2. The Christian knowledge of God.
The Christian knowledge of God, which has God's Word, the Holy Scriptures, as its source of knowledge, is Trinitarian, that is, the Christian recognizes that the one true God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Luther is right when he says in a theological thesis:1212) Scriptura Sancta docet, esse Deum simplicissime unum et tres, ut vocant, personas verissime distinctas.
salutem." Iustin., Apol. 2: "Qui μετά λόγον vixerunt, Christiani sunt, etiamsi non novisse Deum existimati sunt, quales apud Graecos fuerunt Socrates, Aristides." Similia occurrunt apud Irenaeum, Tertullianum, Epiphanium, Hieronymum, Chrysostomum etc. Sed Augustinus, Pelagiano certamine excitatus, ea, quae incommode a veteribus dicta fuerant, correxit. Eandem fuisse scholasticorum sententiam, docet eamque refutat Acosta ... b. Quidam ex pontificiis. Andradius in defens. Conc. Trid, 1st III, p. 292: "Vera fides et vera Dei cognitio ad iustitiam et salutem aeternam non ex sacris tantum literis divinisque oraculis, sed ex rebus etiam iis, quae sensibus subiiciuntur, haberi potest." ... Erasmus in praef. super Tuse. qq. Cic.: "Me non admodum adversum habituri sunt ferendis calculis, qui sperant, illum apud superos quietam vitam agere." Idem in Coli. Relig.: "Cum talia lego, vix mihi tempero, quin dieam: Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis." Et postea: "At ipse mihi saepenumero non tempero, quin bene ominer sanctae animae Maronis et Flacci." ...[Google] 3. Quidam ex Calvinianis. Zwinglius in Expos. Fidei ad regem exarata Christian: "Numam, Aristidem, Socratem etc.. inter beatos coelites" collocat et, Deum "aliquid fidei sua manu in cor Senecae scripsisse", asserit, ex quo iocus Viti Winshemii ortus: "Ca-vete vobis, auditores, a caelo Zwinglianorum; ego non libenter in illo caelo viverem; metuerem enim mihi a clava Herculis." Vide etiam Zwinglii Elench. contra Anabapt. tom. I, opp. fol. 35. Idem tom. I, ep. 1, f. 382: "Ethnieus, si piam mentem domi foveat, Christianus est, etiamsi Christ ignoret." De Prov., tom, I, f. 358, de Seneca scribit, quod "religiose de rerum creatione et conservatione locutus fuerit, quod divinum animum habuerit." Zwinglii patrocinium suscepit Gualtherus, ipsius gener, in Apologia, edita anno 1545, p. 52, ubi quibusdam rationibus Zwinglii opinionem suffulcire conatur. ... [Google] 4. Photimani, licet notitiam Dei naturalem plane negent, salvis tamen suis hypothesibus aliter statuere non possunt, quam, cognitionem Dei ad salutem sufficientem gentiles etiam extra ecclesiam habere potuisse. ... Catech. Racov., p. 25. 26, quaestioni: "Quaenam sunt, quae ad essentiam Dei pertinent, prorsus ad salutem necessaria?" respondet hoc modo: "Sunt ea, quod Deus sit, quod sit tantum unus, quod aeternus, quod perfecte iustus, perfecte sapiens et perfecte potens." Ostorodus, Inst., c. 3, p. 28: "Praeter haec nihil aliud scimus cognitu necessarium, quantum ad essentiam Dei attinet." Atqui ista omnia ex naturali notitia hauriri possunt, ergo iuxta Photinianorum hypothesin gentiles eorum, quae ad salutem sunt necessaria, cognitionem ex natura petere potuerunt." [Google]
1212) Opp. v. a. IV, 473. St. L. X, 177.
