# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1859_S174
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

174 On the Teaching of the Newest Theology concerning the Person of Christ, etc.

united in one single, indivisible Person, and yet have retained their full
integrity — as the passages cited above concerning the Godhead in Christ
testify, specifically concerning that Godhead which alone is in question
here. For this an excellent likeness, acknowledged by the whole ancient
Church, is the union of soul and body in the person of man, since these
remain, in their union, in full integrity, and yet are joined into one single
person. For this reason alone the comparison Thomasius draws between
the personal union of the two natures in Christ and the spiritual and
natural life in the regenerate is not so fitting, because the spiritual and
natural life present in the one person of the regenerate are not two
substances, as the divine and human natures in Christ are. But the
representatives of this newly revived false teaching wrongly charge the
Lutheran confession with "dualism," because it so firmly and decidedly
rejects all mixing of the divine and the human in Christ, and so clearly
distinguishes the two natures wherever they are specifically spoken of. For
with that same decisiveness of divine truth it holds fast to the unity of the
Redeemer's Person subsisting in both natures; only it does not wish to be
more decisive than the Holy Spirit himself, who teaches clearly and
plainly in Scripture concerning this mystery of the union, and just as much
as is necessary for salutary knowledge. The Church knows that one falls
into bottomless abysses of error and folly when one despises and
transgresses the eternal, unerring norm of the Word given to us by the love
of God. For how should the clear distinguishing of what is proper to each
of the two natures tear apart the unity of the Person, when the clear
distinguishing of what is proper to the soul and to the body, to the spiritual
and material nature of man, in no way destroys the comprehensible unity
of his person? That which is diverse in kind, and yet a unity in life, cannot
cease to be so when its constitution is grasped and expressed in words
according to reality.*) But herein lies precisely the humility of true
Lutheran theology: that it can never bring itself to sacrifice the reality and
truth of the divine revelation to a speculative formula that merely sounds
more unified. It remains standing in reverence and adoration before the
mysteries of the divine governance, and confesses rather that it does not
know what Scripture has not taught it, than that it should permit reason of
the flesh a voice on holy ground, and let this reason set up, in place of the
blessed mystery, an error that satisfies it and that it can comprehend.

So we, too, following the example of our fathers, wish to proceed in this
article of doctrine concerning the Person of Christ in the state of
humiliation, and would rather

*) It is by no means meant to be said, by what precedes, that the likeness of the
union of body and soul in the unity of the human person corresponds, in every and
every respect, to the union of Godhead and manhood in Christ. Omne simile
claudicat! [Every comparison limps!]