BWC2a: Trinity explained, the Psalms are made clear

      This continues from Part BWC1d in a series (Table of Contents in Part BWC1) presenting Walther's edition of Baier's Compendium of Positive Theology. — This post begins Volume 2, which is almost 50% larger than Volume 1. In this post, there is helpful instruction on the doctrines that are beyond our reason, such as the Trinity. — From pages 4–69: 

Notable Quotes: (Italics follow the original. All quotes not from Baier are from Walther's additions.); The Trinity.

4: Gerhard: "The name Jehovah…is commonly called the τετραγράμματον [Tetragrammaton], because it consists of four integral letters" [See Luther on this here in his writing Vom Schem Hamphoras.]

8: "…on account of the … doubts of our own minds, the arguments that prove the existence of God are not to be neglected."

10: Zwingli: "A pagan, if he fosters a pious mind at home, is a Christian, even if he does not know Christ."

14: Hafenreffer: "…it is, however, easier to explain what God is not than what He is."

15: Dannhauer: "one cannot say, for example: The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God; therefore the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three Gods"

15: Luther: "Who knows what is, that is called God? It is beyond body, beyond spirit, beyond everything that one can say, hear, and think."

18: Gerhard: "the simplicity of the divine essence, and the Trinity of persons are proposed to us in the Word"

23: Luther: "Nothing is so small, God is even smaller; nothing is so great, God is even greater"

26: Augustine: "God prepared hell for those who inquire curiously"

34: "Thus God, who wills what He does, is said to will and do for the sake of His own glory as an end"

37: Gerhard: "The Calvinists… say that God impels to sin, that God has made an absolute decree of reprobation"

40: Gerhard: "we prefer to speak thus: God wills some things, as good, and permits others, as evil."

42: Gerhard: "Things impossible to nature are those which surpass the accustomed course of nature, such as: for the sun to stand still…" [Gerhard stands against Copernicanism!]

43: Kromayer: "the Reformed, who are persuaded that God proposes nothing incomprehensible to reason for us to believe… and in other places of Scripture of the Old and New Testaments, that the motion of the heavenly bodies was hindered, Isa. 38:8"

46: Kromayer: "That in one divine essence there are three persons can be solidly proven from the Old Testament alone, without the aid of the New Testament."

48: Antithesis: Luthardt: "Only the New Testament actually revealed the divinity of the Messiah." [Refutes John 12:40-41; German theologians making shipwreck of the faith.]

52: Antithesis: Kahnis: "In and of itself, however, this name (Son of God) does not express the divine personality of Jesus Christ."

56: J. Ebart: "God subsists in three persons, not composed from them."

59: Augustine: "If you cannot find out what God is, yet be careful not to think of Him as that which He is not."

63: Dannhauer: ""For although something concerning the Logos and the Son of God may have emanated into paganism, those are nevertheless plagiarisms, stolen from Moses and the prophets." [Paganism stolen from true religion.]

64: Luther: "Therefore, mathematics and all the reasoning of the creature must be excluded from the belief in the Divinity." [Compare: Mathematics, the Loss of Certainty by Morris Kline]

66: Baier: "Thus in Psalm 2:7 God the Father says to the Messiah or Christ (see Acts 13:33): "You are my Son; today I have begotten you," where the word היום denotes the most present and unique moment of eternity, where there is neither past nor future."

69: Antithesis: Quenstedt: "that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone and in no way from the Son, an error which the Greek Church still to this day tenaciously defends"

In the next Part BWC2b…