# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 04 29_S138
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

138

the frog, and sat upon a farthing. Here the people who are high, high, yet higher, and highest in understanding, the Turks and Jews, teach us that God cannot die, and has no wedded wife; how could or would we poor Christians ever know so lofty a thing, if such exceedingly over-lofty masters did not show it to us mad geese and ducks, that God has no wife and could not die? It would be no wonder if, wherever a Jew or Turk goes, the earth beneath him were so merry at such a lofty spirit that it leaped with him over the heaven, and the heaven likewise, before such great wisdom, fell down with stars, suns and moons, at the feet of those Jews and Turks, or into the abyss of hell; for it is, in truth, an incomprehensible wisdom, that God has no wife, nor can die. O Lord God, the Christians know nothing of that! who would appoint God a nurse? Where would he get a nursemaid? Who would bury him? Who would pipe and dance for him at his wedding? Who would hold soul-masses for him? Fie, fie upon the Christians, that they worship a mortal God, and make a married God of him! blessed, blessed are Mahometh and the Rabbis, who teach us much better. — Fie, fie upon thee, senseless Mahometh! shalt thou be called a prophet, who art such a coarse lout and ass?*)

*) This great wisdom, as is well known, is now also peddled by the so-called Rationalists and Friends of Light and other such riffraff. They often say: If Luther were living now, and heard what we know, he would side with us. Here they may see that Luther knew their wisdom right well, and what he held them to be on account of it. Ed.

Well then, let these wretched fools go, and think themselves wise until they have enough of it; but do thou hold fast to the Christian faith, which teaches us through the Scripture that Jesus Christ is true God, and God's Son, and also true man, David's and Mary's Son; yet not two sons, two men, or two persons, but one only Son, and one Person, out of and in two distinct natures, the Godhead and manhood. For as above, in the article of the Godhead, thou must guard against mingling three Persons into One Person, or dividing the being or nature into three Gods, but must hold three distinct Persons in one divine being: so thou must in turn here, in the doctrine of Christ, guard against dividing or separating the one Person into two Persons, or mingling the two natures into One nature, but must hold two distinct natures in One single Person. And as the two natures unite in One Person: so also the names of both natures unite in the name of the one Person; which is called in Latin communicatio idiomatum vel proprietatum. Thus, the man is called and is born of the virgin Mary and crucified by the Jews; the same name shall be given also to God's Son, and it shall be said: God is born of Mary and crucified by the Jews; for God and man is One Person, and not two sons (one God's, the other Mary's), but is one only Son, God's and Mary's.

If now thou wouldst say, like Nestorius, that God, or Jesus, God's Son, was not born of Mary, nor crucified by the Jews; but only the man, Mary's Son: behold, then thou makest two Persons, and dividest the one Person, so that there is another Person who was not born nor crucified, and each nature thus becomes for itself a separate Person, and two distinct sons; which is just as much as to say that God did not become man, but God remains for himself a separate Person from the man, and the man for himself a separate Person from God. That will not do, the Scripture does not suffer it, which says, John 1, v. 14: "And the Word was made flesh." Luke 1, v. 35: "That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of the Highest." And the children's Creed says: "I believe in Jesus Christ, God's Son, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary," etc., and does not say that God's Son is another, but the very same who was born of Mary, and became her Son.

Again: if thou wouldst say, like Eutyches, that the man Jesus, Mary's Son, is not the Creator of heaven and earth, or is not God's Son, whom men should worship: as also lately a mad spirit put forth great crotchets, how perilously we Christians lived, in that we worshipped a creature as God (the senseless fool reads no Scripture, nor books, but dreams out of his own mad head of such lofty matters, and is a self-grown master-wiseacre): behold, here again the Person is torn asunder, and two Persons made out of One. Nestorius divides the Person thus, that he tears the manhood from the Godhead, and makes each nature a separate Person, so that the man alone was crucified in particular; Eutyches again tears the Godhead from the manhood, so that he likewise makes each nature a distinct Person, so that God is to be worshipped as separated from the manhood. But the Scripture and the faith speak thus: When we worship the man, born of Mary, we do not worship a separated man, who for himself, without God and apart from God, is a distinct Person of his own; but we worship the one true God, who with the Father and Holy Ghost is one God, and with the manhood is one Person.

Whoso has not this understanding must go astray in the Scripture, and can fit himself in nowhere. For in the Scripture the Messiah is called: God's servant. Is. 42, v. 1. "Behold my servant, in whom I am well pleased"; and in chap. 53, v. 1: "Behold, my servant shall deal prudently"; yea, he is called "a worm, and no man," Psalm 22, v. 7. And, what is yet more horrible, he is called a poor sinner, Ps. 41, v. 5: "I said, Lord, be merciful unto me: heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee." Ps. 69, v. 6: "O God, thou knowest my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from thee." Likewise, "The reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me." Ps. 40, 13: "Innumerable evils have compassed me about, mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head, therefore my heart hath forsaken me." Here Reason, Jew and Mahometh cry out against us Christians: How can such things be understood of God? How can God be a servant? How can he be a wretched sinner? — Help, God, what senseless, mad, monstrous people we Christians are before such lofty, wise, holy men, who worship no creature, but only the one God!

True it is, Reason does not find such things in its Bible, that is, in the smoke-hole, or in the land of Cockaigne. So the Jews do not find it either in their Bible, that is, in the Talmud... So Mahometh does not find it in his Bible either, that is, in the whore's bed; for therein he studied most... Whoso studies in such books, what wonder is it that he knows nothing of God, nor of the Messiah; since they do not even know what they say or do?

We Christians know (God be praised and thanked in eternity!) that the Messiah is God's only, eternal Son, whom he sent into the world, to take our sin upon himself, to die for us, and to overcome death for us; as Is. 53, vv. 6, 10 plainly says: "All we like sheep have gone astray; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all, and he hath given his life for a guilt offering," etc. Therefore we sing and glory with all joy that God's Son, the true one God with the Father and Holy Ghost, has become for us man, a servant, a sinner, a worm; that God died, that God bore our sins on the cross in his own body; God has redeemed us by his own blood. For God and man are One Person: what the man does, suffers and says here, that God does, suffers and says; and what God does and says, that the man does and says, who is one Son, God's and Mary's, in one undivided Person, and two distinct natures. The devil, and his whoremaster and whoremonger, Mahometh, and his Schemhamphorists, the Jews, may be offended at this, blaspheme, curse (whoever cannot leave it alone); but all together they shall in the abyss of hell tremble for it eternally, gnash their teeth and howl, whither not long (if God will) they shall belong, Amen.