We must do the same thing. One must refrain from debates and say: “I am a Christian; that is, the Son of God was made flesh and was born; He has redeemed me and is sitting at the right hand of the Father, and He is my Savior.” Thus you must drive Satan away from you with as few words as possible and say: “Begone, Satan! (Matt. 4:10.) Do not put doubt in me. The Son of God came into this world to destroy your work (1 John 3:8) and to destroy doubt.” Then the trial ceases, and the heart returns to peace, quiet, and the love of God.

Otherwise doubt about some person’s intention is no sin. Thus Isaac doubts that he will live or have a pious host. About a man I can be in doubt. Indeed, I should be in doubt. For he is not my Savior, and it is written (Ps. 146:3): “Put not your trust in princes.” For man is a liar (Ps. 116:11) and deceitful. But one cannot deal doubtfully with God. For He neither wants nor is able to be changeable or a liar. But the highest form of worship He requires is your conviction that He is truthful. For this is why He has given you the strongest proofs of His trustworthiness and truth. He has given His Son into the flesh and into death, and He has instituted the sacraments, in order that you may know that He does not want to be deceitful, but that He wants to be truthful. Nor does He confirm this with spiritual proofs; He confirms it with tangible proofs. For I see the water, I see the bread and the wine, and I see the minister. All this is physical, and in these material forms He reveals Himself. If you must deal with men, you may be in doubt as to the extent to which you may believe a person and as to how others may be disposed toward you; but concerning God you must maintain with assurance and without any doubt that He is well disposed toward you on account of Christ and that you have been redeemed and sanctified through the precious blood of the Son of God. And in this way you will be sure of your predestination, since all the prying and dangerous questions about GOD’S secret counsels have been removed—the questions to which Satan tries to drive us, just as he drove our first parents.

from Martin Luther, Genesis Commentary, commenting on Genesis 29:9 (Luther’s Works 5:43-50).

See also:

1. Luther Addresses the Problems that Occur When Christians Misunderstand Predestination, pt. 1
2. Luther Addresses the Problems that Occur When Christians Misunderstand Predestination, pt. 2
3. Luther Addresses the Problems that Occur When Christians Misunderstand Predestination, pt. 4
4. Luther Addresses the Problems that Occur When Christians Misunderstand Predestination, pt. 3

Many who did not resist this trial in such a manner were hurled headlong into destruction. Consequently, the hearts of the godly should be kept carefully fortified. Thus a certain hermit in The Lives of the Fathers advises his hearers against speculations of this kind. He says: “If you see that someone has put his foot in heaven, pull him back. For this is how saintly neophytes are wont to think about God apart from Christ. They are the ones who try to ascend into heaven and to place both feet there. But suddenly they are plunged into hell.” Therefore the godly should beware and be intent only on learning to cling to the Child and Son Jesus, who is your God and was made flesh for your sake. Acknowledge and hear Him; take pleasure in Him, and give thanks. If you have Him, then you also have the hidden God together with Him who has been revealed. And that is the only way, the truth, and the life (cf. John 14:6). Apart from it you will find nothing but destruction and death.

But He manifested himself in the flesh to snatch us from death, from the power of the devil. From this knowledge must come great joy and delight that God is unchangeable, that He works in accordance with unchangeable necessity, and that He cannot deny Himself (2 Tim. 2:13) but keeps His promises. Accordingly, one is not free to have such thoughts or doubts about predestination; but they are ungodly, vicious, and devilish. Therefore when the devil assails you with them, you should only say: “I believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, about whom I have no doubt that He was made flesh, suffered, and died for me. Into His death I have been baptized.” This answer will make the trial disappear, and Satan will turn his back.

from Martin Luther, Genesis Commentary, commenting on Genesis 29:9 (Luther’s Works 5:43-50).

See also:

1. Luther Addresses the Problems that Occur When Christians Misunderstand Predestination, pt. 1
2. Luther Addresses the Problems that Occur When Christians Misunderstand Predestination, pt. 2
3. Luther Addresses the Problems that Occur When Christians Misunderstand Predestination, pt. 3
4. Luther on Evolution: An Essay to All Faithful Christians, For Use Against the Epicurian Pigs, Those Enemies of Scripture, Who Attempt to Take Consciences Captive to Evolutionary “Truth”

God says to you: “Behold, you have My Son. Listen to Him, and receive Him. If you do this, you are already sure about your faith and salvation.” “But I do not know,” you will say, “whether I am remaining in faith.” At all events, accept the present promise and the predestination, and do not inquire too curiously about the secret counsels of God. If you believe in the revealed God and accept His Word, He will gradually also reveal the hidden God; for “He who sees Me also sees the Father,” as John 14:9 says. He who rejects the Son also loses the unrevealed God along with the revealed God. But if you cling to the revealed God with a firm faith, so that your heart is so minded that you will not lose Christ even if you are deprived of everything, then you are most assuredly predestined, and you will understand the hidden God. Indeed, you understand Him even now if you acknowledge the Son and His will, namely, that He wants to reveal Himself to you, that He wants to be your Lord and your Savior. Therefore you are sure that God is also your Lord and Father.

Observe how pleasantly and kindly God delivers you from this horrible trial with which Satan besets people today in strange ways in order to make them doubtful and uncertain, and eventually even to alienate them from the Word. “For why should you hear the Gospel,” they say, “since everything depends on predestination?” In this way he robs us of the predestination guaranteed through the Son of God and the sacraments. He makes us uncertain where we are completely certain. And if he attacks timid consciences with this trial, they die in despair, as would almost have happened to me if Staupitz had not delivered me from the same trial when I was troubled. But if they are despisers, they become the worst Epicureans. Therefore we should rather impress these statements on our hearts, such as John 6:44: “No one can come to Me unless the Father draws him.” Through whom? Through Me. “He who sees Me also sees the Father” (cf. John 14:9). And God says to Moses: “You cannot see My face, for man shall not see Me and live” (Ex. 33:20). And we read (Acts 1:7): “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by His own authority. But go, and carry out what I command.” Likewise (Ecclus. 3:22): “Seek not the things that are too high for you, and search not into things above your ability; but the things that God has commanded you, think on them always, and in many of His works be not curious.” Listen to the incarnate Son, and predestination will present itself of its own accord.

from Martin Luther, Genesis Commentary, commenting on Genesis 29:9 (Luther’s Works 5:43-50).

See also:

1. Luther Addresses the Problems that Occur When Christians Misunderstand Predestination, pt. 1
2. Luther Addresses the Problems that Occur When Christians Misunderstand Predestination, pt. 2
3. Luther on Evolution: An Essay to All Faithful Christians, For Use Against the Epicurian Pigs, Those Enemies of Scripture, Who Attempt to Take Consciences Captive to Evolutionary “Truth”
4. Why Don’t Christians Care?

Furthermore, God has most sternly forbidden this investigation of the divinity. Thus when the apostles ask in Acts 1:6, “Has it not been predestined that at this time the kingdom should be restored?” Christ says to them: “It is not for you to know the times” (Acts 1:7). “Let Me be hidden where I have not revealed Myself to you,” says God, “or you will be the cause of your own destruction, just as Adam fell in a horrible manner; for he who investigates My majesty will be overwhelmed by My glory.”

And it is true that God wanted to counteract this curiosity at the very beginning; for this is how He set forth His will and counsel: “I will reveal My foreknowledge and predestination to you in an extraordinary manner, but not by this way of reason and carnal wisdom, as you imagine. This is how I will do so: From an unrevealed God I will become a revealed God. Nevertheless, I will remain the same God. I will be made flesh, or send My Son. He shall die for your sins and shall rise again from the dead. And in this way I will fulfill your desire, in order that you may be able to know whether you are predestined or not. Behold, this is My Son; listen to Him (cf. Matt. 17:5). Look at Him as He lies in the manger and on the lap of His mother, as He hangs on the cross. Observe what He does and what He says. There you will surely take hold of Me.” For “He who sees Me,” says Christ, “also sees the Father Himself” (cf. John 14:9). If you listen to Him, are baptized in His name, and love His Word, then you are surely predestined and are certain of your salvation. But if you revile or despise the Word, then you are damned; for he who does not believe is condemned (Mark 16:16).

You must kill the other thoughts and the ways of reason or of the flesh, for God detests them. The only thing you have to do is to receive the Son, so that Christ is welcome in your heart in His birth, miracles, and cross. For here is the book of life in which you have been written. And this is the only and the most efficacious remedy for that horrible disease because of which human beings in their investigation of God want to proceed in a speculative manner and eventually rush into despair or contempt. If you want to escape despair, hatred, and blasphemy of God, give up your speculation about the hidden God, and cease to strive in vain to see the face of God.

Otherwise you will have to remain perpetually in unbelief and damnation, and you will have to perish; for he who doubts does not believe, and he who does not believe is condemned (Mark 16:16).

Therefore we should detest and shun these vicious words which the Epicureans bandy about: “If this is how it must happen, let it happen.” For God did not come down from heaven to make you uncertain about predestination, to teach you to despise the sacraments, absolution, and the rest of the divine ordinances. Indeed, He instituted them to make you completely certain and to remove the disease of doubt from your heart, in order that you might not only believe with the heart but also see with your physical eyes and touch with your hands. Why, then, do you reject these and complain that you do not know whether you have been predestined? You have the Gospel; you have been baptized; you have absolution; you are a Christian. Nevertheless, you doubt and say that you do not know whether you believe or not, whether you regard as true what is preached about Christ in the Word and the sacraments.

from Martin Luther, Genesis Commentary, commenting on Genesis 29:9 (Luther’s Works 5:43-50).

See also:

1. Luther Addresses the Problems that Occur When Christians Misunderstand Predestination, pt. 1
2. Luther on Evolution: An Essay to All Faithful Christians, For Use Against the Epicurian Pigs, Those Enemies of Scripture, Who Attempt to Take Consciences Captive to Evolutionary “Truth”
3. How Christians Should Regard Moses
4. The Highest Art of Christians…

These are devilish and poisoned darts and original sin itself, with which the devil led our first parents astray when he said (Gen. 3:5): “You will be like God.” They were not satisfied with the divinity that had been revealed and in the knowledge of which they were blessed, but they wanted to penetrate to the depth of the divinity. For they inferred that there was some secret reason why God had forbidden them to eat of the fruit of the tree which was in the middle of Paradise, and they wanted to know what this reason was, just as these people of our time say: “What God has determined beforehand must happen. Consequently, every concern about religion and about the salvation of souls is uncertain and useless.” Yet it has not been given to you to render a verdict that is inscrutable. Why do you doubt or thrust aside the faith that God has enjoined on you? For what end did it serve to send His Son to suffer and to be crucified for us? Of what use was it to institute the sacraments if they are uncertain or completely useless for our salvation? For otherwise, if someone had been predestined, he would have been saved without the Son and without the sacraments or Holy Scripture. Consequently, God, according to the blasphemy of these people, was horribly foolish when He sent His Son, promulgated the Law and the Gospel, and sent the apostles if the only thing He wanted was that we should be uncertain and in doubt whether we are to be saved or really to be damned.

But these are delusions of the devil with which he tries to cause us to doubt and disbelieve, although Christ came into this world to make us completely certain. For eventually either despair must follow or contempt for God, for the Holy Bible, for Baptism, and for all the blessings of God through which He wanted us to be strengthened over against uncertainty and doubt. For they will say with the Epicureans: “Let us live, eat, and drink; tomorrow we shall die” (cf. 1 Cor. 15:32). After the manner of the Turks they will rush rashly into the sword and fire, since the hour in which you either die or escape has been predetermined.

But to these thoughts one must oppose the true and firm knowledge of Christ, just as I often remind you that it is profitable and necessary above all that the knowledge of God be completely certain in us and that we cling to it with firm assent of the heart. Otherwise our faith is useless. For if God does not stand by His promises, then our salvation is lost, while, on the other hand, this is our comfort, that, although we change, we nevertheless flee for refuge to Him who is unchangeable. For in Mal. 3:6 He makes this assertion about Himself: “I the Lord do not change.” And Rom. 11:29 states: “The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” Accordingly, this is how I have taught in my book On the Bondage of the Will and elsewhere, namely, that a distinction must be made when one deals with the knowledge, or rather with the subject, of the divinity. For one must debate either about the hidden God or about the revealed God. With regard to God, insofar as He has not been revealed, there is no faith, no knowledge, and no understanding. And here one must hold to the statement that what is above us is none of our concern. For thoughts of this kind, which investigate something more sublime above or outside the revelation of God, are altogether devilish. With them nothing more is achieved than that we plunge ourselves into destruction; for they present an object that is inscrutable, namely, the unrevealed God. Why not rather let God keep His decisions and mysteries in secret? We have no reason to exert ourselves so much that these decisions and mysteries be revealed to us.

from Martin Luther, Genesis Commentary, commenting on Genesis 29:9 (Luther’s Works 5:43-50).

See also:

1. Luther on Evolution: An Essay to All Faithful Christians, For Use Against the Epicurian Pigs, Those Enemies of Scripture, Who Attempt to Take Consciences Captive to Evolutionary “Truth”
2. Why Don’t Christians Care?
3. The Highest Art of Christians…
4. How Christians Should Regard Moses

IV – Infants Can Believe

The most frequent objection to infant baptism is that babies cannot believe. They do not, says the objection, have the intellect necessary to repent and believe in Jesus.

If this is your opinion, Jesus disagrees with you. Luke 18 tells us that certain parents were bringing infants (Greek – brephe) to Jesus, that He might bless them. The disciples rebuked those who brought the babies. Jesus’ response is well known: “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God. Assuredly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it” (Luke 18:15-17). Some have objected that it is “little children” and not infants that Jesus speaks of here. Yet the very little children that the disciples were forbidding were infants. The infants are the focus of the passage. Clearly on this occasion Jesus had babies in mind when He said what He did!

Does this passage speak of infant baptism? No, not directly. It does show that Jesus did not raise the objection that so many do today about babies not being able to believe. According to Jesus, these babies had what it took to be members of the kingdom of God, feeble intellect and all! “Do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God.”

Now Jesus does not contradict Himself. The central message of His ministry (the Gospel) was that there was only way to enter God’s kingdom. There was only one way to be saved. “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16). Repeatedly Christ taught that faith in Him was the one way to become a member of God’s kingdom (cf. John 3:16-18). Therefore, when He says about babies, “for of such is the kingdom of God,” He is telling us that babies can believe (for how else could they enter the kingdom?!).

So if Jesus maintained that babies can believe (though their faith is very simple), who are we to deny it? And who are we to deny baptism to those who can believe? For those still stumbling over infant faith, remember: it is purely by God’s grace that any person, adult or child, can believe. Faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit as much for the adult as for the child (see John 6:44; 1 Cor. 12:3; Eph. 2:1-4). When the adult believes in Christ it is only because the Holy Spirit, working through the Gospel, has worked the miracle of faith in his heart. So with the infant. If faith, then, is always a miracle, why can we not believe that God would work such miraculous faith in a baby?

