1873 Western District Essay
Religion; Word of God; Cause of Sin, Death, Damnation; Divine Providence
Proceedings of the Synod.
As the subject of the actual doctrinal negotiations, the Synod took up the
Theses
for discussion. They follow here with the explanations and remarks made by the Synod.
That Only Through the Doctrine of the Lutheran Church is All Glory Given to God Alone, an Incontrovertible Proof that the Doctrine of the Same is the Only True One.
The task set here is to prove that the Lutheran religion is the only true one, and this is proved by the fact that in all its teachings all glory is given to God alone. For if we first consider what a religion is, then what a visible church is, and take into account the principal doctrines of the Lutheran church, it will be evident that the doctrine of this church is the only true one, since in all these doctrines it gives all glory to God alone.
Thesis I.
Since religion is the way of worshipping God, the only true religion is that which in all its doctrines gives all glory to God alone.
There are various doctrines in the world; but religion has to do with the relation of man to God; it speaks of the relation in which man stands to God. The doctrine of science, for example, deals with nature; the doctrine of medicine deals with the nature of bodily diseases and the means of curing them; but if you ask any man what religion is, the answer will always be: It deals with the relationship of man to God.
This will be remembered beforehand, because the word "religion" itself does not occur in the Bible. But the word used for it in Scripture is "religion" (Gottesdienst). Paul says in Acts 26: "For I was a Pharisee, which is the strictest sect of our religion (in Greek: ϑρησχεία), i.e. the Pharisee sect is the strictest in the Jewish religion. Here we have the scriptural basis for the fact that religion deals with what man's relationship to God must be.
The following passages of Holy Scripture serve to prove this thesis:
Isaiah 42:8: "I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images." So God alone wants the honor. He only wants to be revered if all honor is given to Him alone; and therefore, as far as a man gives honor to a man, he takes away God's honor and casts Him from His throne.
Romans 1:21, 25: "For although they knew God they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened... because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever." Paul testifies to us here that the first apostasy of the Gentiles consisted in the fact that they did not praise God, did not think of Him, did not give Him all the glory, but gave it to the creature. The first apostasy from true religion in paradise also consisted in the fact that people wanted to be like God and thus robbed Him of His honor.
John 7:18: "He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him." According to Scripture, then, he is a founder of false religion who pretends to be sent by God, but establishes a religion through which God is not honored. What a cursed religion it is, therefore, when a man gives himself honor through any teaching of his religion. This passage, which is well worth noting, is preceded by the words: "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."
John 8:48: "Jesus answered: I have no devil, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me." Thus Christ proves that he has nothing to do with the devil and that his religion is the true one, for he honors his Father. There is much in this: if you have a doctrine that does not honor God, it is a cursed doctrine of devils; if you urge piety while seeking the honor of men, such a doctrine is to be trampled underfoot as a doctrine of devils. Christ wants to say with this saying: How can I
have the devil and lead a doctrine of devils? For whoever honors the Father with his doctrine, his doctrine is certainly right; but that doctrine which does not honor God and takes away his honor is of the devil. — That the Christian religion is the true religion we see from the hymn of praise sung by the holy angels at the birth of Christ.
Luke 2:14: "Glory to God in the highest"; for here it is declared that through Christ the glory is given to God, the glory which Adam robbed him of. Thus a religion is tested as to whether it is the true one, that it takes all glory from man and gives all glory to God.
Romans 3:27: "Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith." After Paul has explained the Christian doctrine of justification, he asks, "Where then is the glory or honor of man?" and answers, "It is through the law of faith. For the law of faith, or, what is the same, the gospel, the religion of Christ, takes away all glory from man and gives it to God. Therefore he speaks of the Father of all believers
Romans 4:20: "For he did not doubt the promise of God through unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God." Wherever works are practiced, God is blasphemed and defiled: that is why all religions except the Christian religion are nothing but a defilement of God. All other religions tell us that if you want to go to heaven, you must be pious and good, do good deeds, become holy and so on. We all bring such religion with us into the world, we like it as we are by nature, and the old Adam says yes to it. But it is the devil's lie. Of course Adam was supposed to be blessed in the state of innocence in doing good, but he was not supposed to acquire this blessedness first. At that time it was not said: If you serve me and remain faithful, then you will be saved and go to heaven, but perfect righteousness and holiness were already procured for him, he already possessed the blessedness that came from God's hand. But he could lose this blessedness, and did lose it. And so it is now. God wants to justify and save us through faith in Jesus Christ; salvation itself lies in the Christian religion. This is also a proof that the Christian religion is the true religion, since it gives all glory to God alone in the matter of salvation. It does not build salvation on human activity, but on Christ, in that people are nothing and allow God to give them everything. God then becomes great! Then God becomes all in all. — God made us without us and gave us temporal life; but if we are to have eternal life, we say: We must acquire it for ourselves, and will not let God make eternal life for us. But just as God gives us bodily life without our
doing, so we go forth from God's hand into eternal life. And when we are once in eternal life, we will have nothing to boast about but God's mercy. Therefore, the only true religion now after the fall is that which gives glory to God alone and only dishonor to man.
This thesis has been put forward by setting aside the atheists who say: "There is no God: therefore we need not worship him." But he who believes that there is a supreme God from whom everything comes, admits the thesis. We refrain from those who say: "Do right, fear no one"; for they have omitted the main point. If there were no God, they would be right; but since there is a God, he must be feared, loved and trusted above all things. Such a man may say, "I do not go to church," but the answer to him is, "You are neglecting your greatest duty, which is to God, and when you go to eternity and God asks you, "What did you believe?" and you say, "My principle was: Do right, fear no one," it will be said, “But you did not do right, and you will sink eternally into the abyss of hell”.
That the Christian religion is the true religion, because it alone gives all glory to God, we also see from the words of Paul: "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God", 1 Cor. 10:31. The real purpose of man's existence is to give glory to God. The next purpose, of course, is to serve his neighbor; but the goal of this is the glory of God. The heart of man, after the fall, is so disposed that it says: How is it that God is so insistent that all honor be given to him, since he punishes such a demand when it is made by men? But this attitude has its reason in the sinful corruption of man. After the fall, people seek honor that is not due to them. God punishes them for this because they thereby make themselves God. But honor is due to God, it rightly belongs to him, he commands us to give him honor according to his righteousness, holiness and truth; he must do this because otherwise it would be contrary to his nature not to make such a demand. It would also be contrary to our salvation, for no man can be a saved man if he does not give glory to God. That this is so, we see also from the passage already quoted under the Thesis, Isa. 42[:8]: "I, the LORD, that is my name," i.e., I, Jehovah; which name denotes the divine essence. And a translation and explanation of this name is found in Rev. 1:8: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty."
Another proof of the truth of the Christian religion is that the main worship of Christians consists of prayer, praise and thanksgiving,
that they will praise and glorify God in eternal life and that the angels praise God at Christ's birth.
No mention is made of the atheists in the Thesis, because they say: "We prove that there is no God, but you prove that there is: so we remain equal." From such talk it is clear that they do not even have what the pagans have. We cannot admit such a justification; for he who does not know that there is a God no longer has that which makes him human.
We could also prove by reason that there is a God; but now it is our intention to argue only with those who admit the existence of a God; for he who admits this, at the same time acknowledges that he must have a religion.
All pagan, philosophical, Mohammedan, Mormon religions are false, because according to all of them man must do this or that in order to acquire salvation; only the Christian religion says the opposite, is opposed to all other religions in the world and has human nature as its enemy. For human nature is blind in its understanding, an enemy of God in its will and a rebel against God in its desires. Man likes to hear it said: You are good by nature, the core is good, you must act according to principles, help your neighbor and love him in order to become pious before God. We Christians don't believe that. Only the hypocrites believe that they go to church, for example, in order to be pious. But we go to church, not actually to serve God, but so that He may serve us there; not to do righteousness, but to receive it from God. Four and a half hundred years [now five hundred years] ago this light arose again through the noble armament of Dr. M. Luther, and where one takes away this light, one takes away a part of Christianity.
The sects say: "We give God the glory; but you must work out your salvation, pray, fight, wrestle", and they despise us, who enter heaven asleep. But their "glory", which they shout, is a glory of its own. Roman churches also have the words: Soli Deo gloria, (glory to God alone), but it is precisely the opposite of what promotes the glory of God that is taught in the Roman church.
The question raised here, whether Christianity as a whole is only above all reason or whether it is contrary to reason, was answered as follows: Christianity, as a whole, has been contrary to reason since the Fall. It outrages every man whom the Holy Spirit does not enlighten, so that he realizes that he has nothing to do to be saved and should have no honor in doing so. Christianity also includes things that are not contrary to reason, but the characteristic of Christianity is always foolishness to human reason.
Hieronymus Kromayer († 1670) writes: "The ultimate purpose of religion is God's glory. For this is not only the aim of all Christian actions, 1 Cor. 10:31, but also the pinnacle of faith and religion, according to which, as the touchstone, one can test the doctrines of all religions; so that the religion which shakes the honor of God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ, who is of the same essence and one throne with him, and the honor of the Holy Spirit through its conversions (corruptelis), is not to be considered a true, pure and unadulterated one. For true religion relates everything to the honor of God as its ultimate end. Therefore, when a sharp dispute arose between Christ and the Jews about the truth of doctrine and religion, as to which of the two parties had the right to ascribe it to himself, Christ referred, among other things, to this characteristic of his doctrine, that it was directed to the honor of the heavenly Father, which the Jewish fabrications shake. John 8:49." (Scrutiniumreligionum. Lips. 1673. p. 327. f.)
Thesis II. *)
*) From here on, the doctrinal discussions were transcribed stenographically by Dr. Dümling and delivered to the standing secretary partly orally and partly in writing.
Since a visible church is an assembly of people who "profess one doctrine and religion", the only true church is the one that gives glory to God alone through all its teachings.
In the first thesis we heard the nature of the true religion. What follows from this? It follows that only that church can be the true one which in all its doctrines gives glory to God alone, because the church is nothing other than an assembly of people who "profess one doctrine and religion". These words: "professing one doctrine and religion", are taken from the Book of Concord. Dietrich's catechism also answers the question: "What are symbols?" thus: "Such books 'which are presented, approved and accepted in the name of the churches that profess one doctrine and religion'." There is no need for a lengthy discussion of this, for this second thesis follows from the first. No one will deny that the visible church has always been an assembly of men professing one doctrine and religion; for the church differs from the state in that it is united by religion, while the state is united by the needs of this life. The state has to provide for the relationship of man to man, but the church for the relationship of man
to the dear God, that is, for religion. We can see this clearly from Holy Scripture.
Ps 26:8: "Lord, I love the place of your house and the place where your glory dwells." The place of worship in the Old Testament was, as every Christian knows, the model for the church. Solomon's temple and the one that was subsequently erected after it was destroyed was the model of the invisible church of God in the New Testament, and of course therefore also of the visible church; for this is no other than the invisible, only viewed in a different relationship. But if the Holy Spirit calls only the temple, where God's glory dwells, a church, how much more must the Church in the New Testament be such, or be the assembly of people among whom God's glory dwells! O a precious truth that we should lock deep into our hearts! All our doings, all our work is against and not for the church if it does not have the glory of God as its goal. Alas, the poor enthusiasts torment themselves and also try to get their people to torment themselves in order to acquire God's grace, righteousness and salvation for themselves, and think that they are working for the glory of God. But this is against the glory of God, for the glory of men, therefore: against the Church. They are not spreading the kingdom of God, but fighting against it. But he who gives all glory to God and seeks to bring man to do the same; and he who recognizes that man is less than nothing; who brings man to fall down before God and as a poor sinful beggar asks and expects everything from God's hand: he builds the Church; for the Church is the place where God's glory dwells. This is the touchstone: if the glory of God does not dwell in our Synod, then it is not God's church, and as much as it diminishes God's glory, so much does it have hideous stains on it; but the more it comes to give glory to God alone, the more it takes on the image of the true church of Jesus Christ. Of course, we must all throw ourselves into the dust when we, especially we preachers, think of how, in our best opinion, we have spoken and done so much that has not only served the glory of God. We have imagined miracles, how serious we are, and yet here and there we have broken off the glory of God and given it to man. Luther also complained about this shortly before his death that it was becoming so difficult for him to hold on to, clearly recognize and apply "by faith alone". What is this other than the complaint: It is becoming so difficult for me to give God all glory and to take all glory from man?
Man fell because he wanted to be like God. It is only by this that he is born again and converted, that he despairs of himself, not hypocritically, but he really feels so, he is a broken vessel, yes, he feels himself as one who would be worthy that God should break him;
but he says, God, have mercy on me! He is not born again who kneels down, prays and struggles in the manner of the enthusiasts in order to acquire salvation — that is the devil's comedy. The good Lord is indeed so merciful that he also has his work there, but he usually only has to help at the hour of death. The sincere among the enthusiasts then throws everything overboard when the ship sinks in the waves; he then thinks nothing of the camp meeting, of praying and sliding on his knees; nor does he think: "You can't be in want, you're going to heaven. He throws all this away and says, "It's all garbage." Just as Paul says, "I consider it all garbage compared to the exuberant knowledge of Jesus Christ. This is how it must be with all of us; no one gets to heaven in any other way. What does God ask about the fact that we have become stale? Nothing at all. Nothing at all. Consider how people among the heathen sometimes struggle. In what abstinence, for example, do the Brahmins in the East Indies live! They would rather die than kill a fly, let alone eat beef. In Hindustan, the Indians throw themselves under the Juggernaut's broad-wheeled chariot, which, drawn by many oxen, rolls along like a hellish monster. The poor Hindu throws himself in front of it and lets himself be crushed like a snail, thinking: Now it's off to heaven! What is he worse than a fanatic who rolls in the dust and wants to achieve salvation with it? He is no worse. But will these gentlemen admit that such a one is going to heaven? Well then, do not think of yourself that your industriousness will bring you to heaven. One must not think that the doctrine of serious Christianity suffers thereby; nay, he who is a poor sinner without honor only begins to become really zealous. Those who only hear the doctrine with half ears and therefore have faith in their hearts like foam at the mouth remain godless people. Alas, it is not easy to give God the glory. It costs great struggles if man is to remain in giving glory to God alone. The fact that he fights, struggles and prays here is only to overcome himself, for nothing in the world would be so easy as getting to heaven if we ourselves did not always work so hard against it. We do not need to persuade God to forgive us our sins, for God has already forgiven them. We do not need to reconcile him, for he is already reconciled to us. We do not need to redeem ourselves, for we are already redeemed. But we are the evildoers who must be overcome: our enmity must be put away, our flesh is our trouble. Hence the struggle and the necessity of the struggle, but not because we must first acquire salvation.
