# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1904_S278
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

27⁸ aKirchlich⸗Zeitgeschichtliches.

ersten Sitzung lautete: The Present Assault upon the Bible.“ Dr. Gregory
bemerkte: “The study of the Bible as the authoritative revelation of God has
been displaced by an unjustiflable literary and critical method that assumes
that the Bible is mere literature, originating, like the literature of Babylon,
Greece, and Rome, in legend and myth. The historical-critical results of
the new view have been embodied in the Eneyclopaedia Biblica, the Poly-
chrome Bible, and the beginning of the“Students' Old Testament, by Pro-
fessor Kent, of Vale. One finds on a single page in the Polychrome Bible
nineteen different little portions pieced together to make one small fragment
of history, all of which snippets the critic professes to be able to separate
and assign to different writers, though there is not a whisper in all history of
the existence of any such writers. In their application to the Gospels in the

same work, Professor Schleede fnds that there are only seven facts left that

can at all be depended upon as historical in the four Gospels, and every one

of these is absolutely insignificant so far as Christian truth is concerned.

It is this condition of things the American Bible League desires to remedy.

The second object of this league is to help the people to see the Bible

as it is and to find out what is in it.“ In derselben Sitzung hielt Dr. Patton,

der beredte Präsident von Princeton, einen Vortrag über The Nature of the

Present Assault upon the Bible and its Unparalleled Danger.“ In demselben

sagte er unter anderm auch: „A new philosophy of religion has arisen, and

with it a new meaning and attitude toward the Bible and Christianity. The

new criticism cannot hold the old view of revelation and the Christian re-

ligion. It regards Christianity as a movement, a stage in a great cosmic

Process, a movement of evolution, with which we have as little to do as with

the equinoxes. The Scriptures are treated as simply a history of religious

experiences — mere records of What men once thought and felt. Christianity
1s regarded as one, though the best, of ethnic religions. It is not without
its errors of record. There is no such thing as primeval innocence, no fall,

no redemption, no incarnation. These things are not accepted as doctrines,
dut as pretty teachings, constituting nothing more than a méetaphysical phi-
losophy. Bring rationalistic critics down to the point and they dodge the
Issue when you ask, Did Christ have a pre-existence? Did he rise from the

dead? Was he ever really dead?7 Was he God of very God?“ At this junc⸗

ture they begin to talk of moralities. They demand ethics. Well, let them
be tried on the ethical side. Jesus Christ taught morals — said something

about divorce and duty to man and God. But on what authority? Was it

human or divine:F If human, it can be accepted or rejected as man's teach-

ings; but if divine, it holds for all time. Moreover, mere morals will not

answer. There must be something else for a poor sinner. An atonement is

necessary. In the interests of morality, home, trade, and the ten com-

mandments we must keep our old Christianity and go back to Paul and the

atoning blood. Or is it back to atheism and despair?'““ Das Thema der

zweiten Morgensitzung lautete: „Practical Consequences of the Attack upon

the Bible.“ Am Nachmittag wurde verhandelt über “The Groundlessness of

the Present Rationalistic Claims''. Prof. Osgood vom Rochester Seminary

hatte eine Arbeit eingesandt über das Thema: „The Identity of the Present

Views with those Propagated One Hundred Lears Ago (Payne and Voltaire).“

Er zeigte: „The only difference is that the former attacks upon the Bible

came from outside of the Church, but now they come from within it.“ Prof.