American Lutheranism, Volume 2 / The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General Council, United Synod in the South)

by F. Bente

LIBERALISTIC TRENDS.

137. Rejecting Verbal Inspiration.—Even the doctrines of the verbal inspiration and the complete inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures have been assailed by prominent representatives of the General Council and the Lutheran Church Review. Dr. H.E. Jacobs, in his introduction to Biblical Criticism (1903) by Dr. J.A.W. Haas, states: "It is, therefore, the Word and not the words; the divine substance and not the particular human form in which that substance is clothed; the divine truth and not the human language, with all its limitations, which, in accommodation to human finiteness, the Holy Spirit employs, that is 'the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.'" (18.) "Nevertheless, the subordination of the words of Holy Scripture to the Word in no way diminishes the need of the most reverent handling and the most careful judgment of the words themselves when considered in the place which they are intended to serve." (19.) "A text from Genesis and one from John, one from the Psalms, and another from Romans, cannot stand upon the same footing…. Many a precious passage in the Old Testament can no longer be used as the sincere expression of Christian faith in the light of the clearer revelation of the Gospel." (21.) "There are few theorists who would assign the same degree of inspiration to the statistics and rolls in Ezra or Chronicles as to those parts of the New Testament for whose reading the dying ask when all other earthly words have lost their interest. Even the distinction between the Petrine and the Pauline theology, which the Tuebingen school so greatly exaggerated, contains within it an element of truth, when the difference is found to be one of degree, but not one of kind." (21.) "The time has come when, in antagonism to such [radical] criticism, the Church must offer a restatement of its doctrine of the Holy Scriptures. The theories of our dogmaticians are not the confessional declarations of our Church. The Augsburg Confession contains no statement on this topic." (26.) "It is only the Formula of Concord that gives an official utterance…. But it formulates no definition either of revelation or inspiration. It simply presents to us in the Scriptures an inerrant and infallible judge concerning all religious truth…. Religious truth, it declares, 'is to be received only as revealed in God's Word," and for this Word we turn to the Scriptures." (27.) "For the truths made known by such revelation we are referred to a record. But that such a certain and indubitable record should be made, another supernatural act is necessary, and this is inspiration. This includes everything that is necessary to render the record an infallible standard of all religious truth." (27.) "If the verbal theory of inspiration mean that every word and letter are inspired, so that the writer was purely passive and performed a merely mechanical office, as 'the pen of the Holy Ghost,' this, we hold, is an assumption for which we have no warrant…. All we need to know is that in the Holy Scriptures we have a complete, clear, and unerring record of revealed truth, that is made the standard, for all time, of religious teaching." (28.) Evidently, then, Drs. Jacobs and Haas do not believe that the Holy Scriptures everywhere are inspired and free from error.

138. Bible Fallible in Scientific Matters.—Dr. J. Stump, professor in the seminary of the General Council in Chicago, supporting Dr. Jacobs, maintained in the Lutheran Church Review of January, 1904: One cannot speak of a confessional Lutheran doctrine of inspiration. Quenstedt's doctrine of verbal inspiration is mechanical and in conflict with all that we know of the Holy Ghost's activity; it cannot be proven from the Scriptures, nor indeed is it necessary. Stump considers the Bible free from error in its religious teachings, but not in its astronomical, geological, physical, and similar statements. To quote literally: "The holy writers were not inspired, however, to be 'teachers of astronomy, or geology, or physics,' and no number of contradictions in this sphere would shake our confidence in the absolute authority of Holy Scripture as the infallible test of theological truth, and inerrant guide in all matters of faith and practise." "The dogmaticians were led to maintain it [the verbal inspiration] by the exigency of the times and the stress of their severe dialectics. [The interest of the dogmaticians was to present the clear doctrine of the Scriptures on inspiration.] And as a result of their doctrines, they were logically obliged to claim the absolute impossibility of any kind of error or inaccuracy whatsoever in the Scriptures, even in unimportant externals; and further more to claim that the Scriptures are not only the sole and infallible guide in matters of religion, but also an infallible guide in matters of human science so far as they touched upon any part of science's domain, —claims which a careful examination of the Scriptures and the purpose for which they were written do not bear out." (L. u. W. 1904, 85.) It was in agreement with these views when the Lutheran, prior to 1904, maintained that the Bible must be explained according to the modern sciences.