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The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments teach first that God is only one (monotheism), Deut. 6: 4: יְהוָ֥ה׀ אֶחָֽד יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ [HEBREW]. Likewise in the New Testament, 1 Cor. 8:4: Ούδεις ϑεός ετερος εί μη εϊς. We can call the whole of Scripture a great protest against polytheism. The gods of the heathen are (Jer. 2, 11), לֹ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים HEBREW], non-gods (Jer. 2:11), אֱלִילִ֔ים [HEBREW], void, "nothing", without real existence, 3 Mos, 19:4; 26:1, Likewise in the New Testament, 1 Cor. 8:4: Ούδεν εΐδωλον iv τψ κόσμψ; Acts 14:15: μάταιοι ϑεοί. They can neither harm nor benefit; for ר֥וּחַ בָּֽם לֹא [HEBREW] and הֶ֣בֶל הֵ֔מָּה [HEBREW] (Jer. 10:6. 14. 16). According to Scripture, therefore, even the worship of men is to be monotheistic only, to go only to the one God, Ex. 20:3: "Thou shalt have no other gods beside me." Likewise Mark. 12:29-30 after the words: "Our God is one God" (εϊς): "You shall love God, your Lord, with all your heart, with all your soul” etc. If there were other gods besides the one, this would require on the part of man a division of the heart according to the number of gods. Polytheism with its worship of several gods does not fall under the concept of cultus divinus. What the heathen sacrifice to their gods, they do not sacrifice to God, but to the devils, 1 Cor. 10:20. If the heathen really want to worship God, they must leave their gods and convert to the one true God, as Paul and Barnabas proclaim to the Lystrans: 1213) Εύαγγελιζόμενοι υμάς από τούτων των ματαίων επιστρέφειν Ιπί τον ϑεόν τόν ζώντα, δς έποίησεν τόν ουρανόν κτλ. So mightily does Scripture teach monotheism to polytheism. But just as decisively, the doctrine also teaches that the one God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that is, three persons in the one God, for Father, Son, and Spirit are personal names. Christian baptism is είς τό όνομα τού πατρός και τού υιού και τον άγιον πνεύματος (Matt. 28:19), and the Christian benediction is (2 Cor. 13:13 [14?]): Ἡ χάρις τοῦ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ἡ κοινωνία τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος μετὰ πάντων ὑμῶν. "Abi ad Iordanem et disce Trinitatem." [“Go to Jordan and learn about the Trinity “] (Matt. 3:16-17.)1214) That the three persons in the
1213) Acts 14:15.
1214) Luther on this in the sermon on the Feast of the Epiphany, St. L. XII, 1131 ff: "So this feast may well be called the Day of the Apparition or Revelation of the Holy Trinity."
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one God are also already clearly revealed in the Old Testament — even if not as clearly as in the New Testament — will be proven in the following under a special section.
This Christian knowledge of God is not mediated and effected by God's revelation in the realm of nature, in the history of mankind and in the conscience, but only by God's revelation in the Word, that is, in the way that God speaks to us men and with us men in the Scriptures, which are his Word, and thus opens up his inner being and his heart to us. Through the natural knowledge of God, says Luther,1215) we recognize God as it were from without, namely by His works, just as we infer from the condition of a house the condition of the master builder. Through the Christian knowledge of God, on the other hand, which is based on God's speech or Word of God, we recognize God "from within," "in His inner being" and "what He has in mind for men, that they may be saved," in the way that one man opens up his inner being to another through speech and Word and reveals his heart and thoughts. This great difference between the natural and Christian knowledge of God would, of course, disappear if we were to believe the modern theologians in their assertion that the Holy Scriptures are not God's own Word, but only the more or less God-influenced human view that the Jewish and the first Christian churches had of God and divine things. But this assertion is, thank God, a completely erroneous one. We saw that Christ and His holy apostles "identify" Scripture and the Word of God absolutely. By abiding by the Scriptures, we hear what God says of Himself, and we realize both that the one true God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and what the nature of the thoughts are that God has had from eternity against us sinful men.
And this brings us to the practical result of the Christian knowledge of God. It does not leave us stuck in an evil conscience, as the natural knowledge of God does, but gives us a good conscience. It is our salvation. The Scriptures do not leave it at the communication that in the one eternal God there are three equally eternal persons of one and the same divine being, but they bind the further communication with it,
1215) St. L. XII, 629 ff.
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that God therefore loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son to it as deliverer from the guilt of sin and death, that the eternal Son became man in time and by his substitutionary satisfaction reconciled the world of men to God, and that the Holy Spirit, through the effect of faith in the reconciliation that has taken place, appropriates the salvation to men. Whoever speaks in the scriptural sense, "I believe in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," speaks at the same time, "I believe in the God who is gracious to me a sinner."
At all times, and especially in our own time, the Christian Church has struggled over the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, a struggle that has been long and fraught with many offences. But the Christian Church knew that it was fighting for its Christian knowledge of God and thus for its salvation. The church of the Reformation also confesses the doctrine of the Trinity in the first article of the Augustana and at the same time renounces all deniers of it. The Apology judges,1216) that all deniers of the Trinity who have stood up within external Christianity stand outside the Christian Church. If we look at Luther, we are immediately confronted with the fact that with the same seriousness with which he put the Christian doctrine of justification back on the lampstand, he also taught the doctrine of the Holy Trinity incessantly and with the greatest determination. And not only as a professor of theology in sharply written theological theses,1217) but in all his writings1218) and especially in his sermons for the Christian people. Read, for example, two sermons preached on Trinity Sunday,1219) in which both the difference between the natural and the Christian knowledge of God and the inseparable connection between the doctrines of the Trinity and justification are set forth in a generally understandable
1216) M. 77, 2. [Trigl., p. 103, 1-2 🔗]
1217) Cf. Opp. v. a. IV, 470 sqq.: Disputatio theologica de mysterio sanctae Trinitatis of 1544 and Disputationes duae de unitate essentiae divinae et de distinctione personarum in divinitate of 1545. The German translation: Walch X, 217 ff.; St. L. X, 177 ff.
