# Der Junge Lutheraner_Frankfurt am Main_September 1950_S33
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Junge Lutheraner

WE SHALL RELY ON NOTHING AND DEFY NOTHING/
EXCEPT ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST ✝ LUTHER ✝

Number 9                     September 1950                     Volume 3

Fatalism or Certainty of Salvation?

Much has been said and written for and against the film "Nachtwache" [Night Watch] — including in the "Junge Lutheraner." The film was certainly better than many a detective thriller or love story otherwise on offer. But precisely when a film deals with a Christian theme, we must form a clear and sound judgment about it.

We do not wish to tear the film apart or pick it to pieces. But we must recognize what was wrong with it; otherwise our own understanding of the faith is not very deep, and we stand in danger of taking harm to our life of faith even through such a fundamentally serious and good film.
Therefore we want to single out one thing here in which we see a danger in this film:

The Tower Scene

A Protestant pastor struggles with thoughts of suicide. Shall we be indignant if such thoughts come to a person who suddenly loses his only child, after his last remaining earthly happiness and sunshine in this life has been taken from him? I think only someone who has himself had to experience a similar fate and been led into the depths of temptation will be able to sympathize here. It is one thing whether someone wrestles with such temptation — even Job, in the depths of his suffering, cursed the day of his birth — or whether he succumbs to it. But thoughts of suicide are always wrong and a sin before God, and toying with the thought of suicide is always a terrible danger. If the right word is not spoken in response, only very disastrous harm can result.

How does the film "Nachtwache" resolve this question? Pastor Heger overcomes the temptation, or rather is torn out of it, when he perceives that the actor Gorgas really intends to do the same thing he himself had been tempted to do. But when Pastor Heger then speaks with the actor and finally tells him: "To let yourself fall here, that would not be hard, but to let yourself fall into God's hands with and despite everything that happens, that is hard" — there we as Lutheran Christians must ask: Has enough been said with that? For here the pastor is no longer alone with himself in his personal suffering, but here he stands as a Christian and pastor before another person who is without faith and threatens to break down under the weight of his guilt. And does he have nothing more to say to this person, who knows no other refuge than suicide? Here surely the testimony of divine truth had to be spoken quite clearly and quite distinctly.

Where in the Bible is it said that it is hard to let oneself fall into God's hands? This statement is not Christian truth of faith, but a wholly vague, colorless fatalism, with which a person as desperate as the actor Gorgas, in his sense of guilt, can do absolutely nothing. Why did Gorgas want to take his own life? Surely not because he wanted to do something that was hard, but because he wanted to flee from what had become too hard for him, because through suicide he wanted to escape his sense of guilt.

The Word of Forgiveness

Precisely in the dialogue on the tower it would have been possible and necessary to bring the word of forgiveness to bear. But this was lacking, and therefore the statement, "It is hard to let oneself fall into God's hands," is a word that is not sufficient for an unbelieving person with guilt on his conscience. For what does he know of God's hands? Must not such a word drive him all the more into despair and damnation? For Holy Scripture itself says: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." (Hebrews 10:31) And that is the only thing an unbeliever knows or suspects in his conscience about God's hands.
Have you ever had occasion to speak with a person who, in his despair, carried thoughts of suicide? Do you believe it is right to tell him what is hard? Must he not rather be told that suicide is the last and most terrible sin he can still commit, and that it will lead him out of the darkness of his temporal distress only into the night of eternal despair and damnation? And must he not be told: "You too have, in all your distress of life and conscience, a Savior and Redeemer who loves you and wants to save you, and who calls out to you: Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. I, I blot out your transgressions for my own sake and remember your sins no more. Fear not, I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name, you are mine."?

To fall into God's hands is comforting only for the one who believes in the forgiveness of his sins and is certain of God's grace. Indeed, whoever comforts himself in faith in his Savior with the forgiveness of his sins already knows himself secure in God's hand. He no longer needs to do anything that is hard. He does not need to let himself fall into God's hands at all; for he is certain that he stands in God's hand, and that nothing, nothing more can tear him from God's hand. "No one shall pluck them out of my hand," says the Lord Jesus, and adds emphatically: "No one is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." This too must be said to an unbeliever who wants to despair in his distress or under his guilt, so that he may become certain that the saving and forgiving, preserving and redeeming love of his God and Savior applies to him as well.

Victorious Certainty of Salvation

That is the victorious certainty of salvation which God's Word gives us through faith, and which we Christians must set against the vague and unclear fatalism that only wants somehow to let itself fall into God's hands and is nothing but comfortless uncertainty. If a person wants to despair under the weight of his guilt or in the fear of his distress, then he must be told what truly takes the unbearably heavy burden from him and truly stills his fear. He must be led to the certainty of salvation that overcomes everything hard, so that he learns to speak with the believing children of God:

"Who shall separate us from the love of God? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us."

Had the film "Nachtwache" presented and testified to this, it would truly have given the people who saw it something lasting. But then the contrast between Catholic piety and Protestant conviction of faith would also have emerged, quite of itself, more clearly and sharply; for the Roman Catholic faith, in contrast to the Protestant Lutheran conviction of faith, knows no certainty of salvation grounded solely in God's grace.

The Danger of Misleading

But this distinction, it seems, was not meant to emerge at all. Hence it comes about that both clergymen in the film — the Protestant as well as the Catholic — practically said and gave nothing to the helpless and desperate actor that could truly tear a desperate person out of his distress. It was quite evidently the intention of the film that a clear and decided position of faith should not be represented, but should be carefully avoided, so that not what divides but what is common to the two confessions would come to light. And that is a very dangerous misleading of the broad masses. That is the death of all decisiveness in matters of faith, the end of all gratitude for God's comforting and saving truth, and the seed and beginning of all the indifference and lukewarmness that today, to such an alarming extent, has seized and dominates the broad masses of our people.
The film "Nachtwache" cannot therefore be called Christian, but at most a religious tendentious film. But we must be clear that it is not a colorless religious fatalism that can help us in all our distresses, but alone the Christian certainty of salvation that is given to us through God's Word, and which we now also want to testify to the people of our time with all strength and decisiveness.
                                                    Hch. Huebener.

[Image: ornamental frame with quotation]

No one can say or believe how hard a thing it is to raise up and awaken again a faint heart and conscience that is utterly drowned in sorrow. Those who are without temptation can easily be cheerful; but it is trouble and labor when one who lies prostrate with spiritual sorrow and affliction is to be brought once more to true knowledge and faith, and to be able to comfort himself with the grace of God and his goodness.

MARTIN LUTHER