The Jesuit Xavier, the hypocrite general, who served the Antichrist from the first day of his Jesuitism until his death and also wanted to acquire
salvation, took it upon himself to show the world what one could and should do to get to heaven. He went into the hospitals to the disgusting sick and sucked the pus out of their ulcers with his own mouth. Then he looked around to see if the people had seen it, and they thought: "This is holiness itself." Does God take us to heaven because we suck up such pus? These are devil's martyrs! — In the fifth century, the Stylites, the pillar saints, were terribly holy. They couldn't fly to heaven and the earth was too bad for them. So they erected large pillars. One of them, a Syrian monk named Simeon, had a forty-foot high pillar erected. He went up to it, sat on top for thirty years, was rained and snowed on, waited for food which people brought him, did not wash or comb his hair, and thought that God should take him, such a crazy creature, to heaven because of this comedy. He did not realize that if God had come, he would have said, "What are you doing up there? You should be down there serving people. Why did I make the wood? But to build houses? Why are you living without shelter? Get down here, you wicked knave!" He was not forty feet closer to heaven, but forty feet lower on the stairway to hell.
But it is hard for us to believe that. When our poor Germans come to America and see how the sects have such a pious appearance, pray, weep and sigh so beautifully, they think that this must be the true church; for in Germany they have of course often seen preachers who were ventriloquists and for whom the main thing was what they collected, their tithes, the interest, generally everything that was attached to and around the parish, and who only talked about the prices of grain, pigs and the like. It is therefore not to be wondered at that the poor people, when they see the pious appearance of an enthusiast, think: "That is quite another man, he wants to save the people, there is the true church." Woe to him who shows no seriousness! But the fact that someone shows such great zeal and is consumed by it does not prove that he is a true prophet. Besides, he can take all honor from God. Then he is lost, even if he had preached himself half to death every day for thirty years. He would have poured his water into a barrel full of holes. Such a man has already lost his reward on earth. And what is it? That the people said, "This is a holy man!”
God's commandment requires us to recognize that he is our God. That is the first commandment. Whoever does not enter the kingdom of God through this door will not enter. It is all hypocrisy and miserable comedy if one wants to fulfill the other commandments and does not fulfill the first. That is why Luther, in his clear divine understanding of the Word of God, repeated the first commandment in
every commandment: "We should fear and love God", so that we do not forget that the second to tenth commandments cannot be fulfilled without the first. We must come to the point where we give God all the glory and make him our God. That is why at the top of all the commandments is: "I am the Lord your God." This is why Luther so often says: "In the first commandment lies the whole gospel, the whole faith", because now, after the fall into sin, we make God our God again through faith alone. All moral teaching takes away the glory of God, but faith gives it to him; and these are only good works if I do them because I think: Should I not serve my God? But who would think: I must serve God so that I may go to heaven, he would want to keep the last nine commandments while leaving out the first. God knows very well why he made this commandment the first. We must go through this door, otherwise we are rejected by God.
Rev 14:6-7: "And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him." We Lutherans are firmly convinced that this prophecy is aimed at Luther and the Reformation. But because it is a prophecy, we cannot, of course, absolutely demand that others believe it. This is not part of the articles of faith. But everyone must admit to us: The renewal of the Church is to consist in the coming of an angel, a messenger of God, who will say: Fear God and give him glory! So it is important that we give him all the glory, that is how the Reformation happened. That is in this prophecy. No one can deny it.
John 5:44: "How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?." So the Savior does not recognize as a believer those who take glory from others, because faith is nothing other than giving all glory to God alone: Giving all glory to God alone. For faith is not sour and sweet feelings, which is what the enthusiasts make faith to be, but it is faith that I give all glory to God alone, that is, that I take everything from God and appropriate it for myself, just as John 1 says: "But how many received him." Receive is the synonymous word for believe. If a person is so far gone that he does not want to do anything to make God his debtor, but that he himself wants to be the debtor for eternity and take everything from God, then he gives God the glory and is alone a true Christian.
When it says in Philippians 2:12: "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling", the Holy Spirit continues and gives the reason.
One would think that this would follow: For man must will and accomplish his conversion; but the Holy Spirit continues differently, namely: "For it is God who works in you both to will and to do, according to his good pleasure." The working out of our salvation on our part is such that we get deeper and deeper into the dung heap with our work.
Luther writes: "Christians are commanded to do nothing but preach and confess the glory of God, that is, our impossibility and God's possibility (Matthew 19:26), as Christ says here." ("Who then can be saved?" the apostles exclaim; but Jesus answers: "With men it is impossible; but with God all things are possible."). The true Christian must recognize that it would always be impossible for him to achieve salvation, but that with God all things are possible. If a person believes this, he is helped. As soon as I trust God to give me salvation, He has already given it to me. God is a sea that is always overflowing; he is only looking for an empty place). "and", Luther continues, "to put out of the way all annoyances that can elevate or inflate the free will." (XVIII, 1328 [St. L. 18, 1078; AE 32, 156]) The whole duty of man, then, according to Luther, is to fight to the death with himself and with others to prevent free will, as the evil hound of hell that will not let us into heaven, from coming forth again. Nothing of free will should be left in our mouths and hearts, but God alone has free will and we should let him give us what he has intended for us.
John Gerard writes: "Any fellowship that adheres to false doctrines and stubbornly defends them, which attack God's honor, is not a true church, even if it gives them a good appearance with distorted and misunderstood scriptural passages." (Disputation. theol. Jenae 1655. p. 3.) Whatever one teaches may have a good appearance; as soon as the honor of God is attacked thereby, the church is false. Therefore all churches, except our Lutheran, are false at present. This is not to say that all communities which call themselves Lutheran are true churches, but only those which, with Luther, give all glory to God alone and take all glory from man.
Consider also how God's honor is diminished by the slightest false teaching. If a king were to make several assertions before his assembled subjects, and one were to say, "I do not believe this," and another, "I do not believe that," they would not fare well; but if man, this worm of sin, were to make God a liar and say, "It is written in the Bible, but I cannot believe it," that would be a small matter. But it is an abomination. One may only take one word in Holy Scripture differently from what it says if Scripture itself requires it. When the Savior says, "Tell Herod that
fox," [Luke 13:32] the Scripture itself tells us that the word "fox" is not to be taken here in its proper sense; for Herod was not a four-footed beast that goes after fowls, but a king. Here Scripture itself compels us to take the word "fox" in a different sense than it reads. But how do the Calvinists do it? The Savior says in Holy Communion: "This is my body; this is my blood." Calvinists say that this cannot be taken as it reads. Why not? They do not explain the words by the Bible, but only say: "Well, who can believe this?" From this it is clear that they do not want to believe God's Word. They say: "Reason does not suffer it." But that does not mean giving God the glory, but dishonoring God! And we should just stand by and watch? unite with them? reject the Word of God with them? Never and never again!
On this point the Iowans sin terribly by admitting that our Lutheran doctrine of Sunday is indeed taken from God's Word, but nevertheless declare it to be one from which we may depart. They want to comfort us by saying that it is the only one they exclude; but Luther rightly says: Whoever denies God in one word has denied him completely. With them the church is to decide on doctrine in a completely Romanizing manner.
Thesis III.
Only through the doctrine of the Lutheran Church is all glory given to God alone; this is evident, among other things, from its doctrine:
First of all, this thesis states: Only through the teaching of the Lutheran Church is all glory given to God alone. Before we look for proof of this through a series of
doctrines, let us first give some evidence that our forefathers were also vividly aware of this, not only that the church must have this quality, but that the Evangelical Lutheran Church really has this quality.
Luther writes about this: "If the papists boast and shout for a long time: Fathers, Fathers!, Church, Church! etc., but because they not only do not preach the Gospel, but also persecute and blaspheme and only want to maintain their splendor, and do not ask anything about Christ's good deeds and honor, nor about the salvation of poor souls, their boasting helps them as little as the false apostles helped their boasting. Again, I know for a fact that we do not preach to please men, but God, that is, that we attribute everything to God alone, and would gladly have all the world recognize the unspeakable grace and good deed that the merciful Father has shown us in Christ Jesus our Lord. All our teaching, preaching and writing is directed to this, and the world becomes hostile to us precisely because we give all glory and praise to God and leave nothing to the world. I still remember well what Dr. Staupitz, who was the Augustinian vicar, said to me at the beginning, when the Gospel came forth: 'That comforts me most of all,' he said, 'that this teaching of the Gospel, which is now coming to light again, gives all honor and praise to God alone and nothing to men; but now it is ever in the day and evident that one can never again ascribe too much honor, goodness, etc. to our Lord God. Thus he comforted me at that time, and it is also the truth that the teaching of the Gospel denies all honor, wisdom, and righteousness to men and ascribes them to the one and true Creator, who makes everything out of nothing. Now it is much safer to attribute too much to our Lord God (although one can never attribute too much to him) than to attribute too much to men. For I can confidently and cheerfully say: Let it be so that the Church, St. Augustine and other teachers, and St. Peter, Apollo, and even an angel from heaven teach differently, yet my teaching is such that it teaches the one God alone to be purely recognized and rightly served, and condemns all men in their wisdom and righteousness. I cannot err or sin in this, for I give to both God and man what is due and proper to each by right." (On Gal. 1:11-12. VIII., 1678. f. [St. L. 9, 96-97; AE 26, 66])
Consider this: If the sects and the false Lutherans do not become enemies of us because we give glory to God alone, then our dishonor is nothing. That must be the disgrace, that we alone give glory to God; as the ancient Fathers already said: It is not
the suffering that makes the martyr, but the cause of the suffering. So we also say: You are not a good Lutheran because your opponents call you a Lutheran, but because they revile you for the sake of the things by which alone you give all glory to God and take all glory from man. This was also Luther's dishonor. "Alas," said the enemies, "he puts all good works to shame, is an enemy of piety, says that God does everything." Luther replied: "Oh, that's so good for me, then it's still right with me, because that's what matters."
How gracious and kind our God is to our Synod, to have led it in such a way that we have been given the opportunity to go into this subject in more detail. This is the crux of the matter, if we want to call ourselves Lutherans, that we give God all the glory and take all the glory from man. That is why Paul was so blasphemed. Everywhere the false apostles said: "Oh, Paul only knows how to talk about faith, we are different people. We say: Holy, holy one must be and keep the law of Moses, that is a religion; but the wretched Paul always and only calls out: Christ, faith, grace." This is how these hopeless false prophets deceived entire churches. When Paul returned, he saw that they had all fallen away from Christ and his grace. They were ashamed of the gospel, they were ashamed of the crucified One; they were ashamed to say, "We are lost and damned sinners, we live by grace alone. Yes, say the children of the world about Christians, they are such poor sinners, they may lead a good life! But let's just let the world revile and scold us like that. That is our greatest honor. But when the world begins to say: "You have to respect them, they are pious", that is very dubious praise. But if it is hostile to us because we insist on grace and always say: Rely only on the Word, rely only on Holy Communion; if they despise us as miserable people because of this, then we should say: Well, that is the right honor, God is honored there, let them kick us into the dunghill; if they only say: "That's true: They know a lot about the dear God," we don't want to take credit for that either.
When Luther first preached the faith, a terrible unrest arose and Dr. Staupitz became anxious. But that was his consolation, as is said in the above testimony of Luther, that he knew that through this teaching all glory would be given to God. There, he thought, one can already say that God takes care of the matter himself, since it is about his honor. When Melanchthon said: "Yes, for God's sake, what is to happen now? The emperor has issued such a terrible edict"; then Luther said: "That is none of my business, it is God's business. If he wants to be thrown off the throne, I cannot keep him on it." Then he made the emperor angry, and the pope cast the ban, and the mob raged and rioted. He lay down in bed and slept peacefully. "I have not," he said, "my honor to save; I have not sought it. So if any
disgrace comes of it, the good Lord may ascribe it to himself." One must be able to speak like this, but no humanity! No wonder the unbelievers do not want to stick to a certain doctrine; for they are not firmly convinced of any doctrine. They would be fools if they wanted to fight for a doctrine that they do not know to be true. "Oh, just keep calm," they say, "and be peaceful, in eternity we will see who is right." Of course they can remain calm, but anyone who knows that a doctrine is the Word of God starts a war with the whole world. And then he goes to bed, and the good Lord may settle the matter completely. God is not a carpenter, shoemaker and the like; he is a creator, and a creator can need nothing at all if he wants to make something. He must have nothing; then he can make something. God did this not only 6000 years ago, but also today. As soon as man says: "I want to do something", God says: "I can use nothing; no material, nothing, nothing, that is my substance. God is everything in everything, and we are merely a thing that has become nothing, i.e. we are nothing except in God. The apostle therefore says: "In him we live, move, and have our being." Let no one be afraid for God's sake when he sees Lutheran doctrines, e.g. of conversion and election of grace, in which everything is attributed to God, if only he knows that in them all glory is given to God and all glory is taken away from man. This is the touchstone.
Gerhard also writes: "That this judgment of Staupitz did not flow from preference, but from the source of truth, is revealed by the matter itself." (Confessio cath. fol. 67.) Gerhard also reports that Emperor Ferdinand I repeatedly said: "He likes two things about the Lutherans, firstly that they give God the glory in everything they do, and secondly that in their churches they regard the government honorably and preach accordingly." (op. cit.)
