# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1859_S180
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

180 Thoughts on Modern Theology.

products. What good, in this, is all mastery, all smoothness and rounding
of form, when the right content is lacking? The want of it is not replaced
by splendid speeches, and is only poorly concealed. Wherefore, though
modern theology may have produced, in other fields, achievements of
lasting worth deserving recognition, it has nevertheless so far proven this
much: that, being by its very essence nothing but a rationalism
intermixed with pietism, it has its future with respect to the further
development of church doctrine. [So printed; the sense evidently
called for, and the next sentence assumes, "no future."]

That future belongs, rather, to Lutheran theology. We do not fail to
recognize, indeed, that in the Romanizing conception of the doctrine of
church and ministry, as well as with respect to the doctrine of inspiration
and of the atonement, of Christology and eschatology, the most regrettable
false paths have been taken. But neither do we wish to overlook that,
over against this, a vigorous reaction is also rising up, that a fresh breath
from the Spirit of the Lord blows through the Church, and that ever
louder and weightier voices are calling for a joyful and humble return to
life within the living Word of God, within the good confession of our
Church, and the doctrinal treasures of the fathers. So we hope that, if the
Lord grants his Church yet a longer respite, the old theology will arise
again in youthful freshness, and the rejuvenated scholarship will build,
upon the foundation once laid, which is Jesus Christ, only with gold,
silver, and precious stones, 1 Corinthians 3:12. It will take up again the
gold of truth which the faithful witnesses, through all the centuries, amid
so much trial and persecution, prayer and tears, have won out of the mine
of the divine Word. Taught by the painful experience of so many false
directions, it will all the more faithfully avoid whatever leads to such
byways; to overcome the false antithesis it will immerse itself all the more
deeply in Scripture, bring forth from it new building-stones of true
knowledge of God, and, for defense, wall up the gaps all the more firmly
and sharpen the old weapons all the more keenly. It will above all let itself
be refreshed and filled by the rich stream of the Reformation's testimony
in the writings of Luther and the fathers, but also, according to the word
"All things are yours," 1 Corinthians 3:21, take up into its treasury — sifting
strictly and critically, to be sure — every element of truth it finds elsewhere
in the field of theology, so as to bring forth from it things old and new, and,
in a truly ecumenical manner, to be able to be all things to all who are of
the truth. In that it thus takes up into itself the content of divine revelation
in unweakened purity, fullness, and power, and thereby also the
inheritance of the earlier ecclesiastical development of doctrine, it will,
by God's grace, also succeed in setting forth the pure divine thought all the
more completely in fitting form. And by holding unbreakably to the
authority of the divine Word as the highest and sole principle of
knowledge, and by victoriously maintaining and carrying through, in
accordance with Scripture, the central position of the article of
justification within the organism of the Christian doctrinal system,
dogmatics will vindicate its genuinely Lutheran and