Faith in God is also like a queen, and dogmatic teachings are like her
court officials. Just as the officials hang on the queen’s every word, so
dogmatic teachings depend on the stated faith.
One can judge solely from its faith how a given church understands
the Word. A faith adapts the Word to itself. As if the faith had ropes, it
pulls whatever it can get from the Word in its own direction.
If a faith is false, it commits prostitution with every truth in the
Word, dragging that truth into perversion and falsifying it. A false faith
drives us spiritually insane. If a faith is true, it agrees with the whole
Word. The God of the Word, who is the Lord God the Savior, then
pours light into that faith, blesses it with his divine assent, and makes
us wise.
[ 4 ] The modern-day faith (which in its inner form is a faith in three
gods, although in its outer form it is a faith in one God) has extinguished
the light in the Word and has removed the Lord from the church. It has
quickly turned the church’s morning into night. (This point too will be
seen in the appendix.) The changes in the faith were made by heretics
before the Council of Nicaea as well as heretics at the council and after it.
How much trust should we put in councils when they do not use the
door to enter the sheepfold? Instead they “climb up some other way,” as
the Lord says in John 10 : 1 , 9. The debating at those councils was like the
walking of a blind person by day or a sighted person by night, each of
whom fails to see a great pit before falling into it.
For example, how much trust should we put in councils when they
have established the notions of viewing the pope as Christ’s representa-
tive, deifying dead people, calling on them as supernatural powers, ven-
erating their images, authorizing indulgences, splitting the Eucharist,
and more? How much trust should we put in the council that established
the horrendous idea of predestination and erected it as a religious icon in
front of all church buildings?
Instead, my friend, as you approach the Word, go to the God of the
Word and enter the sheepfold of the church through the Door. Then you
will be enlightened. Then, as if you were on a mountain top, you will see
the earlier tracks and mistaken turns in the dark forest at the foot of the
mountain—not only those of many other people, but also your own.
The faith of any church is like a seed from which all its dogmas grow. 178
It is like the seed of a tree that generates all the tree’s features including its
fruit. It is like human seed that generates descendants and families one
after the other.
§178 the holy spirit & divine action 249