Hoe von Hoenegg († 1645) writes: "Since in the papacy the honor due to God alone has been given to others, Luther also wanted and should save God's honor by saying with a loud voice: Give glory to God! (Rev. 14.)... And this was done through the ministry of our Luther, who brought back to the church the honor due to God and the way of worshipping him, not by the sword but by the word, not by persecution but by preaching." (Commentary, in Joh. Apocalypsin. Lips. et Francof. 1671. p. I., fol. 540.)
Joh. Christoph Köcher cites the following as the 15th proof "that the Evangelical Lutheran religion is a true, perfect and blessed religion": "because it has the glory of the Most High God as its main end and raises, makes known and
spreads this by means of its entire doctrines and moral rules." (Convincing Instruction of the Truth etc. of the Evangelical Lutheran Religion. Jena 1755. p. 252).
Hieronymus Kromayer writes: "No religion has such great power as the Lutheran religion, in that it not only relates everything to God's glory, but also alone can calm the conscience and give a life-giving consolation. As far as the former is concerned, this could be demonstrated in all the articles of faith if we were to go through them one by one. Thus, in the article on Holy Scripture, we give God the glory of goodness, that He has revealed to us in it the whole counsel of our salvation, and the glory of wisdom, that He has clearly presented the most difficult matters in it. In the article of Christ, the glory of mercy, that he had mercy on us all and bestowed an admirable means of restoring salvation in his Son. In the article on creation and the image of God, the glory of power and holiness, that he created man just, holy and upright in his likeness. In the article on free will, the honor of grace, that in the conversion of man He alone gives both the willing and the doing. In the doctrine of the law and justification, that since no one can perfectly fulfill the law, he justifies us by faith; which doctrine, as it abolishes all honor in man, Eph. 2:8-9, so it gives it to God alone, Rom. 4:2." (Scrut. relig. p. 334.)
How terribly God avenges it, if one robs him of the honor in any doctrine or does not want to give it, is confirmed by the following sad, warning examples. At the St. Louis District Pastoral Conference held at St. Charles, Mo. in 1869, there was one present who fought tooth and nail against the Lutheran doctrine of election by grace and did not participate in the vote. Not long afterwards, he fell away to the papacy. The Methodist [William] Nast claims to have penetrated to perfect sanctification, and as proof of this he states that he has given up smoking. Isn't it as if the devil were leading them by a fool's rope? But that is how it must be: Whoever abandons true holiness must fall for such ridiculous things and think: Now I am a made saint.
To the question as to how it is that in the heading of the theses it is said that it should be proved that the doctrine of the Lutheran Church is the only true one, since in the second thesis it is said: "only that church is the true one which through all its doctrines gives glory to God alone", the answer was given: According to the matter, it is one thing whether it is proved that the doctrine of the Lutheran Church is the only true one, or that the Lutheran Church is the only true visible Church.
Now as to 1. the doctrine of the Word of God, it is well known
that the modern theologians, who also claim to be believers, maintain that the doctrine of the inspiration of Holy Scripture is not yet fixed, i.e., not yet established, by the Lutheran Church, as they express it; this article is still suspended. In the seventeenth century, it is said, a system of the doctrine of the inspiration of Holy Scripture was put together, but it had gone too far, and no one could now accept that doctrine of the inspiration of Holy Scripture; it was reserved for our time to establish the right doctrine on this point; it had not occurred to Luther to teach about Holy Scripture in the way that, for example, a Quenstedt, a Gerhard, a Calov, and other theologians of the seventeenth century did. But only this much is true of this: Luther did not, indeed, leave a scientific system of this doctrine; but if you only read how he speaks of the Scriptures, you will see that he had quite the same faith which Gerhard and Quenstedt and Calov and other famous theologians of our church profess. "Yes," they say, "at least the doctrine does not appear in the symbolic books." That is why the modern theologians want to be considered good Lutheran theologians, even though they do not teach that all Scripture is inspired by God. "Yes," they say, "the Word of God is indeed in the Bible, but there is also much in it that does not necessarily belong to Christianity; the sacred writers may have made a mistake." If this is the case, then man must seek out what is God's Word, then man must stand above the Scriptures, he must decide. For when he decides, he is above God, at least above His Word. But all this is untrue. Thus we teach in the
Apology of the Augsburg Confession: "It is truly a wonder that the adversaries can be so blind and fail to see so many clear passages which clearly declare that we are justified by faith and not by works. What do these poor people think? Do they think that the Scriptures so often speak so clearly for no reason? Do they think that the Holy Spirit does not speak his word with certainty and deliberation, or that he does not know what he is saying?" ("Num arbitrantur, excidisseSpiritui Sancto non animadvertenti has voces?" Do they think that the Holy Spirit) (Article IV, par. 107 f.; [Triglotta p. 153])
In these words of the Apology, therefore, it is said that one should well consider, when reading the Scriptures, that the Holy Spirit inspired these Scriptures, and that He has set all things well "deliberately". Here our Church confesses that every word, every phrase, every repetition of any word, every abbreviation, the whole way of speaking has its origin in the Holy Spirit, who has inspired everything, not only the truths, not only the meaning, not only the "what", but also the "how", who has chosen the words that were necessary so that the mind of God would really be rightly revealed to us. Every Christian knows that this
is the teaching of Holy Scripture itself. The Savior himself tells the apostles that the Holy Spirit will give them "how" and "what" they should preach. (Matt. 10:19-20.) The apostle also speaks "with words which the Holy Spirit teaches" (1 Cor. 2:13.), and the prophets without exception say when they begin to write: The Lord speaks! And when the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament, it says: as the Holy Spirit speaks (Mark 12:36, Acts 1:16, 28:25, etc.), and the apostle Paul testifies that all Scripture is inspired by God. He does not say: the Word of God, but: all Scripture. Just as holy men have written it, so the Holy Spirit has inspired it. That our Lutheran Church believed and confessed this as early as the 16th century is proved, among other things, by the passage quoted from the Apology, and whoever commits himself to the symbolic books and allows himself to be installed in office and does not believe this doctrine is a wretched scoundrel. The Iowans, of course, help themselves in this by saying that only what is contained in the symbolic books with an openly expressed intention of confession must be binding, that alone belongs to the confession; but no one is bound by what is incidentally included therein. In this way, of course, they can throw most of the Confessions overboard. Our Lutheran Church, however, has committed itself to its Confessions as it reads from beginning to end, and this passage, which reads in Latin: "Num arbitranturexcidisseSpiritui Sancto non animadvertenti has voces?", also belongs there. (i.e. do they think that these words escaped the Holy Spirit without notice?) But this could not be said if it were not shown that it is the Holy Spirit Himself who is speaking. It is not Isaiah, not Moses, not Paul who speaks, but it is the Holy Spirit who speaks. It may well happen to a human being that an expression that is not quite right escapes him, but this does not happen to the Holy Spirit. In short, this passage shows that the doctrine of the inspiration of Holy Scripture, as it was presented by our old dogmatists in the seventeenth century, already lies in the symbolic books. No special article was written about it because the papists did not deny this doctrine at that time, nor do they deny it today. The Augsburg Confession was to contain, first of all, those doctrines by which the Lutheran Church proved that it was the old Catholic Church and not a new one, and secondly, those doctrines which were denied by those then present; but in what they agreed was not first stated. This is the reason why we have no special article on the inspiration of Holy Scripture in the Augsburg Confession. But the doctrine of inspiration is contained in its highest rigor in the Apology.
Luther, of whom it is said that he already had a freer view than the later theologians, writes: "I beg and warn
faithfully every pious Christian not to be offended by the simple-minded speech and history that he will often encounter (in the Old Testament), but not to doubt how badly it can always be seen to be merely the word, work, judgment and history of the high divine majesty, power and wisdom." (Preface to the Old Testament. [AE 35, 236]) This was Luther's belief: every word of Holy Scripture is a word of the high majesty of God. Many a word in the Old Testament appeared contemptible to his reason, but he blindly rebukes his reason and says: "God forbid that I should judge this holy book of God according to my reason!
He says: "There is more and greater value in one letter, indeed in a few words of Scripture, than in heaven and earth. Therefore we cannot suffer them to be moved even in the least." (Gal. 5:10, W1 VIII, 2661 [AE 27, 41]) There is therefore more to a letter and a few verses of Scripture than to heaven and earth. A tittle is understood to be a small tick or dot. A tittle would be, for example, the dot above the i or the little ring above the u. For the Hebrew and Greek languages also have little ticks in addition to the characters, and Luther says that a single such tittle in the Bible is more important than heaven and earth. For they often matter immeasurably. In the fourth century, for example, there was a great dispute between true and false Christians as to whether Christ wasομοούσιοςor onlyομοοιούσιοςto the Father. The question then arose as to whether a small ι (iota) should be added to the wordομοούσιοςor left out, and in Greek an ι is just a small dash. If you put it in, a lot was changed. Without ι, the wordομοούσιοςmeans in German: the same essence with the Father, but with the ι ομοιούσιος means similar in nature to the Father. The godless Arians said ομοιούσιος; only the little dash, they said, put it in, and we are satisfied. But the others, the true Christians, said: The little line should not go in. Many of them also had to leave their heads because of this little line. Finally,
Luther: "Far be it from me that there should be one single letter in Paul which the whole universal church should not follow and hold." (W1 XIX, 22; AE 36, 25) The modern theologians say: Of course there are many letters which contain errors, defects, mistakes, some historical, some astronomical, some physical, some mathematical, some chronological. They want to find errors everywhere, but the Word of God always remains firm. It is a trick of the devil! It cannot be said that these men are aware that they are overturning the whole Word of God, but they do not suspect that the devil is behind them and is doing this to them; for if the Christian cannot say, "Every letter is the word of God," he can perhaps say at the hour of death,
"It is well said that we are justified by faith; it is well said: Christ is my life; but — it could also be otherwise. If he does not know that he can rely on every word, he is lost. So also says
Gerhard: "In the article on Holy Scripture we (Lutherans) give God the glory of goodness, that He has revealed to us in Scripture all His counsel concerning our salvation, and the glory of wisdom, that He, as the Creator of sense and language, has spoken clearly and distinctly, therefore we also revere the Holy Scriptures as the decrees of Almighty God and the King of kings, and praise the majesty of them." (Confess. cath. fol. 67. f.)
In two main ways, then, we Lutherans prove that we also give God all glory in the doctrine of Holy Scripture. First, we say: All that man needs to know for his salvation is in Scripture; we need nothing more. [i.e. not “Tradition”] Secondly, we say: Holy Scripture is such that every man can take everything from Scripture itself in order to become certain of his salvation. He needs no pope, no council, no church, no pastor — in short, no man. He can take everything from it himself. So we give God the glory and say: My God, I rely on you alone, not because my preacher preaches like this, not because of the Synod, but because I have recognized it myself from your dear, precious Word. I am dependent only on you, the great God. But as soon as one denies the clarity of Scripture, as the papists and enthusiasts do, one deprives God of honor and declares to the dear God: There, dear God, you have given men a revelation from which they will not be shy and wise. But if God had given His Word in such a way that men first had to have scholars to interpret it, he would not be a wise God; for a revelation to men which reveals nothing to man is an absurdity.
The following testimonies show what, first, the papists and, second, the Calvinists teach against this.