Someone might ask, “If babies can believe then why do they need baptism?” Answer: it is through baptism that faith is created in the infant’s heart. Baptism, far from being the empty symbolism that many imagine it to be, is the visible Gospel, a powerful means of grace. According to Scripture, baptism “washes away sin” (Acts 22:16), “saves” (1 Peter 3:21; Mark 16:16), causes one to “die to sin, to be buried, and raised up with Christ” (Romans 6:3-4) causes one to be “clothed with Christ” (Galatians 3:27), and to be a member of the body of Christ: “for by one Spirit, were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13). It bears repeating: baptism is a special means of God’s grace by which He gives faith, forgiveness, and salvation to the infant.

V – The Practice of the Early Church

Those who deny infant baptism have a problem. They must explain why the fathers of the Church’s first centuries speak of infant baptism as a universal custom. The Fathers is what we now call Pastors who led the Church after the death of the apostles. When we examine the writings of Irenaeus (d. 202), Tertullian (d. 240), Origen (d. 254), Cyprian (d. 258), and Augustine (d. 430), we see that they all spoke of infant baptism as accepted custom (though Tertullian disagreed with it).

Irenaeus remarks, “For He came to save all through means of Himself all, I say, who through Him are born again to God, infants, and children, and boys, and youths, and old men” (Against Heresies, Book 1, Ch. 22.4).

In his commentary on Romans, Origin writes, “The Church has received from the apostles the custom of administering baptism even to infants. For those who have been entrusted with the secrets of divine mysteries, knew very well that all are tainted with the stain of original sin, which must be washed off by water and spirit” (Romans Commentary, 5.9).

Cyprian writes, “In respect of the case of infants, which you say ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after birth, and that the law of ancient circumcision should be regarded, so that you think that one who is just born should not be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day, we all thought very differently in our council. For in this course which you thought was to be taken, no one agreed; but we all rather judge that the mercy and grace of God is not to be refused to any one born of man… Spiritual circumcision ought not to be hindered by carnal circumcision… we ought to shrink from hindering an infant, who, being lately born, has not sinned, except in that, being born after the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of the ancient death at its earliest birth, who approaches the more easily on this very account to the reception of the forgiveness of sins – that to him are remitted, not his own sins, but the sins of another” (Letter 58 to Fidus).

And in his Enchiridion, Augustine declares, “For from the infant newly born to the old man bent with age, as there is none shut out from baptism, so there is none who in baptism does not die to sin” (Enchiridion; ch. 43).

Conclusion

For completeness sake, I have listed five reasons why Christians should baptize infants. The first reason should have been enough. Jesus has commanded His Church to “make disciples of all nations baptizing them . . ..” Christ made no exceptions. Infants are part of all nations, as are every other age group. We do not have to prove this. The burden of proof is on those who deny that infants are to be included in “all nations.” To deny the blessing of infant baptism because you can’t find the words “infant baptism” in the Bible makes as much sense as rejecting the teaching of the Trinity because you can’t find the words “Trinity” or “triune” in the Bible.

As to babies not being of the age of reason and therefore not able to believe, I have shown that Christ disagrees. So in a sense, the teaching of infant baptism reveals who your Lord is. Lord Jesus Christ has commanded us to baptize all nations, has declared that everyone who dies without faith is damned, and has taught us that infants can believe by God’s grace working through baptism. Lord Reason says, “I don’t understand how a baby can believe, therefore I reject infant baptism. It makes more sense to me to do it my way.” Which Lord will you obey? Will you obey Christ and baptize “all nations,” including infants, even though you don’t understand it? Or will you obey Reason and reject infant baptism because you don’t understand how babies can believe? Which Lord will you obey?

See also:

1. Why We Baptize Babies (The Case for Infant Baptism), pt. 1
2. Infant Baptism
3. The Early Church on Infant Baptism
4. Luther’s Sermon On Infant Baptism

Should we baptize babies? The Christian Church continues to be sharply divided over this important question. Those who answer “yes” (Lutherans, Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, etc.) claim Biblical support for their position. Those who answer “no” (Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, many “Bible” or “evangelical,” or “non-denominational” churches) say the Bible is on their side. The pro-infant baptism churches assert that Christ commanded infant baptism. The opposing side asserts that nowhere is such a thing commanded. They hold that at best it is useless and at worst harmful. It is their practice to rebaptize adults who were baptized as babies.

The Lutheran Church has always taught that baptism is for everyone, including infants. We believe that Jesus wants babies to be baptized. We do so for the following reasons.

I – Christ Has Commanded Us

Many raise the objection: “There is not a single example of infant baptism in the New Testament, nor is there any command to do so. Therefore Christians should not baptize babies.”

But Jesus has commanded infant baptism. In Matthew 28:19 He says, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit . . ..” Before He ascended, the Lord of the Church commanded us to baptize “all nations,” a phrase the Church has always understood to mean “everyone.” Matthew 25:31-32 also uses the phrase “all nations” in this way. All nations are to be baptized, regardless of race, color, sex, age, class, or education. Jesus makes no exceptions. He doesn’t say, “Baptize all nations except . . ..” Everyone is to be baptized, including infants. If we say that babies are not to be included in Christ’s Great Commission, then where will it stop? What other people will we exclude?

It is true that there is no example in Scripture of a baby being baptized. However, to conclude from this that babies are not to be baptized is absurd. Neither are there any specific examples of the elderly being baptized, or teenagers, or little children. Instead we read about men (Acts 2:41; 8:35) women (Acts 16:14-15), and entire households being baptized (Acts 10:24,47-48; 16:14-15; 16:30-33; 1 Co. 1:16). The authors of the New Testament documents didn’t feel compelled to give examples of every age group or category being baptized. Why should they have? Certainly they understood that “all nations” is all-inclusive.

II – Babies Need Forgiveness

The Bible teaches that infants are born sinful and are in need of forgiveness. Scripture says nothing about an “Age of Accountability” that begins at the age of reason. Its message is that accountability begins at conception. David confesses in Psalm 51:5, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” The Bible teaches original sin, that the corruption and guilt of Adam’s sin is passed on to every human being at conception. Jesus affirms this teaching when He says, “Flesh gives birth to flesh” (John 3:5). Paul takes it up in Romans 5:18: “So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.”

Furthermore, Jesus said, “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved; he who believes not shall be damned” (Mark 16:16). According to Jesus, ANYONE who does not believe in Him will be damned. Jesus makes no exception for infants. Babies will not be saved without faith in Jesus. Parents who think they are placing their children under God’s grace by “dedicating” them are deceiving themselves. The only dedication that the New Testament knows of is the “dedication” that take place via baptism. That is why infants should be baptized. Like everyone else, they desperately need forgiveness. If infants die before they believe in Jesus, they will be eternally condemned. They, like everyone else, need to be baptized so that they can be born again. Jesus said, “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). We believe that baptism is God’s special means of grace for children by which He causes them to be born again. To keep them from baptism is to keep them from forgiveness and to endanger them with damnation.

III – Baptism Replaces Circumcision

God’s covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17:10-14) demanded that every male child was to be circumcised when eight days old. By circumcision, the baby entered into a covenant relationship with the true God.

St. Paul teaches us that in the New Testament baptism has replaced circumcision. “In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism . . .” (Col. 2:11-12).

Given this fact, it would have been natural for first century Jewish believers to baptize infants, since they were accustomed to circumcise their male children at eight days old. It is also logical that if God regarded eight day old male babies as members of His covenant people through circumcision, He will also regard newborn babies to be members of His kingdom through baptism, the “circumcision made without hands.”

See also:

1. Infant Baptism
2. The Early Church on Infant Baptism
3. Luther’s Sermon On Infant Baptism
4. Baptism Is Putting On Christ

Here are the ten most read articles on Gnesio from 2011.

1. The Offerings of Cain & Abel
2. The Birth of Jesus and the Angel’s Song
3. Sermon on the Good Shepherd
4. Faith in Shakespeare
5. Sermon for Palm Sunday
6. Nero
7. Sermon Preached by Martin Luther at Erfurt in 1521
8. Jesus is Your Good Shepherd
9. Christ: The Center of the Old Testament
10. Paul, Apostle

Bonus

Luther on Whether Soldiers too can be Saved

Psalm 90: A Prayer of Moses, the man of God

Lord, you have been our dwelling place
in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

You return man to dust
and say, “Return, O children of man!”
For a thousand years in your sight
are but as yesterday when it is past,
or as a watch in the night.

You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream,
like grass that is renewed in the morning:
in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;
in the evening it fades and withers.

For we are brought to an end by your anger;
by your wrath we are dismayed.
You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.

For all our days pass away under your wrath;
we bring our years to an end like a sigh.
The years of our life are seventy,
or even by reason of strength eighty;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.
Who considers the power of your anger,
and your wrath according to the fear of you?

So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Return, O LORD! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
and for as many years as we have seen evil.
Let your work be shown to your servants,
and your glorious power to their children.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and establish the work of our hands upon us;
yes, establish the work of our hands!

See also:

1. Rev. Dr. C.F.W. Walther Bicentennial (1811 – 2011)
2. Upcoming Changes at Gnesio

It is a common experience, that kingdoms which quickly rise, become disconnected and soon again fall apart. Indeed the more the form is solidified and expanded, the spirit dwindles from the form. It is like a stone thrown in the water which forms ever widening circles of ripples. But the center, which stirred the water in the first place, loses its power.

The common experience of the world teaches this, and the history of the kingdom of God hardly demonstrates anything different. The quick blooming of the apostolic congregations did not last eternally. And where does the spirit remain which at the time of the blessed Reformation so powerfully united in love such a great number of quickly growing evangelical congregations? Truly, the closer we come to the last days, the more Luther’s statement appears to be proven that the word of God is like a passing rain shower [fahrenden Platzregen], which rarely remains more than a generation in one place and does not return to where it has been.

For this reason it would not be good, my brothers, if we would conceal from ourselves the fact that with the external growth of our Synod dangers will certainly increase which threaten the Synod’s internal prosperity; especially if God should now give us times of rest and peace.

It is not difficult to predict from which side the enemy will continue to threaten us.

Up until now the enemy has not been able to rob us of the precious Word of God. Indeed, he has not been able to hinder us in our struggle for pure doctrine, such that our opponents have progressively been silenced. The next thing the devil will seek is to make us satisfied and tired, to lull us into sleep and security and to fool us into arrogance, as though everything were well and good, if only the orthodox confession and good churchly order stands correct everywhere among us.

What he perhaps could not achieve through temptation to narrow minded legalism, because in that, by God’s grace, there remained an upright earnestness and diligence for God’s honor and the salvation of souls; will he from now on perhaps achieve through a false broadmindedness [Weitherzigkeit], with which he will certainly try to tempt us?

In the beginning all the storms and external attacks [Anfechtungen], which he hung about on our necks, against his very will, only helped force together the little flock to stand chest to chest on the rock of salvation. Through the bond of faith and love we were bound together all the more in inward purpose. It is certainly no wonder that now the devil would calculate to continually stretch and loosen these bonds until finally everyone goes his own way by himself.

from H.C. Schwann (1865) Verhandlungen der Elften Jahresversammlung des Mittleren Districts der deutschen ev.=luth. Synode von Missouri, Ohio u.a. Staaten im Jahre 1865. St. Louis, Mo., Druck von Aug. Wiebusch u. Sohn, 1865, pp. 7-10.
Translation by Matt Harrison.

See also:

1. Prosperity & Good Days

So then, with all the more confidence, let’s look to the road ahead. Indeed, let’s not be deceived. The clouds on the horizon have not dispersed. No. In fact, they rise up all the darker and more threatening. It is quite possible that the most difficult blows are still to come. For the arm of the Lord is not yet extended. It is absolutely possible that we should still expect completely different tribulations and dangers. But we will not lose courage! The mercy of the Lord has no end! It is new every morning; and His faithfulness is great. We are but spiritual foreigners and pilgrims, who have no abiding home here below but seek the one to come. Only let us raise again the weary hand and tired knee. Only let us hold tight the staff, which is written of in Psalm 23. Then, come what may, with the holy psalm- ist, we will be able to say: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” [Psalm 23:4–6 KJV]. Amen.

H.C. Schwan, At Home in the House of My Fathers, p. 482.

See also:

1. Beware of False Prophets
2. Something Completely Other Than…
3. The Long Drawn-out Trumpet Blast of a Herald

SCHWAN TO SIHLER
Translated by Ed Suelflow
Cleveland, May 9, 1876

Dear honored Doctor:

It is time to prepare proposals for our Synod. One of these should deal with the discussion we had last year concerning the internal condition of our congregations. I would ask you herewith to take over this project.

I am not familiar with the “whys” and the “wherefores.” Twice we had similar discussions, in 1856 and 1858, on the basis of reports that have been considered. The impression that remained with me is that, even though the discussions were fruitful, they were more personal opinion rather than substance based on the reports. The reports themselves were rather useless, because of the sheer volume of questionable judgments expressed by individual Pastors – an extraordinary disproportion. How can we avoid it this time? And is there a way to discuss the matter without these reports?

Further, it is likewise unclear to me which specific issues concerning the life of our congregations we are to discuss this time – the same ones, to prove progress or lack of it – or are there other issues? Some of these should not be included, even though this topic was deemed important by the Pastoral Conference: “Theses Concerning the Doctrine of Sin”. Certainly this was the cause of somewhat idle but interesting conversation at the Conference. (I will appoint Pastor Koehler as reporter and Carl Schmidt as co-reporter.)

I have no other counsel except to ask you to select both the subject matter as well as the way to handle it.

Your son, with whom I visited yesterday, shared with me the plan to wait for the beginning of the college semester until November, so the new arrivals might escape the unfortunate fever. Also all vacations and other free days would be cancelled. This seemed plausible to me. I asked him to draw up a memorial to that effect, that, if it were accepted by the teacher college board of regents (Aufsichtsbehoerde), to present it then to the Synod.

No doubt you already heard by telegram that the body of my uncle is on its way from St. Louis and will probably lie in state here next Sunday. The congregation has invited Walther to preach the funeral sermon. As far as I know Pastor Nieman has invited you to participate. If you cannot come, surely you will write Wyneken’s biography for Der Lutheraner. I dreamt in a most realistic way that uncle, while thinking about leaving San Francisco, had died from a stroke. I sat down then and wrote him a letter of encouragement. It appears that he actually died at that exact time. I am satisfied that he is at rest, which was his desire, but I miss him more than I had originally thought.

It has been necessary for my wife to be bed-ridden for months. I am waiting for the first warm days to take her into the country. It will be good medicine for her.

