19. Theology and system.
Also the word system is not always used in the same sense.545) Therefore, it must be clarified in which sense, and in which sense not, theology can be called a system.
If we understand by system a coherent whole, then the Christian doctrine is a system. The Christian doctrine, which is taken only from the Holy Scriptures, forms a coherent whole in two respects: 1. in so far as the Scriptures, according to their content, do not present different human doctrines (Mosaic, Johannine, Petrine, Pauline, etc.), but the uniform doctrine of God (doctrinam divinam). doctrine), but presents the uniform doctrine of God (doctrinam divinam), because all Scripture is inspired by God and is completely without error; 546)
543) John 10:35; 17:14, 17.
544) Preface to the sermons on the first book of Moses. St. L. III, 21.
545) Cf. Bretschneider, Systematische Entwicklung 3, p. 39. Baier-Walther, Kompendium I, 76. Any larger Reallexikon, e.g. Center, Century Dictionary,, VII, 6142, under "System". Kliefoth, Der Schriftbeweis des Dr. J. Chr. K. von Hofmann. Nitzsch-Stephan, Ev. Dogmatik, p. 10 f. 18.
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2. inasmuch as in the Christian doctrine drawn only from Holy Scriptures the doctrine of justification διά της πίστεως χωρίς έργων νόμον stands in the center in such a way that all other doctrines are either presuppositions (articuli antecedentes) or consequences (articuli consequentes) of the doctrine of justification.547) This connection of the Christian doctrines is also not a construction of Luther and the Lutheran dogmatists, but taught in the Holy Scriptures. When Paul says on the one hand that he preached the whole counsel of God, 548) on the other hand that in preaching it he knew only Christ crucified for the sins of the world,549) he thus teaches that the forgiveness of sins for the sake of Christ's atoning death is the center of the whole Christian doctrine. Likewise, Peter designates the forgiveness of sins through faith in Christ as the central doctrine of all Old Testament Scripture when he says: "Of this [JEsu] all the prophets testify, that through his name all who believe in him should receive forgiveness of sins." 550) The unity of Christian doctrine is also evident in the fact that we cannot change any part of Christian doctrine without consequently affecting the whole.551) If, for example, we question that the Holy Scriptures are God's own infallible Word, this affects the character of the whole Christian doctrine. What is Christian doctrine is then not decided by God in his Word, but by the theologizing human ego. If the metaphysical deity of Christ is denied, then the satisfactio vicaria falls away,552) and if the satisfactio vicaria is denied, there is no forgiveness of sins by faith without works of the law, no means of grace that offer forgiveness of sins ex parte Dei and demand only faith ex parte hominis,
546) Cf. the detailed explanation under the section "More detailed description of theology as doctrine," p. 57 ff.
547) Cf. the chapters "The Central Position of the Doctrine of Justification," II, 617 ff; "The Preconditions of Justification by Faith without Works," II, 611 ff; "The Relationship between Justification and Sanctification in the Narrow Sense," III, 6 ff.
548) Acts 20:27.<w:t>549) 1 Cor. 2:2.<w:t>550) Acts 10:43.
551) This is also pronounced Gal. 5:9: μικρά ζύμη όλον τό φύραμα ζνμ.οΐ. Meyer z. St.: "in doctrinal relation" said. Especially Luther on this passage L u. W. IX, 642 ff.
552) Rom. 5:10; 8:32; 1 John 1:7.
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no Christian church that is the congregation of believers, no salvation that is attained through faith in Christ.553) Luther: In philosophia modicus error in principio in fine est maximus. Sic in theologia modicus error totam doctrinam evertit. ... Est enim doctrina instar-mathematici puncti; non potest igitur dividi, hoc est, neque ademptionem neque additionem ferre potest. … Debet igitur doctrina esse unus quidam perpetuus et rotundus aureus circulus, in quo nulla sit fissura. Ea accedente vel minima, circulus non est amplius integer.554) [“In philosophy, a small error in the beginning is the most important in the end. Thus in theology a small error overturns the whole doctrine. ... For the doctrine is like a mathematical point; therefore it cannot be divided, that is, it can bear neither subtraction nor addition. … Therefore, doctrine must be a certain perpetual and round golden circle, in which there is no fissure. When it is added or reduced, the circle is no longer complete”] Thus Luther decisively teaches the closed whole of the Christian doctrine and in this sense a "system" of the Christian doctrine. The closed inner connection of the Christian doctrine from the center of the doctrine of justification is also evident in the fact that without the article of justification no other article of the Christian doctrine is actually believed. It does not stand that one can believe the article of the Trinity, for example, or that of the person of Christ, and not believe that of justification. Certainly, the fides humana in those articles can be there, but not the fides divina which the Holy Spirit works. For the Holy Spirit enters a human heart only with the faith in justification.555) Only when I believe, through the action of the Holy Spirit, that God has forgiven my sins for the sake of Christ's satisfactio vicaria, do I also believe, through the action of the Holy Spirit, that there is one God, that God is triune, that Christ is God and man, that there is a resurrection of the dead and eternal life, and so on. So much from the article of justification the Christian doctrine is unus quidam perpetuus et rotundus aureus circulus. The reason why we do not like the term "system" to characterize the Christian doctrine is that modern theologians usually call theology a system in the sense that it is not a system.