Gerhard writes: "Whoever is disrespectful of the public notices posted by the authorities is judged to insult the honor of the authorities themselves; in the same way, whoever thinks and speaks disrespectfully of the sacred Scriptures, those sacred public tablets of divine truth, is rightly judged to diminish the honor of God himself. But the popes do this in many ways:
"1. by making the authority of Scripture dependent on the authority of the church alone". (The Church is thus to unlock the meaning, otherwise it will never be explored. How terrible! The good Lord would give us His Word and only a certain number of people would have the key to it. They call them the church. This so-called church is a robber of God, takes the honor from God that he has given us His Word, and that
we owe this good deed to him and not to the church. — Gerhard continues):
"2. By appending to the certain and immovable Word of God presented in the canonical books the apocryphalwritings, which contain uncertain and false assertions". (This is very important. We also have the apocrypha in our Bible book, e.g. Jesus Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Maccabees, etc.; but it is stated above that they are not to be regarded as Holy Scripture, but only to be read carefully. From them we can read what the Jewish church believed after the appearance of the prophets up to the time of Christ, which otherwise the common people would not know at all. But they also contain many falsehoods. It says that the witch of Endor brought the real Samuel out of death, that a certain Rhazis performed a great heroic deed with his suicide, that Judas Maccabeus did well to send two thousand drachmas to Jerusalem as a sin offering, and that it was a good and holy opinion to pray for the dead that their sins might be forgiven. Of course, when the Roman priests read about the 2,000 drachmas, they thought: "This is a good passage, we must not delete it from the Bible," and they looked at the 2,000 drachmas with one eye and at purgatory with the other. The Book of Tobiah then also condones shameful sorcery. Even though the Apocrypha contains a lot of valuable things, they are still very bad crumbs. The Roman Church, however, insists as much on the acceptance of the Apocrypha as on that of the Book of Isaiah or the Psalter, because it thinks it can prove purgatory, its sorcery at their consecration and the like; whereas anyone who knows history knows that the Apocrypha was never recognized by the Church of the Old Covenant. We have received the Old Testament from the Jewish orthodox Church, but in this Testament there is no Jesus Sirach, no Book of Tobiah, no Books of the Maccabees, and so on. The Old Testament church already had these books, but they were not recognized as divine books. They were not originally written in Hebrew, but in Greek, and some of them only exist in Latin. In short, the papists are lying when they say that the Apocrypha is as good a word of God as the other books. We do not recognize them and give God the glory by not imputing to him books that he did not make. For it is a great ungodliness for someone to write a book and put another name on the title, such as "Luther". But it is a small sin to write on it: "This book is from God", when it was written by men from their own spirit. — Gerhard writes further:)
"3. By urging the Church to accept the traditionswith the same reverence as the written Word of God" [Cp. to Prof. Joel Biermann]. (The
papists decided in the Tridentine Council that the traditions must be treated with quite the same reverence as the Word of God. For they also call their traditions the Word of God, and while they make a distinction between the written and unwritten Word, they claim that both are equally divine and holy. In this, that they make the uncertain traditions equal to the Word of God, consists the abominable theft of God. — Gerhard continues:)
"4. By denying the perspicuity of Scripture"; (This they do against God's honor. For if God wrote an obscure book, he would either have to be so foolish that he would give the book while no one should understand it — thus only wanting to monkey with people — or he would have to be as clumsy as we are, who often write and speak something that no one understands. By denying the clarity of Scripture, wisdom is denied to God. Therefore the doctrine that the Scriptures are dark is a blasphemous doctrine. — Gerhard writes further:)
"5. By denying the perfection of Scripture". (The papists say that there must be other things besides Scripture. But if Scripture, which God made, were an imperfect work, then God would no longer be God. — Gerhard writes further:)
"6. By obstinately denying that Scripture is the only guide of doctrines and doctrinal disputes in the Church". (They say that not only the Bible, but also the decrees of the Conciliar, the decisions of the Church, and what we find in the Fathers of the Church in general, are the guide. — Gerhard continues:)
"7. By impudently denying that the Holy Spirit can be a judge through the Holy Scriptures". (The Lutherans have always held against the papists that the Scriptures, and not the pope and the councils, are the judge. They ridiculed this and said: "Your judge does not even have a mouth and yet he can speak; he is a mute judge of paper; the printers and typesetters make him out of printer's ink! But this is blasphemous mockery! When we call Holy Scripture a judge, this is a figurative way of speaking, i.e. we do not mean to say that the Bible is a person, but that it judges just like a person; for the Holy Spirit speaks through the Scriptures. To deny this to Holy Scripture is to deny it to God Himself. — Gerhard writes further)
"8. By keeping the laity from reading the Scriptures". (This is horrible and terrible! For in this way the Christians did not actually have God's Word at all, but God would have given His Word to the priests and clergy, and the poor laity would then have to stand before their clergy, open their mouths and ask: What has the good Lord written? They would have to rely on the priests instead of God's Word. — Gerhard finally writes:)
"9. By desecrating the Holy Scriptures with insults and blasphemous speech." (Diputatt. p. 24. ff.) (They say, for example: "The Bible is a heretical book; for all heresies have arisen from the Bible." [Cp. Piepkorn and Biermann speak like this: “biblicism” produces “Jehovah’s Witnesses”, “Mormons”] Of course, if they mean that our Lutheran Church originated from the Bible, they are right. The Pope is so hostile to the Bible because the Bible reveals all his tricks — and we have discovered them. Then they say: "The Bible is a dead letter", or: "It is a waxy nose that can sometimes be made wide, sometimes long, sometimes an eagle's nose, sometimes something else; shy people can do what they like with it." They say this in their blindness. The simplest person, who has perhaps never learned to read in his life, let alone write and count, if he is a true Christian and is presented with a false doctrine that he must believe, asks: "Where is this written?" If you then read a passage to him, he will be able to say with great ease: "You lied; the doctrine is not there." Scripture is so clear that there are clear passages for everything a Christian must believe in order to attain salvation.)
Gerhard did not mention the one thing by which the papists also attack God's honor, namely that they not only consider their Vulgate equal to the original text, but even place it above it. In the Roman Church it is not permitted to appeal against the Vulgate to the Hebrew and Greek text, which comes from the sacred writers. They say that the Pope made sure that the Latin Bible was not falsified, but that they don't know very well what the situation is with the Hebrew and Greek texts. While we Lutherans hold our Lutheran translation of the Bible in the highest esteem because it renders so wonderfully in German what is in the original text, if a dispute arose and someone wanted to say: "Luther did not express himself correctly here or there", we would not say: "What Luther wrote is written". Oh no, Luther was not a prophet and apostle who could not have been mistaken. [Against Prof. Mackenzie] "Well then," we would say, "let's go back to the original text!" We therefore place Luther's translation below the original text. This has the advantage. Luther's translation must be checked and corrected according to the original text.
What do the Calvinists now say with regard to the doctrine of Holy Scripture?
John Gerhard writes: "So far it has been shown how God's honor with regard to his nature and attributes is attacked by the Calvinist falsifications, it is now still to be shown how they attack it with regard to the divine word. Although they want to be regarded as maintaining a complete consensus with our churches in the article of Holy Scripture and fighting the papal enemies of Scripture with us with united forces, the matter itself shows that
they are also rightly accused in this respect of attacking and shaking the honor of Scripture and consequently of God himself."
The United Churches say: "You Lutherans are real disturbers of the peace, you do not want to unite with the Reformed, since they are in agreement with you, for example in the doctrine of the Word of God." Yes, God would that it were so! But this is precisely where they disagree with us. When we say: "The Bible is God's Word, literally inspired by the Holy Spirit", they say yes to this. But if we say, applying this teaching: "Behold, the Savior says: This is my body; this is my blood; here it is clearly written, you cannot ignore it," they make excuses. Then it comes out that they do not believe that these are words of divine wisdom. (See what has already been said about this in Thesis II under the quotation from Gerhard). Gerhard continues:
"1. To the apostles, the writers of the Holy Spirit, the ministerial causes of the Scriptures of the New Testament, some of their community ascribe errors and oversights (lapsus). Conrad Vorst published a book with Socinus's name suppressed, and recommended it by a preface, in which, p. 104, it is asserted of the evangelists and apostles that 'it may have happened that they sometimes' (in interpreting some passages of the Old Testament and in explaining the proofs derived from them) 'erred insignificantly (Ieviter)'. He also writes on p. 15: 'Although in some small matters, which are of no importance (since it is possible that one may have retained the truth of such matters better than the other), they may have written somewhat or very differently from one another.’ The same writes in his reply to Dontelock's arguments: 'He could teach much of this kind from Calvinistic teachers', by which they express the opinion: 'That the writers of the New Testament have committed errors of memory, erred in trifling matters, quoted many an inappropriate thing'... Francis Junius disputes in the first book of the Parallels p. 1053: 'Luke inserted the name Cainan into the genealogy and thus added something to the history for the sake of the assumed opinion of the people. Although we' (he says) 'admit that this was wrong in the matter, one could still have the opinion that it was so, indeed, the people had this opinion, and he took account of this generally accepted opinion among the people, etc.'. Luke knew that this was wrong, but he knew that it was of such a kind that it was only contrary to the truth of a historical matter, but not to the catholic faith."
The Calvinists do just like the modern theologians. They all say that it is quite possible that an evangelist might have believed that a passage from the prophets was a prophecy of Christ, but that he might also have been mistaken; the doctrine was correct, but that it was an error for him to believe that this or that passage dealt with Christ or a matter of the new covenant.
The modern theologians now usually say that the Bible is not a book from which one can learn natural science, astronomy, mathematics, geography; the Bible was not given for this purpose; therefore it could well have happened that in these points false things had come into the Bible. Ah, if we had such a Bible, the devil could say in every temptation: "You cannot rely on it." No, if we cannot believe that the whole Bible is God's Word — it is boldly spoken, but it is true — then we can confidently put the Bible in the furnace. It would help us nothing, nothing at all. We can only use such a Word of God in which we do not have to search out the Word of God ourselves, but of which God himself says: "This is my Word!" But if he had to say: "You have sense, you are a clever man, you seek it out!" — then I would rely on myself and not on the Word. — Gerhard also writes:
"2. Nor do we see how it agrees with the authority and credibility of Scripture that Calvin, in his Institutes, Book 4, chapter 17, § 23, calls those 'hair splitters' (aucupessyllabarum) who in the words of the Lord's Supper insist on the words as they read (Disputp. p. 125. 569. f.).
For the Lutherans, Scripture is the sole norm, rule and guideline of all faith and life. Catholics, on the other hand, place tradition and the authority of the Church above Scripture. The Jesuit Kratzer said to Heilbronner at the Colloquium in Regensburg: "May the Holy Spirit himself step forward and speak: 'You, Kratzer, are wrong; Heilbronner, you have won the victory', then I will immediately step over into your path." He thus declared that the Holy Spirit did not speak through the Scriptures, but had to come personally and give this statement as a direct revelation. He therefore did not recognize the authority of Holy Scripture, so that it alone is the judge and norm of all teaching.
[Walther’s grand paragraph:]
Above all, we must recognize this in a very real way: If we really want to give God all the glory and thus have the mark of being true Lutherans, let us hold fast to the pure old doctrine of the inspiration of Holy Scripture by the Holy Spirit, even according to the words. If we give way in this in the slightest degree, we have gambled it away and everything else we teach that is good has lost its real value. For as soon as I deny the foundation, what good will it do me to keep what is built upon it? So if we had all the doctrines of the Lutheran Church, it would be nothing if we let ourselves be deprived of the one doctrine that the Bible is inspired by God word for word. [i.e. “verbal inspiration”. Against Westfield House essays] If the Bible is not inspired by God, then the Lutheran doctrine is not the right one either; for the Lutheran doctrine is nothing more than a repetition of what is written in the Bible. Hence it is that we can say so confidently and cheerfully: "You are all wrong,
we alone are right." Not because we think we are clever people; no, we do not consider ourselves so clever and learned, but, on the contrary, we like to believe that other people are more clever and learned; but that we say so confidently and cheerfully to the whole world and to all sects, "You are wrong, we are right," is because we have only accepted what is written in the Bible. If we were to say, "Perhaps we too are wrong," we would be attacking God's honor, as if he had perhaps deceived us after all. No, as serious as we are about giving God alone the glory, we must remain serious about our confession: We have the pure doctrine, all others are in error, blindness and darkness. But we can say this without arrogance, because we know: Lutheran doctrine is nothing but that which is contained in the very clear passages of Holy Scripture. The Lutheran Church must not allow itself to be determined by reason, it must not allow itself to be determined by the heart — which may feel as it pleases.
It has never allowed itself to be determined by the Church Fathers. It accepts what the Church Fathers teach with the Bible. But it has also never allowed itself to be determined by the whole Church if it taught differently from the Bible. Or, if someone came and said that he had new revelations, that would not help; we would answer him: "That's what the Bible says." Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians might come, or Spiritualists might raise all the dead, or at least conjure them up — we laugh at that silly stuff; though we would like to weep over it too. But we laugh in so far as it makes no impression on us. We are not afraid that we are wrong, like the poor sectarians who waver to and fro. Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians, they all tremble and hesitate. Why then? Simply because they do not trust the Bible. We Lutherans trust the Bible; what it says is settled. Methodists, Papists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Spiritualists, Shakers and Quakers — they may come; just stop your lumpishness about us: we have our Bible. With it we will confidently lie down on our deathbed. There you will stand and say: "The Lutherans were right. They did not miss the right path because they made the Word of God the lamp of their feet and the light of their paths." Yes, it all depends on us becoming firm in it, or we are lost. The devil is already knocking in our Synod through the Iowans: we should give up this jewel, we should, as Luther says, sit on the monkey's tail and say: "We can no longer use the 17th century doctrine of inspiration in this time." Alas, it is not merely the teaching of the 17th or 16th century, but that of the apostles and prophets themselves. If they had added their own to the word, they would have been the most God-forgetful rascals, which
is terrible to say; for they would then have had to say: "This is what the good Lord means"; but they say: "Thus saith the Lord, thus saith the Holy Ghost." And the Savior himself adds to a passage he quotes: "And the Scriptures cannot be broken." First he says: "It is written: You are gods," etc., and then he himself adds: "And yet the Scriptures cannot be broken." He wants to say: It is indeed strange that the authorities are called gods, but — the Scripture cannot be broken. So let us also say. What is written is certain to us. May modern theology continue to develop, it is developing into hell. It wants to deprive the poor Christian of the ultimate consolation of being able to rely on the Word of God. We give God the glory that he has given us His Word. And if all books lie, this book does not lie.
This faith of the Lutheran Church has also been carried over into its hymns. Our entire hymnal is a testimony to how it gives glory to God alone in the doctrine of Holy Scripture. For example, it says: "I believe what Jesus' word promises, I feel it or I don't feel it." "One little word can fell him." "This much the Lord's mouth tells us, we must abide by it, we will not let an angel drive us from this ground." The whole song; "O Lord of hosts, thy holy word." "Even though you have already ascended from this earth in sight and now remain invisible from us all here for this time, until your judgment will begin there and we will all stand before you and look at you with joy: so you are always with us and your church according to your word and not bound in one place with your flesh and legs; your word stands firm like a wall, which no one can change, no matter how clever he may be. You say: Take this is my body, you shall eat it orally; drink all my blood, with you I remain, you shall not forget mine. You have spoken it, therefore it is true; you are almighty, therefore no thing is impossible for you. And even though my heart does not understand how your body can be in many places at the same time, and how this happens, I still trust your words; how this can be, I command you, in your word I am content to believe." "On God's word alone," says the collection of songs in the prayer treasure, "I will build my foundation and faith. That shall be my treasure forever, in which alone I will trust. I will not compare human wisdom with the divine word. What God's word clearly speaks and judges, everything shall give way. My heart shall rely on God and his word alone. His Word shall be a light for me to walk in the right way. O God, let no false teaching separate me from your truth. Help me to confess the truth for the sake of your name."
Only through the teaching of the Lutheran Church is all glory given to God alone; this is evident, among other things, from its doctrine
That this doctrine in particular has been singled out is due to the fact that the Synod of Iowa is currently accusing the Synod of Missouri of being Calvinistic. For we, following Luther, have proved that it is God alone who prepares man for salvation and finally introduces him into salvation; that man's free will is not at all active in this; that man deserves nothing at all so that God may give him eternal life; does nothing for the sake of which the good God accepts him into heaven; that God has seen nothing in any man from eternity that he should have said: "I foresee that man will be such and such; I will choose him." This teaching is Luther's teaching. We do not want to accept the contrary doctrine, which he condemns in his precious writing The Bondage of the Will, and that is why we have publicly confessed it. This was a great annoyance to the Iowans. They thought that what we published was pure Calvinism; that by teaching that God had found nothing in man to elect him, we must therefore also maintain that God had found nothing in man to condemn him; that as man has no merit to go to heaven, so, according to our doctrine, he must not be guilty of being damned, as the Calvinists maintain. For they say that people are saved and that people are damned comes from the eternal divine decree. But we condemn this doctrine with all our heart. We firmly and certainly believe — and we are prepared to die for this, if God in his grace preserves us — that all those who have been chosen by God for salvation have been chosen only by free grace, by free mercy; that God has seen nothing, nothing at all in them for the sake of which he has decided to save them. We hold that there is no cause at all in man why he is saved, but that the cause alone is God's eternal mercy and the merit of Jesus Christ. We reject every third cause of salvation that is supposed to lie in man.
