8. Summary characterization of recent theology insofar as it denies the inspiration of Scripture.
In this section we do not bring anything new, but only summarize the main points of what has already been said repeatedly in other connections. Strahan, in Hastings1002) , correctly defines the difference between the ancient and the modern theologians as far as their position on Holy Scriptures is concerned: In the article De Scriptura Sacra, the ancient theologians did not want to present their own
1001) Dogmengesch. 2 II, 289.
1002) Encyclopedia. VII, 346.
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view, but God's view and doctrine as revealed in His Word. The newer theologians, on the other hand, consider the opposite method to be the only correct one. The newer theologians, on the other hand, consider the opposite method to be the only correct one. They take a critical position toward the Scriptures. They do not want to teach what the doctrines say about themselves, but to present what is to be held of the doctrines according to the impression which they, the theologians, receive from the doctrines. On the basis of this procedure, which they call the "scientific" one, they come to the conclusion that the Scriptures are not the Word of God and that therefore the old doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures must be abandoned. Strahan literally says: "Protestant scholars of the present day, filled with the scientific spirit, have no a priori theory of the inspiration of the Bible." By the a priori theory rejected by Protestant scholars of our time, Strahan understands nothing more than that these theologians do not intend to teach from Scripture what Scripture says of itself. Thus Strahan declares himself when he goes on to say, "They do not open any book Old or New Testament with the feeling that they are bound to regard what it teaches as sacred and authoritative (authoritative). They accept only what they regard as irresistible logic of facts. They hold that if they are not convinced of the inspiration of the Bible by its [the Bible's] intrinsic value, they cannot be validly convinced of it in any other way. And finally, if they formulate a doctrine of the divine influence under which the Scriptures were written, it can only be an inference from the essential features which, after free and honest investigation, they cannot but acknowledge." 1003) The result of this method of ascertaining "the value of Scripture" is given by Strahan in the words, "The ancient doctrine of the equal and infallible inspiration of all
1003) Strahan, op. cit.: "Protestant scholars of the present day, imbued with the scientific spirit, have no a priori theory of the inspiration of the Bible. … They do not open any book of the Old or New Testament with the feeling that they are bound to regard its teaching as sacred and authoritative. They yield to nothing but what they regard as the irresistible logic of facts. They feel that, if they are not convinced of the inspiration of the Bible by its intrinsic merits, they cannot be legitimately convinced in any other way. And if in the end they formulate a doctrine of the divine influence under which the Scriptures were written, this is an inference from the characteristics which, after free and fair investigation, they are constrained to recognize."
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parts of the Old Testament Scriptures … are now rapidly disappearing among Protestants. In fact, there is no clear dividing line between what deserves and what does not deserve a place in Scripture." Strahan's report presents an equally unfavorable result with respect to the New Testament. He says, "The number of those passages in the Bible which cannot be regarded by Protestants as inspired in any true sense is not small." 1004)
We will have to admit that in this description the position of modern theology to the Scriptures is correctly drawn in contrast to the old one. Theodor Kaftan can be considered as a representative. When he writes:1005) "We are reality people," he means: What is authoritative for us is not what the doctrines teach of themselves, but what we accept as divine truth according to the impression that the doctrines make on us (insofar as the doctrines "prevail" with us).1006) Theodor Kaftan also came to the conclusion in this way that verbal inspiration had "definitely been overcome".1007)
If we ask where it comes from that men, when they do not recognize the Scripture, which is nevertheless God's Word, as God's Word, the Scripture gives us clear information about it. Christ had to deal with people in John 8 who could not recognize His Word as the Word of the Son of God. Christ points to this fact when he says v. 27, “My Word hath no place in you,” ου χωρεΐ έν νμϊν, and in the question v. 43, "Why then know ye not my language? For ye cannot hear my word." But this fact that the Jews do not know his language and cannot hear his word, he justifies with the other fact that they are not God's children, but stand outside the community of God. Positively and negatively Christ says v. 47: "He that is of God heareth the Word of God: therefore hear ye not, because ye are not of God." That "hear" here stands in the concise sense, not merely
1004) ""To sum up: the old doctrine of the equal and infallible inspiration of every part of the Old Testament ... is now rapidly disappearing among Protestants. There is, in reality, no clear dividing-line between what is and what is not worthy of a place in the Scriptures." Also with regard to the New Testament, the result of the scientific investigation is: "There are not a few passages in the Bible which cannot be regarded by Protestants as in any true sense inspired." (op. cit.)