Yours truly,
H.C.Schwan

See also:

1. Church in Roanoke Votes on Leaving Denomination
2. The Stroke of Grace
3. Leaving the ELCA in South Dakota
4. Anglican Bishop Minns Advises Leaving the ELCA

But the first synod at Jerusalem dealt not only with doctrine, it also dealt with mission. It says: “And they declared all that God had done with them” [Acts 15:4]. “And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles” [Acts 15:12]. Also at our sessions, the mission [of the Church], after the treatment of doctrine, takes the most time. Our dear traveling preachers [Reiseprediger] have given their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Suffering great deprivation out on our often inhospitable prairies and in solitude in the wild mountains of Montana, without making much fuss, they have done the most difficult work. They recount to us how the Lord has opened doors for them every- where, and congregations have sprouted up like gardens of God. By reporting this to us, they bring great joy to all the brethren. In so doing, they move us to holy determination to take the Word of God ever further and to work ever more diligently. Indeed, last year, we unanimously decided to assist in taking the Word into the land of the heathen [the American Indians]. It was the reports of our traveling preachers that warmed our hearts and have given us courage to implore God that He give still more because He already has given us so much. To be sure, it is our chief task to preach the Word to brethren in the faith who live in scattered places. But we have now done that beyond what anyone would have thought possible. From Winnipeg to New Orleans, there is a string of one congregation after another. Our missionaries carry the message from the east to the setting of the sun, to the Rocky Mountains and back. To be sure, we always lack the necessary workers. Thus the prayer of the Lord “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, pray the Lord of the harvest that He send workers into his fields” is applicable for the Church of the entire [era of the] New Testament. And so the workers will remain few until the Last Day. If we had enough workers, we wouldn’t need to pray what the Lord asks us to pray. God desires our prayer that He may give us what is needed.

Our Confessions also testify that along with the advancement of understanding of the pure doctrine, the mission should be the chief matter of a synod. Luther writes in the Smalcald Articles:

But let us return to the subject. I should be very happy to see a true council assemble in order that many things and many people might derive benefit from it. Not that we ourselves need such a council . . . we see so many vacant and desolate parishes everywhere that our hearts would break with grief. Yet neither the bishops nor the canons care how the poor people live or die, although Christ died for them too. Those people cannot hear Christ speak to them as the true shepherd speaking to His sheep. This horrifies me and makes me fear that He may cause a council of angels to descend on Germany and destroy us utterly, like Sodom and Gomorrah, because we mock Him so shamefully with the council [SA Preface 9–11; Tappert, 290].

Walther remarked on this at the synod of the Iowa District: “Behold, dear brothers, we should be so minded also. We come here not for the sake of ourselves. We stand in the faith and with this faith we hope to be saved! But how many millions are there still who have no faith! We exist and have founded a synod in order, as much as possible, to bring men to sal- vation, and thereby to check the misery in Christendom and the number of the lost in the poor blind heathen world. If we do not do this, if we fail to seek the honor of Christ and the salvation of souls, Luther fears, as he says, ‘then may the dear God convene a synod, namely a “council of angels” in order to carry out his judgment.’ ” (Iowa Synodal-Bericht, 1:113)

Friedrich Pfotenhauer, At Home in the House of My Fathers, p. 697

See also:

1. The Genesis of False Doctrine
2. Discipline in Doctrine
3. The Mission of the Church
4. Stay Away from Those Who Teach False Doctrine

John Behnken, President of the LCMS 1945-1962, in “Mercies Manifold: Radio Messages Broadcast During the Summer of 1949, CPH 1950, pp. 117f.

See also:

1. God’s Own Time
2. They Err Who Deny Preachers the Power to Forgive Sins
3. There cometh, yea, the time when…

Then why, beloved brothers, do we stand by one another? Why can’t we leave one another? It is because we cannot let go of the one truth that we, in fellowship with all the saints, have acknowledged, believe, and confess as it is in the Confessions of the Lutheran Church. These Confessions bear witness to the truth clearly, plainly, and powerfully on the basis of the Holy Scriptures, against all the desires of Satan, to the whole world. And why do we hold so firmly to our Confession such that we happily endure the hatred of the world and also of the rest of Christianity, which is difficult to bear? Why, with God’s help and grace, would we suffer persecution and death before we would give up even a small part of that Confession? We do so because we have come to make the truth set forth in that Confession our own, not in times of good leisure and rest, like we might appropriate other natural or historical truths. The Holy Spirit has revealed this truth to us in the midst of the burdens of troubled consciences as our only salvation. Through the Word, the Spirit has borne witness to the truth in broken and troubled hearts. Our consciences are bound to the Word and therefore to the Confession of the Church. As poor, forlorn, and condemned men, we have learned to believe in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. The peace of conscience, the peace of our souls, the hope of eternal blessedness, our very being and life hang on this truth. To surrender it would be to surrender our salvation and ourselves for time and eternity. Therefore, neither can we let go of the most insignificant portion of the Confession because the entire series of the individual teachings of the faith are for us one chain. This chain not only binds our understanding in the truth, it binds our consciences and lives. The loss of an individual part of the same would break this chain, and we would be torn loose from Christ, tumbling again into the abyss of anxiety, doubt, and eternal death.

Therefore we hold fast to our Confession, as to our very life’s life.

F.C.D. Wyneken, in At Home in the House of My Fathers, p. 287

See also:

1. “The Evangelical Lutheran Church observes the unity of confession and love toward all who share with it the one faith.”
2. The Unity of the Lutheran Church
3. Concerning the Unity of the Lutheran Church
4. We Strive in the Right Way for the Unity of the Church…

…holy Jacob…sees the camp of God nearby and says, “This is the encampment of God” [Gen. 32:3]; God’s help is generally with men of faith and men who have been perfected. Moreover, as one who had been perfected, he thought of reconciliation with his brother [cf. Gen. 32:4-21]. Accordingly he thought to invite Esau with humility and to prevail on him with kindnesses and considered that he could be won over with gifts as well. Therefore Jacob went along with his wives and children to meet his brother, so that even if Esau was angry at him, he would relent out of allegiance to ties of kinship [cf. Gen. 33:1-2]. “And he bowed down seven times on the ground” [Gen. 33:3]. … What does it mean, that he bowed down seven times? The answer would remain open if one did not remember Peter’s question in the Gospel, “If my brother sins against me, how often shall I forgive him? Up to seven times?” [Matt. 18:21] and the answer of the Lord Jesus, “not only seven times, but even seventy times seven” [Matt. 18:22]. And so the holy patriarch foreshadows this in prophetic spirit, since he is looking to Christ who is coming and who would command that pardon be extended to one’s brother not only to seven times but even to seventy times seven. Thus, in view of this meeting, Esau would forgive his brother the injury he thought he had received; although the offended party, Esau would return to friendship, because the Lord Jesus was going to take flesh and come upon the earth for that very reason, to give us manifold pardon for our offenses.

Then, intending to ask for peace from his brother, Jacob slept in the encampment [cf. Gen. 32:14]. Perfect virtue possesses tranquillity and a calm steadfastness; likewise the Lord has kept His gift for those who are more perfect and has said, “My peace I leave to you, my peace I give to you” [John 14:27]. It is the part of those who have been perfected not to be easily influenced by worldly things or to be troubled with fear or tormented with suspicion or stunned with dread or distressed with pain. Rather, as if on a shore of total safety, they ought to calm their spirit, immovable as it is in the anchorage of faith, against the rising waves and tempests of the world. Christ brought this support to the spirits of Christians when He brought an inner peace to the souls of those who had proved themselves, so that our heart should not be troubled or our spirit be distressed. That this peace is beyond all understanding our apostolic teacher proclaimed when he said, “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and feelings in Christ Jesus” [Phil. 4:7]. And so the fruit of peace is the absence of disturbance in the heart. In short, the life of the just man is calm, but the unjust man is filled with disquiet and disturbance. Therefore the ungodly man is struck down more by his own suspicions than most men are by the blows of others, and the stripes of the wounds in his soul are greater than those in the bodies of men who are lashed by others. …

Therefore Jacob, who had purified his heart of all pretense and was manifesting a peaceable disposition, first cast off all that was his, then remained behind alone and wrestled with God [cf. Gen. 32:23-25]. For whoever forsakes worldly things comes nearer to the image and likeness of God. What is it to wrestle with God, other than to enter upon the struggle for virtue, to contend with one who is stronger and to become a better imitator of God than the others are? Because Jacob’s faith and devotion were unconquerable, the Lord revealed His hidden mysteries to him by touching the side of his thigh [cf. Gen. 32:26]. For it was by descent from him that the Lord Jesus was to be born of a virgin, and Jesus would be neither unlike nor unequal to God. The numbness in the side of Jacob’s thigh foreshadowed the cross of Christ, who would bring salvation to all men by spreading the forgiveness of sins throughout the whole world and would give resurrection to the departed by the numbness and torpidity of His own body. On this account the sun rightly rose on holy Jacob [cf. Gen. 32:32], for the saving cross of the Lord shone brightly on his lineage, and at the same time the Sun of Justice rises on the man who recognizes God [cf. Mal. 4:2], because He is Himself the Everlasting Light. But Jacob limped because of his thigh [cf. Gen. 32:32]. “On account of this the children of Israel do not eat the sinew even to the present day” [Gen. 32:33]. Would that they had eaten it and had believed! But because they were not about to do the will of God, therefore they did not eat. There are those, too, who take the passage in the following sense, that Jacob limped from one thigh. Two peoples flowed from his lineage, and there was then being revealed the numbness which one of them would presently exhibit toward the grace of faith. And so it is the people itself that limped by reason of the numbness of its unbelief.

Indeed, not long after the preceding revelation, Dina, Jacob’s daughter, was violated and deflowered of her modesty and virginity by the son of a stranger [cf. Gen. 34:1-5]. Her brothers, who did not understand the mystery, first offered the strangers an alliance in faith through intermarriage [cf. Gen. 34:13-17] and then killed them [cf. Gen. 34:25-29], out of a zealous desire for vengeance. But Jacob esteemed compassion with a forbearance that was moral, or he foresaw, with an understanding that was mystical, the mystery of the Church that would be gathered together from the nations. Therefore it was with reluctance and sorrow that he learned of that spectacle of the vengeance that had been taken [cf. Gen. 34:30]. On this account God’s answer was given to Jacob, who prophesied the coming of the Lord Jesus: “Arise and go up to Bethel” [Gen. 35:1], that is, to the house of bread, where Christ was born, as the prophet Michea gives testimony when he says, “And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephrata, are not too little to be among the first of Juda. For out of you will come forth the ruler in Israel, and his going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity” [Mich. 5:2]. Truly that is the house of bread, which is the house of Christ, who came to us from heaven as the bread of salvation [cf. John 6:51] so that now no one may be hungry, but each one may gain for himself the food of immortality. There the patriarch was commanded to dwell; there he was commanded to make an altar to God, who appeared to him [cf. Gen. 35:1]. There he took the strange gods and buried them under a turpentine tree [cf. Gen. 35:2-4]; there also Rachel was buried on the way to Ephrata, that is, Bethlehem [cf. Gen. 35:19]; and there Jacob set up a column over her grave [cf. Gen. 35:20].

What great mysteries these are! There, there is the Church of God, in which God appears and speaks with His humble servants. There the idols of the nations are taken away and buried, for the faith of the Church has destroyed every practice of paganism. But why, I ask, did he bury them under a turpentine tree? Assuredly that is an unproductive species. And so the gods of the nations are there, where no fruit is. There the earrings of the pagans are buried, and they gave them to Jacob [cf. Gen. 35:4] so that now they could grow used to hearing a new language and could forget the old sleep of unbelief, and so that their ears could become deaf to sacrilege and be purified for grace. …

But the truth of the Church did not shelter unbelief; rather it buried it and blocked the ears of the pagans. It is appropriate, too, that the holy Rachel was buried there, for all those who are baptized in Christ are buried together with Him. So we are taught by the Apostle, who says, “For we were buried with him by means of baptism into death, in order that, just as he has arisen from the dead, raised up through his own power, so we also may rise up by his grace” [Rom. 6:4]. Every deceit of the pagans really is buried at the time when someone has been washed free of his vices, because our old man, fastened to the cross, now does not know how to be a slave to the old sin. It is appropriate as well that a column is set up over Rachel’s grave, because the Church is the column and mainstay of the truth [cf. 1 Tim. 3:15]. (“Jacob and the Happy Life,” II:25-28,30-34, pp. 160-66)

from Ambrose on Law and Gospel.

These are the words of Ambrose, which clearly support our position; he denies justification to works and ascribes it to faith, which liberates us through the blood of Christ. If you pile up all the commentators on the Sentences with all their magnificent titles – for some are called “angelic,” others “subtle,” and others “irrefutable” – read them and reread them, they contribute less to an understanding of Paul than this one sentence from Ambrose. (Apology of the Augsburg Confession IV:104-05, The Book of Concord, edited by Theodore G. Tappert [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959], p. 122)

See also:

1. Ambrose on Justification
2. Ambrose on Justification: A Study in the Catholicity of Lutheran Theology
3. Ambrose of Milan

The Lutherans of the sixteenth century consistently maintained that their cultus and confession were truly catholic: “…nothing has been received among us, in doctrine or in ceremonies, that is contrary to Scripture or to the church catholic”;1 “…No novelty has been introduced which did not exist in the church from ancient times…”;2 “…our churches dissent from the church catholic in no article of faith but only omit some few abuses which are new and have been adopted by the fault of the times…”3 According to the Lutherans it was Rome, and not Wittenberg, that had departed from the authentic catholic faith of the apostles and Fathers of the Church.

One of the most significant assertions of the Lutheran reformers was that sinners are justified before God by grace through faith alone, and not by human works or merits of any kind. In regard to the Lutheran doctrine of justification, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession makes the following statement:

We know that what we have said agrees with the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures, with the holy Fathers Ambrose, Augustine, and many others, and with the whole church of Christ, which certainly confesses that Christ is the propitiator and the justifier.4

Was this claim valid? Was the Lutheran doctrine of justification truly catholic, or was it (as the Pope and his followers claimed) a sectarian innovation? Since the Lutherans appealed explicitly to the ancient Father St. Ambrose (among others) as one who taught what they were teaching, it will be helpful to examine Ambrose’s writings on justification to determine if the Lutherans really understood his position and if his teaching did in fact confirm theirs.

St. Ambrose (c.338-397), Bishop of Milan, has always been remembered as a courageous churchman, an able teacher, and a faithful shepherd. Christendom has also counted him as one of the eight “Doctors of the Church,” and an examination of his writings readily confirms the appropriateness of this honor.

