_8_A Brief Critique of Modern Theology in So Far As It Denies the Inspiration of Scripture

We are summarizing what has already been said elsewhere. In Hastings’ Encyclopedia, VII, p. 346, Strahan correctly describes the difference between the old theology and the modern theology as to their attitude toward Scripture thus: the old theologians aim to present in the article “De Scriptura Sacra” not their own notions, but God’s views and teachings as He revealed them in His Word. Modern theologians, however, regard the opposite method as the only correct one. They assume a critical attitude over against Scripture. They do not propose to teach what the Scriptures say of themselves, but they judge of Scripture on the basis of the impression which Scripture makes upon them, the theologians. By this procedure, which they call the “scientific” one, they arrive at the result that the Scriptures are not the Word of God and that accordingly the old doctrine of inspiration must be discarded. Strahan declares: “Protestant scholars of the present day, imbued 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 the present day,” Strahan means nothing else than that these theologians do not propose to teach what Scripture says of itself. Strahan himself explains his words in this way when he continues: “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.” The result of this method of ascertaining “the worth of Scripture” Strahan states in these words: “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.” Just as unfavorable, according to Strahan’s report, is the result of the scientific investigation of the New Testament: “There are not a few passages in the Bible which cannot be regarded by Protestants as in any true sense inspired.”

This portrayal of the attitude of modern theology toward Scripture in distinction from the old theology is absolutely correct. Take Theodore Kaftan as a representative. When he writes: “We are realists,” he means thereby: What the Scriptures teach of themselves is not authoritative for us, but only that is authoritative which we, according to the impression which Scripture makes upon us, regard as the divine truth. By this method Kaftan also has arrived at the result that Verbal Inspiration must be “definitely abandoned” (Moderne Theologie des alten Glaubens, 2d ed., pp. 108, 113, 116).

The question why people do not recognize the Scriptures, which are the Word of God, as the Word of God, is clearly answered by the Scriptures. Jesus is dealing (John 8) with people who would not recognize His Word as the Word of the Son of God. Jesus indicates this when He says (v. 37): “My Word hath no place in you,” and when He asks them (v. 43): “Why do ye not understand My speech?” and then supplies the answer: “Even because ye cannot hear My Word.” And the cause of the Jews’ inability to understand His speech and hear His Word, Jesus says, is the fact that they are not children of God, have no communion with God. Positively and negatively Jesus declares (v. 47): “He that is of God heareth God’s words; ye therefore hear them not because ye are not of God.” It is obvious from the context that the term “hear” is here used in the pregnant sense, denoting not merely the external hearing with the ears, but also the “internal” hearing, the reception of the word as God’s Word. With the external ear the Jews heard Christ’s Word, but since they were not children of God, they could not recognize Christ’s Word as God’s Word, but revolted against it. Christ here establishes the fact that acceptance of His Word as God’s Word is confined to the Christians. Again, in John 10:4, in the Parable of the Good Shepherd, Christ says that His sheep follow Him, “for they know His voice,” and in v. 26 He gives as the reason why the Jews would not accept His Word: “Because ye are not of My sheep.” Luther, too, remarks on John 8: “Hence the Jews have no other ground for their unbelief than that they are not God’s children” (St. L. XI:568). But, now, why does Christ deny that the Jews who were disputing with Him were God’s children and declare that they were consequently unable to receive His Word as God’s Word? The Jews based their divine sonship on their natural descent from Abraham, saying: “Abraham is our father,” John 8:39. Thus they revealed that they did not recognize Christ as the Savior of sinners, as the One who had come to give His life as a ransom for many (Matt. 20:28). Expressed in theological terms, they did not recognize Christ’s satisfactio vicaria, although His satisfactio vicaria had been clearly pictured to them 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” (ch. 53:5), and though Christ Himself had reminded them of this satisfactio when He told them: “If you believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). In short, the Jews’ rejection of the Word of Christ as not being the Word of God was but a symptom of a deeper-seated disease, namely, that they did not believe in Christ’s vicarious satisfaction.

Even so the fact that the modern theologians do not perceive Scripture (which verily is Christ’s own Word, given us through His Prophets and Apostles) to be the Word of God, is but a symptom of a deeper-seated disease, namely, that they have quite generally discarded the doctrine of the satisfactio Christi vicaria. For this reason all their theological thoughts move outside the Christian sphere. Without “the cost” (“Koeste”), that is, without Christ’s satisfactio vicaria, doctrine and faith remain Turkish and Jewish, as Luther expresses it in his powerful sermon on John 3:16-21. “I have often said before this that faith in God is in itself not sufficient, but the cost must also be there. The Turk and the Jew, too, believe in God, but without the means and the cost.” (St. L. XI: 1085.) “lustus fide vivet, sed fide Crucifixi” — the just lives by faith, by faith in the Crucified One (XXI a: 1514). Where the satisfactio vicaria is not taught and believed, there is also no Holy Ghost, for only through this doctrine, through faith in this doctrine, does the Holy Ghost enter into the heart (Gal. 3:2; John 16:14); and He is the Spirit of truth, who teaches me to recognize His Word which He spoke through the Prophets and Apostles (1 Pet. 1:10-12) as His Word. Modern theology must therefore return to the Scriptural teaching of the satisfactio vicaria. Without this return it will never attain the Christian attitude toward Scripture, but will continue, in its teaching on Scripture, to contradict Christ and His Apostles to their face. — That is not to say that everyone who from the security of the rostrum or in his “scientific” writings criticizes the satisfactio vicaria cannot have faith in Christ. We like to think of a “double bookkeeping,” or inconsistency, according to which a person in his heart and before God does not rely on what he defends as truth in disputationibus, as Luther and Chemnitz express it.

