# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 10 02_S21
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

21

and establish a civilly free state of the Jews. From the introduction of the essay cited there follows accordingly, among other things, the following nonsense: 1. One must fight for civil liberty if it should be entirely suppressed, and thereby the Negroes are granted the right to rise up against their masters and to make themselves free by force. 2. One cannot have a share in the redemption accomplished by Christ and cannot be a child of God if one is a slave; the Negro slaves therefore cannot be Christians. But St. Paul writes in 1 Cor. 7:21-22: Art thou called, being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman. 3. Christ has by his precious blood obtained civil liberty. — So deep has the author already, in the introduction, pushed the cart into the muck of nonsense. He seems himself to have noticed something of it, and what does he do now to get the cart out again? He tries a little trick that does honor to his doctor's title. He says: "Freedom is, according to its essence, properly only One." The wretched devil himself must have put that into his head, for nothing would be dearer to him than that we, like true botchers of cookery, should mix together civil and Christian liberty, state and church, the world and the kingdom of God, and then, in maintaining and defending such a hodge-podge, should slay one another and let ourselves be led to hell. — Freedom is supposed to be only One according to its essence! — If only the author would prove that, for example, freedom from righteousness and freedom from sin; freedom from death and freedom from life; freedom from taxes and freedom from drunkenness; freedom from the fear of man and freedom from the fear of God, etc., are essentially One freedom. If the author can prove that, he shall have honestly earned his doctor's hat. The meaning of the word "freedom" is indeed always one and the same; by it the condition of being "free" from some compulsion is designated; but the essence of freedom depends upon the kind and character of the compulsion which is opposed to freedom. Hence, as many kinds of compulsion as there are, or can be imagined, so many kinds of freedom can be imagined. And the author wants to impose upon his readers that the essence of freedom, just like the meaning of the word freedom, is always one and the same! With equal ease it could be proved that the Lord Christ and a piece of wood are one in essence. For Christ says, John 10: I am the door. Very well, in my room there is also a door. Door always means door, that is, a means by which one gets from one thing into another; consequently, according to the author's conclusion, all doors are one in their essence. Now since my room door is of wood, the Lord Christ must be one in essence with a piece of wood. O fie upon such stupidity and blasphemy. Or how does the following conclusion please the author: Herr Dr. V. is a creature; an ass is also a creature; consequently the Herr Doctor and an ass are one in essence?

As the author passes from the introduction to the actual treatment of his subject, he specifies three aspects of development of the, in his opinion, One freedom, namely: personal, religious, and political freedom. Of each of these three aspects of development he treats in a separate section. We wish to look somewhat more closely only at the first, because in it our church is attacked and we get quite enough nonsense to enjoy there already, so as not to lust also after the two others.

Of personal freedom, which the author also calls moral freedom and finally even moral-Christian freedom, he says that the Roman Church teaches, confesses, protects and fosters it. Further, he says it is partly a faculty, partly a condition. What kind of condition, of that we hear not a syllable more, probably because the author himself did not know. But of the faculty of freedom he says that it is a power of man to determine himself in his doing and leaving undone, and that therein is included the ability to choose between good and evil, as well as between good and better; or, in other words, that man has freedom of choice as free will. That the Roman Church so teaches, he brings testimonies for from the Council of Trent, that confessional writing of the Roman Church which is set in opposition to the Lutheran Church and divine truth. But he is not content with this, but seeks also to demonstrate the same view from two ancient church fathers, and thereupon sets over against these testimonies utterances of Lutheran and Reformed theologians, in order to prove that the Protestants denied the moral freedom of man and were enemies of moral freedom (as if: to deny something and: to be an enemy of a thing, were one and the same), and he conjectures that the Reformers denied the doctrine of the moral unfreedom of man either only for the sake of contradicting the Roman Church, or in order to have a pillow of rest in a life of sin. — We will briefly uncover the nonsense contained in these statements:

1. Personal or moral freedom is supposed to be the power of man to determine himself in his doing and leaving undone, etc. Since the heathen also are men, they must have this freedom too, and yet Dr. V. calls this very same freedom, on page 106, moral-Christian freedom. Therefore the heathen, who have never heard anything of Christ, have by nature the moral-Christian freedom!!! — If Dr. V. will not concede this nonsense, and should perhaps assert that toward the end of the first part he forgot what he was actually talking about, and unawares slipped from the personal freedom of men to the Christian freedom of Christians; then he may be pleased to explain to us how it rhymes that he ascribes personal freedom to men and yet afterward says: "Children of God, to which the Church, she alone, forms us, have received the spirit of childhood and cry, as truly, not seemingly, freed through Christ, in this Spirit: Abba, dear Father!" For if the Christians have first received the spirit of childhood, then they must of necessity not have had it before; and if the Christians have become through Christ truly, not seemingly, freed, then they must have been before also truly, not merely seemingly, unfree. And yet Dr. V. asserted a moment ago that men had "freedom of choice as free will," that they had "the power to choose between evil and good, as well as between good and better," that is, that they had moral freedom, no matter whether they be Christians or not.

2. Dr. V. asserts that the Church protects and fosters personal freedom. But we ask: of what use then is the protection of the Church, if man has that freedom just as well without the protection of the Church? With the same right the Roman Church could then arrogate to itself that it protects sun, moon and stars from falling from heaven, though they stand firm well enough without that.

3. Dr. V. says: "the Church forms us into children of God, who have received the spirit of childhood," etc. Even if we here disregard the nonsense lying in the manner of expression: to form someone into a child who has received something; yet we cannot leave unreproved the other nonsense contained in these words. — One can form, as is well known, only out of a material already at hand. A sculptor, for example, can form a stone figure out of a stone; but where there is no material, there nothing can be formed, but only something created. Either, therefore, we have moral-Christian freedom already before we are Christians, and this is then further formed by the Church; or, if one will not let this nonsense pass, one must declare the expression: "the Church forms us into children of God" to be nonsense.

4. Dr. V. is not ashamed to charge the pious church father Augustine with teaching the moral freedom of man in the sense of Dr. V.; whereas Augustine, as everyone knows, was the most decided opponent of that godless doctrine which in Augustine's times the monk Pelagius, but in our times Herr Dr. V. and the Roman Church teach. Precisely at the instance and representations of Augustine the doctrine of Pelagius, that man by nature has moral freedom to choose evil or good, was rejected by the Church as abominable heresy at the Synod of Mileve and Carthage in the year 416, and again at Carthage in the year 418. This sentence of condemnation was then in the year 431 also concurred in by the general Council of Ephesus. — But what is Herr Dr. V. to do now in the face of such facts-