Ambrose’s theology is first and foremost a Christ-centered theology. According to Ambrose, “where Christ is, there are all things, there is his teaching, there forgiveness of sins, there grace, there the separation of the dead and the living.”5 Ambrose accordingly focuses on the saving work of Christ as the only hope for sinners: “He gave himself to be offered for our sins, that by his blood he might cleanse the world, whose sin could not be abolished in any other way.”6 “The Lord’s death is my redemption, for we are redeemed by his precious blood.”7 Ambrose’s doctrine of the atonement actually includes two facets. The significance of Christ’s suffering and death as an expiatory sacrifice to God is explained in the following words:

Jesus took on himself even death, that the sentence of condemnation might be carried out, that he might satisfy the judgment that sinful flesh should be cursed even unto death. Nothing therefore was done contrary to the sentence of God, since the condition of God’s sentence was fulfilled.8

The significance of Christ’s suffering and death as a ransom to the devil is explained thus:

If we were redeemed not with perishable things – with silver and gold – but with the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, surely the one who sold us had a right to our service in the coin of a now sinful race. And, undoubtedly, to release from slavery those whom he held bound he demanded a price. The price of our freedom was the blood of our Lord Jesus, and it had to be paid necessarily to the one to whom we had been sold by our sins.9

As might be expected, the grace of God has a central place in Ambrose’s theology. He asks,

What can we do worthy of heavenly rewards? By what labours, by what sufferings, can we wash away our sins? Not according to our merits, but according to the mercy of God, the heavenly decrees concerning men are issued.10

According to Ambrose, “the grace of the Lord is given not as a reward which has been earned, but simply according to the will of the giver.”11 Ambrose also writes: “Let no one arrogate aught to himself, let no one boast of his merits or his power, but let us all hope to find mercy through the Lord Jesus.”12 It is indeed God’s gracious call that alone sets the sinner free, and Ambrose therefore prays to his Lord:

Call forth thy servant. Although I am bound with the chains of my sins, being now buried in dead thoughts and works, yet at thy call I shall go forth free and be found one of those sitting at thy feast.13

And how, exactly, is God’s gracious salvation actually received by each individual Christian? According to Ambrose, “God chose that man should seek salvation by faith rather than by works, lest any should glory in his deeds and should thereby incur sin.”14 The evangelical character of Ambrose’s theology is also evident in what he writes in regard to John 3:36:

Let us consider another similar passage: “He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life, but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” That which abideth has certainly had a commencement, and that from some offense, viz., that first he not believe. When, then, anyone believes, the wrath of God departs and life comes. To believe, then, in Christ is to gain life, for “he that believeth in him is not judged” [John 3:18].15

The following comparison that Ambrose makes between the woman with the issue of blood (Luke 8:43-48) and the Christian clearly demonstrates that he understands “faith” to be much more than a mere mental acceptance of certain doctrines and facts:

The woman was immediately healed, because she drew to him in faith. And do you with faith touch but the hem of his garment. The torrential flow of worldly passions will be dried up by the warmth of the saving Word, if you but draw near to him with faith, if with like devotion you grasp at least the hem of his garment. O faith richer than all treasures! A faith stronger than all the powers of the body, more health-giving than all the physicians!16

In examining Ambrose’s use of the terms “justification” and “justified,” it becomes clear that he connects justification with forgiveness. Ambrose states that “he is justified from sin to whom all sins are remitted through baptism.”17 According to Ambrose, good works cannot be a cause of forgiveness and justification because in our sinful condition we are simply incapable of producing works that are truly good. He writes that “we are not justified by works but by faith, because the infirmity of our flesh is an impediment to works; but the brightness of faith overshadows the error of works and merits forgiveness of our faults.”18 Again, “Not of works, but of faith, each is justified by the Lord.”19

Sanctification and good works naturally follow justification and are necessary as the fruits of a true justifying faith. However, Ambrose makes it clear that these fruits must not be relied on as in any way earning God’s favor:

I will glory not because I am righteous but because I am redeemed; I will glory not because I am free from sins but because my sins are forgiven me. I will glory not because I have done good nor because someone has done good to me but because Christ is my advocate with the Father and because the blood of Christ has been shed for me.20

The Pauline emphasis on justification as the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the sinner is reflected in the following statement by Ambrose:

In Adam I fell, in Adam I was cast out of Paradise, in Adam I died. How shall God call me back, except he find me in the Second Adam – justified in Christ, even as in the first Adam I was made subject to guilt and destined to death?21

Ambrose’s most thorough treatment of the doctrine of justification is found in a letter to a layman named Irenaeus,22 which is quoted at length in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession.23 This letter, in which Ambrose also outlines the proper distinction between Law and Gospel, deserves to be quoted at length here as well:

Sin abounded by the Law because through the Law came knowledge of sin and it became harmful for me to know what through my weakness I could not avoid. It is good to know beforehand what one is to avoid, but, if I cannot avoid something, it is harmful to have known about it. Thus was the Law changed to its opposite, yet it became useful to me by the very increase of sin, for I was humbled. And David therefore says: “It is good for me that I have been humbled” [Psalm 119:71]. By humbling myself I have broken the bonds of that ancient transgression by which Adam and Eve had bound the whole line of their succession. Hence, too, the Lord came as an obedient man to loose the knot of man’s disobedience and deception. And as through disobedience sin entered, so through obedience sin was remitted. Therefore, the Apostle says: “For just as by the disobedience of one man the many were constituted sinners, so also by the obedience of the one the many will be constituted just” [Romans 5:19].

Here is one reason that the Law was unnecessary and became necessary, unnecessary in that it would not have been needed if we had been able to keep the natural law; but, as we did not keep it, the Law of Moses became needful to teach me obedience and loosen that bond of Adam’s deception which had ensnared his whole posterity. Yes, guilt grew by the Law, but pride, the source of guilt, was loosed, and this was an advantage to me. Pride discovered the guilt and the guilt brought grace.

Consider another reason. The Law of Moses was not needful; hence, it entered secretly. Its entrance seems not of an ordinary kind, but like something clandestine because it entered secretly into the place of the natural law. Thus, if she had but kept her place, this written law would never have entered it, but, since deception had banished that law and nearly blotted it out of the human breast, pride reigned and disobedience was rampant. Therefore, that other took its place so that by its written expression it might challenge us and shut our mouth, in order to make the whole world subject to God. The world,24 however, became subject to him through the Law, because all are brought to trial by the prescript of the Law, and no one is justified by the works of the Law; in other words, because the knowledge of sin comes from the Law, but guilt is not remitted, the Law, therefore, which has made all men sinners, seems to have caused harm.

But, when the Lord Jesus came he forgave all men the sin they could not escape, and canceled the decree against us by shedding his blood [Colossians 2:14]. This is what he says: “By the Law sin abounded, but grace abounded by Jesus” [Romans 5:20], since after the whole world became subject he took away the sins of the whole world, as John bears witness, saying: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” [John 1:29] Let no one glory, then, in his own works, since no one is justified by his deeds, but one who is just has received a gift, being justified by Baptism. It is faith, therefore, which sets us free by the blood of Christ, for he is blessed whose sin is forgiven and to whom pardon is granted [Psalm 32:1].25

It seems fair to conclude that the sixteenth-century Lutheran doctrine of justification was fully congruent with the teaching of St. Ambrose on this subject, and that the Lutherans’ appeals to him were both legitimate and accurate. In those writings in which Ambrose dealt with this matter deliberately and carefully, he taught on the basis of Holy Scripture that sinners are justified before God by grace through faith alone, and not by human works or merits of any kind. On this central article of the Christian faith, the Lutherans were thoroughly “Ambrosian,” and if Ambrose’s views are a reflection of the authentic catholic position, the Lutherans were also thoroughly “catholic.”26

ENDNOTES:

1. Augsburg Confession, epilogue to XXVIII, 5 (Latin), in The Book of Concord, translated and edited by Theodore G. Tappert (Fortress Press, 1959), p. 95.

2. Augsburg Confession XXIV:40 (German), Tappert pp. 60-61.

3. Augsburg Confession, prologue to XXII, 1 (Latin), Tappert p. 48.

4. Apology of the Augsburg Confession IV:389, Tappert p. 166.

5. Epistle 4, The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 26 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1954), p. 104.

6. In ps. 47 enarr. 17; quoted in F. Holmes Dudden, The Life and Times of St. Ambrose (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), Vol. II, p. 606.

7. De fide III:36; quoted in Dudden II, p. 607.

8. De Fuga 44; quoted in Dudden II, pp. 608-09.

9. Epistle 72, The Fathers of the Church 26, pp. 93-93.

10. Expos. ps. 118, 20:42; quoted in Dudden II, p. 631.

11. Exhort. virginitatis 43; quoted in Dudden II, p. 632.

12. Expos. ps. 118, 20:42; quoted in Dudden II, p. 631.

13. De Poenitentia II:72; quoted in Dudden II, p. 626.

14. In ps. 43 enarr. 14; quoted in Dudden II, p. 627.

15. De Poenitentia I:53, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. X (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans reprint, 1983), p. 338.

16. De Virginitate 100; quoted in Dudden II, p. 628.

17. Quoted by Augustine in Contra Julianum II:8:23; quoted in turn in Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent, Part I (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1971), p. 475.

18. Liber de Jacob et Vita Beata, ch. 2; quoted in Chemnitz, Examination I, p. 508.

19. Exhort. Virginitatis 43; quoted in Dudden II, p. 627.

20. Liber de Jacob et Vita Beata, ch. 6; quoted in Chemnitz, Examination I, p. 507.

21. De Excessu Sat. 11:6; quoted in Dudden II, p. 610.

22. Not to be confused with the second-century church Father St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons.

23. Apology IV:103, Tappert pp. 121-22. In the text of the Apology, immediately after the appearance of this quotation, we read: “These are the words of Ambrose, which clearly support our position; he denies justification to works and ascribes it to faith, which liberates us through the blood of Christ. If you pile up all the commentators on the Sentences with all their magnificent titles – for some are called ‘angelic’ [Thomas Aquinas], others ‘subtle’ [John Duns Scotus], and others ‘irrefutable’ [Alexander of Hales] – read them and reread them, they contribute less to an understanding of Paul than this one sentence from Ambrose.” (Apology IV:104-05, Tappert p. 122.)

24. It is at this point that the Apology begins its quotations from this letter.

25. Epistle 73, in The Fathers of the Church 26, pp. 466-68. In the translation of Epistle 73 that is found in that source, Ambrose’s Latin phrase “quia ex praescripto legis omnes conveniuntur et ex operibus legis nemo iustificatur” is rendered inaccurately as “because all are brought to trial by the prescript of the Law, and no one is justified without the works of the Law.” This is corrected in the quotation that appears in this essay.

26. In his “Treatise on the Reading of the Fathers or Doctors of the Church,” Martin Chemnitz offers these very interesting comments about the writings of St. Ambrose in general: “He wrote many things, but best are the commentaries which he wrote on all the epistles of Paul, which can be of great help to the reader. There also is extant his commentary on Luke. He wrote on Isaiah, a work which antiquity held in the highest authority of all his writings. But it no longer is extant. In his Pauline commentaries he speaks most accurately about justification. There are also some other writings by him which are definitely doctrinal. Yet he has some statements which are not so satisfactory, particularly on free will and original sin. These were seized upon by the Pelagians as being his firm opinion. But Augustine, in his Contra Julianum, Bk. 1, shows clearly how these statements are to be understood. Ambrose was held in great authority even among the easterners, who criticized Jerome because in speaking of him he gave him too little honor.” (Chemnitz, Loci Theologici (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1989), Vol. I, p. 32.) We now know that the Pauline commentaries to which Chemnitz refers were not actually written by Ambrose. Chemnitz’s positive analysis of Ambrose’s teaching on justification would also apply, however, to many of Ambrose’s genuine writings (such as the ones from which the quotations in this essay are taken), where he does indeed speak “most accurately about justification.”

This essay was published in Lutheran Synod Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 3 (September 1988), pp. 71-80. The printed version differs slightly from the online version that appears here.

See also:

1. Ambrose on Justification
2. How To Study Theology
3. Ambrose of Milan
4. Ambrosiaster on Justification

1. Evangelical practice consists not in this, that we teach and treat nothing except the evangelical message (the Gospel), but in this, that we treat everything in evangelical fashion.

2. This means that since we expect justification before God, the renewal of the heart, and the fruits of the Spirit only through the Gospel, we have this one thing in mind in everything that we do, to give free course and sway to the Gospel.

3. For this very reason, when we follow evangelical practice, we do not discard the Law or make its edges dull through bringing in the Gospel, but we rather preach it with all the more seriousness in its full severity, however, in evangelical fashion.

4. The Law is used in an evangelical way if it is employed solely for the purpose of preparing the soil for the evangelical message (the Gospel) and of submitting a divine norm for the manifestations of the new life that spontaneously arises through the evangelical message.

5. It is not evangelical practice to cast the pearls before the swine, but much less is it evangelical practice to keep them in one’s own pocket.

6. Evangelical practice drops not one iota of the things that God demands, but it demands
nothing else and no more than faith and love.

7. Evangelical practice demands manifestation of faith and love if we desire to be saved, but
it does not issue commands about their various manifestations as far as aim, amount,
and mode are concerned.

8. Evangelical practice demands fulfillment of even the smallest letter of the Law, but it
does not make the state of grace dependent on the keeping of the Law.

9. Evangelical practice endeavors indeed to prepare the way for the operations of the Gospel by the Law; but it does not endeavor to aid the Gospel in its real functions by the Law; and since it expects the fruits of the Spirit to be produced solely by the Gospel, it is willing to wait for them, too.

10. Evangelical practice considers nothing an essential gain that does not come through the Gospel, that is, through faith; therefore it bears with all manner of defects, imperfections, and sins rather than to remove them merely in an external manner.

11. Evangelical practice limits pastoral care [Seelsorge] to specific applications of the Law and the Gospel; the scrutiny and judging of the hearts it leaves to God, the searcher of hearts.

12. Evangelical practice insists on good human order, but still more does it insist on Christian liberty, and for that reason it lets adiaphora remain real adiaphora; that is, it leaves the decision concerning them to the conscience of the individual.

13. Evangelical practice is faithful in little things; yet it considers matters in their larger aspects and totality more important than individual details.

14. To be wise as serpents; to redeem the time; not to let Satan gain an advantage over us; [and] to become all things to all men in order that by all means some might be saved are likewise elements of evangelical practice.

15. Evangelical practice is equally far removed from antinomian and from legalistic practice.

16. Evangelical knowledge and disposition should issue in evangelical practice, but do so rather seldom and slowly.

17. Usually we do not advance beyond legalism, or we fall into antinomian laxity; to such
an extent, the Gospel is foreign to our nature.

18. There is danger in both directions. For us at present, the greater danger is still in the
direction of legalism.

19. Apart from the natural tendency of the old Adam and our origin in pietistic circles, etc.,
our present situation and the necessary reaction against the prevailing moral laxity in
principles and in life are responsible for this state of affairs.

20. Or how many are there not who secretly fear more to give the blessings of the Gospel
to an unworthy person than to deny them to a poor sinner or to curtail them? Whose conscience is not hindering him to follow the example of Paul and to become all things to all men? But where this is the case, one surely still finds legalistic practice.

21. Legalistic practice does not consist in this, that one does not treat anything except the Law; but in this, that one treats everything in a legalistic manner, that is, in such a way that one’s main aim is to see to it that the Law gets its due and that one tries to accomplish through the Law or even through laws what only the Gospel can accomplish.

22. In addition (as is often the case where the inner motive power really still is the Law), the more fiery zeal asserts itself which does not even permit love to be the queen of all commandments; which spurns Christian wisdom as its counselor; and which, even when it appears merely to teach, to reprove, or to admonish, in reality applies coercion—and for that matter the worst kind, namely, moral coercion—all the more unevangelical [does] our practice become.

23. Unevangelical, legalistic practice is found not only in Churches and congregations, but likewise in schools and in the homes, and besides in our fraternal intercourse.

24. The instances of unevangelical practice that are still most frequent with us in the realm of ministerial work, the cure of souls, and congregational government are perhaps the following:

In sermons: Overabundant castigation [durchgeisseln] of individual sins, un-wholesome conditions, or perhaps even of matters of personal dislike; the portraying of well-known sins of well-known persons instead of laying bare the bitter roots out of which all evil fruits grow; mere so-called “testifying” without real instruction and admonition; unnecessary or premature or un- edifying polemics; urging that repentance and faith be manifested instead of preaching that which produces repentance and faith; a pietistic classification of the hearers; attaching conditions to the Gospel promises [Verklausulierung des Evangelii]; preaching faith predominantly as to its sanctifying power; pre- sentation of the grace of God only to build demands on such presentation.