1005) Modern Theology of the Old Faith 2, p. 108.
1006) op. cit., p. 113.<w:t>1007) op. cit., p. 116.
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the external hearing with the ears, but the "inward" hearing, the acceptance of the word as Word of God, results from the context. With the external ear the Jews heard Christ's word, but because they were not God's children, so they could not recognize Christ's word as God's word, but revolted against it. Christ here states the fact that the acceptance of His Word as the Word of God is limited to Christians. Likewise, Jn. 10:4, in the image of shepherd and flock, he says that his sheep follow him, "for they know his voice," oτt οϊδααιν την φωνήν αντον, and v. 26 he justifies the non-acceptance of his word on the part of the Jews by saying, "For you are not my sheep," ον γάρ έστε εκ των προβάτων των εμών. So also Luther remarks on John 8:1008) "So then the Jews have no other excuse of their unbelief, except that they are not God's children." But why does Christ deny the Jews disputing with Him the sonship of God and thus also the ability to recognize His Word as the Word of God? The Jews based their sonship to God on their bodily descent from Abraham. They said: "Abraham is our father", Jn. 8:39. Thereby they revealed that they did not recognize Christ as the Savior of sinners, as the one who came to give his life for redemption (λύτρον) for many.1009) Terminologically expressed: they did not recognize Christ in his satisfactio vicaria, although Christ precisely in his satisfactio vicaria was already so clearly painted before their eyes by Isaiah: " he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." 1010) Christ had also emphatically reminded them of this, John 8:24, saying, "If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." In short, the fact that the Jews did not recognize Christ's Word as the Word of God, but rejected it, was only a symptom of a deeper damage, namely the damage of not recognizing Christ in His substitutionary satisfaction. — In the same way, the fact that the newer theologians do not recognize the Scriptures (which are truly Christ's own Word given to us through His prophets and apostles) as the Word of God is only a symptom of the deeper damage, that they have almost universally abandoned the doctrine of the satisfactio Christi vicaria. Thus they live in their
1008) St. L. XI, 568.
1009) Matt. 20:28.
1010) Is. 53:5.
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theological thought outside the Christian sphere. Without "cost", that is, without Christ's satisfactio vicaria, doctrine and faith remain of the Turk and Jewish, as Luther says in his powerful sermon on John 3:16-21). "I have often said before that faith alone is not enough to God, but the cost must also be there. The Turk and Jew also believe in God, but without means and cost." "Iustus fide vivet, sed fide Crucifixi.” 1012) Where the satisfactio vicaria is not taught and believed, there is not the Holy Spirit, because only through this doctrine and faith in this doctrine does the Holy Spirit come into the heart,1013) the Spirit of truth, who teaches his word, which he spoke through the prophets and apostles,1014) also to be known as his word. Therefore, modern theology must return to the scriptural doctrine of satisfactio vicaria. Without this return, it will not find the Christian position on Scripture, but will continue to contradict Christ and His apostles to their faces in its judgment of Scripture. That we do not deny the Christian faith absolutely to everyone who criticizes the satisfactio vicaria from the safety of the cathedra and in "scientific" writings comes from the fact that we like to think of a possible "double-entry bookkeeping" or inconsistency, according to which someone does not consider true in his heart and before God what he advocates in disputationibus, as Luther and Chemnitz express themselves.
The characteristic of modern theology, in so far as it combats the inspiration of Scripture, further includes the following: It is in the nature of things, and is also generally admitted, that truth cannot be combated with truth, but only with untruth. Now, because the inspiration of Scripture is truth, all who combat this truth are in the position of having to deal with untruth. This becomes clear when we examine the quality of the arguments with which they wage war against inspiration. These arguments can be adequately described as a large collection of historical and logical falsehoods. We recall here what has already been proven earlier.
First of all, in order to reject historical untruths: Almost all deniers of inspiration claim that only the later dogmatists invented the "artificial theory" according to which all the
1011) St. L. XI, 1085.<w:t xml:space="preserve">1012) St. L. XXI b, 1514.
1013) Gal. 3:2; Jn. 16:14.
1014) 1 Petr. 1:10-12.
