Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran ChurchBente, F. (Friedrich)
Religion
Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church
Bente, F. (Friedrich)
Formula Concordiae -- Catechisms; Lutheran Church -- Catechisms
Luther continues: "This is the way the devil goes to work. He attacks
Christ with three storm-columns. One will not suffer Him to be God; the
other will not suffer Him to be man, the third denies that He has
merited salvation for us. Each of the three endeavors to destroy Christ.
For what does it avail that you confess Him to be God if you do not also
believe that He is man? For then you have not the entire and the true
Christ, but a phantom of the devil. What does it avail you to confess
that He is true man if you do not also believe that He is true God? What
does it avail you to confess that He is God and man if you do not also
believe that whatever He became and whatever He did was done for you?"
"Surely, all three parts must be believed, namely, that He is God, also,
that He is man, and that He became such a man for us, that is, as the
first symbol says: conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered, was crucified, died, and rose again, etc. If one small part is
lacking, then all parts are lacking. For faith shall and must be
complete in every particular. While it may indeed be weak and subject to
afflictions, yet it must be entire and not false. Weakness [of faith]
does not work the harm but false faith--that is eternal death." (St. L.
10, 998; E. 23, 258.)
Concerning the mystery involved in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the
chief topic of the Ecumenical Creeds, Luther remarks in the same tract:
"Now, to be sure, we Christians are not so utterly devoid of all reason
and sense as the Jews consider us, who take us to be nothing but crazy
geese and ducks, unable to perceive or notice what folly it is to
believe that God is man, and that in one Godhead there are three
distinct persons. No, praise God, we perceive indeed that this doctrine
cannot and will not be received by reason. Nor are we in need of any
sublime Jewish reasoning to demonstrate this to us. We believe it
knowingly and willingly. We confess and also experience that, where the
Holy Spirit does not, surpassing reason, shine into the heart, it is
impossible to grasp, or to believe, and abide by, such article;
moreover, there must remain in it [the heart] a Jewish, proud, and
supercilious reason deriding and ridiculing such article, and thus
setting up itself as judge and master of the Divine Being whom it has
never seen nor is able to see and hence does not know what it is passing
judgment on, nor whereof it thinks or speaks. For God dwells in a 'light
which no man can approach unto,' 1 Tim. 6, 16. He must come to us, yet
hidden in the lantern, and as it is written, John 1, 18: 'No man hath
seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of
the Father, He hath declared Him,' and as Moses said before this, Ex.
33: 'There shall no man see Me [God] and live.'" (St. L. 10, 1007; E.
23, 568.)
III. The Augsburg Confession.
18. Diet Proclaimed by Emperor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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