With respect to Confession and the Lord’s Supper: Demanding more for admission than is absolutely required for its salutary use; schoolroom catechizing and inquisitorial searching of the heart of those announcing; postponing reproof till announcement for Communion or Confession; using refusal of Holy Communion as a coercive, terrifying, or disciplinary means; refusing [admission to the Lord’s Supper] even when a state of unrepentance cannot be provided.

With respect to Baptism: Being either entirely unwilling to baptize children of heretics or unbelieving people who nonetheless are in contact with the Word [die unter dem Schall des Wortes leben], even if there is no intrusion in somebody else’s domain [in ein fremd Amt greifen], or [being willing to do so] only after various human guarantees have been given; putting acceptance of sponsors on a level with admission toHoly Communion.

At marriages: Refusing to perform marriages of people who are outside the congregation, even if they are not manifestly wicked; a meticulous insistence on a certain form of parental consent and of engagement.

At funerals: Absolute refusal of burial in the case of all who did not somehow belong to the congregation or at least requested the visit of the pastor; adherence to the principle that at every funeral, the salvation or damnation of the deceased must be asserted publicly, that sins have to be castigated, and the occasion must be used to take a fling [anzustechen] at the sins and failings of the survivor.

In the care of souls: Constant trimming and pressing [hobeln und feilen] on everybody till all wrinkles have been removed; acceptance of every kind of gossip [Zuträgereien]; mixing into house, family, and matrimonial matters, even if no public offense has been given; judging one’s attitude of heart on the basis of a few words and works; applying moral coercion through exaggeration, and so on.

In congregational government and Church discipline: Exaggerated demands at the reception of new members; a denial of, or peremptory fixing of time limits for, participation in the spiritual treasures of the Church as a guest, especially for attendance at the Lord’s Table; mandatory imposition of dues on church members, requiring the same amount from all, or coercive taxing of the individuals; use of church discipline as a measure against matters that are not evident, mortal sins, or even against self-provoked sins; to consider a person as convicted in his own mind or as opposing maliciously because he is not able to reply to the arguments and charges uttered against him, or even assents; to lay more weight on the correct form of the proceedings than on the achieving of the purpose of the discipline; to demand the same form and the same degree of publicity for all confessions of sins that may have to be made; the endeavor to make the chasm between those who are in and those who are outside the congregation really large, instead of building bridges for the opponents and for those who are on the outside.

25. Legalistic practice in itself makes the Gospel into Law, the Law a taskmaster (but not unto Christ); it makes confession a torture, the cure of souls hypocritical fawning, the Sacrament a testimony and seal that one is acceptable (to the pastor); it makes Christian liberty a mere pretense, church discipline an oppression of consciences, the people painfully meticulous, self-righteously pharisaical, and the Church a police institution.

26. Legalistic practice has the appearance of greater conscientiousness, courage, and quicker success only for the blind. Looked at carefully, it lacks true courage to allow God to reign and His Word to work. Its conscientiousness is that of an erring conscience and [is] in itself one of the greatest hindrances of the working of the Law as well as of the Gospel.

27. Legalistic practice behooves no church less than the Evangelical Lutheran [Church].

28. To make the fine customs of old established churches the standard for such as are in the process of establishment is not Lutheran.

29. There are plenty of things in which we cannot avoid giving offense; let us not give it by
unnecessary severity in practice.

30. Let us courageously make an end of all unevangelical practice; but let us not forget that
there is but one step from legalistic to antinomian practice.

31. Antinomian practice would beware of legalism and would bring about everything only
by the Gospel. But, since it lacks the severity of the Law, it also lacks the fervor of the
Gospel. Therefore it will result in laxity and undisciplined conduct.

32. If we fall from legalistic into antinomian practice, evil has become worse.

From “At Home in the House of My Fathers.”

See also:

1. Propositions on Unevangelical Practice
2. On Doctrine and Practice
3. Lutherans in Practice
4. Theology and Practice of The LORD’S SUPPER

a Epistemology

Pietism fostered a shift in epistemology, that is, how we “know” things, especially, but not limited to, the area of religion.

Its subjective epistemology served to justify freedom from ideology (civil or religious) and from external cultural restraints and gave primacy to the authority of the individual’s perceptions and intuitions, all of which was in harmony with the developing cultural ethos of America.

This analysis has been supported by Hägglund.

The new way of thinking was expressed in epistemology. According to Spener, experience is the ground of all certainty, both on the natural level and on the level of revelation. As a result the personal experience of the pious is the ground of certainty for theological knowledge. Only the regenerate Christian can be a true theologian and possess real knowledge of revealed truth.

b Word of God

While the Pietists gave great emphasis to Bible reading, nevertheless the Scriptures were viewed differently than had been in the church of the Lutheran Reformation.

i The Word of God was no longer formal principle. It may have been a norm but not the sole, nor indeed, the preeminent norm.

ii It was replaced by conversion, the experience of regeneration, the norm of an inner experience or feeling.

iii There is a tendency to encourage a “private and individual” study, and even interpretation, of the Bible.

iv While the sermon is good, it is certainly insufficient. The sermon, like the Scriptures, is an external authority and thus not as effective.

c Confessions

In Lutheranism, the confessions have a role of authority second only to the Scriptures. But like the Scriptures, they too are an external authority. Furthermore, the Confessions, as fides quae creditur, are seen as marginal in importance, especially as they also confess negative propositions about the declarations of others.

The anxious adherence to the letter of the Lutheran Confessions which had marked Orthodoxism was also relaxed…. Besides calling attention to a few instances in the Confessions of mistaken biblical exegesis, such pietists as Spener raised questions about the Confessions’ treatment of absolution, prayers for the dead, and other topics.

d Authority of Doctrine & Theology:

The Pietist view of doctrine may be understood as very modern. Once again, doctrine is an external thing; furthermore, it and the theological endeavor in general are perceived are intellectual activities which had little appeal for the Pietists.

The pietists were never too concerned over theological differences; in their concern for Christian living they tended to gloss over or ignore doctrine, and caused no divisions with anyone because of doctrinal variations. Unlike Lutheranism, both Pietism and the Reformed Church made doctrine a secondary consideration.

The turn towards the subject meant, however, a fateful turn from theology as doctrinal truth claim to theology as an account of faith’s experience and its practical and ethical consequences.

e Consciousness

There have been various theologies based on consciousness; Pietism has been one. It, for instance, had a marked influence on Friedrich Schleiermacher, called the “Father of Modern Theology,” and a Pietist of a “higher order.”

The role assigned to the consciousness brings us up against the fact that it has only a limited capacity, so that when one thing is dominant in it, it cannot absorb others. In Pietism this may be seen grotesquely in Zinzendorf, and partially in Spener, with regard to the sexual libido. The capacity of consciousness does not allow love of the Lord to exit side by side with sexual desire in our emotional potential. Hence for the Savior’s sake the libido has to be excluded from sexual intercourse and new children of God have to be conceived without desire. The starting point in the pious consciousness necessitates a strict control of what is received into the heart because of its limited capacity. Believers must seek to exercise apathia even in marriage.

2 Consequences
a Rationalism & the Aufklärung (Enlightenment), e.g. Halle University

It can be said that Pietism prepared the way for rationalism and the Enlightenment. Bengt Hägglund has observed this.

Thus it was that conservative Pietism inaugurated, in a variety of ways, the modern way of thinking in the field of theology and ecclesiology. In its subjective concept of knowledge and in its interest in morality and the empirical facts of religion, Pietism bore within itself tendencies which came into full bloom in the thought world of the Enlightenment, in the secular area as well as in the theological sphere.

In fact, by its emphasis on the subject (away from the objective), it became the fertile soil “for several modern movements: Neology, rationalism, Enlightenment, romanticism.” This was illustrated at the Pietist University of Halle; as Pietism had cleared the dogmatic spirits of the day out of Halle, so they left the doors open for the even more evil spirits of Rationalism. “Pietism broke the hold of orthodoxy, but in so doing left the intellectual field in Germany and Scandinavia open to the inroads of English deism and French skepticism.”

Robert Handy stated this in a very similar way:

“Pietism broke the grasp of confessional orthodoxy, but it raised up no theological leaders to take the place of the older dogmatic theologians. The critical, rationalist spirit of the eighteenth century…invaded Germany and found the intellectual field largely barren.”

b Prussian Union

Pietism also fostered the Prussian Union. It was among three movements which “allowed” the Union to be effected, Nationalism, Rationalism and Pietism.

Union of the Lutherans and Reformed was in part the outcome of the Aufklrung and Pietism. The one with its rationalism minimized the doctrinal differences between the confessions, and in the other the quality of religious experience and the methods employed for nourishing and giving effect to the Christian life overpassed confessional boundaries.

This was also observed by Hermann Sasse in one of his most forceful critiques of the Reformed influences on Lutheranism.

The unions of 1817 and the following years were possible because Pietism and the Enlightenment had not only undermined the doctrinal basis of the church, but, along with that, had destroyed the understanding for confessional differences.

c Ecumenism

Pietism’s dissolution of Orthodoxy’s confessional consciousness is directly related to its own self-understanding as an international and interconfessional movement. Thus Pietism was a decisive preparation for the modern, ecumenical movement.

It was clear that Christian experience was not limited to Lutherans, and since experience was stressed rather than doctrine, denominational differences tended to be disregarded.

3 Theology
a Church

There were three features of pietistic ecclesiology which are prominent.

i collegia pietatis & ecclesiolae in ecclesia

ii fellowship

iii individualism

Less importance was attached to the church; it was viewed as an mere institution. The organized church was often criticized as “Babylon, as corrupt, and the formation of conventicles (ecclesiolae in ecclesia) had the effect of taking individuals or groups of individuals out of the larger community of Christians.

One of the chief characteristics of pietism as it took institutional form in Germany and Scandinavia was the conventicle, a small group of Christians who met apart from the regular worship of the congregation for Bible study, prayer, and mutual edification. In these groups the externals of liturgical worship as well as the sacramental means of grace were subordinate to the experience of awakening and conversion.

b Baptism & Confirmation

In his Pia Desideria, Spener made a very Lutheran confession of baptism.

Nor do I know how to praise Baptism and its power highly enough. I believe that it is the real “washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit” (Tit. 3:5), or as Luther says in the catechism, “it effects forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and grants” (not merely promises) “eternal salvation.”

On the other hand, infant baptism had less meaning. Pietists stressed the need for a conversion experience; baptism continued to be observed but was supplanted by the rite of confirmation.

c Confession & Absolution

I assume that Dr. Krispin will be dwelling on this topic. I therefore offer only this summary description and comments on it.

Private confession, which had for the most part become an empty formality [!], was gradually supplanted in may places by general confession, but was more meaningfully replaced by a new emphasis on the cure of individual souls.

There was a move, then, away private to a general, public confession. Even here we can note evidences of Pietist influence. This can be observed in some forms of Confession and Absolution, e.g.:

I now ask you before God, Is this your sincere confession, that you heartily repent of your sins, believe on Jesus Christ, and sincerely and earnestly purpose, by the assistance of God the Holy Ghost, henceforth to amend your sinful life? Then declare so by saying: Yes.”

Perhaps an even more telling form of pietistic practice is found in the following form of absolution [?]; it begins in the declarative statement, no uncommon in Lutheran rites:

Upon this your confession, I, as a called and ordained servant of the Word, announce the grace of God to all of you. On behalf of my Lord Jesus Christ and by his command, I forgive you all your sins, in the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Now notice what is added immediately in the very next sentence:

God forbid that any of you reject his grace and forgiveness by refusing to repent and believe, and your sins therefore remain unforgiven.

The words following seem a weak attempt to recover the full promise and joy of the absolution offered so recently.

My he comfort you with his holy absolution, and strengthen you with his Sacrament, that your joy may be full.

Here the Pietists may have attempted to address a concern even expressed by “more orthodox” Lutherans: “Can the pastor responsibly pronounce the forgiveness of sins in such a blanket manner or in such a public (contra private) setting?” The problem became real when the church lost the practice of private confession and absolution.

d Lord’s Supper

In the same way that Spener had offered a Lutheran confession of baptism (above), so he also spoke of the Sacrament of the Altar.

Nor less gladly do I acknowledge the glorious power in the sacramental, oral, and not merely spiritual eating and drinking of the body and blood of the Lord in the Holy Supper. On this account I heartily reject the position of the Reformed when they deny that we receive such a pledge of our salvation in, with, and under the bread and wine, when they weaken its power, and when they see in it no more than exists outside the holy sacrament in spiritual eating and drinking.

“Occasionally pietists showed reluctance to receive Communion, either because they felt that they were themselves unworthy or because they were unwilling to receive it with unworthy people or at the hands of unworthy ministers.” The reluctance could perhaps explain that in parts of Estonia and Latvia it has been customary to commune only once a year.

e The Office

Pietism sought to transform the minister’s office, “making him a shepherd of souls and a preacher of salvation, not simply an administrator of sacraments and a protector of pure doctrine.” This conforms with the overall aims of Pietism: an emphasis on the internal will detract from, neglect and reshape the theology and practice especially of the holy office and sacraments. For these are external gifts of God.

f Repentance

Repentance occupied a dominant place in the theology and life of the pietists. The emphasis on the inner life encouraged, even demanded, serious and constant self-examination. This “self-analysis…cast them on the iron couch of introspection.”

Constant probing of the inner life often led to morbid introspection and gave great vogue to diaries, autobiographies, and other accounts of spiritual struggles. Weeping, wailing, and groaning were regarded as sure signs of true repentance, and people belabored themselves, even in their hymns, as “rotten carcasses” and “stinking worms.”

This was very indicative of a shift in theology which in turn had practical consequences, i.e. that it placed the believers right back under the law.

Repentance was reduced to remorse, and in time a sort of routine was devised artificially to excite appropriate feelings. This sometimes led to self-deception, hypocrisy, and an affected mouthing of pious clichés, the “language of Canaan.” The consequence, theologically, was that what man does in repentance was placed in the foreground rather than what God has done and does in Christ. This inevitably carried with it a change in the understanding of justification.

All of these changes reflect the shift of accent from institution to individual, from outward act to inner experience.

g Forensic Justification – Regeneration

Pietism expressed many of its concerns in what I describe as an “adverbial” manner: e.g., ” Do you really repent?” This question was especially with reference to confession itself. (See above) “Are you really saved? The same may be observed in much “Evangelical” piety today. Arthur Repp noted that Spener “looked for some means by which he as pastor could deal with the individual to assure himself that his parishioner was truly converted.”

Pietism was not content with criticizing the orthodox institutional church and demanding the introduction of reforms. It also–and this constitutes its real church historical significance–focused chief attention upon a different biblical-theological subject. The reformers and the orthodox theologians had given central place to the Word of God and the doctrine of justification. But Pietism’s central subject was regeneration (conversion, rebirth).

Spener fostered a tradition of mystical spiritualism.

