# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 04 25_S140
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

140

not also here thus, that he uses the little word is? Had he done so, he would have left no back door open to doubt and unbelief. But did he not wish to slip through himself? Has he not said what Scripture teaches? What he thinks and by his example teaches to think, he has said a little more plainly in the Rel. History. How disparagingly he speaks of Christ, despite the fact that Scripture [as he himself confesses] teaches, testifies and asserts otherwise—we have shown in an earlier essay. What security is it now for the confession of the Godhead of the Holy Ghost, when the author says nothing else than: Scripture teaches. In the mouth of confessors the proof that Scripture teaches thus or so is an invincible shield of faith; in the mouth of those who will not confess it is a hiding-place of unbelief and a shameful abuse of the name of God.

When he would pass over from the Unity of God to the Trinity, he speaks only of a How of revelation. ***)

***) Qu. 62. "How then has this one God revealed himself more nearly in Holy Scripture for our salvation?"

Ans. "As Father, Son and Holy Ghost."

We pass over the fact that, instead of

in Holy Scripture

it should rather say

according to or after the testimony of Holy Scripture

for the revelations of the triune God [e.g. the creation] would remain even if Holy Scripture did not bear witness to them, and the revelation of God in Scripture, that is, the inspiration, of which the author will know nothing, could not be recognized or asserted with certainty if Scripture did not bear witness to it.

But the chief matter in this sentence is the How and the As.

In this expression it remains doubtful

1) whether it is only One Person who has revealed himself as Father, as Son and as Holy Ghost, or whether there are several, each of whom has revealed himself, for the author has not yet said at all that that one God is a triune God.

2) Whether, even if there were several Persons, these Persons are each by himself and one as well as the other truly God. But this shall not remain doubtful, for therein consists the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

When he would distinguish the Persons, he conceals the essential point of the distinction. †)

†) The essential point in this case is:

1) That the Father is that Person who has begotten or borne the Son from eternity.

2) The Son, however, that Person who is begotten or born of the Father from eternity, whereby he is not only distinguished from all creatures but is also designated as himself God.

At his incarnation, moreover, the Son was born of a virgin, and though become man, yet remained God, and so is true God and man in One Person, as Dr. Luther teaches in the 2nd Article:

"True God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary."

3) That the Holy Ghost is that Person who proceeds not, like the Son, from the Father alone, but from the Father and the Son, and not, like the Son, begotten, but proceeding, and in his essence God, like the Father and the Son, as we also sing in the Creed:

"We believe in the Holy Ghost

God with Father and the Son."

How now does the author of the Hanoverian Cat. act?

1) He does not even grant the Father a special paragraph. It seems that one is to take for it what he says in the foregoing. And what does he say there?

Qu. 61. that there is not more than one only God, and

Qu. 62. that this one God has revealed himself as Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Either he now understands by this one God the triune, or he understands thereby the Father.

In the former case, what he says cannot hold for what he ought to say of the Father in particular, namely, that he has begotten the Son from eternity.

In the other case [as he would have the Father understood] he excludes the Son and the Holy Ghost from the Godhead, for he says

Qu. 61. "to whom the highest perfections belong.

But if the highest perfections do not also belong to the Son and the Holy Ghost, then they are not God.

2) What he includes of the Father [Qu. 63.] is no more than that he repeats the name "Father" and that the Father has sent the Son.

It is not said how the Father is Father of the Son in an entirely different sense from that in which he is the Father of believers, yes, the Father of all men.

3) What he says of the Son [Qu. 63.] is no more than how the Son is named; but no inference is drawn to his Godhead, no inference to what is peculiar in his incarnation, no distinction of the birth of Christ from the birth of other men.

4) What he adduces of the Holy Ghost are again mere names without inference.

When he is to say: The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and from the Son, he says: The Holy Ghost is sent. ††)

††) The word "sent," which he uses in the answer [Qu. 61.] is either idle, or it is meant to be an interpretation of the word proceed.

That it would be idle is evident, when one considers that the Son is just as much sent as the Holy Ghost, and that thus the Son and the Holy Ghost are not distinguished from one another therein, as the author, according to his question, had wished to show.

That it is meant for an interpretation becomes very probable, when one observes that the word "proceed" in the text of Scripture appended is printed in larger type.

But if it is to be an interpretation, it is false.

For the word proceed, when used of the Holy Ghost, signifies something other than to be charged with a message.

Starke says of it [Synops. John 15:26.]

This word [he proceedeth] [proceed] is here taken in a quite peculiar manner, not as with profane writers [secular authors], and occurs in such a sense only here alone, and thereby the peculiar eternal communication of the essence of the Father and of the Son to the Holy Ghost is indicated, which however is distinguished from the eternal begetting of the Son of God in a manner incomprehensible to us.

