Nature and concept of theology.
(De natura et constitutione theologiae.)
1. The understanding of the standpoint.
Given the situation in the Church of the present day, an understanding of the theological standpoint is necessary. The standpoint from which this dogmatics was written is the conviction that the Holy Scriptures, in specific distinction from all other books that exist elsewhere in the world, are God's own infallible Word and therefore the only source and norm of doctrine that a Christian dogmatics has to present. There was a time when, within the Christian Church, this point of view was not questioned at all, except for a few exceptions. This time reaches into the first half of the eighteenth century. Since then, and especially in the present, the situation has changed to the extent that what was once the rule has now become the exception, as far as the public teachers are concerned. The public teachers, who are known in wider circles and are regarded as representatives of the Protestant theology of the present day, deny almost without exception that the Holy Scriptures are God's own Word by inspiration. They also, therefore, refuse to regard and use the Holy Scriptures as the sole source and standard of theology. A general flight from the allegedly unreliable Holy Scriptures into one's own human ego has set in, euphemistically called "Christian faith consciousness," "born-again ego," "experience," and so on. Due to this loose-from-the-Scriptures movement, a state of affairs has occurred within modern Protestantism which has its analogue in the Roman Church. As in the Roman Church not the Holy Scriptures but the “I” of the Pope is finally the only source and norm of doctrine, as the one who has "all rights in the shrine of his heart,"1) so also the modern Protestant theologians want to draw and norm Christian doctrine not from the Holy
1) Schmalk. Art. M. 321, 4 [Smalc. Art., Concordia Triglotta, 495, 4 🔗].
2 ><w:t xml:space="preserve"> The nature and concept of theology. [English ed. 3-4]
Scriptures, but from the "pious self-consciousness of the dogmatizing subject," 2) . As in the papacy only so much is valid of Scripture as the pope acknowledges and confirms, so the newer Protestant theology wants to allow only that to be valid in Scripture which the pious theologizing subject declares worthy of acceptance. This is an accurate description of the state of affairs when we look at the bulk of the newer theologians who do not "identify" Scripture and the Word of God, and therefore do not want to draw and standardize Christian doctrine from Scripture but from within themselves. Thus the order of things in the Christian church is not merely shifted, but turned upside down. We are dealing with a real revolution against the divine order in the Christian church.
In contrast, we fully uphold the position that the Holy Scriptures, through the unique divine act of inspiration, are God's own infallible Word, "God's Book,"3) from which alone, until the Last Day, Christian doctrine is to be drawn and standardized in all its parts. And for this standpoint we do not ask apology, but assert it as the only correct one. This standpoint has great examples in itself. First, the normative example of Christ and his holy apostles. For these, as is to be detailed in the doctrine of Holy Scriptures, consistently "identified" Scripture and the Word of God: Γέγραπται, Scriptura sacra locuta, res decisa est. For this point of view we also have the normative example of the Reformer of the Church, Luther. When Luther says, "The word they shall let stand," he means the word of Holy Scriptures. Hence Luther's reminder to all readers of Scripture, including theologians — and them in particular: "You shall thus act with Scripture, that you think as God Himself speaks." 4) Hence Luther's somewhat crudely expressed warning to us theological teachers that we will become "monsters" (portenta) of theologians like the scholastics if we depart from Scripture, because it, Scripture, "alone is the source of all wisdom [in theology]."5) Admittedly, in the present day it is very generally and in part also very decisively asserted that Luther was a
2) Expression in Nitzsch-Stephan, Lehrbuch d. Ev. Dogmatik 3, 1912, p. 13.
3) Luther's naming of Scripture. St. L. IX, 1071.
4) Sermons on the Genesis, 1527. St. L. III. 21.
5) Exeg. opp. Lat. Ed. Erl. IV, 328. St. L. 1, 1289 f.
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"freer" position on Scripture than the later Lutheran theologians. But this assertion, where it is made bona fide, is based on ignorance of the historical facts, as is to be shown in the Doctrine of Holy Scriptures.
As is well known, the modern theologians, who substitute their own pious consciousness for Scripture as the source and norm of theology, claim that it is precisely their pious self-consciousness and their "sense of reality," sharply developed by the newer science, that prevent them from identifying Scripture and the Word of God. We will be allowed to set "experience" against "experience" and "sense of reality" against "sense of reality". For our part, we experience it with millions of Christians, and by God's grace we may still continue to experience it, that the Holy Scriptures are truly the Word of God. And this experience is conveyed to us for the written Word of the apostles just as it was conveyed to the hearts of the Corinthian Christians with regard to the oral proclamation of the apostle Paul.6) Because the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God, they do not wait for the Pope or any other theologizing individual to recognize and confirm them, but they obtain recognition for themselves through the production of faith as a result of the action of the Holy Spirit, which is bound to the Word, just as the works of God in the realm of nature testify to themselves as divine, without having to wait for confirmation on the part of the representatives of the natural sciences. On the other hand, the newer theologians, who are fleeing from the Scriptures, move in the field of self-deception and pass by the knowledge of truth, because they want to move faith away from its ground of origin and knowledge and let it rise directly from their own inner being. That there is self-deception in this is certain because Christ very clearly and certain binds the knowledge of truth to abiding in his Word: "If ye continue in my word”, ἐν τῷ λόγῳ τῷ ἐμῷ … γνώσεσθε τὴν ἀλήθειαν [“ye shall know the truth”], Jn. 8:31-32. If, then, as theological teachers we wish to know and teach not error but truth, we must abide in Christ's word, which we have in the word of his apostles until the Last Day, as Christ likewise instructs us very clearly when he says Jn. 17:20 that all
6) 1 Cor. 2:1-5.