If one understands by "system" such a coherent whole, which is derived or developed from one supreme principle by thinking under deduction of the actually given (speculative system), then the Christian doctrine is no system. The formation of a system by human thinking is only
553) The detailed exposition under the section “Objective and Subjective Reconciliation” II, 411 ff.
554) Ad Gal. Erl. II. 334 sq.; St. L. IX, 644 f.
555) Gal. 3:1-3.
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possible in the field of knowledge which does not deal with really existing but only with imagined things, as this is the case with "pure" mathematics (in contrast to "applied" mathematics). The speculative system building is already in its application to natural scientific and historical facts not only unscientific, but downright nonsensical, because it is based on the delusion that facts depend on human thinking. The speculative system formation is already in its application to scientific and historical facts not only unscientific, but downright nonsensical, because it is based on the delusion that facts depend on human thinking. Philosophical idealism has rightly been called a disease of the human mind, in which man imagines that his thoughts (ideas) are the rule and measure of all things. Edm. Hoppe remarked in the publication "Der Alte Glaube": "Nature" — and we add analogously: also history — "is not so kind as to bind itself to the scheme of the textbook." 556) In theology every human or speculative system formation is absolutely excluded, because the Christian doctrine is given in the Scriptures as a divine greatness, in which human thinking cannot nor should not change anything. Here every addition and every deduction is expressly forbidden.557) The activity of the theologian, therefore, consists neither in developing the Christian doctrine from one supreme principle or from one fact, e.g., from the fact of regeneration, by thinking, nor even in constructing it from the so-called "whole of Scripture," which is a logical monstrosity, but merely in taking the Christian doctrine in all its parts directly from the statements of Scripture which deal with the doctrines in question (sedes doctrinae). By thus putting together in one place what Scripture itself says about each of the doctrines, we have the ordered knowledge of Christian doctrine that is accessible and necessary for us men in this life. Also, of course, we can teach only as much about the context of the doctrines present in Scripture as is said about them in Scripture. With this method, gaps remain for human comprehension in this life. As examples of this, the scriptural doctrines of beatitude sola Dei gratia and perishing sola hominum culpa have already been cited earlier. Both doctrines are clearly revealed in Scripture. But whoever wants to systematize them, that is, to combine them into a unity in the sense of human reason,
556) Quoted in L. u. W. 1907, p. 316.
557) Jos. 23:6; Matt. 5:17-19; Jn. 10:35; 8:31-32; Gal. 1:6-9.
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corrupts either one or the other and becomes either a Calvinist or a synergist. Attempts to bring the scriptural statements about the Trinity to a rational unity have led to monarchianism on the one hand, and tritheism on the other. Most modern theologians have also wanted to make the scriptural statements about the person of Christ (verus Deus and verus homo) "epistemically" unified. The result is that they have rejected the "doctrine of two natures" and have thus taken a standpoint extra ecclesiam. Those who want to make theological knowledge "uniform" beyond the revelation of Scripture deprive themselves eo ipso of knowledge that deserves the predicate "theological." To save us from this derailment, the apostle reminds the theologians of all times of the fact that the knowledge of God, and therefore our doctrine of God in this life, is a fragmentary one: Έκ μέρους γινώσκομεν και έκ μέρους προφητεύομεν. 558)
This theme, "Theology and System," seems to us so important that we emphasize a little more forcefully some points already touched upon.