So the word "proceed" in this context cannot be explained by "to be sent"; for both indicate something quite different, as an attentive reader of the Bible can notice from this alone, that Christ says [John 15:26.]

I will send him,

and yet does not say

he will proceed,

but

he proceedeth.

There the sending must refer to something future, and that is first of all the outpouring of the Holy Ghost on the first Pentecost day. The proceeding, however, is represented as something distinct from it, namely an eternal presence.

Cf. Starke at the place cited:

"He proceedeth, however, in such wise that, in proceeding, he yet always abides in the Father and the Son and cannot be apart from them, as they also cannot be without him, though they are not from him, but he from them. — Hence it is also said here, not, who has gone forth from the Father, but who proceedeth."

When he is finally to draw the conclusion and say:

Seeing that Father, Son and Holy Ghost is each by himself God and yet nevertheless there are not three Gods, therefore the one God must at the same time be a Triune—

he avoids not only in question and answer (Qu. 69.) the word "Triune" entirely and relegates it, together with the word Person, merely to a note*), but even in the note he does not give the right conception of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

*) He says therein:

1) That the words "Person" and "Trinity" are only once in use [understand, he, the author, did not wish to have introduced such use; for the present one must still take them into a note, soon the time will come when one will not miss them even in a note.]

2) The word Person was to signify that there is a real distinction between Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

But the different names already indicate that of themselves. The word Person is rather to show how far Father, Son and Holy Ghost are different from one another.

The author grants — no further than as a property, effect or mere name of its object.

But he ought to say:

so far that each is by himself self-subsisting and God by himself, and does not first become God in union with the two others.

3) The word Trinity is to prevent the misunderstanding as though the fellowship of the three divine Persons were like the fellowship of three human and mutually separated persons.

But not only this misunderstanding was to be prevented thereby, but among others also this, that the Father be not held as the proper and therefore sole God, but the Son and the Holy Ghost, however highly one may ever think of them, yet as lesser than the Father.

Let us hear in conclusion the Augsburg Confession.

There it says, Art. 1.

And by the word Person is understood not a part, not a quality in another, but that which subsisteth of itself, as the Fathers have used the word in this matter.

Therefore are rejected all heresies contrary to this article, as: the Manichees, who set up two Gods, one evil and one good. Likewise: the Valentinians, Arians, Eunomians, Mohammedans and all such; also the Samosatenes, old and new, who set up only one Person and make sophistry of these two, Word and Holy Ghost, and say that they must not be distinct Persons, but that Word signifies a bodily word or voice, and the Holy Ghost is a created motion in creatures.

(To be continued.)

(Sent in by Pastor Brohm.)

School Address

delivered at the opening of a new school.

Never have I entered the school with a gladder heart, and never do I think I have met gladder faces than today your own, you dear children and parents, who rejoice with me at the happy completion of our new school, which we are this morning entering for the first time. Here stands a spacious, bright, airy, healthful schoolhouse, and the inner furnishing of it also leaves nothing to be desired. I live in the glad hope that from this day on our school system will gain a new impulse, and our new school will become a blessing to many of the thousands of children who dwell round about us. But that we may thank God the more gladly for this gift, and use it the more faithfully, let me set before you the high importance and the great blessing of a Christian common school.

I speak not of the common school in general, but of the Christian common school. Of schools there is indeed no lack in this land; yes, this praise must be given to the United States, especially to the older among them, that they do much more for schools than many states of the Old World; but what is in great, in crying want, is Christian common schools, which yet are an indispensable necessity and the source of true national welfare. As man's end and aim is twofold, an earthly and a heavenly, so it is the task of a good common school to lead the child entrusted to it toward this twofold goal. Rightly one demands of a common school that it train the various mental powers of the pupil with the greatest possible thoroughness and all-sidedness, and prepare him at least in its foundations for his future earthly calling, be it high or low. It is not necessary here that I enumerate all the single branches of instruction. Of two things only I remind you: though dwelling in America, we Germans ought nevertheless not to neglect our German mother tongue in our schools. Not only the piety toward our mother, not only the excellence of the German language in itself, but also and especially the wealth in the greatest treasures of Christian wholesome literature, such as no people of modern times can show, for the sake of which no German Lutheran should let his mother tongue perish. What people has a translation of the Bible that could equal the Lutheran? What people has such excellent wholesome books of edification as the German? What people such a store of spiritual hymns rich in thought? Were our children to forget their mother tongue, they would lose the key