Now, of course, reason says: "If it is the case that the elect are chosen by the mere grace of God, then it follows that even if people are not saved but damned, it can only be because God has not chosen them." But reason cannot conclude otherwise. We Lutherans differ from the sectarians and Calvinists in that we do not draw this conclusion. Holy Scripture teaches that we are chosen by grace, by God's purpose, by the counsel of his will. Nowhere does it say that we are chosen because God foresaw that we would be good people. Everything is attributed only to God's grace, God's mercy. And the person who is introduced into heaven must say:
"Dear God, it is you alone who brought me here; if it had been according to my merit, according to my will, I would now also be in hell like the others; I thank your mercy alone; you have chosen me, a damned and lost man." But those whom God has not chosen have not been chosen, have not been saved, precisely because, even though God has bestowed all his grace on them, they have willfully rejected this grace. They did not want to accept it. God sent his Son into the world for them and instituted the ministry of preaching reconciliation for their sake; he sent the apostles into all the world, had the ministry of preaching established everywhere, ordained Baptism, the Lord's Supper and absolution for them: they let everything be in vain. The word was powerful enough; but they not only opposed it with their natural resistance, which God always takes away, but with a willful resistance, as Stephen said to the crowd in the high council in Jerusalem: "You always resist the Holy Spirit." That men are saved is caused solely by God's mercy; that men are damned is caused solely by man, by man's wickedness, but not by God in any way. This is what we assert. This is also written in our symbolic books.
Luther explained this wonderfully in his treatise against Erasmus: "That free will is nothing" [or The Bondage of the Will]. But the Iowans say that Luther's book on free will is a completely false book, that it contains pure Calvinism, and that in this book God is consequently made the cause of damnation. But they want to be considered good Lutherans. That is why they say that Luther later revoked this writing, whereas they know or should know — it is impossible to decide — that Luther not only did not revoke this writing "That Free Will is Nothing" until his death, but declared it to be his best writing alongside the Small Catechism and the Church Postils. These were good books, he said, and he had to say so, but not to his credit. So if the Iowans say it is heretical, they must also declare that Luther died a heretic. But it is untrue. This writing contains the pure, honest, biblical, evangelical doctrine. Admittedly, it leaves no trace of free will; Luther sweeps out every corner of it. Anyone with a little leaven of Pelagianism will of course bang his head against this writing, be annoyed by it, and think it is a horrible book. For this is true: Luther speaks so powerfully and so boldly in it that one often feels as if lightning had struck, until the lightning fades again and one realizes: The man is right after all; it is the blessed doctrine that points poor man to God's mercy. That is true: he sometimes speaks as Calvin did, but don't let that change your mind. If two people say the same thing, it is by no means the same thing. Luther does not want to teach absolute predestination,
but he wants nothing, nothing at all, to be attributed to man. This is already clear from the title of the book. It does not read: Of Predestination, but: The Bondage of the Will. You have to pay attention to this, otherwise you won't understand Luther properly. Luther only wants to deny man's free will in spiritual matters, which is why he attributes everything, but not sin, to God.
Now that an accounting has been given as to why the teachings of our church regarding the origin of sin, death, hell, and dam nation are here considered as a proof that only through the teaching of the Lutheran Church is all glory given to God, let us hear what the Augsburg Confession, the Formula of Concord, and Luther himself write about it.
Augsburg Confession: "Of the Cause of Sin they teach that, although God does create and preserve nature, yet the cause of sin is the will of the wicked, that is, of the devil and ungodly men; which will, unaided of God, turns itself from God, as Christ says John 8:44: When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own". (Art. 19 [Triglotta p. 337])
Here our Confession declares that the cause of sin does not lie in God — to assert this would be a terrible blasphemy; it would make God the devil himself — but in the evil will of the devil and then in the will of man which has become evil through the devil's seduction. Thus it says in the 11th article of the
Formula of Concord: "As God is not the cause of sin, so he is not the cause of the punishment of damnation, but the only cause of damnation is sin, for the wages of sin is death; and as God does not will sin, nor does he take pleasure in sin, so he does not will the death of the sinner.... Of the vessels of mercy he clearly says that the Lord himself has prepared them for glory, which he does not say of the damned, who have prepared themselves, and not God, as vessels of condemnation." (Solid Decl. Art. 11,1-82)
The Augsburg Confession only testifies to us that God is not the cause of sin; the Formula of Concord now makes the conclusion which necessarily follows from this: that therefore God is not the cause of death, therefore also not the cause of hell, not the cause of damnation; but all this is only the consequence of sin, which God has not caused. That is why it is blasphemous speech when the rationalists say: "Yes, God has created sinfulness in man." The first humans already wanted to attribute the cause of sin after the fall to God. Adam wanted to blame Eve and Eve wanted to blame the serpent. "Why," said Eve, as it were, "did you make the serpent?"
and Adam wanted to say: "Why did you give me Eve?" This is part of our nature: we prefer to blame God; we think he will be able to answer for it.
The quotation also says that God spoke differently about the vessels of mercy and the vessels of condemnation, namely Romans 9:22-23. Of the vessels of wrath it says in v. 22: "which are prepared for condemnation"; but of the vessels of mercy it says in v. 23 in the original Greek text: "προητοίμασεν" i.e. which he has prepared beforehand for glory. This is strange. Has it slipped from the Holy Spirit that he first says of the vessels of wrath: They are prepared (in Greek: xατηρτίσμενα), but of the vessels of mercy: They are prepared beforehand (προητοίμασεν)? By this he means: Of course no one will go to hell unless he is prepared for it. But such a one condemns himself and makes himself a vessel of dishonor. It is different with the vessels of mercy: they do not prepare themselves; they have been prepared from eternity through the election of grace. Man owes his salvation to God alone; but he owes his damnation only to himself, and God has no part in it. He who is saved must bring glory to God; he who is damned must only cry "woe" over himself.
That it is a gross falsehood when the Iowa Synod says that Luther's writing on free will contains Calvinistic elements is proven by the following passage from that writing itself: "God does not grieve over the death of the sinner, which he works, but grieves over the misery and death which he finds in man, and would gladly take it away.... For he wills that all men should be saved, 1 Tim. 2:4, because he has come to all through the word of salvation, and it is the fault of our will that we do not accept Him, as the Lord Christ says in Matthew 23:17: "How often have I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you were not willing." (XVIII, 2235. f. [The Bondage of the Will, AE 33, pp. 139—40)])
Luther teaches, say the Iowans, that God does not want to save all men at all, that he does not want them in heaven, but has destined them to sin and damnation; but Luther writes here clearly and distinctly that the dear "God would gladly take away misery and death; for he wants all men to be saved, and it is our fault that we do not accept him". This is well to remember. If we are condemned, it is not because God does not help us, but because our will is to blame. His will is our salvation; our will, unfortunately, is our ruin, while we, in our blindness, take it for our salvation. Calvin would have said to such a writing as Luther's: "I can never ever sign that, it is heresy." And now they want to turn
Luther into a Calvinist. Anyone who does not read our theological journal (Lehre und Wehre) should not be misled by the cries of the Iowans [and several of today’s LC-MS theologians.]. If they call us Calvinists, they are lying. We hate Calvinism as a doctrine of devils, because it robs the poor sinner of the highest consolation, namely that the whole world is redeemed and that he can therefore count himself among it. We are horrified by this abominable doctrine, and then the Iowans come and claim, because we hold to the doctrine of the eternal free mercy of God and therefore deny everything to man: "You are also Calvinists." The Bible says on the one hand: "It is all grace", and on the other: "You have not willed"; there we hear what is the cause of salvation and damnation.
Luther also wrote to John Lang in 1522: "Why do you argue about the evil that God does? I see that you have nothing else to do in such perversions of Satan. He needs no work, nor is it a work or a deed, but an omission of the work of God. For that is why we do evil, because he ceases to work in us and lets nature do what it does in its wickedness. Otherwise, where he himself works, nothing but good follows. And this omission on God's part is what Scripture calls hardening. For evil cannot happen because it is nothing, but only comes about when nothing good happens or is prevented." (XV, Appendix, p. 230. f. [St. L. 15, 2609])
Everything that happens in the world does not happen without God. The dear God is not like a watchmaker who puts together a watch, then leaves it, goes his way and cares no more about it; but, having created the world, he sustains it and works everywhere: he is, to use a crude image, as it were the steam-power of the great machine. As soon as the steam is gone, the machine stands still. As soon as God were to leave the world for a moment, the whole machine would come to a standstill. He not only sets the sun, moon and stars, the great universe, in motion, but everything that moves, moves because God is the moving force. Even the thief who climbs in through the window at night and reaches for the box of money he wants to steal could not bend his five fingers if the good Lord stopped being the driving force in him at that moment. For we are not gods, but only a shadow, a nothing; the good Lord must be in us and drive us. As long as the world has existed, many have argued about this and said: "If it is true that we live, move and have our being in him, then God must also do evil." Of course, reason cannot think otherwise. Calvin says: That is also the case. But Luther says in the quotation quoted above: "Why do you argue about the evil that God does? I see that you have nothing else to do in such disruptions of Satan." Just now, when the whole Church is bleeding from a thousand wounds, the modern theologians are consuming and wasting their whole lives, for instance, to get out a a single point which
stands above a dash, while there are so many important things concerning the salvation of millions of souls about which theologians can research and write. Luther continues: "Satan does not need a work, nor is it a work or a deed, but an omission of God's work." God does not do evil in man; people already do evil without him. The thief certainly needs God to keep his hand alive, but he does not need God to give him the thief's mind, so that instead of putting his hand to the spade, he puts it in his neighbor's purse. God does not give him this, but he has given him his hand. But the thief has misused the moving powers of God for evil. It would of course be wonderful if a father gave his hand to his ungodly child and did not pull it back, if the child took the father's own hand and gave him a slap on the cheek with it; but that is how God does it. He gives man strength unto death and does not withdraw it from him, even though man continues to misuse it to fight against God. Now is the time for grace, patience and long-suffering. When this time has passed, we will see with horror how great God's justice and holiness are. Just as we now marvel at his long-suffering and cannot find ourselves in this long-suffering, so we would not be able to find ourselves in God's wrath if we did not have a transfigured eye. Luther continues: "For that is why we do evil, because he ceases to work in us and lets nature do what it does in its wickedness. Otherwise, where he himself works, nothing but good follows." This is an important passage, for God is a sun of goodness. The sun does not need to do anything to make it dark, it only needs to stop shining and it becomes dark. But where it works, it becomes bright and light. Such a sun of goodness is the good Lord. Where God works, there is pure light, pure good, pure happiness, pure joy. But when God wants to punish in his wrath, he does nothing. It is precisely when he does nothing that misery arises. As soon as he leaves man in his misery, he sinks from level to level, from evil to evil, from ruin to ruin. Luther continues: "And this forbearance of God is called hardening in Scripture." Everyone should remember this word! Calvin understood "hardening" to mean a real act of God in the hearts of people, i.e. making them hardened. No, says Luther, one can of course say: God hardens; but then this means nothing else than that the good God ceases to work in the heart of man — and then he hardens himself. We are, of course, talking about the kingdom of grace and the Spirit. Just as the sun's failure to emit rays is the cause of darkness; or just as, when it does not rain for a long time and the water ceases to flow on the ground, the ground becomes hard of itself, so that one can say, as the Scripture does, that the field is like
stone, like iron, and just as this is the cause of the rain doing nothing: so it is with God as soon as he does not work in man. As soon as God does not work in man, man is lost. (Thus his sinful spirit drags him from sin to sin.) Then he becomes hardened. Luther continues: "For evil cannot happen because it is not." Evil is not a certain thing. It has not been seen. We have seen things that have come about through sin, but sin is a nothing that "comes about when nothing good happens or is prevented". The Calvinists are very careful in their confessions that it is not so easy to see how blasphemously they speak; but their theologians have blabbed off the map. They actually say that God is the cause of sin, even the active cause, and if not the effecting cause, then at least the accidental, deciding, decreeing, irritating (instigans) cause of it. This does not occur in their confessional writings. — "God does not grieve over the death of the sinner which he works, but grieves over the misery and death which he finds in man." God works, as the ancients expressed it in their artistic language, the material but not the formal aspect of sin, i.e. every action we perform is not in itself something good or evil, but it depends on the attitude. For example, if a murderer cuts someone's head off, he belongs on the gallows; but if the executioner does it, he does the very same thing that the murderer does, but it is not a sin for him. On the contrary, he does a good work, he acts in his profession, and if he does it in faith, God will still reward him for this act. Furthermore, blasphemous words are not in themselves a sin; for when we read from the Bible, for example, how people have blasphemed, we are not committing a sin, because we want to say how reprehensible men have been, how it has been in their wicked, wretched souls that they could have uttered such things against the Creator. It follows, therefore, that God does everything that man does, with the exception of sin, which is of the devil. God sustains everything he has created, but not sin. As much as God has created the devil, so much is good; for what God does is and remains eternally good. So also our flesh remains a creation of God and therefore good; but sin is attached to it, with which God has nothing to do. For Scripture expressly says in Psalm 5[:4]: "For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness." This is an important passage.
