# Pieper Correspondence_St. Louis Missouri_Franz Pieper to August Pieper 14 March 1908_S1
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

For CHI

=======================
St. Louis, Mo., 14 March 1908.
Dear August!
First what can be settled briefly. Adam and Eve after the Fall were outside fellowship with God, thus in fact heathen, [gap in the transcription], and had to be converted by the application of law and gospel, as the heathen were converted in old times and are still being converted. -- Ulrich's article is a rather unclear performance. On John 13:1-20 this is to be said: The body of the whole is not justification but sanctification, namely the condescension and serving love among those who have become God's children, as Christ himself expressly declares, v. 15ff. The footwashing is not a sacramentum remissionis peccatorum [transcription: "peratorum"]. But within the pericope Christ teaches justification in passing, vv. 8b-10, in the words: "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." Luther hit it when he says (??) 2,236: "So this footwashing bears chiefly on the teaching of the humble Christian [gap in the transcription] life, which Christians are to lead and practise among one another, if they otherwise would be Christ's disciples and God's children. Beside this teaching the Lord would also, on account of his person, set before us another and higher teaching. For when Peter resists and will not let himself be washed, Christ says to him, 'If I wash thee not, thou shalt have no part in my kingdom.' There he does not speak as if so much [gap in the transcription] in the bodily footwashing, but he speaks of the washing which he has done through
(page 2 of letter).
his blood on the trunk of the holy cross . . . Such washing is no example for us." I therefore hold that Ulrich has given an incorrect exegesis of 8b-10. But the thought that Christians must continually let themselves be cleansed of the pride that clings to them if they would remain in Christ's kingdom is emphatically impressed on the disciples by Christ in Matt. 18:1-3: "At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." But this thought is not expressed in John 13:8-10. Here there is symbolic mention, in passing, of the forgiveness of sins, as [Peter; no subject in the transcription] also evidently understood it when, in the feeling of his sinfulness, he wants to have his hands and head washed too.
The temptation of Christ is an exceedingly delicate subject when one comes to what took place in Christ's soul. We must here chiefly stake out the limits within which our thoughts are to move. The limits Scripture sets us are these: 1. Christ was really and truly tempted, and that as we men are; 2. but without sin, and so again quite differently from us men. It is for Christ a fight, a hard fight, a labor, hard labor; the arrows of temptation pierce into Christ's soul and were deeply felt in Christ's pure soul, and yet no concupiscentia [transcription: "concupisrendia"] was thereby awakened in Christ, but with God's word he so drove the arrows back that in him they
(page 3 of letter).
did not awaken the slightest evil inclination. Since they want to make you false teachers, it is useful, disputandi causa [transcription: "disputands causa"], that you take your stand behind Luther and the "Fathers." Luther sets forth: "You must not think that they (the temptations) were sweet to him here; they stirred his heart too just as they do ours" (---- 17,5). Further: "Christ surely felt them (the temptations), for he was no stick or stone, although he was and remained pure and without sin, as we cannot remain. But that the devil assailed Christ with care for the belly, along with unbelief and avarice, is proved by Christ's answer when he says: Man liveth not by bread alone" (---- 11,111). Now the individual sentences under attack: "Christ feels the law as authority over himself as if he were a sinner." "As authority over himself" is covered by [gap in the transcription], for if Christ is under the law, then the law is as an authority over him; "as if he were a sinner" is explained on p. 30 by "he stands like us, in our place, under the law," and is likewise covered by Gal. 4:4f., according to which Christ, renouncing the use of his [gap in the transcription], stepped with men under the law, so that he was under the law as men are. On Gal. 4:4-5 Luther has Christ speak thus to his own: "I have entered into the same prison, tyranny and servitude of the law under which you were captive servants. I have suffered the law to rule over me, its Lord, to terrify me" ---. (St. Louis Edition IX, 487). In general you should compare Luther on Gal. 4:4-5, especially 38-39 (last half), 43.
(page 4 of letter).
Gerhard: [gap in the transcription]. The limit here again is this: Christ truly under the law, as we are, but never against the law, as alas! we are. Therefore the following sentence, "felt the law as a burdensome authority over himself," is not false. It would be false if it said "as an irksome authority," because that would express an opposition, inner disobedience. Professor Köhler too, especially on p. 31, very energetically rejects that. That the law lay upon Christ and pressed him and that Christ felt this too, for that the whole of Scripture and especially the life-story of Christ in the Gospels is proof; it is likewise established that in the life and suffering under the law he submitted himself to a "foreign" will insofar as he thereby fulfilled the will, the command of the Father -- as mediator between God and men. But alongside this it must be held at the same time: "I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart" (Ps. 40:7 [German numbering]). For the "burden" you can also appeal to Gerhard:
[gap in the transcription]
[gap in the transcription]
[gap in the transcription]
Professor Köhler speaks a language of his own. And that is surely not wrong. Now as regards Christ's position toward the Father's will in Gethsemane, we (Stoeckhardt and I) believe that at the bottom of p. 32 the facts of the matter are [gap in the transcription]
(page 5 of letter).
expressed than further up on p. 32. [Transcription unclear: "Anhang Band"] this latter passage the matter is expressed: The Lord has a different will from the Father, feels the Father's will as a foreign one; it is hard for him that the Father's will goes before his own, so he prays that, if it is possible, his own will may be done, but that he willingly yields himself to the Father's will. According to all three accounts we have of the event (Matt. 26, Mark 14, Luke 22), Christ begins his prayer with [gap in the transcription]; his prayer or wish to be spared the cup is from the very beginning [gap in the transcription] in kind. What Professor Köhler puts last in describing the event stands first in the Gospel accounts. To be sure, Christ clearly distinguishes his will from the will of the Father: "not as I will, but as thou wilt." To that extent one can say that Christ feels the will of the Father as a foreign one. But Christ from the outset places his will under the will of the Father. Christ assumes the possibility -- because divine omniscience rested in him and did not assert itself -- that the cup could pass by according to the Father's will. On this assumed possibility, that the Father might will that the cup should pass, rests the wish, the prayer, that he might be spared the cup; therefore I find the matter [gap in the transcription] expressed thus at the bottom of p. 32: "The terrible anguish, produced by the burden of men's guilt and by the prospect of judgment, suggests the wish that the suffering might pass. So long as the wish does not wilfully oppose the will of the Father" (and that is here assumed as fact) "it only expresses how heavily the Lord feels the torment. More we do not learn."
To this, in my opinion, you must point if they try to [gap in the transcription] a false doctrine out of the statement at 2, 31, top.
God stand by you and turn everything to the best of his Church.
F(ranz Pieper).

Transcribed by: Wm. A. Kramer, St. Louis, Mo., 1-28-82.