_9_The Consequences of the Denial of the Inspiration of Holy Scripture

Though the earlier modern theologians, such as Kahnis, Luthardt, and others, denied the inspiration and together therefore necessarily the infallibility of Scripture, they nevertheless asserted that the Protestant principle of the sole authority of Scripture must stand. Nothing must be placed above the Bible in matters of the Christian faith. The Bible must remain the “final norm” of Christian knowledge and doctrine. Kahnis wrote: “Protestantism stands and falls with the principle of the sole authority of Scripture. This principle is independent of the dogmaticians’ doctrine of inspiration.” 102 These men were reminded at the time, here and abroad, that they were deceiving themselves. If the Scriptures are not the pure divine truth, but also contain error besides the truth, the theologian, whose task it is to separate the truth from the error according to his “faith consciousness” or his “Christian Ego,” is necessarily made the ultimate and highest norm within Protestantism, is placed above the Scriptures. And this degrading of Scripture to a norma normata was very soon quite generally practiced and declared to be the only correct thing. Thus Seeberg, for instance, who declared that the “testimony of Christ and His salvation” in Scripture must act as the corrective of the Word of Scripture, even citing Luther as authority for such a procedure, writes: “From this viewpoint the Scriptures must not be co-ordinated as the second principle [Seeberg’s emphasis] of Protestantism with justifying faith. The controlling fundamental thought is faith. And since faith alone understands Scripture and Scripture is intended only for faith, it [Scripture] must be subordinated [our emphasis] to the principle of faith.” We see here what happens to Protestantism when it relinquishes the truth that Scripture is the infallible Word of God. The principle of Protestantism, “the sole authority of Scripture,” is turned upside down. The faith of the Christians is no longer based on the Scriptures, on the Word of the Apostles and Prophets, but the order is inverted: the Scriptures, the Word of the Apostles and Prophets, are based on faith. Protestantism has degenerated into out-and-out “enthusiasm,” as we have it in Quakerism. We point to Robert Barclay, the dogmatician of the Quakers, who likewise says that Scripture is not the “adequate primary rule of faith and morals,” but is merely to be regarded as “a secondary rule, subordinate to the Spirit” (regula secundaria, subordinata Spiritui). “The last resort” and “the sure and immovable foundation of the entire Christian faith” is not the Holy Scriptures, but the inner, immediate revelation of the Holy Ghost, which brings with it its own certainty.

Seeberg fully agrees with Barclay; he merely substitutes “faith” for Barclay’s “inner, immediate revelation,” to which as first principle the Scriptures are to be “subordinated” as second principle (today it is no longer the fashion to speak of “inner, immediate revelations”). And the entire modern theology, in so far as it denies the inspiration of Scripture, agrees with Seeberg in principle and usually also in form. It is not Scripture which is the source and norm of faith, but faith is the source and norm of theology.

The results of the denial of the inspiration of Scripture are the following:

1. The knowledge of Christian truth is lost and in its place we get human illusion and ignorance. For if any man teach otherwise and consent not to the wholesome words of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we have them in the words of His Apostles and Prophets, he is bloated and ignorant, sick () about questions and strife of words (1 Tim. 6:3-4; John 8:31-32; John 17:20). If those who deny the inspiration of Scripture are not entirely engulfed in human opinions and ignorance, it is because inconsistently they disown their false principle and still cling to portions of the truth revealed in Scripture.

2. Faith, in the Christian sense, is relinquished, since Christian faith can exist only vis-à-vis the Word of God. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God (Rom. 10:17).

3. Prayer must be given up, since Christian prayer presupposes the continuing in Christ’s words. “If ye abide in Me and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (John 15:7).

4. Victory over death is rendered impossible. “If a man keep My saying, he shall never see death” (John 8:51).

5. If we deny inspiration, we relinquish the one effective means of doing mission work, which consists in teaching men to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded His Church (Matt. 28:19). Whoever does not bring the doctrine of Christ should not be received or treated as a Christian teacher (2 John 9-10).

6. We lose the true Christian unity of the Church, which consists in faith in the Word of Christ (John 8:31-32; Matt. 28:19; Eph. 4:3). Luther: “The Word and the doctrine must effect the Christian fellowship and unity” (St. L. IX:831).

7. We relinquish intercourse with God, since God, remaining invisible to us in this life, approaches us only through His Word. He that does not commune with God solely by means of His Word is holding intercourse only with his own fantasies, with “projections of his human Ego” (1 Cor. 13:12; 1 Tim. 6:3-4).

8. We turn the Christian religion, which is the wisdom from above, the which has not “entered into the heart of man” and is a “mystery which was kept secret since the world began but now is made manifest by the Scriptures of the Prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God” (1 Cor. 2:9; Rom. 16:25-26) — this wisdom from above we turn into a wisdom “of this world,” since we let men decide for us what in the Scriptures of the Apostles and Prophets is God’s truth and what is not God’s truth, and how much of Scripture is to be accepted and how much rejected. We demolish the divine Jacob’s ladder, the bridge and the path, which unites heaven with this earth. In short, everything that makes Christians of us and keeps us Christians, we renounce in principle if we depart from the truth that the Holy Scriptures are by inspiration God’s own infallible Word.

Walther, therefore, in 1886, a year before his death, induced by the attempt of modern theologians to make Luther the protector of their “liberal” attitude toward Scripture, wrote the following: “Suppose that Luther actually regarded the Bible as a book containing all manner of error, out of which only the scholars could lift the kernel of divine truth, that position would rob the Bible Christians only of Luther. But it is a most horrible thing that the theologians of the Modernist faith, including the Modernist Lutherans (without exception, it would seem), declare it to be a fact no longer debatable that the Scriptures contain, besides the ‘good thoughts’ of their authors, also ‘hay, straw, and stubble,’ which ‘the fire consumes.’ That stand robs the Bible Christians not only of a man whom they had heretofore regarded as a faithful witness of the truth, but it robs the Bible Christians of the Bible itself, a lamp to their feet and a light on their path forever, their rod and their staff in the dark valley of affliction, in short, of God’s Word, their consolation in the terrors of sin, their hope in the darkness of their last hour! … We must say of this so-called ‘divine-human nature of Scripture,’ as the term is understood by modern theologians: Beware, beware, I say, of this ‘divine-human’ Scripture. It is a devil’s mask, for at last it manufactures such a Bible according to which I certainly would not care to be a Bible Christian; namely, that henceforth the Bible should be no more than any good book, a book which I would have to read with constant scrutiny in order not to be led into error. For if I believe that the Bible also contains errors, it is to me no longer a touchstone, but itself stands in need of one. In a word, it is unspeakable what the devil seeks with this ‘divine-human’ Scripture.” (Lehre und Wehre, 1886, p. 76f.)