There is only one book in the world that is perfectly and inerrantly uniform, even though its writers were men of different levels of education and the first and last writers were separated by a period of about 1600 years. This book is the Bible. The perfect inerrancy of the Bible is due to the fact that it is consistently inspired by God and is uniform, unbreakable truth. This is what Christ and his apostles stand for with their authority, both with regard to the Old Testament and the New Testament.559)
Because modern theology denies the unified truth of the scripture with its inspiration, it takes refuge from the allegedly non-unified scripture in the pious consciousness, the religious experience, the reborn ego of the human subject for the purpose of obtaining a "unified whole". But this transfer of the basis of unity, considered a little more closely, does suffer from a self-contradiction. In spite of the denial of the inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures, modern theologians
558) 1 Cor. 13:9.
559) Jn. 10:35; 2 Tim. 3:16; 1 Petr. 1:10-11; 2 Petr. 1:21; Jn. 17:14, 17; 8:31-32.
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admit that the pious ego or the religious experience is not to be trusted completely, but rather that there is the possibility of self-deception. Furthermore, it is conceded that with the ego method an almost infinite abundance of diversities has occurred and that the cornucopia of diversities is certainly not yet empty. But even more. It is further conceded, partly that the Holy Scriptures are to be regarded as an "authentic document" of the historical revelation of God, partly that the time in which the Holy Scriptures were written stood "closer" to the revelation of God than we, the late-born, in the 19th and 20th century. With these concessions the thought is taken that for the purpose of gaining a "unity" it would be more reasonable and safer to stay with the Scriptures than to retreat into the pious self-consciousness of the theologizing subject, which possibly deceives itself and which actually has put out of itself an almost endless abundance of diversities.
If we do not want to be drawn into the self-deception and the deception of others, which is bound up with this human system-building in theology, then we must absolutely hold that we are in the field of theology completely in the field of the given and fixed facts, in which no human thinking and therefore also no human system-building can change even the slightest thing. Rightly has been pointed out the analogy which exists in this relation between natural science and theology. For natural science, the things actually given in the field of nature are the "field of perception" or the "world of perception", as it has been suitably expressed. All human knowledge of natural things always reaches only as far as the observation and experience of the facts at hand reaches. If the natural scientist wants to arrange plants or animals systematically, he does not do so, as long as he proceeds truly scientifically, according to his ego, which is independent of the external world, that is, not according to his own thoughts as to how the plants and animals should be constituted, but he lets the arrangement depend entirely on the given nature of the objects situated outside him. In other words, the scientifically working naturalist does not make or construct his system, but he takes note of it and he recognizes it where and
164 ><w:t>The nature and concept of theology. [English ed. 143]
as far as it is actually pronounced in the given things. Where the conjecture, the hypothesis or the speculation of the natural scientist begins, there natural science ends. To recall once more Hoppe's saying, "Nature is not so kind as to bind herself to the scheme of the textbook." One has clarified the matter in this country also in such a way that one has distinguished between a railroad system and a mountain system. We can construct a railroad system, however, in so far as it does not yet exist, but is to be built. A mountain system, on the other hand, because it already exists independently of our thoughts, we cannot construct, but only describe according to its given nature and according to the already existing relationship of the individual mountain chains to each other. This now finds its application to the formation of systems in theology. The theologian, and in general everyone who teaches in the church, has to deal with the given and unchangeable fact of the Word of God, which Christ gave to his church through the apostles and prophets. Word of God is as unchangeable and completed a fact as the creation of the world. Just as we men cannot change the created world but must accept it as a closed fact, so we in the Church are bound to Christ's Word with all doctrines. Christ's word is our "world of perception", and indeed our only "world of perception", as certainly as we are bound by divine order to abide by Christ's doctrine, to teach from God's mouth alone and not from our own ego or from the ego of other men.560) What comes from elsewhere than from God's mouth is straw among the wheat, not knowledge of truth but imagination, a product that is neither to be presented nor heard in God's house, in the Christian church. Thus it stands firm that in theology not the slightest room is left for human speculation or, what amounts to the same thing, for a system formation for the purpose of the "epistemic" grasp of Christian truth. Where gaps appear for our limited human cognition in our "field of perception", that is, in the revealed Word of God, we are careful not to fill the gaps with our own thoughts. There we remember, as already explained by the reference to 1 Cor. 13:9
560) John 8:31-32; Jer 23:16.
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the fact that the fragmentary knowledge of spiritual things is the normal state for the time of this life. — And one more point should be made in this connection. Even the modern theologians, who have abandoned Holy Scriptures as the source and norm of theology and have retreated to their ego, should recognize as impossible, even from their ego standpoint, the formation of a system or the construction of a unified whole. He who wants to construct a system in the sense of a unified whole must know the object with which he is dealing through and through, or must completely encompass it with his knowledge. The object of theology, however, is, as even modern theology admits, God, the God whom even natural reason still recognizes as the infinite and incomprehensible God. Therefore, also from the point of view of Ego theology, the unified system formation should be recognized as a titanic enterprise and — refrain from it.