The passage in 2 Sam. 24:1, where it is said that the anger of the LORD provoked David to number the people, is remarkable. "Behold," say the Calvinists here, "God himself provoked him." But this is what the unfortunate heretics do. When they find a passage which at best suits their purposes, they do not look further into Scripture to find out whether it is to be taken exactly as it reads. Of course, if we had no other passage,
we would also speak: As it is written, so it must be taken. But the Holy Spirit, who is wise, has inspired another prophet with yet another passage. 1 Chron. 21:1 reads: "And Satan stood against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel." It is indeed marvelous that in the one passage it is said that the anger of the Lord provoked David, and in the other that Satan caused him to number the people; but this is not a contradiction, but if we take both passages together, we get an exceedingly important, prayerful, adorable doctrine, namely this: When the sinner sins, he has not detached himself from God, so that he is now an independent being next to God, who can do what he wants. No, God does not allow the reins of world government to be taken out of his hands, but keeps them for all eternity. A child of God will not be harmed if he does not allow it. That is why the Holy Spirit can also say: God's anger provoked David to have the people numbered; but by this he means that God was so angry with David because of his unfaithfulness that he decided to allow the devil to give David the power to number the people, which would then result in a great judgment. The devil could not have accomplished such a thing for himself. He could not even command swine, for when the Savior cast out a whole legion of swine from a possessed man, they first had to ask him politely to let them go into the swine. So we see that since the devil cannot even exercise dominion over a pig without God's permission, how much less can he do so over a human being, or even over a child of God. This is what the Holy Spirit wants to teach with these passages: If anything happens, whether good or evil, it happens under the divine government either by God's grace or by God's wrath. Whoever does not believe this does not firmly believe that there is a God. For to believe that there is a God does not mean to believe that an old man sits up there in his grandfather's chair and says: "I have to watch what the people below do from time to time." No, God is the immeasurable, incomprehensible One who permeates the whole world, who is everywhere and is God everywhere, who moves and drives and pushes and sustains and governs everything. Anyone who does not believe in a living, omnipotent, immeasurable God has only an idol in his heart. That is why the Holy Spirit could say with full truth in one place: "The devil!" suggests it to David, and in another: "God's wrath provokes him.".
Question: What does the Augsburg Confession mean by the words: "who immediately, when God has removed his hand, has turned from God to evil"? [AC 19; Trigotta p. 53] Answer: As soon as God does not work by grace in a person, the person can do nothing but sin. Man can be compared to a falling stone. If it were possible for us to step to the ends
of the earth and let a stone fall, it would fall down into the immensity and fall until something came to stop it. It is similar with man. If God does not work in him, he falls from sin to sin. If an unconverted man does not fall into murder, adultery, fornication, theft, he has his God to thank for this; for if God had withdrawn his hand from him, he could soon have found himself in such a position that his evil heart would have fallen upon these abominations as well. When we realize this, we will not be proud of our honor and will say, "Oh, gracious God, you have protected me until now; just do not remove your hand from me, or I will be lost." For out of the heart comes murder, adultery, fornication, thievery, false witness, blasphemy. All this comes out. So it was in there. It sticks in the heart of all men. Therefore, if God does not hold his hand over us, we are lost.
Now follow some passages from the Reformed Confession, namely from the resolutions of the Synod of Dort. It states: "The Synod rejects the errors of those who teach that God leaves no one out of his mere righteous will in the case of Adam and in the general state of sin and damnation, or in the communication of the grace necessary for faith and conversion." (Corpus libb. symboL, qui in eccles. Reformat, auctoritatempublicamobtinuerunt. Ed. J. C. G. Augusti. Elberfeldi1827. p. 212.)
This is assumed by all strict Calvinists. They reject the teaching that God passes over no one entirely and offers mercy to everyone, and that he leaves no one to his misery without mercy, and maintain that the correct doctrine is that God's mercy extends only to the elect, but that God does not want the rest to be saved at all, and that he does not want to save them from their certain destruction, but that they should remain in the sin of Adam according to God's will. They claim that God once wanted to show the whole world how just and angry he was against sin; therefore he created people whom he knew would fall, and thought: "I will save some, but I will make an example of the others; I will not send them a Savior, I will not give them grace to believe. What do the Reformed teach other than that God is the cause of remaining in sin and not being saved from death, hell and damnation? In their confession they only express themselves so carefully so that they can hide themselves a little; but anyone who looks closely at their words will realize that they want to say that God is ultimately to blame; he is such a sovereign being; He could also prepare such a tragedy that he creates millions and millions, one part of which he wants to cast into hell so that one can see how just and angry he is against sin, but the other part
of which he wants to have in heaven so that one can see how merciful and kind he is. But none of this, but just the opposite is found in Scripture, as we shall hear when we discuss the doctrine of God's general will of grace in the present thesis.
The resolutions of Dortrecht go on to say: "That some are endowed with faith by God in time, and some are not, comes from his eternal counsel. For God is aware of all his works from eternity, Acts 15:18, Eph. 1:11." That is no reason at all. They make God as powerless as a human being. We can also know some things in advance, at least with some certainty; indeed, an ungodly person who does not want to convert knows for certain that he will go to hell. But with God it is quite different. Luther says of him: "What we humans see lengthwise, God sees everything crosswise", i.e. if we want to see into the distance, it soon becomes foggy that we can no longer see anything in the distance, but God is one thing as close as the other. Therefore he knows beforehand not only what He wants to do, but what others want to do, yes, he even knows what might happen under other circumstances. The Reformed deny this, which is why they say that foreknowledge and predestination are one and the same. In those resolutions it is further stated:
"according to which counsel he graciously softens the hearts of the elect, although they are hard, and inclines them to faith, but leaves the non-elect to their wickedness and hardness out of righteous judgment." (op. cit. p. 203.) When they say here: "out of righteous judgment", this of course says nothing; for if God only wanted to proceed according to justice, he would not be able to save others either. For we are all made of one and the same dough; by nature we are all lost sinners. Therefore, if God does not give, or rather does not impart, universal grace to the individual, something else must be added, namely, that man does not want to accept it at all.
Finally, the Swiss Confession states: "God has decided to reveal his glory in such a way that he has decided to first create man pure, then to allow him to fall, and then to have mercy on some of the fallen and therefore to choose them, but to leave the others in the corrupt mass and finally to dedicate them to eternal perdition." (Formula Consensus Helvetica non 1675. op. cit. p. 446. f.)
It is therefore terrible that the Iowans equate us with the Calvinists. In comparison with them, it is to be noted how it is possible that one can deduce, according to his reason, a quite terrible doctrine from a doctrine which is in itself quite right. For example, the Bible says: The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. Furthermore: The Father is the Lord, the Son is the Lord, the Holy Spirit is
Lord; the Father is omnipotent, the Son is omnipotent, the Holy Spirit is omnipotent; the Father is eternal, the Son is eternal, the Holy Spirit is eternal. When the reckoners come upon these things, they bring out three Gods, three Lords, three Almighties, three Eternals. "Yes," they say, "what shall we say 3 times 1 is 3? There we sit." We say: The Bible does indeed say: The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God; but it does not say: 3 times 1 is 3, therefore there are three gods. Rather, it says the opposite, namely that there are three persons, each of whom is God, Lord, almighty and eternal, but that there is only one divine being, and therefore only one God, one Lord, one Almighty, one Eternal. Therefore, away with the art of arithmetic when it applies to God's word and divine things! The ass was also not allowed to go up Mount Moriah and — reason is the ass. [Genesis 22:3-5]
We now come to No. 3 in the third thesis. It reads: Only through the teaching of the Lutheran Church is all glory given to God alone; this is evident, among other things, from its teaching:
3. OfDivine Providence.
Of course, all doctrines without exception could have been cited to prove the truth of this thesis, since every doctrine ultimately has this goal: God alone should have the glory. But the fact that among the few this one in particular has been chosen is mainly due to two reasons: First, because all men without exception are atheists by nature, because in all men by nature is the doctrine: there is no God. And even if all people say by nature that there is a God, they do not believe in a living God and the world appears to them to be empty of God. They live under the impression that they can do whatever they want here and God is idly watching. But that is terrifying. Where this is believed, one believes in an idol; and that is what every man does by nature until he is converted. Then things change completely. Wherever he now walks and stands, and wherever he sees and hears and feels, everything, everything is something that reminds him of God, everywhere he stands is God, everywhere he feels God, everywhere he experiences God's workings. — Secondly, this teaching has been chosen because we live in a terribly atheistic age in which everything is attributed to nature instead of God: Everything is supposed to go according to the eternal laws that lie in nature. The dear Christians who talk so much about the laws of nature and think that these are actually the driving force have no idea how they can be seduced into blasphemous ideas and speech. A Christian should rather see God at work everywhere, as the apostle Paul says: "In him we live and move and have our being."
But since this doctrine is a very broad and wide one, and therefore many things could be referred to which would also be excellently suited to accomplish our purpose, namely, to show that in our
Lutheran doctrine of the providence of God lies glory, we will only consider two sides of this doctrine. First: What does divine providence extend to? or: What is the good God concerned about, what does He care for? Secondly: What influence has the good God on everything that happens in the world? To what extent is the good God active as often as something happens in the whole world? To what extent does God cooperate or, as the old theologians express it, concur in all actions?
J. Rambach writes: "The object of divine providence is all created things, none excepted, visible and invisible, living and inanimate, heaven, earth and sea, and all that is therein. As he created everything, so his providence extends to everything. He sustains 1. the invisible creatures, the angels; for the good cannot govern themselves without his wisdom and cannot sustain themselves without his power, the evil cannot harm themselves without his permission, and he sets limits and boundaries to their wickedness. 2. the visible creatures, and among them not only man as the noblest creature, but also all irrational animals. In Egypt, frogs and lice must carry out his commands."
How often has God made the locusts into his armies? An atheist, of course, in his blindness, thinks that this is very dishonorable talk from God. But that is God's greatest honor, that no mosquito can move in the universe without Him; for there is nothing beside the dear God that could say to Him: Do thou thy part, and I will do mine. God says to him: You are nothing where I cease to work in you and on you! And this concerns the archangel like the smallest frog, yes, the smallest mosquito, the smallest mite and moth. Oh, it is a very blessed teaching! Once you have grasped it correctly, you go through the world in a completely different way, then you see the dear God everywhere with the eyes of faith; and that makes the Christian not go through the world like a cow. When a Christian walks through the meadow, he sees the hand of God everywhere, how it clothes the beautiful flowers so lovingly and how it puts strength into the fruit so that man and the cattle get what they need.
Rambach continues: "But such provision extends over all genera, over all species, indeed over all individuals of each genus; e.g. God provides not only for the genus of creatures called birds, but for every species, storks, swallows, sparrows, indeed for every single specimen (piece) of them, for every stork, swallow and sparrow."
Anyone who does not believe this is not a Christian. Every swallow, every sparrow has a life story, and if a sparrow had sense and could talk, it would tell us what miracles God has done, that it has found its food every day, how it has been so faithful, how it has slept peacefully, got up cheerfully and sang: Where is my
food? — If we could understand his language, a book could be written about every sparrow. — God cares for the small, individual sparrow! That is what we must believe; otherwise we believe in no living God, no Creator, Governor, Sustainer of all things, and then we are nothing but miserable atheists who take the core, the dear God, out of the world. We must strengthen ourselves in this faith in these shameful atheistic times, so that we do not allow the living, all-acting God to be taken from us unnoticed.
Rambach continues: "He not only ensures that the trees remain, "grow and are preserved, but also for every tree, branch and its leaf."
Although there are billions and billions of leaves in the whole world, there is not a single leaf that God has not taken care of. If you don't believe it, you don't have a God. For that is not believing in God, if one thinks that there is a being who is immensely great and created the world, who also sometimes intervenes in it — no, he has everything, everything, every little leaf in his hand and rules it as it must be; for precisely if the dear God did not care for the small, the great would not exist. Just think: if someone wanted to take care of a large building as a whole, but perhaps a stone was missing in an important place, and he wanted to say: "I take care of the whole, not the stone", it would not help him if the building suddenly leaned and he now wanted to hold the whole. There have been people who have thought that God takes care of the whole, but does not take care of the smallest things; but this is a boundless stupidity.
Rambach continues: "Each of these is under its own government, as Christ teaches in Matthew 10:29. A sparrow is one of the most despised and (apparently) useless birds, yet Christ says that none of them will be killed, shot or injured without the will of the Father."
Hunters often return home and say: "I didn't hit anything today." They may think it was partly due to the powder, but God did not allow the bird to be hit. Unbelieving hunters don't believe that, but we Christians do. And if one gathered all the cannons in the world and shot them off, — one would not hit the sparrow if its time had not yet come.
Rambach also writes: "Luke 12:6: "Not one of them is forgotten before God?"
What a great word that is: The dear God thinks of every sparrow; he does not forget even one! And yet people are so insane that they think: Should God complain like this and remember all the sparrows? Yes, God is such a great God that he does not need to calculate how many sparrows he still has. Even we, for example, can see
four windows at once on a house and estimate the number of panels; but God looks and sees millions times millions before him and knows their number without calculating.
Rambach continues: "Even the smallest, most despised and useless things are subject to divine government and providence. Christ assures us of this in Matthew 10:30: 'Now the very hairs of your head are numbered,' so that none can fall out except according to the Father's will. What we consider valuable, we count."
A very beautiful remark! The Savior says: "Now your hairs are also numbered." He does not mean to say that God does a sum and counts them in this way, but rather that God considers everything he has created important, he considers it valuable and cares about everything without exception.
Rambach continues: "It therefore means a precise science and diligence. Just as the sunlight does not spurn the smallest worm, neither does God's providence."
God could have arranged it so that the glorious, radiant sun with its light would only fall into the eye of immortal man; but no, he has made it so that, as often as the sun comes out like a bridegroom from his chamber, the golden light falls into the eye of the least worm, even gilding and silvering every speck of dust. He has, so to speak, written in bright letters before our eyes: I take care of everything, my goodness is daily over everything, I care for everything.