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will believe in Him through the apostles' word (διά λόγον αυτών). Therefore, in theology it is not necessary to flee from the word of the apostles and prophets into the theological ego, but in theology everything depends on the fact that the theologizing human ego gets rid of itself. And this happens only in such a way that the theologian carefully suppresses all his own thoughts and views that come to him, and only allows such thoughts, speeches, and doctrines to have a home in him that are expressed in Christ's Word. And this is not unworthy "bondage" and "literal service," as has been thought, but this is our glorious freedom which we may enjoy as Christian theologians. Christ also instructs us about this John 8 when he says, "If ye abide in my words … ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” ἡ ἀλήθεια ἐλευθερώσει ὑμᾶς. The most ignominious bondage of man that exists in the world is being a prisoner of one's own erroneous thoughts. Deliverance from this bondage of one's own erroneous thoughts in matters pertaining to our own and all men's salvation is the purpose for which Christ has given us his own word through his apostles and prophets. So do not get rid of the Scriptures, but go to the Scriptures and to them alone as the source and norm of theology! Luther thanks God for having given him the grace to let all thoughts that had come to him "without Scripture" fall away again.
How bad the situation is for a theology that has gotten away from the Scriptures and has settled in the area of "pious faith consciousness" is also clearly evident in its results. A sad product of this theology is the denial of the satisfactio Christi vicaria. Hofmann, who has been called the father of Ego theology among the conservative Lutheran theologians of the nineteenth century, also very definitely denied the vicarious satisfaction of Christ. And now the denial of satisfactio vicaria is almost as common as the denial of the inspiration of Holy Scriptures. And here lies the deepest reason for the fact that the Holy Scriptures are not recognized as Christ's Word. He who denies the satisfactio vicaria does not know the Christ whom the Scriptures teach;7) and inasmuch as anyone does not know Christ, he cannot know Christ's Word, as Christ Himself says.8) We do not deny personal Christianity to every theologian who speaks
7) Jn. 1:29; Matt. 20:28 etc.<w:t>8) Jn. 8:43, 47.
5 > The nature and concept of theology. [English ed. 6-7.]
against satisfactio vicaria from the safety of his study table or lectern. Luther also points out a possible "happy inconsistency" when he says of the theologians whom Erasmus brought against him that they spoke differently inter disputandum than their hearts stood before God.9) But consequently there is a connection between the denial of Christ's vicarious satisfaction and the rejection of Scripture as the Word of Christ, just as consequently there is a causal nexus between the knowledge of Christ as the Savior of sinners and the knowledge of Scripture as the Word of Christ. This is to be further elaborated in the doctrine of the Scriptures.
Another evil consequence of subjectivism [ichtheology] is the doctrinal confusion that has occurred wherever modern theology has succeeded in moving the church away from its doctrinal foundation, the word of the apostles and prophets (Eph. 2:20), and placing it on an ego basis. It is true that the opinion has been expressed that unity in doctrine is possible even after the divine authority of Scripture has been abandoned. The "purely subjective" "ideas" would betray themselves as such and be repelled by the "church common spirit". But in the same paper it is referred to that the extensive agreement in the new dogmatic principles is bound "with an almost infinite abundance of diversities in the application of these principles, as caused sometimes more by the religious individuality of the dogmatist, sometimes more by the degree of his scientific consistency."10) This obvious and admitted divergence in doctrine found in the modern-theological camp can be resisted in only one way. Theologians must leave the ego base and return to the foundation on which the whole Christian Church is built, namely, on the word of Christ's apostles and prophets, on Christ's word, on Holy Scriptures. Then our doctrines, those of us who call ourselves Christian theologians, will be shaped as Luther describes: "This we may do, provided we are also holy and have the Holy Spirit, that we catechumens and disciples of the prophets may boast, as which we repeat and preach what we have heard and learned from the prophets and apostles, and are also certain that the prophets taught it. That is said
9) Opp. v. a. VII, 166. St. L. XVIII, 1730.
10) Nitzsch-Stephan, Dogmatik, p. 13 and IX.
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in the Old Testament of the 'prophets' children,' who set nothing of their own nor new, as the prophets did, but teach that which they have from the prophets."11) From this point of view, this Christian Dogmatics was written.