Characteristic of this tradition is the central place given to regeneration (a biological image) instead of justification (a forensic image). The language of “rebirth,” “new man,” “inner man,” “illumination,” “edification,” and “union of Christ with the soul” is common to Spener and to the older mystics.

Thus there was a shift away from forensic, justification talk. This came under the influence of Eastern Christian ascetic tradition and elements of mysticism in the West.

Forensic terminology gave way to organic terms implying growth and development. The popularity of the language of “rebirth,” “new man,” “inner man,” “inner prayer,” “illumination,” “sanctification” or “godliness,” “partaking of the divine nature,” “union with Christ” and “union with God” was illustrative of shifting theological emphases. Most important was the shift from justification to regeneration (conversion, rebirth) as the central theological theme and a parallel shift from faith to love.

This “most important” shift is further explained in the following:

Major emphasis was placed on regeneration, which Spener thought of as the granting of a new life. Justification is the fruit of regeneration. The doctrine of imputation was therefore replaced by the idea that justification and sanctification form a unity. This unity is expressed by the term “regeneration” (or “new birth”), which no longer–as in the older tradition–coincides with the concept of the forgiveness of sins but designates an inner transformation which in turn is the source of the new life that characterizes the Christian man.

h Luther & the Pietists on Regeneration:

On an important point which separated Luther from the Pietists, Martin Schmidt, a leading German scholar on Pietism, wrote the following:

They [the Pietists] liked to deal with regenerate man as a fixed quantity and therefore spoke of the fruits of regeneration. The Reformer [Luther] remained engaged in the struggle between the old and the new man. The (Pietist) problem of attainability he [Luther] deferred in favor of the state of affairs which he described strikingly with the word “temptation” [Anfechtung]. This state of affairs taught the “heeding of the word” (Isaiah 28:19) and the consolation of divine grace in the forgiveness of sins. Out of the liberating message that Jesus Christ had done everything for him, the new man came forth. Thus the Christian, who was always becoming, looked never to himself nor to the rank of his being a child of God. ‘Flesh’ and ‘spirit,’ as they are harshly contrasted to one another in the seventh and eighth chapter of Romans, remained for him irreconcilable opposites…. [ellipsis original] The believer did not progress beyond Anfechtung and Luther judged a condition without it to be of gravest danger. That is why a Christian never fixed his eyes upon himself, but upon his Lord and depended upon his Word… [ellipsis mine] The pietists sought to advance again the importance of Luther’s teaching of a living faith. In so doing, however, they shifted the emphasis: the vivacity, which made itself recognizable in good works, was valued more by them than faith itself. Yet Luther understood faith to cling to the divine promise and to depend upon the promise itself, so that the believer was acceptable to God with his entire being… [ellipsis mine] The fruits of faith became more important for the pietists than their source, faith, on which everything was dependent for Luther.

from Ronald Feuerhan, THE PIEPER LECTURES 1998, Concordia Historical Institute & the Luther Academy, September 17-18, 1998, “THE ROOTS AND FRUITS OF PIETISM.”

for the full essay: http://www.mtio.com/articles/aissar3.htm

See also:

1. The Roots & Fruits of Pietism
2. Liturgy & Pietism
3. Pietism, More Than A Renewal Movement?
4. Decadent Pietism & The Religious Ego

from Hans Iwand, Lecture on the Theology of the Cross.

See also:

1. Sasse on the Theology of the Cross
2. The Cross Alone is Our Theology
3. Theology of the Cross Handout
4. The Message of the Cross

Walther joined the Saxon Germans who immigrated to the United States in 1839 (the date of arrival), and at the age of 27 found himself leader of the group that settled in Perry County, Missouri. In 1847, Walther played a key role in the founding of the LCMS, which now ranks as one of the largest Christian denominations in the United States with more than 2.3 million baptized members in some 6,200 congregations and more than 9,000 pastors.

Find out more about Walther, “The Father of the Missouri Synod,” and his lasting leadership. Join the celebration.

http://www.lcms.org/walther200

See also:

1. Walther on Communion Fellowship
2. LCMS Bicentennial Lectures
3. Submit a Research Paper on CFW Walther
4. LCMS Convention News from July 13

3.11 So be careful, that the external pomp of works and the deceits of human traditions mislead you, so that you may not wrong the divine truth and your faith. If you would be saved, you must begin with the faith of the sacraments, without any works whatever. But on faith the works will follow. Only do not think lightly of faith, which is a work, and of all works the most excellent and the most difficult to do. Through it alone you will be saved, even if you should be compelled to do without any other works. For it is a work of God, not of man, as Paul teaches. The other works He works through us and with our help, but this one He works in us and without our help.

3.12 From this we can clearly see the difference, in baptism, between man the minister and God the Doer. For man baptises and does not baptise. He baptises, for he performs the work, immersing the person to be baptised. He does not baptise, for in that act he officiates not by his own authority, but as God’s representative. Hence, we ought to receive baptism at the hands of a man just as if Christ Himself, no, God Himself, were baptising us with His own hands. For it is not man’s baptism, but Christ’s and God’s baptism, which we receive by the hand of a man, just as every other created thing that we make use of by the hand of another, is God’s alone. Therefore beware of dividing baptism in such a way as to ascribe the outward part to man and the inward part to God. Ascribe both to God alone, and look upon the person administering it as the instrument in God’s hands, by which the Lord sitting in heaven thrusts you under the water with His own hands, and speaking by the mouth of His minister promises you, on earth with a human voice, the forgiveness of your sins.

3.13 This the words themselves indicate, when the priest says: ” I baptise you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen,” and not: “I baptise you in my own name.” It is as though he said: ” What I do, I do not by my own authority, but in the name and as God’s representative, so that you should regard it just as if our Lord Himself had done it in a visible manner. The Doer and the minister are different persons, but the work of both is the same work, or, rather, it is the work of the Doer alone, through my ministry.” For I hold that “in the name of” refers to the person of the Doer, so that the name of the Lord is not only to be uttered and invoked while the work is being done, but the work itself is to be done not as one’s own work, but in the name and as another’s representative. In this sense, in Matthew 24, Christ says, “Many shall come in my name,” and in Romans 1 it is said, “By whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith, in all nations, for His name.”

3.14 This view I freely endorse. It is very comforting and greatly aids faith to know that one has been baptised not by man, but by the Triune God Himself through a man acting among us in His name. This will dispose of that fruitless quarrel about the “form” of baptism, as these words are called. The Greeks say: “May the servant of Christ be baptised,” while the Latins say: “I baptise.” Others again, pedantic triflers, condemn the use of the words, “I baptise you in the name of Jesus Christ” – although it is certain that the Apostles used this formula in baptising, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles – they would allow no other form to be valid than this: ” I baptise you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” But their contention is in vain, for they bring no proof, but merely assert their own dreams. Baptism truly saves in whatever way it is administered, as long as it is not administered in the name of man but in the name of God. No, I have no doubt that if one received baptism in the name of the Lord, even though the wicked minister should not give it in the name of the Lord, he would yet be truly baptised in the name of the Lord. For the effect of baptism depends not so much on the faith or practice of him that confers it as on the faith or practice of the one who receives it – of which we have an illustration in the case of the play-actor who was baptised as a joke. Such anxious disputings and questionings are aroused in us by those who ascribe nothing to faith and everything to works and forms, while we owe everything to faith alone and nothing to forms, and faith makes us free in spirit from all those scruples and fancies.

from Martin Luther, “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, A Prelude” (1520).

See also:

1. Excerpt from the Babylonian Captivity of the Church ~ The Sacrament of Baptism
2. Excerpt from The Babylonian Captivity of the Church ~ The Sacrament of the Altar
3. The Early Church on Infant Baptism
4. Baptism! What Is It Good For?

Both Matthew and Mark attach the note of universality to the cup, not to the bread, as though the Spirit saw this schism coming, by which some would be forbidden to partake of the cup, which Christ desired should be common to all. How furiously, do you think, would they rave against us, if they had found the word “all” attached to the bread instead of the cup! They would not leave us a loophole to escape, they would cry out against us and set us down as heretics, they would damn us for schismatics. But now, since it stands on our side and against them, they will not be bound by any force of logic – these men of the most free will, who change and change again even the things that are God’s, and throw everything into confusion.

2.6 But imagine me standing over against them and interrogating my lords the papists. In the Lord’s Supper, I say, the whole sacrament, or communion in both kinds, is given only to the priests or else it is given also to the laity. If it is given only to the priests, as they would have it, then it is not right to give it to the laity in either kind. It must not be rashly given to any to whom Christ did not give it when He instituted it. For if we permit one institution of Christ to be changed, we make all of His laws invalid, and every one will boldly claim that he is not bound by any law or institution of His. For a single exception, especially in the Scriptures, invalidates the whole. But if it is given also to the laity, then it inevitably follows that it ought not to be withheld from them in either form. And if any do withhold it from them when they desire it, they act impiously and contrary to the work, example and institution of Christ.

2.7 I confess that I am conquered by this, to me, unanswerable argument, and that I have neither read nor heard nor found anything to advance against it. For here the word and example of Christ stand firm, when He says, not by way of permission but of command, “All of you, drink from it.” For if all are to drink, and the words cannot be understood as addressed to the priests alone, then it is certainly an impious act to withhold the cup from laymen who desire it, even though an angel from heaven were to do it. For when they say that the distribution of both kinds was left to the judgment of the Church, they make this assertion without giving any reason for it and put it forth without any authority. It is ignored just as readily as it is proved, and does not stand up against an opponent who confronts us with the word and work of Christ. such a one must be refuted with a word of Christ, but this we do not possess.

2.8 But if one kind may be withheld from the laity, then with equal right and reason a portion of baptism and penance might also be taken from them by this same authority of the Church. Therefore, just as baptism and absolution must be administered in their entirety, so the Sacrament of the Bread must be given in its entirety to all laymen, if they desire it. I am amazed to find them asserting that the priests may never receive only the one kind, in the mass, on pain of committing a mortal sin – that for no other reason, as they unanimously say, than that both kinds constitute the one complete sacrament, which may not be divided. I beg them to tell me why it may be divided in the case of the laity, and why to them alone the whole sacrament may not be given. Do they not acknowledge, by their own testimony, either that both kinds are to be given to the laity, or that it is not a valid sacrament when only one kind is given to them? How can the one kind be a complete sacrament for the laity and not a complete sacrament for the priests? Why do they flaunt the authority of the Church and the power of the pope in my face? These do not make void the Word of God and the testimony of the truth.

2.9 But further, if the Church can withhold the wine from the laity, it can also withhold the bread from them. It could, therefore, withhold the entire Sacrament of the Altar from the laity and completely annul Christ’s institution so far as they are concerned. I ask, by what authority? But if the Church cannot withhold the bread, or both kinds, neither can it withhold the wine. This cannot possibly be contradicted. For the Church’s power must be the same over either kind as over both kinds, and if she has no power over both kinds, she has none over either kind. I am curious to hear what the Roman flatterers will have to say to this.

2.10 What carries most weight with me, however, and quite decides the matter for me is this. Christ says: “This is my blood, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins.” Here we see very plainly that the blood is given to all those for whose sins it was shed. But who will dare to say it was not shed for the laity? Do you not see whom He addresses when He gives the cup? Doesn’t He give it to all? Doesn’t He say that it is shed for all? “For you,” He says – Well, we will let these be the priests– “and for many” – these cannot be priests. Yet He says, “All of you, drink of it.” I too could easily trifle here and with my words make a mockery of Christ’s words, as my dear trifler does. But they who rely on the Scriptures in opposing us, must be refuted by the Scriptures.

from Martin Luther, “Babylonian Captivity of the Church, A Prelude” (1520).

See also:

1. Excerpt from the Babylonian Captivity of the Church ~ The Sacrament of Baptism
2. Against the Execrable Bull of the Antichrist (excerpt)

3.5 This message should have been persistently impressed upon the people and this promise diligently repeated to them. Their baptism should have been called again and again to their mind, and faith constantly awakened and nourished. Just as the truth of this divine promise, once pronounced over us, continues to death, so our faith in the same ought never to cease, but to be nourished and strengthened until death, by the continual remembrance of this promise made to us in baptism. Therefore, when we rise from sins, or repent, we are only returning to the power and the faith of baptism from this we fell, and find our way back to the promise then made to us, from which we departed when we sinned. For the truth of the promise once made remains steadfast, ever ready to receive us back with open arms when we return. This, if I am not mistaken, is the real meaning of the obscure saying, that baptism is the beginning and foundation of all the sacraments, without which none of the others may be received.

3.6 Therefore a penitent will gain much by laying hold of the memory of his baptism above all else, confidently calling to mind the promise of God, which he has forsaken. He should plead it with His Lord, rejoicing that he is baptised and therefore is yet within the fortress of salvation. He should detest his wicked ingratitude in falling away from its faith and truth. His soul will find wondrous comfort, and will be encouraged to hope for mercy, when he considers that the divine promise which God made to him and which cannot possibly lie, still stands unbroken and unchanged, yes, unchangeable by any sins, as Paul says in 2 Timothy 2. “If we do not believe, He continues to be faithful, He cannot deny Himself.” Yes, this truth of God will sustain him, so that if all else should sink in ruins, this truth, if he believes it, will not fail him. For in it he has a shield against all assaults of the enemy, an answer to the sins that disturb his conscience, an antidote for the dread of death and judgment, and a comfort in every temptation – namely, this one truth – he can say, ” God is faithful that promised, Whose sign I have received in my baptism. If God be for me, who is against me?”

3.7 The children of Israel, whenever they repented of their sins, turned their thoughts first of all to the exodus from Egypt, and, remembering this, returned to God Who had brought them out. This memory and this refuge were many times impressed upon them by Moses, and afterward repeated by David. How much rather ought we to call to mind our exodus from Egypt, and, remembering, turn back again to Him Who led us forth through the washing of regeneration, which we are bidden remember for this very purpose. And this we can do most fittingly in the sacrament of bread and wine. Indeed, in ancient times these three sacraments –penance, baptism and the bread – were all celebrated at the same service, and one supplemented and assisted the other. We read also of a certain holy virgin who in every time of temptation made baptism her sole defense, saying simply, “I am a Christian.” Immediately the adversary fled from her, for he knew the power of her baptism and of her faith which clung to the truth of God’s promise.

3.8 See, how rich therefore is a Christian, the one who is baptised! Even if he wants to, he cannot lose his salvation, however much he sin, unless he will not believe. For no sin can condemn him save unbelief alone. All other sins – so long as the faith in God’s promise made in baptism returns or remains –all other sins, I say, are immediately blotted out through that same faith, or rather through the truth of God, because He cannot deny Himself. If only you confess Him and cling believing to Him that promises. But as for contrition, confession of sins, and satisfaction – along with all those carefully thought out exercises of men – if you turn your attention to them and neglect this truth of God, they will suddenly fail you and leave you more wretched than before. For whatever is done without faith in the truth of God, is vanity of vanities and vexation of spirit.

from Martin Luther, “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church – A prelude 1520.”

