“My favorite cartoon in college days was of a long freight train that had ground to a halt in the desert. A set of footprints in the sand stretched all the way from the caboose up to the engine. The engineer was leaning out of the cab explaining sheepishly to the conductor, ‘The fire went out.’
“What do you do when someone does not agree that the gospel and the sacraments are enough? It depends, I suppose, on whether you are ‘satisfied’ enough to want to say something about it or fight for it. Asking whether it is enough is something like asking whether one spouse is enough! If the gospel is not enough, I expect the confessors would simply have said that there is nothing really to do then but to preach until they have had enough! For in actuality, the satis est is a confession to the power of the gospel.[1] If one has heard it, what more could one want?
“Consequently, what the reformers demanded above all was just the right so to preach. But such preaching, of course, depends on whether there is any fire left. The satis est makes the question unavoidable: Are we satisfied that the gospel is enough? If not, is this whole discussion not pointless?”[2]
[1] “For it is sufficient (satis est) for the true unity of the Christian church that the Gospel be preached in conformity with a pure understanding of it and that the sacraments be administered in accordance with the divine Word.” Augsburg Confession, Article VII; Tappert, p. 32.
[2] “Satis Est? What do we do when other churches don’t agree?” Unpublished lecture.