The Principium Cognoscendi in Theology

The subject submitted for our consideration this morning presents a somewhat forbidding aspect. The Principium Cognoscendi in Theology - that sounds like a rather abstruse, metaphysical proposition. I hasten, therefore to assure you that this subject has a definite practical bearing on every part of the work which we are doing and preparing to do as preachers, ministers, pastors, missionaries in the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is to enable us to determine, in regard to ourselves and others, when a person is really a theologian in the estimation of Lutherans and when he is turning out genuinely theological work of abiding value. When my class, in 1883, moved into the then new seminary on Jefferson Avenue, the principium cognoscendi in theology was among the first subjects of study which we took up under Doctor Walther