See also:

1. The Early Church on Infant Baptism
2. Baptism! What Is It Good For?
3. Baptism Is Putting On Christ
4. Infant Baptism

I wish you also to keep this as a provision through the whole course of your life, and beside this to receive no other, neither if we ourselves should change and contradict our present teaching, nor if an adverse angel, transformed into an angel of light should wish to lead you astray. For though we or an angel from heaven preach to you any other gospel than that ye have received, let him be to you anathema. So for the present listen while I simply say the Creed, and commit it to memory; but at the proper season expect the confirmation out of Holy Scripture of each part of the contents. For the articles of the Faith were not composed as seemed good to men; but the most important points collected out of all the Scripture make up one complete teaching of the Faith. And just as the mustard seed in one small grain contains many branches, so also this Faith has embraced in few words all the knowledge of godliness in the Old and New Testaments. Take heed then, brethren, and hold fast the traditions which ye now receive, and write them an the table of your heart. Guard them with reverence, lest per chance the enemy despoil any who have grown slack; or lest some heretic pervert any of the truths delivered to you.

Cyril of Jerusalem (313-386), Catechetical Lectures, 5:12-13.

See also:

1. Cyril of Jerusalem on the Canon
2. The True Apostolic Tradition
3. Cyril of Alexandria on Justification
4. The Destruction of Jerusalem and the End of the World. Luke 21, 5-38.

2. This is the same as permitting Pelagians and all heretics to triumph, indeed, the same as conceding victory to them.

3. It is the same as making sport of the authority of all doctors of theology.

4. It is therefore true that man, being a bad tree, can only will and do evil [cf. Matt 7,17-18].

5. It is false to state that man’s inclination is free to choose between either of two opposites. Indeed, the inclination is not free, but captive. This is said in opposition to common opinion.

6. It is false to state that the will can by nature conform to correct precept. This is said in opposition to [Duns] Scotus and Gabriel [Biel].

7. As a matter of fact, without the grace of God the will produces an act that is perverse and evil.

8. It does not, however, follow that the will is by nature evil, that is, essentially evil, as the Manicheans maintain.

9. It is nevertheless innately and inevitably evil and corrupt.

10. One must concede that the will is not free to strive toward whatever is declared good. This is in opposition to Scotus and Gabriel.

11. Nor is it able to will or not to will whatever is prescribed.

12. Nor does one contradict St. Augustine when one says that nothing is so much in the power of the will as the will itself.

13. It is absurd to conclude that erring man can love the creature above all things, therefore also God. This is in opposition to Scotus and Gabriel.

14. Nor is it surprising that the will can conform to erroneous and not to correct precept.

15. Indeed, it is peculiar to it that it can only conform to erroneous and not to correct precept.

16. One ought rather to conclude: since erring man is able to love the creature it is impossible for him to love God.

17. Man is by nature unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God.

18. To love God above all things by nature is a fictitious term, a chimera, as it were. This is contrary to common teaching.

19. Nor can we apply the reasoning of Scotus concerning the brave citizen who loves his country more than himself.

20. An act of friendship is done, not according to nature, but according to prevenient grace. This is in opposition to Gabriel.

21. No act is done according to nature that is not an act of concupiscence against God.

22. Every act of concupiscence against God is evil and a fornication of the spirit.

23. Nor is it true that an act of concupiscence can be set aright by the virtue of hope. This is in opposition to Gabriel.

24. For hope is not contrary to charity, which seeks and desires only that which is of God.

25. Hope does not grow out of merits, but out of suffering which destroys merits. This is in opposition to the opinion of many.

26. An act of friendship is not the most perfect means for accomplishing that which is in one. Nor is it the most perfect means for obtaining the grace of God or turning toward and approaching God.

27. But it is an act of conversion already perfected, following grace both in time and by nature.

28. If it is said of the Scripture passages, “Return to me, . . . and I will return to you” [Zech 1,3], “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you” [Jas 4,8], “Seek and you will find” [Matt 7,7], “You will seek me and find me” [Jer 29,13], and the like, that one is by nature, the other by grace, this is no different from asserting what the Pelagians have said.

29. The best and infallible preparation for grace and the sole disposition toward grace is the eternal election and predestination of God.

30. On the part of man, however, nothing precedes grace except indisposition and even rebellion against grace.

31. It is said with the idlest demonstrations that the predestined can be damned individually but not collectively. This is in opposition to the scholastics.

32. Moreover, nothing is acheived by the following saying: Predestination is necessary by virtue of the consequence of God’s willing, but not of what actually followed, namely, that God had to elect a certain person.

33. And this is false, that doing all that one is able to do can remove the obstacles to grace. This is in opposition to several authorities.

34. In brief, man by nature has neither correct precept nor good will.

35. It is not true that an invincible ignorance excuses one completely (all scholastics notwithstanding);

36. For ignorance of God and oneself and good work is always invincible to nature.

37. Nature, moreover, inwardly and necessarily glories and takes pride in every work which is apparently and outwardly good.

38. There is no moral virtue without either pride or sorrow, that is, without sin.

39. We are not masters of our actions, from beginning to end, but servants. This is in opposition to the philosophers.

40. We do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds but, having been made rightous, we do righteous deeds. This in opposition to the philosophers.

41. Virtually the entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace. This is in opposition to the scholastics.

42. It is an error to maintain that Aristotle’s statement concerning happiness does not contradict Catholic doctrine. This is in opposition to the doctrine on morals.

43. It is an error to say that no man can become a theologian without Aristotle. This is in opposition to common opinion.

44. Indeed, no one can become a theologian unless he becomes one without Aristotle.

45. To state that a theologian who is not a logician is a monstruous heretic–this is a monstruous and heretical statement. This is in opposition to common opinion.

46. In vain does one fashion a logic of faith, a substitution brought about without regard for limit and measure. This is in opposition to the the new dialecticians.

47. No syllogistic form is valid when applied to divine terms. This is in opposition to the Cardinal [Peter of Ailly].

48. Nevertheless it does not for that reason follow that the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity contradicts syllogistic forms. This is in opposition to the same new dialecticians and to the Cardinal.

49. If a syllogistic form of reasoning holds in divine matters, then a doctrine of the trinity is demonstrable and not the object of faith.

50. Briefly, the whole Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light. This is in opposition to the scholastics.

51. It is very doubtful whether the Latins comprehended the correct meaning of Aristotle.

52. It would have been better for the church if Porphyry with his universals had not been born for the use of theologians.

53. Even the more useful definitions of Aristotle seem to beg the question.

54. For an act to be meritorious, either the presence of grace is sufficient, or its presence means nothing. This is in opposition to Gabriel.

55. The grace of God is never present in such a way that it is inactive, but it is a living, active and operative spirit; nor can it happen that through the absolute power of God an act of friendship may be present without the presence of the grace of God. This is in opposition to Gabriel.

56. It is not true that God can accept man without his justifying grace. This is in opposition to Ockham.

57. It is dangerous to say that the law commands that an act of obeying the commandment be done in the grace of God. This in opposition to the Cardinal and Gabriel.

58. From this it would follow that “to have the grace of God” is actually a new demand going beyond the law.

59. It would also follow that fulfilling the law can take place without the grace of God.

60. Likewise it follows that the grace of God would be more hateful than the law itself.

61. It does not follow that the law should be complied with and fulfilled in the grace of God. This is in opposition to Gabriel.

62. And that therefore he who is outside the grace of God sins incessantly, even when he does not kill, commit adultery, or become angry.

63. But it follows that he sins because he does not spiritually fulfill the law.

64. Spiritually that person does not kill, does not do evil, does not become enraged when he neither becomes angry nor lusts.

65. Outside the grace of God it is indeed impossible not to become angry or lust, so that not even in grace is it possible to fulfill the law perfectly.

66. It is the righteousness of the hypocrit actually and outwardly not to kill, do evil, etc.

67. It is by the grace of God that one does not lust or become enraged.

68. Therefore it is impossible to fulfill the law in any way without the grace of God.

69. As a matter of fact, it is more accurate to say that the law is destroyed by nature without the grace of God.

70. A good law will of necessity be bad for the natural will.

71. Law and will are two implacable foes without the grace of God.

72. What the law wants, the will never wants, unless it pretends to want it out of fear or love.

73. The law, as taskmaster of the will, will not be overcome except by the “child, who has been born to us” [Isa. 9,6].

74. The law makes sin abound because it irritates and repels the will [Rom 7,13].

75. The grace of God, however, makes justice abound through Jesus Christ because it causes one to be pleased with the law.

76. Every deed of the law without the grace of God appears good outwardly, but inwardly it is sin. This is in opposition to the scholastics.

77. The will is always averse to, and the hands inclined toward, the law of the Lord without the grace of God.

78. The will which is inlined toward the law without the grace of God is so inclined by reason of its own advantage.

79. Condemned are all those who do the works of the law.

80. Blessed are all those who do the works of the grace of God.

81. Chapter Falsas concerning penance, dist. 5, confirms the fact that works outside the realm of grace are not good, if this is not understood falsely.

82. Not only are the religious ceremonials not the good law and the precepts in which one does not live (in opposition to many teachers);

83. But even the Decalogue itself and all that can be taught and prescribed inwardly and outwardly is not good law either.

84. The good law and that in which one lives is the love of God, spread abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

85. Anyone’s will would prefer, if it were possible, that there would be no law and to be entirely free.

86. Anyone’s will hates it that the law should be imposed upon it; if, however, the will desires the imposition of the law it does so out of love of self.

87. Since law is good, the will, which is hostile to it, cannot be good.

88. And from this it is clear that everyone’s natural will is iniquitous and bad.

89. Grace as a mediator is necessary to reconcile the law with the will.

90. The grace of God is given for the purpose of directing the will, lest it err even in loving God. In opposition to Gabriel.

91. It is not given so that good deeds might be induced more frequently and readily, but because without it no act of love is performed. In opposition to Gabriel.

92. It cannot be denied love is superfluous if man is by nature able to do an act of friendship. In opposition to Gabriel.

93. There is a kind of subtle evil in teh argument that an act is at the same time the fruit and the use of the fruit. In opposition to Ockham, the Cardinal, Gabriel.

94. This holds true also of the saying that the love of God may continue alongside an intense love of the creature.

95. To love God is at the same time to hate oneself and to know nothing but God.

96. We must make our will conform in every respect to the will of God (in opposition to the Cardinal).

97. So that we not only will what God wills, but also ought to will whatever God wills.

In these statements we wanted to say and believe we have said anything [presumably translator means "nothing"] that that is not in agreement with the Catholic church and the teachers of the church.

See also:

1. Table Talk of Martin Luther about the Early Church Fathers
2. Sermon Preached by Martin Luther at Erfurt in 1521
3. The Theology of Facts vs the Theology of Rhetoric
4. Martin Luther’s Prefaces to the Psalter 1531 & 1545

See also:

1. The Pious Lie
2. The Pious Lie (reposted)
3. Even the Pious Resist Grace

1. Mercy is goodness, goodness is love, and, therefore, mercy is love. Mercy is goodness and love but in a specific relationship, namely, in relation to the unfortunate and wretched. Love is manifold. When it is directed to God on high, it becomes devotion and adoration. When it is directed over the whole earth to other redeemed brothers, it becomes goodness, affability, and friendliness. But when it enters areas filled with misery and brings with it consolation, relief, and help, then it becomes mercy. May the God who is love grant us manifold love and awaken in us a sense of and a will for mercy at the beginning of this inquiry.

2. The Old Testament uses five different words that mean “mercy” and the New Testament uses three. But these words are distinct in the sense that they point to the different stages of mercy’s existence from the first inner impulses of mercy to its external practice. Other languages, too, have many words that mean the same thing, but rarely do the words so clearly and markedly point to various expressions that are used in the Old and New Testaments. Usually all of these expressions are translated in the same way into German, because the German language does not have distinct expressions for the different stages and forms of mercy. But there are some things that are understandably lost in the translation, which the text in the original languages reveals to the diligent reader.

3. One could ask whether mercy has been from eternity or whether it slowly came into being over time. The answer for the question is not difficult. Insofar as mercy is love and goodness, it is certainly from eternity. Insofar as it is a relation of love and mercy to misery, it cannot be older than misery itself. And because one always has to see love and mercy together, it is fitting to say that mercy came into being like misery, that is, in time, but that it lasts in eternity even when there will be no more misery. Eternal love cannot forget the misery of the creature, even when it is taken care of. There is no doubt that misery would return if mercy would not keep watch at the gates of heaven.

4. What is mercy? Is it a mere impulse? Is it a state? Is it a doing? Those are three questions in one. A possible answer is this: mercy is love toward the wretched, and it comes into being with misery. As we saw, it does not even cease to exist with misery. But if it does not end with misery, does it cease before misery itself ends? Is it, therefore, something that lasts or is even a state of being? Whenever love meets misery, mercy is awakened. However, because misery is continually present in God’s eyes, mercy cannot be an impulse, but it has to be a continuous inner movement of God, who created the world and who did not cease to love it although it fell. Mercy is, therefore, a state, that is, a state of continuous transfer of divine love to the wretched. But is it thinkable that God’s love toward the broken is given to them without physical deeds? Can anybody stop the waters of grace, which want to come down from heaven, so that they would not flood the languishing earth? As the inner impulses of mercy are without number, so also are the deeds of mercy without number. Therefore, mercy is a state that does not suddenly cease after coming into being, but it is an endless impulse of God’s heart toward the lost world, an endless row of God’s gifts given to sinners. Thus all three questions are answered in the affirmative. If anyone wants to contradict, let him contradict, but it is more profitable that your mercy become like God’s.

from Wilhelm Loehe, “Löhe on Mercy: Six Chapters for Everyone, the Seventh for the Servants of Mercy”(1858–1860)

See also:

1. In Mercy, Lord
2. New ‘Hands of Mercy’ Newsletter

from Hermann Sasse, “Liturgy and Confession, A Brotherly Warning Against the ‘High Church’ Danger, first published in Lutherische Blaetter (Christmas 1959). 

See also:

1. Concordia Shanghai Dedicates New High School
2. Christ Our Great High Priest
3. Pour Out Thy Spirit From On High
4. California Church Votes to Leave ELCA

Now God made a testament; therefore, it was necessary that he should die. But God could not die unless he became man. Thus the incarnation and the death of Christ are both comprehended most concisely in this one word, “testament.”

from Martin Luther,”The Babylonian Captivity of the Church”

See also:

1. The Testament of Jesus
2. The New Testament
3. Treatise on the New Testament
4. Christ – The Center of the Old Testament

And in order, therefore, that they may know that this also pertains to grace, let them read what the apostle says: And that you be in nothing terrified by your adversaries, which indeed is to them a cause of perdition, but of your salvation, and that of God; for unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake. Philippians 1:28-29 Certainly he said that both were given. Let them read what he said also: Peace be to the brethren, and love, with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians 6:23 Let them also read what the Lord Himself says: No man can come to me, except the Father who has sent me shall draw him. John 6:44 Where, lest any one should suppose that anything else is said in the words come to me than believe in me, a little after, when He was speaking of His body and blood, and many were offended at His discourse, He says, The words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and life; but there are some of you which believe not. John 6:64 Then the Evangelist added, For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed, and who should betray Him. And He said, Therefore I said unto you that no man can come unto me except it were given him of my Father.