4. Remarking on the question, in which sense and in which sense not theology can be called a "system", was said at that time by Kliefoth in the evaluation of Hofmann's system formation. Kliefoth wrote:561) "Hofmann wants to derive the whole of Christian doctrine from the fact of his Christianity, which has been brought to the simplest self-expression, in unbreakable necessity and with complete renunciation not only of church doctrine, but also of Scripture; or in other words: to let the said fact, by bringing itself to expression, unfold itself to the whole of Christian doctrine, and that in unbreakable necessity, and without anything being excluded from elsewhere. This is how I understood v. Hofmann's intentions and proved that I understood him correctly by his own statements. Now there are two ways of systematic treatment. The first one merely aims at arranging its substance according to its nature. It is the one applicable to empirical [actually given or present] substances. Therefore, its characteristic consists in two things First, it must always work vis-à-vis this empirical substance of its own; it can only arrange this empirical
561) In the Kirchl. Zeitschr., edited by Kliefoth and Mejer, year 6. Published separately under the title "Der Schriftbeweis des D. von Hofmann”. Schwerin 1859, p. 174 ff.
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substance of its own by simultaneously recognizing it empirically. Secondly, such an arrangement of empirical substances can result in a self-contained whole, a system, only if this substance itself is a whole in itself. ... From which we see at the same time that such a system must first of all look for its empirical sources and constantly adhere to them, build itself only hand in hand with empirical research and cannot be finished before the latter itself is completed.562) … But fundamentally different from it is that way of system building which has been in the minds of the speculative philosophers of all times: they wanted, starting from some simplest, to let emerge from this simplest, rejecting all empiricism, by self-development of that simplest, a system of cognitions, hoping that the unbreakable necessity of this process of development would give such a system and its individual propositions such a correctness and certainty that it would then afterwards not only coincide with everything that empiricism lets us recognize, but would also give the right key for empirical cognition. ... It does not need to be proved that this speculative kind of system building, which is fundamentally independent of empiricism, is something completely different from the first kind, which is based only on a materially corresponding arrangement of empirically gained knowledge. If we look at the relationship of both to the doctrine of salvation, I have no doubt that the speculative method is neither wholly nor half applicable to it, since God has revealed his salvation historically in word and work, and thus also wants it to be known by us in an empirical way. On the other hand, it is equally certain and self-evident that I consider the first empirical type of systematic treatment applicable to the doctrine of salvation, indeed that it seems to me more applicable to the doctrine of salvation than to anything else in the
562) In other words and in memory of Edm. Hoppe: Nature, as something actually given, is not so amiable to be directed after the natural scientist, but the natural scientist must, as long as he remains reasonable, direct himself after nature. Likewise, the historical facts are not so kind as to be guided by the historian, but the historian, if he does not want to degenerate into a novelist, must be guided by the attested historical facts. Where the naturalist and the historian begin to resort to hypothesis or to "exegesis," they should say so, in order to make known to the public where their science — that of the naturalist and that of the historian — has ceased.
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world, because the words and works of God for salvation are certainly in themselves a harmonious whole. Just as all Christian dogmatists of all times have made use of this method. But for this very reason I insist, together with all these dogmatists, that the laws of this method should be observed, that the formation of Christian systematic theology should take place only vis-à-vis its own empiricism. ... If I now compare v. Hofmann's system demands with this, then it was undoubtedly present in his own statements that the empirical way of systematic treatment does not seem scientific enough to him, but that he recommends the way of speculative system formation. For he seeks a simplest as a starting point; that should unfold itself, from which should be derived in unbreakable necessity. Scripture and church doctrine are to be left aside; but what comes out will coincide with what is to be compared afterwards. Of all this, of these categories of necessity, self-development, derivation, the empirical kind of systematic treatment knows nothing; but the speculative not only knows of them, but it has its essence in them. ... It is not true what Hofmann testifies about himself: his systematics are not essentially the same as Augustine's scientificity; for it is not a matter of rigor or non-rigor in the scientific requirements, but of deriving and letting oneself unfold with necessity and disregarding Scripture, of which Augustine etc. did not know a word. Neither can his systematics be understood as a mere tightening of the method of earlier dogmatists, but it is a different kind from this; the earlier dogmatists have the empirical kind of systematic treatment, while v. Hofmann wants the speculative one."
