and quarrels.. If they call that an exotic word which cannot be shown
composed of just as many syllables in Scripture, then indeed they
impose on us an unjust law, by which every interpretation is condemned
that is not stitched together out of the context of Scripture.. But
what forbids us from explaining, by plainer words, those things which
are perplexing and difficult for our understanding in the Scriptures,
provided the same words religiously and faithfully serve the truth of
Scripture itself, and are used sparingly and modestly, and not without
occasion? Of this matter there is no lack of quite many examples. But
what, when it has been proven that the church is driven by the utmost
necessity to employ the words Person and Trinity, if someone the
novelty of words then