He repeated, to wit, the saying in which He had said, No man can come unto me, except the Father who has sent me shall draw him. And He declared that He said this for the sake of believers and unbelievers, explaining what He had said, except the Father who has sent me shall draw him, by repeating the very same thing in other words in that which He said, except it were given him of my Father. Because he is drawn to Christ to whom it is given to believe in Christ. Therefore the power is given that they who believe in Him should become the sons of God, since this very thing is given, that they believe in Him. And unless this power be given from God, out of free will there can be none; because it will not be free for good if the deliverer have not made it free; but in evil he has a free will in whom a deceiver, either secret or manifest, has grafted the love of wickedness, or he himself has persuaded himself of it.

from Augustine, “Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, Book I”

See also:

1. Heretics & Grace
2. Soldier, Commend Yourself to God’s Grace
3. Grace to you, and peace…

from Martin Luther, “The Bondage of the Will.”

I want to point out to you a correct way of studying theology, for I’ve had practice in that. If you keep to it, you will become so learned that you yourself could (if it were necessary) write books just as good as those of the fathers and councils. This is the way taught by holy King David (and doubtlessly used also by all the patriarchs and prophets) in Psalm 119. There you will find three rules, amply presented throughout the whole psalm: prayer (oratio), meditation (meditatio), and testing (tentatio).

Prayer

First, you should know that the Holy Scriptures constitute a book that turns the wisdom of all other books into foolishness, because not one teaches about eternal life except this one alone. Therefore you should straightway despair of your reason and understanding. With them you will not attain eternal life, but, on the contrary, your presumptuousness will plunge you and others with you out of heaven (as happened to Lucifer) into the abyss of hell. But kneel down in your room and pray to God with real humility and earnestness (as David did), that he through his dear Son may give you his Holy Spirit, who will enlighten you, lead you, and give you understanding.

Meditation

Second, you should meditate not only in your heart, but also externally, by actually repeating and comparing oral speech and literal words of the book, reading and rereading them with diligent attention and reflection, so you may see what the Holy Spirit means by them. Take care you do not grow weary or think you have done enough when you have read, heard, and spoken them once or twice, and that you then have complete understanding. You’ll never be a particularly good theologian if you do that, for you will be like untimely fruit which falls to the ground before it is half ripe. God will not give you his Spirit without the external Word.

Testing

Third, there is testing. This is the touchstone that teaches you not only to know and understand, but also to experience how right, how true, how sweet, how lovely, how mighty, and how comforting God’s Word is, wisdom beyond all wisdom.

David, in Psalm 119, complains often about all kinds of enemies, arrogant princes or tyrants, false spirits and factions, whom he must tolerate because he meditates, that is, because he is occupied with God’s Word in all manner of ways. For as soon as God’s Word takes root and grows in you, the Devil will harry you and will make a real theologian of you, for by his assaults he will teach you to seek and love God’s Word. I myself am deeply indebted to my critics, that through the Devil’s raging they have beaten, oppressed, and distressed me so much. That is to say, they have made a fairly good theologian of me, which I would not have become otherwise. And I heartily grant them what they have won (honor, victory, and triumph) in return for making this of me, for that’s the way they wanted it.

Learn from David

Now, with that you have David’s rules. If you study hard in accord with his example, then you will also sing and boast with him, “The law of thy mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces” (Ps. 119:72). And it will be your experience that the books of the fathers will taste stale and putrid to you in comparison. You will not only despise the books written by adversaries, but the longer you write and teach, the less you will be pleased with yourself. When you have reached this point, then do not be afraid to hope that you have begun to become a real theologian, who can teach not only the young and imperfect Christians, but also the maturing and perfect ones.

If, however, you feel and are inclined to think you have made it, flattering yourself with your own little books, teaching, or writing, because you have done it beautifully and preached excellently; if you are highly pleased when someone praises you in the presence of others; if you perhaps look for praise, and would sulk or quit what you are doing if you did not get it–if you are of that stripe, dear friend, then take yourself by the ears, and if you do this in the right way you will find a beautiful pair of big, long, shaggy donkey ears. Then do not spare any expense! Decorate them with golden bells, so that people will be able to hear you wherever you go, point their fingers at you, and say, “See, See! There goes that clever beast, who can write such exquisite books and preach so remarkably well.” That very moment you will be blessed and blessed beyond measure in the kingdom of heaven. Yes, in that heaven where hellfire is ready for the Devil and his angels.

Reprinted from Luther’s Works, Vol. 34
Edited by Lewis W. Spitz
Copyright 1960 (Muhlenberg Press)

He helps his hearers more by his wisdom than his oratory; although he himself is less useful than he would be if he were an eloquent speaker also. But the one to guard against is the man whose eloquence is no more than an abundant flow of empty words.

Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana

See also:

1. The Theology of Facts vs the Theology of Rhetoric
2. Barna Study on Weakness
3. New Barna Study Surveys Views on Abortion

BISHOP OF ALEXANDRIA

SCHOLIA ON THE INCARNATION OF THE ONLY-BEGOTTEN.

[Translated by P.E. Pusey]

1. What is Christ?

The name Christ hath neither the force of a definition, nor does it denote the essence of any of what kind it is, as for example a man or a horse or an ox, but it rather makes declaration of a thing wrought. For some of them of old were anointed with oil, as then pleased God, and the anointing was a token to them of kingdom: Prophets too were spiritually anointed with the Holy Ghost, so as thence too to be named christs (and 1 the blessed David sings in the Person of God and says, Touch not Mine anointed and do My Prophets no harm: the Prophet Habuccuc too says, Thou wentest forth for the salvation of Thy people, to save Thy christs): but in regard of Christ the Saviour of all we say that an anointing took place, yet neither symbolic, as though done with oil, nor as for the grace of Prophet’s office, nor yet that which is understood as in destination for the achievement of ought, such as we say took place in the case of Cyrus, who reigned over the Persians and Medes, for he led an army against the land of the Babylonians, God Almighty over all instigating him thereto. For it was said, Thus saith the Lord to Cyrus My christ, whose right hand I held. Albeit the man was an idolater, he was called christ, by reason of being as it were anointed king by the decree from above and fore-ordained by God to mightily |186 subdue the land of the Babylonians:—-but this rather do we say 2.

Since on account of the transgression in Adam, sin hath reigned against all, and then the Holy Ghost fled away from the human nature and it came therefore to be in all ill, and it needed that by the Mercy of God, it mounting up to its pristine condition should be accounted worthy of the Spirit:—-the Only-Begotten Word of God became Man, and appeared to them on earth with Body of earth, and was made free from sin, that in Him Alone the nature of man crowned with the glories of sinlessness, should be rich in the Holy Ghost, and thus be re-formed unto God through holiness: for thus does the grace pass through to us too, having for its beginning Christ the First-born among us. And therefore does the blessed David teaching us sing to the Son, Thou lovedst righteousness and hatedst wickedness, therefore God, Thy God anointed Thee with the oil of gladness.

The Son therefore has been anointed like us in human wise 3 with the praises of sinlessness, as I said: the nature of man having in Him been made illustrious and now become worthy of partaking of the Holy Ghost, no more departing, as at the beginning, but delighting to dwell therein. Wherefore it is also written that the Spirit soared down upon Christ and hath abode upon Him. Christ therefore is the Word of God called Who because of us and as we is Man and in servant’s form: both anointed as Man after the Flesh, and anointing Divinely with His own Spirit them that believe on Him.

2. How we must understand Emmanuel.

God the Word is named Emmanuel, because He laid hold of the seed of Abraham and like as partook of flesh and blood. Now Emmanuel is interpreted, With us is God. But we confess that the Word of God was with us, not |187 locally (for in what place is God not, Who fills all things?) nor because He is seen to come to us by way of aid (for thus was it said to Jesus, As I was with Moses, so I will be, with thee too), but because He was made in our condition, i. e. in human nature, without forsaking His own Nature, for the Word of God is Unchangeable in Nature.

But why was it, when it was said to Jesus, As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee, that he was nevertheless not called Emmanuel? this is the reason, even though He be said to be with any of the saints. We therefore say that He God the Word became with us, at that time of which Baruch says, He did shew Himself upon earth and conversed with men, and found out all the way of instruction and gave it to Jacob His servant and to Israel His beloved, for He is our God and there shall none other be accounted of in comparison with Him. As far then as pertained to His being God by Nature, He was not with us; for incomparable is the difference between Godhead and manhood and exceeding great the difference of the natures.

And therefore was the Divine David calling to Mystic relationship God the Word Who had not as yet come to us and saying in spirit, Why hast Thou departed far from us, O Lord, despisest us in season in tribulation? Therefore He departed not 4 from us, but was with us, Who while He remained what He was, took hold of the seed of Abraham, as I said; received moreover the form of a servant, and was beheld as Man upon the earth.

But Christ and Emmanuel signify to us the Same Son, the one, because He was anointed as we in human wise, receiving the Spirit for the nature of man in Himself first (for He is set forth as the first beginning of the race), |188 Himself again anointing, as God, with the Holy Ghost those who believe in Him; the other, because He was with us in the way I have explained, whereof the Prophet Isaiah tells us saying, Behold a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and shall call His Name Immanuel. For when the holy Virgin conceived out of the Holy Ghost, but bare according to the flesh a Son, then too was He called Emmanuel; for the Incorporeal was with us by carnal birth, and that took place which was told by David, God shall appear openly, our God and shall not be silent, and that (I deem), I Who speak am at hand. For the Word spake through the Prophets as yet Unembodied, He came Embodied.

3. What is Jesus.

By the force of the ideas 5 whereby we are bound to speak of One Son of God, Christ and Emmanuel and Jesus are the Same, and this name too from the fact, for He shall save (it says) His people from their sins. For just as the name Emmanuel meant, that the Word of God through His Birth of a woman was made with us; and Christ again, that made Man. He is said to be anointed as we in human wise; so too Jesus, that He saved us His people, which specially proves Him to be truly God and by Nature Lord of all. For the creature is not said to belong to a mere man 6, but rather it will befit to say that all things are the Only-Begotten’s even though He was made Man.

Some one haply will say, Yet the people of Israel were called Moses’.

To this we will say, The people was called God’s and that was true; but because they passed into revolt, and made a calf in the desert, they were dishonoured of God, He vouchsafed not any more to call them His people, but made them over to a man. Not so we, for we are Jesus’ own, in that He is God and all things created through Him. For so saith David, For He hath made us and not we ourselves, we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His |189 Hand. And Himself again says of us, My sheep hear My voice and they follow Me, and again, And other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I must bring and there shall be one fold, one Shepherd. And He bade too the blessed Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me? feed My lambs.

4. Why the Word of God was called Man.

The Word out of God the Father was called Man, albeit by Nature God, in that He partook of blood and flesh like we. For thus was He seen of those on the earth, and not letting go what He was, but assuming human nature like us, perfect as regards itself; yet in human nature too hath He remained God and Lord of all, by Nature and in truth Begotten of God the Father. And this the most wise Paul most clearly shews us, for he says, The first man is of the earth earthy, the second Man the Lord 7 out of Heaven. Albeit the holy Virgin hath borne the Temple united to the Word, yet is Emmanuel said to be (and rightly) out of heaven, for from above and out of the Essence of God the Father was His Word begotten. Yet He descended unto us when He was made Man; yet thus too is He from above. And John testified, saying of Him, He that cometh from above is above all, and Christ Himself saith to the people of the Jews, Ye are from beneath, I am from above, and again, I am not of this world, albeit He was as Man . called part of the world; yet therewith also was He above: the world as God. For we remember that He plainly says, And no man hath ascended up to heaven but He That came down from Heaven, the Son of man. But we say that the |190 Son of Man came down from Heaven by an economic union, the Word allotting to His own Flesh the endowments of His glory and God-befitting Excellency.

5. In what way the Word of God is said to have been emptied.

God the Word full by nature and in every way Perfect, and distributing out of His own Fullness His own goods to the creature, we say was emptied: in no wise wronged in His own Proper Nature, nor changed so as to become otherwise, nor made in ought inferior, for inconvertible and unchangeable is Himself also even as He Who begat Him, and never may He be capable of passion. But when He was made Flesh, i.e. Man, He made (as He said, I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all flesh) the poverty of human nature His own; first, in that He was once made man, albeit He remained God; next in that He took the form of a servant, Who is in His own Nature free, as Son, and while He is Himself the Lord of glory He is said to receive glory: Himself Life, He is said to be quickened: and receives power over all, Himself King of all and with God, and Ho was obedient to the Father, suffered the Cross and so on. But these things befit the measure of the human nature, yet He makes them His own with flesh and fulfils the economy, remaining what He was.

6. How Christ is One.

The Divine Paul writes, Though there be gods many and lords many in heaven and in earth, yet to us One God the Father of Whom all things and we of Him, and One Lord Jesus Christ through Whom all things and we through Him. Yea and the very wise John said of God the Word, that All things were made through Him, and without Him was nothing made, and the blessed Gabriel declared the Gospel to the Holy Virgin saying, Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb and, bear a Son, and shalt call His Name Jesus. Since then the Divine Paul declares that all things were made through Jesus Christ, and the Divine Evangelist confirms the force of the sentence and preaches that He |191 was God the Maker of all things, speaking truly, and the Angel’s voice too points out that Jesus Christ was truly born of the Holy Virgin: yet we do not say that Jesus Christ was mere man 8, nor do we conceive of God the Word apart from His human nature but, we say that He was made One out of both, as God made Man, the Same begotten Divinely out of the Father as Word, and humanly out of woman as Man: not as though called to a second beginning of being then when He is said to have been born after the flesh: but begotten indeed before all ages, yet when the time came wherein He must fulfil the economy, born also of a woman after the flesh. Therefore, albeit others are called by like name christs, yet is there One Jesus Christ through Whom are all things, not that a man was made Maker of all things, but that God the Word, through Whom all things were made, like as we took part of flesh and blood, and was called Man, yet lost not what He was; for so, so made in flesh is He rightly understood to be Maker of all.

7. How Emmanuel is One.

Once for all in the last ages is God the Word said to have been made Man, and (as Paul saith) was manifested by the Sacrifice of Himself . And what is the Sacrifice? He offered His own Body for us for an odour of a sweet savour to God the Father, and entered in once into the holy place not by the blood of goats and hulls, but by His own Blood, for so to them who believe on Him obtained He eternal redemption. Therefore very many before Him were saints but no one of them was called Emmanuel. Why? For not yet had the time come, when He was to be with us, i.e., to come in our nature through flesh, Who is superior to every creature. One therefore is Emmanuel, for once was the Only-Begotten made Man, when He underwent fleshly Birth through the holy Virgin. For it was said to Jesus too, I |192 will be with thee, yet was he not Emmanuel; He was also with Moses, yet neither was he called Emmanuel. As often therefore as we hear the name, With us is God, given to the Son, let us wisely conceive that not so was He with us in the last times, as He is sometimes said to have been with the saints, for with them He was as a helper only: but with us He was, because He was made like us, not losing His own nature, for He is unchangeable as God.

See also:

1. The Incarnation Itself
2. The Incarnation of God the Word
3. Athanasius on the Incarnation
4. Excerpts from an Email to Mark Hanson