Furthermore, in order to understand the nature of modern theology as far as it attacks the inspiration of Scripture, the following should be noted: It lies in the nature of the case, and it is generally admitted, that truth cannot be fought with truth, but only with untruth. Now, since the inspiration of Scripture is the truth, all who attack this truth are compelled to operate with untruths. We see this clearly when we test the quality of the arguments which are adduced against inspiration. These arguments can adequately be called a large collection of historical and logical untruths. Let us recall here the facts which we have established above.

To refer, first, to historical untruths:

1. Nearly all opponents of the doctrine of inspiration insist that it was the later dogmaticians who invented the “artificial theory” that every word of Scripture is the infallible Word of God (“identification of Scripture with the Word of God”), while Luther had preserved an attitude of freedom over against Scripture. The historical truth is, as we have seen, that Luther presented in all its details the doctrine found in the dogmaticians and that he did it so much more powerfully than the dogmaticians could do it. 2. If we examine the quotations from Luther which are brought forward in the attempt to make Luther the protector of the neologists in their fight against inspiration, we find that these passages either do not speak of inspiration at all (as, e. g., the “hay, straw, and stubble” passage) or say the opposite of what is ascribed to Luther. This includes the passages which are adduced to show that Luther admitted contradictions, etc., in the Scriptures. 3. To discredit Verbal Inspiration in the eyes of the public, the assertion is rather generally made that the dogmaticians had entirely “mechanical conceptions” of the inspiration of Scripture. The historical truth is that the dogmaticians expressly reject all mechanical conceptions; they teach that the Holy Ghost suavi operatione (by a suave operation) so influenced the intellect and will of the writers that they wrote volentes scientesque (willing it and conscious of it), not citra et contra voluntatem suam, inscii ac inviti (without and contrary to their will, unknowingly and unwillingly). 4. To discredit Verbal Inspiration, it is further asserted that the verbal-inspirationists regarded Holy Scripture as “a codex of laws fallen from heaven,” as “a paper pope,” etc. The truth is that such a thought never entered the minds of the defenders of Verbal Inspiration. Rather they teach very clearly that Scripture did not fall from heaven, but was written here on earth by men, in a human tongue, through the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. And the advocates of Verbal Inspiration do not set up Scripture as a “paper pope,” which demands external subjection without internal conviction, but to them Scripture is a book that— by virtue of its being God’s own Word — itself works faith and eo ipso willing and joyous acceptance through the operation of the Holy Ghost inherent in it.

Furthermore, it is evident that modern theology in the heat of its battle against inspiration has been led into alogisms (absurdities), paralogisms (formal fallacies), self-contradictions, that is, into logical untruths. It betrays a total absence of logic when, as we have seen, 1) the distinct style of each writer, the reference of the writers to their historical investigation or to communications of facts by other persons, their use of existing records and documents, the variant readings in the copies of the Bible, are advanced against the doctrine of inspiration. 2) Also the fact that the holy writers were and remained sinners does not contradict the inspiration but rather calls for it if it is granted that the Church is not built on the fallible word of men, but is built to the end of time on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets. 3) It is a paralogism to use Luther’s “liberal opinions” on the antilegomena, which he, together with the Early Church, did not consider a part of the fixed canon, as proof that he took a “liberal attitude” toward Scripture in general, also toward the homologumena, and doubted their inspiration. 4) That the opposition to the truth of inspiration leads to the predicament of logical untruth is apparent from the self-contradictions in which these men involve themselves. On the one hand we have the assertion that in presenting the Christian doctrine one must not proceed from the “word revelation,” that is, from Holy Scripture, but from “faith” in the “revelation by deed” or in the “facts of salvation,” a faith which the Christian or theologian has in his heart. On the other hand, these same men admit, and they are right in doing this, that God’s “revelation by deed” without God’s revelation in the Word, remains an “undecipherable hieroglyph.” The latter assertion entirely cancels the former, since it establishes that without God’s revelation in the Word no faith whatever in God’s “revelation by deed” is possible; nothing would be left from which to proceed. Similarly, Theo. Kaftan is so set on doing away with Verbal Inspiration that he, too, asserts two things that cancel each other. On the one hand he asserts that all theologians know that “there is no authentic text” of the Holy Scriptures since the number of variant readings is “legion.” On the other hand he (Kaftan) is sure that he can determine on the basis of Scripture what is and what is not the objective Word of God in the Bible. (Moderne Theol. d. Alten Glaubens, 2d ed., p. 96 f., p. 113.) That this would be impossible on the supposition that “there is no established text” of the Holy Scriptures did not dawn on him.

In the foregoing paragraphs we have passed harsh judgments on the deniers of the inspiration of Holy Scripture. But while doing this, we do not forget — to use a drastic term of Luther — to “take hold of our own nose” and charge ourselves that we are not always as “serious as we should be” in taking the Bible to be the very Word of God. We confess that when we open our Bible, we do not always consider that the Bible is the book in which not men, but the great God Himself, the Creator and Lord of the universe, is speaking to us in matters of our salvation. We further confess that we do not read the Holy Scriptures as diligently as is proper for those who by God’s grace are convinced that the Holy Scriptures are “God’s letter” addressed to us. Luther says repeatedly, in various forms of expression: “Letters of lords and princes should be read twice and thrice, for they are carefully worded. But, verily, the letters of our Lord God — for thus St. Gregory calls the Holy Scriptures — one should read three times, seven times, yea, seventy times seven, or, to make it still stronger, without end. But we do not do it. I myself do not do it; therefore I hate myself, ego odi me. But when I get at it and read it, I derive strength from it; I feel that it is a power and not a mere story.” (St. L. I:1055; XXII: 544, 1069.)