BWC2b: Trinity; Creation

      This continues from Part BWC2a in a series (Table of Contents in Part BWC1) presenting Walther's edition of Baier's Compendium of Positive Theology. — These quotes continue with the particulars of the incomprehensible, but Scriptural, mystery of the Trinity. — Creation is wonderfully treated in v. 2, examining every detail of the wording of the creation account. Also, on pp. 86-87, there is refutation of the Copernican Theory. — From pages 71–98:

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

71: Quenstedt: "According to the holy Fathers, the particle ἐξ [from] is attributed to the Father, διά [through] to the Son, and εἰς [in] to the Holy Spirit."

72: Quenstedt: "Although the Son is from the Father, He is nevertheless God with the Father"

73: Quenstedt: "Of certain Calvinists, who attribute to the Father a certain preeminence and superiority over the Son even with respect to deity"

74: Quenstedt: "The rule of Augustine is well known: 'The works of God ad extra are indivisible,' that is, common to all three persons."

76: Luther: "…the Symbol [Creed] of the holy Athanasius is founded, which is so framed that I do not know whether anything more important and glorious was ever written in the Church" [Defense of Trinity]

Creation:

77: Reusch: "But heaven, as heaven, and distinct from the total bodies of the world, such as planets, comets, and fixed stars or suns, consists of aether, which fills those vast spaces"

78: Luther: "Therefore, as for this opinion of Augustine, we hold that Moses spoke properly, not allegorically or figuratively" [As Luther would hold with Joshua on Joshua 10:13.]

80: Quenstedt: "The creation of the world from nothing in time cannot be known by natural light or… by philosophical arguments, but is known only from divine revelation, and is therefore an article of pure faith."

82: Quenstedt: "To define precisely where it [heaven] is, however, is rash."

83: Antithesis: J. H. Kurtz: "We already have, in pre-human times, an earth, and no less a history, which unfolded on and in it.…such sober and level-headed men as…Rudelbach, Guericke…have spoken in its favor." [Rudelbach and Guericke were thought of as orthodox!]

86: Walther quotes Hollaz, Calov, Rollius, and Hafenreffer against Copernicanism, i.e. Walther clearly held with the bare words of Holy Scripture on Joshua 10:13: "And the sun stood still…"

86: Antithesis: Deyling: "These forms of expression [e.g. Joshua 10:13] are what experts in the art are accustomed to call optical, and they distinguish them from physical truth."

88: Augustine: "Created animals that are harmful would have harmed no man, if he had not sinned."

88: Luther: God "did not say, as He did of other creatures, 'Let the earth bring forth man'; but, 'Let us make man'"

89: Luther: "For will you not judge it absurd that a man, who is to live forever, is born from a single drop of seed in his father's loins? There is almost more absurdity in this than in what Moses says, about the clay formed by the fingers of God."

91: "…the effect produced [of God's inbreathing, Gen. 2:7] was a spirit, distinct from the body and all matter.

93: Quenstedt: Eve "did not exist by immediate creation, but by propagation and transmission."

95: Luther: "…it does not say that Christ made the world through the Father, but that the Father made it through Him [the Son], so that the Father remains the first person and that from Him [the Father], yet through the Son, all things come"

97: Twesten: "Ex nihilo means: not from something, not from prior matter; it does not designate matter, but excludes it."

98: Philippi: "The concept of creation arose only on the ground of positive divine revelation, and where it is found outside this sphere (as in Mohammedanism, Rationalism), it is demonstrably borrowed from there."

98: Antithesis: Delitzsch: "The world, far from having been nothing before its creation, had an ideal existence in God, and its creation was the transfer from this ideal existence into a real one."

100: "so by the power of the divine blessing man is generated from man with regard to the soul just as much as the body by the universal concurrence of God alone"

101: Quenstedt: "If it is assumed that the soul is created immediately by God, either original sin must be plainly denied, or God cannot be freed from injustice, both of which are absurd"

In the next Part BWC2c…