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words of Scripture were God's infallible Word ("identification of Scripture and Word of God"), while Luther maintained the position of freedom towards Scripture. The historical truth is, as we saw, that Luther presents the doctrine we find in the dogmatists in all details and much more powerfully than the dogmatists were able to do. If we look further at the quotations from Luther by which the attempt is made to gain from Luther a protector of the modern-theological position on Scripture, they are passages which either do not deal with inspiration at all (as the "hay, straw, and stubble" quotation), or they are passages in which, as soon as one reads them up, nothing of what is ascribed to Luther stands. Here belong the passages which are supposed to show that Luther admitted contradictions etc. in the Scriptures. — In order to discredit the verbal inspiration before the public, the assertion is made almost throughout that the dogmatists had quite "mechanical ideas" about the inspiration of Scripture. The historical truth is that the dogmatists expressly repudiate all mechanical conceptions, teaching that the Holy Spirit suavi operatione so acted upon the minds and wills of the sacred writers that they wrote volentes scientesqne, not citra et contra voluntatem suam, inscii ac inviti. — To discredit verbal inspiration, it is further claimed that the representatives of verbal inspiration regarded Holy Scriptures as a "code of laws fallen from heaven," as a "paper pope," etc., whereas no such thing ever occurred to the representatives of verbal inspiration. Rather, they teach very clearly that the Holy Scriptures did not fall from heaven, but were written here on earth by men and in human language by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Nor do the representatives of verbal inspiration regard Scripture as a "paper pope" to which one submits without inner conviction, but to them Scripture is a book which — precisely because it is God's own Word — procures for itself faith and eo ipso willing and joyful recognition through the action of the Holy Spirit associated with it.
It is also clear that modern theology, in its zeal to fight against inspiration, moves in alogisms, paralogisms, self-contradictions, that is, in logical falsehoods. A complete absence of logic is present, as we have seen, when it is objected against inspiration: the different style
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in the individual books of Scripture, the calling of the writers to historical research or the communication of facts by other persons, the use of writings and documents already available, the presence of different readings in the copies of the Bible. Even the fact that the holy writers were and remained sinners does not contradict inspiration, but rather demands it on the premise that the Church is not built on fallible human word, but on the foundation of the apostles and prophets until the Last Day. A paralogism is also present when Luther's "free judgments" on the Antilegomena, which he does not count as part of the established canon with the ancient Church, are cited as proof that he took a "free position" on Scripture in general, that is, also on the Homologumena, and questioned their inspiration. — That the opponents of the truth of inspiration come into the position of becoming logically untrue, finally also appears from the self-contradictions which we perceive in them. On the one hand, we encounter the assertion that in the presentation of Christian doctrine one must not start from the "word revelation," that is, from the Holy Scriptures, but from the "faith" in the "deed revelation" or "salvation facts" which the Christian or the theologian carries within himself. On the other hand, it is admitted by the same persons, and rightly so, that without God's revelation in the Word, God's “revelation in deed" remains an "ununderstood hieroglyph." The latter statement completely cancels out the former, because it states that without God's revelation in the Word, there is no belief in the "revelation of deed" to start from at all. Further: Theodor Kaftan is so zealous in combating verbal inspiration that he also asserts two things that dismiss each other. On the one hand, he claims that it is not hidden from any theologian "that there is no fixed text of Holy Scriptures" because the number of different readings is "legion."1015) On the other hand, he claims that he (Kaftan) can determine on the basis of Scripture what in Scripture is objective Word of God and what is not.1016) That this is impossible on the premise "that there is no fixed text of Holy Scriptures" has escaped his perception.
1015) Modern Theology of the Old Faith 2, p. 96 f.
1016) op. cit., p. 113.
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In the foregoing we have pronounced harsh judgments on the deniers of the inspiration of Holy Scriptures. But we do not forget — to use a coarse expression of Luther — to "take ourselves by the nose" and to accuse ourselves that we do not always "with right seriousness" take the Scriptures for the Word of God. We will have to confess that we do not consider every time we open our Bible that the Bible is the book in which not men but the great God Himself, the Creator and Lord of the universe, speaks to us in matters of our salvation. We will also have to confess that we do not read the Holy Scriptures as diligently as befits those who are convinced by God's grace that the Holy Scriptures are "God's letter" to us men. Luther says repeatedly and in alternate expressions:1017) ) Lords' and princes' letters should be read two and three times, for they are written thoughtfully. But truly, the letters of our Lord God — for that is what St. Gregory calls the Holy Scriptures — should be read three times, seven times, even seventy times seven times, or, that I may say more, infinitely. But we don't do it. I don't do it myself, that's why I'm sorry for myself, ego odi me; but when I get over it and read it, I find strength, I feel that it is a strength, and that it is not a [mere] history.