The desire to have Luther as a protector has led the newer system-building theologians to say that the Reformer of the Church "genetically developed" the whole of Christian doctrine from the article of justification. So already Luthardt. However, "genetic development" in Luthardt's sense would place Luther among the system builders. Luthardt says:563) " If dogmatics is to be the systematic exposition of the Christian faith, it must genetically develop the whole of Christian doctrine
563) Compendium of Dogmatics 11 S. 30.
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from a fundamental unity, i.e., it must not merely derive it from a supreme principle, but must dissect the facts of Christianity itself as they are summarized in principle. Luther describes the article on the righteousness of faith as such a genetic principle: 'In it David holds out to us the summa of the whole Christian doctrine and the clear loving sun which illuminates the Christian congregation. If this article is grasped and retained with certain and firm faith, the others gradually come and follow, as of the Trinity, etc.' W. W. Erl. Exeg. opp. Lat. XX, p. 193: Stante enim hac doctrina stat ecclesia etc. Comm, in ep. ad Gal. II, 23, ed. Irmischer. Locus igitur iustificationis, ut saepe moneo, diligenter discendus est. In eo enim comprehenduntur omnes alii fidei nostrae articuli, eoque salvo salvi sunt et reliqui. [Google] But the dogmatics that followed did not carry out this idea and designated only Scripture (in contrast to the Roman fundamental article of the infallibility of the pope; cf. Gerhard, Conf. Cathol. I, 2, 1- p. 71) unicum principium cognoscendi, from which the doctrines of faith were not only proved but developed." The opposition between Luther and "the following dogmatics" asserted here by Luthardt is a fiction. What Luther says of the central position of the doctrine of justification, namely, that this article contains the summa of the whole Christian doctrine, throws the right light on all other doctrines, and resists the intrusion of error in all other doctrines, etc., is also found in the Lutheran dogmatists, for example, in that they describe all other doctrines in their relationship to the article of justification as articuli antecedentes and consequentes.564) And what Luthardt ascribes to the dogmatists in contrast to Luther, that to them the Scriptures were unicum principium cognoscendi, from which the doctrines of faith were not only to be standardized but also to be taken directly, is also found throughout and even more powerfully in Luther. Luther knows absolutely no method of construction in theology, also no construction of the doctrines of faith from the central article of justification with the exception of the scriptural word. Luther says this not only in the numerous passages in which he rejects every "scripture-less" thought and advises every
564) Quenstedt, Systema I, 352 sqq, theses 6. 7. 8.
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theologian to let all thoughts that have occurred to him "without scripture" in any doctrine fall out again as quickly as possible, but he also says this precisely where he compares Christian doctrine to a "golden chain" and to a "closed ring". This description of the Christian doctrine in Luther is always based on the assumption that every single link of the "golden chain" is given directly by the Word of Scripture. Indeed, Luther adds that anyone who denies any article of Christian doctrine thereby denies God in His Word and makes him a liar. Luther writes:565) "It is certain that whoever does not believe or does not want to believe one article (after he has been admonished and taught), certainly does not believe one with seriousness and right faith. And whoever is so bold as to deny God or rebuke God in one word [of Scripture], and wilfully does so against and above that in which he has been admonished or instructed once or twice, may also (certainly does) deny God in all his words and rebuke him with lies. Therefore it is called, round and pure, all believed or nothing believed. The Holy Spirit (who is the whole Scriptures, III, 1890) cannot be separated nor divided, that he should teach or make believe one part true and the other false. Without where are the weak who are willing to be taught and not stiff-necked to contradict." Luther also knew exactly Hofmann's method of construction, whose peculiarity, as we have seen, consists in first constructing the doctrine from one's own inner being, carefully setting aside the Holy Scriptures, in order to then subsequently seek out the ego product in Scripture and adjust it according to Scripture. Thus, in the dispute over the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, Reformed sacrament enthusiasts also attributed to Luther the theological method of first putting the Scriptural words about the Lord's Supper completely out of sight, taking the doctrine of the Lord's Supper from "faith" and then "exposition" of the Scriptural words about the Lord's Supper. Luther expresses himself somewhat forcefully about this method of construction. He says:566) "It is the arrogance of the afflicted devil who mocks us by such enthusiasts in this great matter, that he pretends to be instructed by Scripture so far as to put Scripture out of the way beforehand." Luther, for his part, insists,
565) St. L. XX, 1781.<w:t xml:space="preserve">566) St. L. XX, 780. 782.