139. Other Symptoms of Liberalism.—As a rule, the inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures is denied in the interest of the theory of evolution, a doctrine absolutely incompatible with, and, consistently developed, destructive of, the very fundamentals of Lutheranism. The evolutionary doctrine, however, this antipode of Christian thought, which, wherever digested, has proved to be the beginning of the end of Christianity, was adopted also and publicly defended within the General Council. Rev. Brenner says: "I have heard General Council ministers say that they did not believe everything that is written in the Bible, and as they continued to explain their views, it became very evident that they were evolutionists." (L. u. W. 1917, 465.) Dr. T.E. Schmauk, the president of the General Council, declared in the Lutheran, April, 1912: "Evolution is the most wide-embracing, suggestive, and fascinating theory of things and life that ever has been offered. In innumerable cases it has been found to be in accord with nature and with history. In itself it is not a cause, but a process. Evolution as a partial process may be within Christianity." In 1915, in his book, Trends of Thought, Dr. J.A.W. Haas wrote: "If evolution as a biological theory remains within its limits and knows its sphere, it will not contradict the claims of Christianity. If we avoid a materialistic philosophy in biology, and if we do not make nature all-controlling, we can accept evolution as not in disagreement with Christianity." "But, on the other hand, Christianity must be careful not to demand as Biblical facts old hypotheses of species. It must differentiate between statement in popular religious language and the interpretation which tradition has put upon Biblical statement. In this tradition there are elements of past science which have unconsciously colored the Biblical account. Christianity must also treat its document historically, and not be disturbed if the temporal vessels of its religious truths are not shaped scientifically. Were they thus shaped, they would fail in their very purpose. It is general, popular, descriptive, childlike language, which is universal and lasting. But Christianity must make certain great reservations over against any theory of evolution. It must demand that the doctrines of a personal God, of the final spiritual character of life and its origin, and of the divine nature of man's spirit be not violated." "Christianity can allow an evolution as the continuation of creation." (L. u. W. 1915, 514.) The Lutheran, June 21, 1917, published an article of L.S. Keyser in which he maintains: "Evolution is God's method of developing that which He has previously created. The evolutionary process may have continued for millenniums upon millenniums until the introduction of life. Whether man's body was evolved or not, surely his soul must have been created. We should use two terms: creation and evolution. Together they afford an adequate explanation of the universe as it is to-day." (Lutheran Witness 1918, 372.) According to Lutherischer Herald, October 15, 1904, Dr. Pick, of the General Council, declared: "Harnack is all right." (L. u. W. 1904, 517. 564.) "Keeping company with liberals, we are not surprised that some of our ministers are liberals in both doctrine and practise," says Brenner in Dangerous Alliances, 1917. "What is to be thought of the orthodoxy of a General Council minister who says: 'God spoke to the Christians of that day through their experience no less clearly than through the words of St. Paul'? Lutheran, March 29, 1917, p. 7. What about the soundness of the faith of a D.D. who can recommend Hastings's Bible Dictionary as a reliable work of reference? Rev. M.S. Waters recommends a book that is full of the worst heresies; but the president of the New York and New England Synod, Rev. W.M. Horn, when his attention is called to the matter, bluntly declares: 'I will do nothing in the case referred to.' On request of the District Synod of Ohio, the president of the General Council appoints a committee, with Dr. Joseph Stump of the Chicago Seminary as chairman. The committee investigates. It reports that 'The General Council at this stage has no jurisdiction in the case.' The charges were not denied. This question has not been settled, and so far as we know, no effort has been made since the General Council met in Rock Island, two years ago, to settle it. On the evidence submitted to him, Dr. T.E. Schmauk, president of the General Council, stated in his report: 'I am convinced that the man's views are unevangelical and thoroughly subversive of the principles on which the General Council is founded.' Gen. Council Minutes, 1915, p. 23." (L. u. W. 1917, 465.)