Rambach continues: "So we must realize that this also extends to the smallest things. It is not as if an earthly king were to provide for all and every one of his subjects through a general decree, even though there are many thousands whom the king does not know. God knows the smallest things and provides for them, as Christ, the mouth of truth, assures us. It is true that reason thinks it indecent to the majesty of God that he should lower himself even to the least of his creatures. The pagan Pliny thinks that the divine majesty is defiled when it cares for despised things. But these are foolish thoughts, as the great Doctor of the Church Jerome also held." *)
*) St. Jerome writes: "It is absurd to think of God's majesty as knowing at any moment how many mosquitos arise and how many die, how many bugs, fleas and flies there are on earth, how many fish swim in the water. — We are not such silly flatterers of God that, while we draw his power even to the lowest, we insult ourselves by saying that Providence is one and the same as regards rational and irrational beings." (Comment. in Habacuc. I.)
It is hard to understand how a divine scholar could have spoken thus. It is sad! He speaks as if it would cost the dear God a great
arithmetic experiment to know how many insects are at this moment in the whole world, while his eye surveys everything, from beginning to end, without first having to consider anything; for the dear God does not make conclusions as we men do, but knows everything about himself, the present, the past and the future: he lives in the eternal today. This must have completely obscured the omnipresence and omniscience of God for Jerome! That is why Rambach adds:
"For thereby the honor of God is rather promoted, namely 1. the honor of his infinite goodness, when he embraces with the arms of his providence both the lowest worm and the highest angel. If it is not decent for God to create them, why should it be indecent for him to preserve them?"
This is very important! Otherwise we must become atheists and materialists and say: "That's how it came out of the mud; God can't help it", which is a wicked, blasphemous teaching.
Rambach continues: "2. The glory of his power and wisdom. The power of God is no less visible in the creation of a mosquito than of an elephant; hence also in its preservation."
If one wanted to argue about which is more artful and powerful, to create a mosquito or an elephant, one would almost say that the mosquito is more artful and powerful. The mosquito has eyes, ears, mouth and a mass of limbs, and in this little creature there is a kind of soul, a life that flows through everything about it, a tendency either to do something or not to do something. All its limbs are connected in an unspeakably artful way to form a whole organism, so that the most artful steamship is a mere lump and cannot be compared with it. For the mosquito moves itself, has life, and this life goes from the outermost limb to the outermost limb again; it can even sing, can even sting, the little thing can pursue man, and man is glad if he can only escape from it, and the elephant — even he is frightened when a swarm of bees comes upon him. The big clumsy animal is afraid of the little insect. Should we not be ashamed that there are people who do not admire this, who pass by this great work of art like unreasoning cattle and do not bow their knees before God and say: Oh God, how great You are! Millions upon millions You have created and daily preserve what we despise as nothing, as vermin, and therein lies hidden Your supreme wisdom, Your supreme power.
Rambach goes on to say: "Wisdom shows its excellence when it directs and guides creatures, who themselves do not know the purpose of their being, to such a purpose."
No one will attribute to the bee that it thinks, e.g: In two or three months it will snow, then it will be winter, then there will be no more flowers, you will have to work hard, otherwise you will starve, what will your children do then? No, the good Lord drives the bee to build its hive so beautifully and to attach everything in the most beautiful way, and if people didn't come over it, it would always be well provided for. Who is it that tells the bee: Get wax and so much honey and collect it in cells? — It is the good Lord, the conductor, otherwise no animal would take care of it. God also instructs the beaver to build his house in such a way that he does not drown in it. — There was a very interesting article about this recently in "Abendschule" No. 11. There a new philosopher by the name of Hartmann, who otherwise wants to know nothing of a personal God, speaks of the caterpillar of the night peacock's eye: after a short time it weaves itself in and builds itself a shell that is easy to open from the inside, but resists attacks from the outside. The philosopher says: "This is the unconscious in the animal." Yes, what this atheist writes is unconscious nonsense!
Rambach continues: "There is also no difference between creatures in themselves, but it arises only from their relation to us; for example, it is believed that a worm is more contemptible than a lion. The latter, of course, as we regard it, is better than a worm; but if we disregard the relation, the least worm has as much excellence in its kind as a lion."
Perfectly true. A mosquito is just as skillfully composed as a lion. Naturalists are amazed to see, with the help of their loupes, all that is in a mosquito's leg, all the little veins it has. If all men were to conspire to devote their whole lives to making a mosquito, for example, they would accomplish nothing with all their intelligence, wisdom and power and would be put to shame. Therefore, cursed be those who deny the living God, while everywhere they look they see themselves surrounded by immeasurable power and wisdom, and they are nothing but impotent dust.
Rambach continues: "For this consists only in a certain constitution of the parts of which the body is composed. Nor does God make a burden, as one might think. His infinite mind cannot be overloaded, nor can it be weighed down." (Schriftm. Explanation of the foundation of theology. Frankf. 1738. p. 157. ff.)
Now follow a couple of testimonies from Luther on the same point. The same writes:
"Among the things which are not to be taught before everyone, you (Erasmus) say this is one: 'God is essentially present in all creatures. From which it follows that he is present
in a secret chamber as well as in heaven.'" Then you scold the scholastic quarrelers for uttering useless things, and now say: 'Even if this article is true, it would not be good to teach such things before everyone'.... But where there are intelligent, honorable, Christian preachers who speak of these things with skillful, reasonable words, they can also speak of them and the like before the people without any danger... Therefore a Christian heart is not at all afraid to hear that God is with his own in death, in hell, in waters, in mud, which are as unclean and impure as other filth. Indeed, since Scripture says that God is in all places and fills all creatures, it is necessary to know that he is also in these places. If someone wanted to say that if I were thrown by a tyrant into a tower or an unclean pit, as has happened to many saints, I would not be able to call upon God or believe that he was with me until I came back to a decorated, painted church." (XVIII, 2094-96; [AE 33, 47])
Let but one fall into a secret pit, and he will believe the article. How many dear, dear martyrs have been thrown into the most horrible pits, and how many have been soaked in manure until they died. How they should have thought: The holy, pure God will not be with me in this stink? He may well be in it; it does not defile him, any more than the sun is defiled when it shines into the dung. For just as the golden sun, which casts its rays into the dung-hole as into the clear spring, is not defiled in the former and is not clarified in the latter, so the bright sun of God remains bright everywhere, it is not defiled anywhere, it is not darkened anywhere.
Luther writes in another passage: "It is God who creates, works and sustains all things by his almighty power and right hand, as our faith confesses; for he sends no ministers or angels when he creates or sustains anything, but all such things are the work of his divine power itself. But if he is to create and sustain it, he must be there and make and sustain his creation both in its innermost and outermost parts." [AE 37, 57 f.]
God cannot use tools to create and sustain; he does it all himself. He needs instruments to govern, but creating and sustaining is a privilege of the great majesty of God. But if he is to create and sustain, he must be there and create and sustain his creatures in the most essential as well as in the most essential. For example, when the Savior healed the sick son of the king (John 4:47-50) from afar, He did not do so by sending His power there, but the Jesus who was visible here was also invisible in the house where the sick man lay, and there He helped. If
Christ had not been omnipresent, he would only have been able to work where he was visible. It is the same with God.
Luther continues: "That is why he must be present in every creature in its most intimate, most outward parts, around and around, through and through, below and above, in front and behind, so that nothing more present or more inward can be in all creatures than God himself with his power." [AE 37, 58]
It means: "God with his power!" Not: power without God. That would be nonsense! But man would rather believe such nonsense than a living, immeasurable omnipresence of God. But Luther proves it from God's Word.
He continues: "For it is he who makes the skin; it is he who also makes the bones; it is he who makes the hair on the skin; it is he who also makes the marrow in the bones; it is he who makes every part of the hair; it is he who makes every part of the marrow; he must make everything, both part and whole: so his hand must be there to make it; it cannot fail." [Ibid.]
If God were not always there and did not always work, nothing would come into being. Most people think that if they see a very small green spike today and find it significantly larger in eight days, it has pushed itself out in this way. O we blind people! It doesn't push itself out. If the good Lord were not everywhere, no seed could germinate, no sprout could become a stalk, and no sprout would ever bear a leaf, a flower, a fruit.
Luther continues: "This is where the Scriptures come from, Isaiah 66:2....: ‘The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool’. He does not say: A part of heaven is my chair, a part or place of earth is my footstool; but what and where heaven is, there is my chair, be it heaven below, above or beside the earth; and what or where earth is, be it on the bottom of the sea, in the grave of the dead or in the middle of the earth, there is my footstool. Now guess, where is his head, arm, breast, body, if he fills the earth with his feet and heaven with his legs? He reaches far above and beyond the world, above heaven and earth. What can or does Isaiah mean by this saying, for as St. Hilary also speaks about this, that God is essentially present at all ends, in and through all creatures in all their parts and places, so that the world of God is full and he fills them all."
The whole world is full of God; but this is the misery that man does not believe it, as was said at the very beginning. We humans are all atheists by nature; this is demonstrated daily and hourly. For would anyone indulge in even one vain thought, or speak evil words, do ungodly works, if he really believed: Here stands the good God? Purely, he would not do that. That is why a living Christian, like Joseph, is so afraid to do anything against his God. He knows that God
is always with him: he stands everything, he hears everything. God is not merely there in such a way that he only senses it, no, he is there in the flesh. Anyone who does not believe this does not believe in a God.
In this disgraceful, God-denying time, we must push this article hard. The dear Christians do the second and third articles well, but the first, they think, have long since shaken off their shoes. But we must also learn this article until we die; it is the foundation for the second and third articles. Many people don't really believe the first article; when they come to the second, their reason bumps up against it. But those who have accepted the great miracles of visible creation in faith will not be offended when they hear, for example: In the Lord's Supper is the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Luther continues: "yet is not enclosed and encompassed by it (the world), but is at the same time outside and above all creation? These are all things incomprehensible beyond all measure, yet they are articles of our faith, brightly and powerfully attested in Scripture. It is little against this piece that Christ's body and blood are at the same time in heaven and in the Lord's Supper, and if the enthusiasts began to come here with reason and eyes, they should soon fall away and say: It would be nothing and, as is the virtue of the wicked, to say: There is no God. Ps 14:1 For how can reason suffer the divine majesty to be so small as to be present and essential in a grain, over a grain, through a grain, within and without? And even if it is a small majesty, can it still be completely and especially in each one, which are so innumerable? For he makes every grain special in all things, within and without."
For it is not true faith, if someone thinks that there is a bit of God everywhere, as we are always only at one point with one part of our life. We are just composite beings; but it is different with God. He is not only everywhere, but everywhere he is always whole. And yet there are not so many gods, as many times the dear God is everywhere whole. Yes, you say, how can I understand that? Indeed, no human being can understand that. But it is true; for God is not a creature of the spirit, who has a foot and a hand. He needs no space at all, nor can He be divided, He is a very simple being; where He is, He must be whole. So if God is in a grain, there is not just a bit of the dear God in it. The dear God Himself is in every speck, and the whole God. The whole God is also in us, in every part, and again in the whole. That is the omnipresence of God. But most people think that God is a spirit comparable to the air: just as the air spreads through the whole world, so God as a spirit is extended and spread through the whole world. But these are all wrong, stupid ideas, which
we concoct according to reason. No, where God is, there he is whole, and He is everywhere.
Luther continues: "Thus his power must be there everywhere in and on the grain: but now his power is united and one and does not divide itself, that he made the skin on the grain with his fingers, and the pith in the grain with his feet: so the whole divine power must be there, in and on the grain everywhere; for he does it all alone. Again, that the same majesty is so great that it can encompass neither this world nor a thousand worlds, and say: Behold, here it is." (Erlangen Edition. Vol. 30, pp. 58-60.) [Ibid. 59]
God does not need to go anywhere in order to be anywhere, for he is already everywhere. That is why Jesus did not descend from heaven as if on a staircase, for he was already in the whole world beforehand. He only began to be in the world in a different way, namely as the God-man.
Luther says in another writing: "We say that God is not a stretched out, long, broad, thick, high, deep water, but a supernatural, inscrutable being, who is at the same time in every little grain completely and utterly, and yet in all and above all and beyond all creatures; therefore there must be no fencing here, as the spirit (of the swarmers) dreams. For one body is much, much too wide for the Godhead, and there could be many thousands of Godheads within it, and again also much too narrow for one Godhead to be within it. Nothing is so small, God is still smaller; nothing is so great, God is still greater; nothing is so short, God is still shorter; nothing is so long, God is still longer; nothing is so broad, God is still broader; nothing is so narrow, God is still narrower, and so on, it is an inexpressible being above and beyond all that can be named or thought." (op. cit. p. 221. f.) [AE 37, 228]
When it says here: "Nothing is so small, God is even smaller", Luther means to say: If God wanted to be in the grain, you would say: "That is too small for him." Then I say to you: He could be mistaken for an even smaller object. He is so omnipotent that he can be everywhere, he needs no space, no room, no expansion. For us, of course, something is easily too small and, conversely, too big. A church is far too big for one person, as there can often be many hundreds of people in it. But with God it is different. Nothing is so big, God is always bigger, and nothing is so small, God can always be completely in it without having to shrink and shrivel up, as the Reformed say: "How can the body of Christ be in the host? He would then have to crawl into it completely." But these are stupid rational thoughts. His body is not the body of an ordinary human being, but the body of a great, immeasurable, eternal God, who can be wherever he wants.
Now we hear, secondly, what God's providence actually consists of. About this says
Joh. Gerhard: "Divine providence in regard to all things comprehends two operations in itself, preservation and government. Created things do not exist by themselves and by their own powers, but God sustains all things with his powerful word (Heb. 1:3), all things exist in him (Col. 1:17), in God we live, move, and have our being (Acts 17:18), as the being of the rays of the sun, the shadow of the body, so all creatures depend on the divine preservation."
Gerhard thus says: Rays, namely sunbeams, would not exist if there were not a sun from which they radiated; a shadow would not exist anywhere if there were not bodies that cast the shadow: this is precisely how it is with the existence of all things. They are only there because there is divine preservation. God did not create things so that they could exist for themselves, but in such a way that they are perpetually dependent on Him for all eternity. For God does not want to give his glory to anyone else: he always wants to be and remain the Creator, Sustainer and Governor of all things for all eternity. If a person loses God, the shadow has lost its body, the sunbeam its sun, and thus he himself has ceased to be.