1218) Especially in detail in the exposition of the last words of David, St. L. III, 1884 ff.
1219) St. L. XII, 628 ff; XIII, 664 ff. In the Erl. Ausg. both sermons are found 9:1-37.
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manner. Also every theologian will read these sermons with benefit. We put here a part from the first sermon. Luther says: "This is the revelation and knowledge of God to Christians, that they not only know that there is one true God apart from and above all creatures, and that he can be no more than the same one God, but also what the same one God is in his inward unfathomable nature. For human reason and wisdom can nevertheless come so far from itself that it concludes (however weakly) that there must be a one, eternal, divine being who creates, sustains and governs all things, because it sees such a beautiful, excellent creature, both in heaven and earth, so wonderful, orderly and certain, in its governance, that it must say that it is not possible for it to be made and walk in this way by chance or by itself, but that it must be a Creator and Lord, from whom it all comes and is governed, and must therefore recognize God in the creatures; as St. Paul Rom. 1:20 also says that God's invisible essence, that is, his eternal power and divinity, is seen when it is perceived in the works, namely in the creation of the world. This is a knowledge (a posteriore), since one looks at God from the outside by his works and governance, as one looks at a castle or house by heart and thereby feels the master or landlord. But (a priore) from within, no human wisdom has ever been able to see what and how God is in himself or in his inner being, nor can anyone know or speak anything about it, for it has been revealed to him through the Holy Spirit. For just as no one knows what is in a man, says St. Paul in 1 Cor. 2:11, except the spirit of the man that is in him, so also what is in God, no one can know except the Spirit of God. From the outside I may well see what you do, but I cannot see what you have in mind and think. And again, you also cannot know what I am thinking unless I make you understand it by word or sign. So much less can we see and know what God is in his own secret essence, until the Holy Spirit, who also searches and sees the depth of the Godhead, says Paul there, reveals this to us; as he does by the sermon of this article, in which he teaches us that in the divine majesty there is no more than one undivided being, and yet
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in the same, that there is first of all the person called the Father; and from this the other, which is the Son, born from eternity; and the third, proceeding from these two, which is the Holy Spirit. These three persons do not separate from each other like two or three brethren or sisters, but remain in one eternal, undivided and inseparable being. Such things, I say, are not investigated, climbed, or ascended by human reason, but are revealed from heaven above; therefore only Christians can address both what is the essential Godhead in Himself, and also how He shows Himself from without, in His creatures, and what He has in mind for men, that they may be saved. For they hear all this from the Holy Spirit, who reveals and proclaims it through the Word. But the others, who do not have such revelation and judge according to their own wisdom, as Jews, Turks and heathens, must consider such sermons to be the greatest error and highest heresy, and say that we Christians are mad and foolish that we make three gods, when according to all reason, even according to the Word of God, there cannot be more than one God; for it does not rhyme that there is more than one host in one house, more than one lord and prince in one governance; much less that there is more than one God ruling over heaven and earth; they think that with such wisdom they have put us down mightily, and with our faith have made a mockery of us to all the world; just as if we were so very coarse-minded and great fools that we could not also see such things, who after all, praise God!, have so much common sense, and who argue and prove, as well as they do, if not better and with more reasons than they do, with all their Koran and Talmud, that there is no more than one God… Now we Christians have the Scriptures, of which we are certain that they are the Word of God, which also the Jews themselves have and which came to us from their fathers, from which also and from no other all that is known of God and divine works, even among the Turks and the heathen (if it is not publicly fables and invented) has been taken from the beginning of the world, confirmed and proven with great miraculous works to this day. This article tells us that there is no God or divine being except the one God; but it not only presents God to us from the outside, but also leads us into his inner being and shows that in him there are three persons, but not three gods or
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threefold Godhead, but one undivided divine essence." After Luther has given the scriptural proof for the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, he adds with regard to the practical result in comparison with the natural knowledge of God: "What does it help you if you can say nothing more, because God is merciful to the pious and rebukes the wicked? Who makes you sure that you are pious and please God with your papal and Turkish monasticism and holiness? Is it enough for you to say that whoever keeps such an order, God wants to give him heaven? No, dear brethren, it is not necessary to think or say what seems good to you, for I could do that as well as you, just as it happens that everyone thinks up something special, this one a gray, that one a black monk's cap, etc., but to hear and know what God's counsel, will and opinion is. This no man shall tell thee out of his own head, neither shall any book on earth teach thee, except that one word and scripture, given of God himself, which declare unto us that he sent his Son into the world to redeem them from sins and the wrath of God, that whosoever believeth in him should have everlasting life."