# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 04 29_S137
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
(Rev. John, chap. 14, vv. 6, 7.)
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine pure shall to eternity endure."
Published by the German Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Year 7.  St. Louis, Mo., the 29th of April 1851.  No. 18.
Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for subscribers out of town, who are to pay it in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 Cents.
Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be sent to the Editor; all others, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity and of the Person of Christ.

set forth by Dr. M. Luther.

(Conclusion.)

In sum, there is One God, One Lord, One divine Majesty, nature and being of all three Persons; but now the Person of the Father reveals himself, now of the Son, now of the Holy Ghost. Whichever of them reveals himself, it is the one God, in three Persons, to the end that we may rightly know the divine Majesty, and not, like Jews, heretics, and Mahometans, believe blindly and without discernment as though God were nothing more than a single Person: God will not have that, but will be known as he has revealed himself to us. And especially God is concerned for the revelation and knowledge of his Son, throughout the whole Scripture, of the Old and New Testament; everything points to the Son. For the Scripture is given for the sake of the Messiah, or Seed of the woman, who shall bring back to rights all that the serpent has spoiled: take away sin, death, wrath; bring back innocence, life, paradise and the kingdom of heaven. And as the fall of Adam came about in this way, that he stumbled distinctly against the Son, and yet thereby at the same time sinned against all three Persons, as the one God: so God, in turn, has let his Son alone and distinctly become man, that Adam through the Son, against whom he had stumbled and fallen, might distinctly be raised up again, and yet that such raising up or redemption is the work of all three Persons alike, as of the one God.

For when the serpent, the devil, wished to bring Adam to his fall, he set him against the Son distinctly, when he said: Ye shall be as God. That came too near the Son of God, and both, the devil and Adam, wanted to depose the Son from his honors; for the Son alone is the equal, or the image of the invisible God, Col. 1, 15, and the image of his divine being, who is equal to the Father in one Godhead, Heb. 1, 3. And the devil had earlier done the same fall in heaven, and had learned with his angels precisely at the same Image, the Son of God; he was not content that he was the fairest image of God among all the angels (though not begotten from eternity, but created in the beginning), but wished also to be the inward natural image of God, equal to the Son; as the Fathers interpret the passage Is. 14, vv. 12, 13, 14, under the name of the king of Babel: "How art thou fallen, thou fair morning star? Thou who saidst in thine heart: "I will ascend into heaven, and be like the most high God". Therefore the Person of the Son has distinctly been revealed, and become man, that we might rise again in him through his humanity, we who had stumbled and fallen against his Godhead. So then the whole Scripture, as has been said, is altogether nothing but Christ, God's and Mary's Son; everything in it is concerned with that same Son, that we may know him distinctly, and so may see the Father and the Holy Ghost, One God, forever. He that hath the Son, to him the Scripture stands open, and the greater and greater his faith in Christ becomes, the brighter the Scripture shines for him.

(Of the two Natures in Christ.)

If now thou believest and understandest that Christ is true God and man, as the Scripture teaches us; then see to it further, and learn to become certain, that thou dost not divide the Person of Christ, nor mingle the two natures, or the divine and human being, into One being, but distinguish the nature here and keep the Person one.

For here also many clever wits have stumbled, in that they would make either Godhead and manhood One nature, or else two Persons, as Nestorius and Eutyches with their like; while the Jews and Turks are here exceedingly high and over-high of spirit, and hold us Christians for great fools. If he is God (say they), how can he die as a man? for God is immortal. If he is man, how can he be God's Son? for God has no wife. Here it goes as the saying is: Money has honor, said