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that the doctrines of the Lord's Supper are not constructed from "faith" but are shown to be expressed in the scriptural words that deal with the Lord's Supper. "So this is the summa of it, that we have the clear, bare scripture for us, which is thus, 'Take, eat; this is my body.'" So also the Zwingli and Oecolampadius are to “bring up Scripture, which thus reads: 'This means my body' or: 'This is my body's sign.'" So completely far from Luther is all doctrine construction, setting aside the words of Scripture that deal with the individual doctrines. Luther's powerful "Sermon on the Armor and Weapons of Christians"567) is, according to its main idea, a warning against any doctrinal construction, namely a warning against a "faith" that does not rest in all parts on the expressed word of Scripture. "We have sufficiently founded the articles of our faith in Scripture, so stop and do not let it be twisted with glosses and interpreted according to reason, as it rhymes or not." To the objection that not a unity but contradictions might emerge if one merely adheres to the words of Scripture, Luther answers: "Scripture will not be contrary to itself nor to some articles of faith, whether or not they are contrary to one another in your mind and do not rhyme." In short, according to Luther, Christian doctrine admittedly has "unity," but not a unity "in the head" of the dogmatizing human subject, according to the method of construction, but a unity grounded in the fact that Christian doctrine in all its parts is taken directly from Scripture, which is the Word of God and therefore not against itself, but completely uniform. "This has deceived the good man Oecolampadius, that Scripture, so [in his head] are contrary to each other, must of course be reconciled and one part take a mind that suffers itself with the other. ... But if they would consider beforehand and see how they would speak nothing but God's doctrine, as St. Peter teaches, and leave their saying and putting at home, they would not cause so much misfortune."568)
It should be mentioned that the formation of systems, which is adjusted to a "gapless", "contradictionless" unity or to a closed "logical whole", has also been criticized sharply in the present. It has been said that the whole
567) St. L. IX, 810 ff. <w:t xml:space="preserve">568) St. L. XX, 798.
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system-building, which has been inoculated into the theology of the 19th century by the "reformer of the church of the 19th century", by Schleiermacher, is, strictly speaking, a sleight of hand. This system formation, which is on the line of Schleiermacher-Hofmann-Frank, etc., actually amounts to either completely deleting or at least reducing the incomprehensible, which cannot be separated from the Christian religion, in order to make the Christian faith acceptable to an unbelieving generation. This generally admired system formation has also been compared to the Procrustean bed. On the other hand, modern theologians have now recommended another way for the necessary salvation of the incomprehensible in Christianity. It must be recognized as a fact that everything that faith says in this eon in relation to Christian doctrine necessarily takes the form of the "irrational" or the "paradox". This sounds good and seems to stand in harmony with 1 Cor. 13:9: "Our knowledge (in this life is piecemeal, and our prophesying is piecemeal." But unless the proponents of the theology of the "irrational" return to Scripture as the Word of God and as the sole source and norm of theology, they determine the "irrational" or the super-rational found in Christianity not from Scripture but from the ego of the theologizing subject. Therefore, there is only a differently named form of human system formation. Subjectivism is not overcome, but remains in principle in force. The "Christian I" remains with the method of turning around its own axis. And let us not forget that this is the case with every form of subjectivism. As long as we put in the place of sola gratia self-determination, self-setting, self-decision, human behavior, facultas se applicandi ad gratiam, etc., and further: as long as we put in the place of sola Scriptura the "pious" self-consciousness, the religious experience, the religious cognition, the "faith," etc. of the theologizing subject, so long we remain — seen from the scientific character of our procedure — in the great circle of those who, as I said, move ον κατ επίγνωσιν around their own axis. And the result of this circular movement around one's own ego is uncertainty of salvation and uncertainty of truth. Hence
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Luther's struggle for sola gratia and sola Scriptura against both Rome and Reformed zealotry. Hence the warning of the Formula of Concord against founding the Christian state by anything located in man himself (by "aliquid in homine"). Hence our own hot fight here in the United States against the Ego theology of the Reformed sects and against the Ego theology of synergism, which even under the Lutheran name demanded and still demands a right to exist. Christian certainty of salvation and Christian certainty of truth is only possible if we, with Luther, go "beyond ourselves" out of our ego or — what is the same thing — take a standpoint outside the world. This happens above only by remaining in accordance with the order established by Christ through faith in His (Christ's) Word, which we have in the Word of His apostles and prophets, in the Holy Scriptures.