Gerhard continues: "Preservation is nothing other than the continuation of being. Being and being preserved have the same author and the same origin. Therefore, just as all creatures have received their essence, their properties and their powers of action from God in creation and generation, they are also maintained by Him in their being and activity. There is therefore a constant influence of the divine all-sustaining power on all existing things, so that if it were withdrawn even for a moment, they could not work, indeed could not be. What is more natural to man than to move? and yet we move in God (Acts 17:28). What is more natural to the sun than to rise daily? and yet it is God who makes the sun rise (Matthew 5:45)."
Of course, like most languages in the world, we have a way of saying: "The sun rises, it rains, it hails." — But this is an improper way of speaking, which Scripture explains by the fact that it usually says: God makes the sun rise, God rains, God hails. Thus the Savior says: "He causes His sun to rise on the wicked and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."
Gerhard continues: "Therefore, although all things have their nature implanted in them, they do not express it, nor can they express it, unless they are sustained in being and life by God's power, that I may say so. Ps 104:29-30: 'If thou hidest thy face, they are afraid; if thou takest away their breath, they perish, and return to dust.
If you let out your breath, they will be created and turn into the form of the earth. — Deut. 8:3. and Matt. 4:4. it is said that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God; From this we not only learn that God can nourish and sustain man without natural means, but we are also reminded that if God withdraws his Word, through which bread was first created and received the power to nourish, the bread could by no means nourish man, but that the constant influence of the creating and sustaining Word is necessary for it to express the power implanted in it to nourish."
Some people think: Let the bread nourish me, and that the stone cannot be digested and does not increase my blood, that is very natural. But where does this come from? We Christians know: because God placed his blessing on bread 6000 years ago. When there is an abundance of bread, one is immediately satisfied; but in the temptation, people devour bread upon bread and always complain of hunger and want to eat what they see that is edible. This is because God withdraws his blessing, and if he withdrew it completely from us, the best wheat we grow would not nourish us or satisfy our hunger. For the blessing that is in the grain nourishes us. Only the blind heathen thinks that the nourishing power is in the grain itself.
Gerhard continues: “Man is not healed by the herbs, but by the Word of God, which originally implanted that power in the herbs and still instills it as it were today." (Loc de provid. § 61-63.)
The godless physicians think that the medicinal herbs have this power; there is no need to believe in a god. But if God withdrew the blessing from the herbs, they would help us nothing.
Fecht writes: "If God were to withdraw his hand from any thing even for a moment, it would immediately fall back into nothingness." (Controvers. Sylloge. Giessae1768. p. 80.)
Having spoken of the preservation of all things, we now come to the last part of the article on the providence of God, which deals with the divine government. Here, too, we shall hear only what is most necessary, namely, what is especially important if we are to recognize the glory due to God through the doctrine of this subject.
Thus John Gerard writes about this: "Divine Providence is otherwise active in the good actions of men, otherwise in the evil." It is assumed here that God is involved in all actions, whatever their nature, or, as the old theologians say, concurs, has an influence, that God is involved in everything that is done in the world — except sin. Now, however, good
actions are divided into two kinds, namely civil good and spiritual or good before God. Concerning this difference
Gerhard writes the following: "In civil good actions, divine providence works in such a way that it not only sustains the acting nature and gives it the powers to act, but sometimes also awakens those who are not born again and directs them to useful ends contrary to the intention of those by whom they were done. Thus it is said that God called Cyrus and seized him by his right hand (Isa. 45:1, 3)." —
This is extremely important so that we do not think that what the world does — especially the great deeds that are done in the state among the nations as nations — are all done merely by men. This is again an atheistic view of world events. God does everything and has his divine eye on everything. If God is not willing, no war can break out; if God is not willing, no peace can be made. And vice versa: if God is not willing, no human being can start a war, and if God is willing, the nations must make peace. God gives war, God gives defeat. Anyone who attributes victory to cannons or well-trained soldiers is basically an atheist; just as atheists have always said in recent times: "We already know who will win: — who has the best soldiers, cannons, etc.". While history shows that often the largest armies have done nothing against a small group. This was only because God did not want the small group to be overcome. Xerxes had to leave Europe again with his million soldiers after he had come to flood everything. Other tyrants, on the contrary, led everything out, not where it was favorable for them, but where it was thought that they must perish here. Why? God used them as a scourge. And we Christians, when we read in the newspapers, must always look not at men, who are only the instruments, but at God, who rules the world. If we see, for example, that things are going sadly in politics, as we Americans unfortunately see all too often, it is not enough for us to scold them, but we must beat our breast and say: God gives good times when he wants to bless; bad times when he wants to punish. Therefore no revolutions, but repentance! For he brings down the mighty and lifts up the lowly. We are only too inclined to always look at people. At that time the Jews probably did not think that Cyrus, this mighty ruler of the East, had been taken by the hand of God himself; that is why the prophet Isaiah had to tell them. But we now have the whole of Holy Scripture and with it the key to world history: therefore the most simple-minded Christian horseman can make a better judgment about it than the greatest historian, if he is not a Christian. For those who do not believe in the Gospel,
the whole world is an insoluble riddle. We have only recently seen from the first and second Napoleons that there is a God who rules the world. At first it was thought that it came from the first Napoleon's immense talent as a general that he seemed to want to drown the whole of Europe in his blood, but lo and behold! because people did not want to recognize that he was a scourge of God, the good Lord had to arrange it so that it was not actually people but the snow, the ice, the Russian sleet that defeated him.
Gerhard continues: "God commands and approves spiritually good actions in such a way that he works them through the Holy Spirit himself, since otherwise we are not capable of thinking anything ourselves, let alone doing anything (2 Cor. 3:5)."
This is well worth remembering! Spiritual good does not come from our own strength. Therefore, as long as a person does not yet have a new spirit and a new heart, everything he does is pure sin before God, even if it may be civically good. God alone works the conversion of man, man has nothing to do with it. He does not decide for himself, as the Iowa Synod teaches, but God decides for man, converts him, regenerates him, awakens him; God himself first makes him a new man. But now
Gerhard continues: "But after we are born again through the Holy Spirit, we are so impelled that we are also active ourselves, i.e., the will of man works through the powers not of nature, but through the powers given to him by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and is an active or cooperating instrument." —
So it is also true that anyone who has not come to the point of cooperating with the Holy Spirit is not a Christian. He who places his Christianity in the fact that he only goes to church now and then and allows God's Word to make an impression on him there, to awaken him, to frighten him, to comfort him, and then goes up and away and remains as he was: he is not a Christian. A Christian is the one who has allowed himself to be transformed by God's Word and Spirit in such a way that he himself now also cooperates in what is spiritually good; for only then does God want to cooperate. Now it should not be forgotten that man never cooperates with his natural power, but only through the Spirit and the power he has received in conversion.
But now we come to a most important subject, namely the extent to which God cooperates in evil deeds.
Gerhard says: "But God neither commands evil actions, nor wills them, nor supports them, nor impels them. We therefore say that God cooperates in evil acts first of all insofar as he foreknows them, or rather knows and sees them. Nothing escapes his eyes, which are brighter than the sun."
In recent times it has often been asserted that God does not foreknow
evil; for if God foreknew it, it would be necessary that it should happen: but if it were so, man could not help it. And some godless murderers blasphemously say that they were destined to murder. Of course, our reason cannot comprehend that God can know in advance that someone will or will not do something. Here we must recognize that God is inscrutable. Even if we can't work out how he can know something in advance that is not forced by man but happens freely — enough, he knows it. For Gerhard quite rightly says: "or rather knows and sees". He wants to say: strictly speaking, God has no foreknowledge, he has no present, no past, no future. What he knows, he knows; only for us is it foreknowledge, everything is already there before his eyes. That is why it is said of the Son: "Today I have begotten you." Today! He does not say: "Early in eternity", for then we would think that there was an "earlier" time, since he was not yet begotten and therefore did not yet exist. This begetting goes on forever. What continues to happen has also happened. But if Scripture were to say of a matter merely that it happened once, then it could easily be taken for an event that happened once and did not happen afterward, like creation; but the begetting of the Son of God is an eternal one, that is, one that continues to happen; for in eternity there is no such today before which is a yesterday and after which is a tomorrow.
Gerhard continues: "But this foreknowledge does not impose an unconditional necessity on evil actions. On the other hand, divine providence works in it by preserving nature, for in Him we move (Acts 17:28). But it is an astonishing long-suffering of God that he supports the members and sustains the powers and movements even in those actions in which he is most defiled; but this happens because of the intercession of the Son, and this goodness of God invites us to repentance."
Gerhard thus wants to say: If the Son of God had not, so to speak, made a contract with his heavenly Father from eternity, and the Father had not said: "Go, my Son, and make atonement for sinners": God would have had to cast out the world in Adam and Eve immediately after the fall to hell; he could not have looked on patiently, he would have had to destroy the world at once, it would have passed away in the fire of his wrath. This is why some of the angels who had no Savior were cast into the abyss of hell as soon as they sinned. But men were preserved because the Son of God prayed for them. He said to the heavenly Father: You cannot and must not destroy them, I will redeem them, I will become a man, I will take their sin upon myself, I will do for them what they have not done, and suffer for them what they would be
worthy to suffer for their sin, I will empty the last drop from the cup of your wrath. Then the Father declared: "Well, let the world still stand until the last one is born whom I have chosen for salvation. When the last chosen one is born, the last support of the world will have fallen away. God can then no longer leave the world standing in his wrath. This is why Luther says so beautifully: Christians are the legs of the world, which is why they have to wade in the mud. Yes, it is an amazing long-suffering of God that he preserves the wicked, preserves the tongue with which they blaspheme him, preserves the ear that hears the blasphemies, preserves the eyes that commit adultery and fornication, sustains the throat through which, worse than beasts, they pour intoxicating drinks, worse than cattle, the feet with which they walk in the paths of destruction, the fist that murders the brother, the body that should be a temple of the Holy Spirit but is a temple of idols. Oh, the indescribable patience of God!
God is not bound by the so-called laws of nature. The three men in the fiery furnace are an example of this. And when God had the prophet Jonah thrown into the sea, he did not let him drown, but brought him into the belly of the whale. And when the Jews were to pass through the Red Sea, the water lost its quality of always needing a boundary and stood there like a wall. God has just proved that it is he who continually maintains the laws of nature, but not nature apart from him. — But when God holds up to us in Scripture the example of Jeroboam's withered hand, he is saying to us: Behold, if I withdraw my hand, you should also withdraw yours.
Gerhard continues: "For if we were immediately destroyed when we sin, we could not turn to repentance (Rom. 2:4); then if a person heaps up God's wrath according to his unrepentant heart, he will receive it so that God will show the greatness of his wrath against sin in the punishments afterwards for the glory of divine justice (Ex. 9:16)." The more a person resists divine grace, the more he provokes God's wrath, the more he heaps up a treasure of God's wrath for that day. Of course, some are preserved who thereby only receive greater condemnation, while others are suddenly taken away.
Gerhard continues: "But a careful distinction must be made between the movement and action itself, and the error of the action. The action as action is not the sin, otherwise all actions would be sins, but the error and defect in the action is the sin. But this error and defect does not come from the general cause, but from the proximate cause, namely from the will of man. Augustine explains this with the example of
limping, which does not spring from the motive power of the soul, but from the dislocation of the leg." (Loc. de providentia. § 82-88.)
Luther also cites this example. That a horse limps does not depend on the rider, but on the horse, which is lame. If the horse "is" lame, it will limp, even though the most skilled rider is sitting on it. Nobody can say: Oh, what are you doing? The horse is limping! The rider replies: What can I do about it, I'm not making it limp. So, says Luther, it is with all creatures. God is the rider. If the horse that God rides is good, it goes well — that is the Christians, the children of God —; but if the horse is bad, — even if God rides well — the horse limps. So, even if God is the driving force in all people, he works good; but he does not work evil, he finds evil. This is at the same time a justification of Luther's entire book De servo arbitrio("The Bondage of the Will"). So if there are other passages in which Luther speaks as if he believed that God also does evil, this is mere appearance. Just think of the parable of the limping horse. —
Much more could now be said about the relation of God to evil; but here it is only a question of what part, what participation God has in evil. This is, after all, the serious matter and that in which God's honor must be saved. Now one could still say that God also concurs in evil, insofar as he forbids it, insofar as he hinders it, insofar as he punishes it, insofar as he directs it to good, insofar as he shortens it and insofar as he directs it differently than the evil one wants; but here it is a matter of saving God's honor. While we Lutherans firmly believe that God is not idle in any matter, that no one — whether good or evil — stands idly by, we also hold, so help us God, that God himself has no part in evil. We want nothing to do with the Calvinist theory that conflates God with evil.
Question: In what way does the doctrine that God permits evil uphold God's honor, since we humans are usually guilty when we do it? Answer: That we are guilty of this is because we humans have the duty, as God's subjects, to prevent all evil because it is against God. We owe this to God and our neighbor, but God does not owe anything to any creature. Who can demand it of him? Who can hold him accountable? We must all say: No, God, you are not guilty, for you are not subject to anyone.
On the other hand, God will show in eternity that he has brought all evil to a good end. Here we see it only in individual things, for example in the sale of Joseph. It was a wicked deed, and yet Joseph says to his brothers: "As for you, you meant evil against me,
but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” [Genesis 50:20] We also see this in the most wicked deed of all, the deed of Judas Iscariot, the traitor. No deed has had a more glorious consequence than this. Thus God shows us in a few examples already in this life that he is the great artist who can make something good out of evil. And in eternity we will be amazed, and although the damned in hell will not sing: "Glory to God in the highest!" — but even with regard to hell, all the blessed will praise God and say: "You are not only eternal love, you are eternal holiness, your wrath burns to the lowest hell, you are the Lord of all lords; woe to him who rebels against you! He will finally lie crushed under your feet. Glory to God! Glory to God! In heaven and in hell!"