# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1913_S154
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

154 Moderner Unglaube in der Generalsynode.

and date and author does not deéstroy the value and significance of
Old Testament teaching for the student of Christian theology.“
(566 f.) Von den Theologen, die sich mit solcher Kritik nicht identifi⸗
zieren, schreibt Delk: „The writer or teacher who ignores this free
and frank investigation of the Scriptures cannot be a guide in our
day, and is likely to prove an obscurantist where he should be a
leader in all truth.“ (565.) „I have no more sympathy with those
timid litèralists, holding to some mechanical theory of inspiration,
Wwho will not enter into à fréee and frank study of the various books
of the Bible themselves, and seek to prevent others from entering
into the kingdoms of light. Such men areé infidel to the Protestant
principle. They are quite as much foes of the Bible and theology
as the iconoclasts they attack.“ (564.) Was aber Delk hier rühmt
als „Protéstant principle“, ist nicht das Prinzip lutherischer Prote⸗
stanten, sondern der unitarischen Freiprotestanten.

Aus dem Gesfagten ergibt sich von selbst, daß Delk auch von der
Verbalinspiration nichts wissen will. Er schreibt: „That the oracular
and dictation theory of writing has disappeared, and that the method
of the historian's careful compilation from tradition and earlier
documents has succeeded to the earlier theory of compilation goes
almost without saying. The note of individualism is so strong in
the synoptic writers that no theory of verbal inspiration is longer
tenable.“ (568.) Eben darin bestehe ein Hauptverdienst der höheren
Kritik, daß sie die altkirchliche Anschauung von der Wortinspiration
zerstört habe. „It is because the higher criticism has made clearer
just such distinctions, limitations, insights, and predictions in
St. John, St. Paul, St. James, that theology owes an unspeakable
debt to modern scholarship. It has set theology freée from that
tyrannous literalism and false idea of inspiration which made all
attempts at the adjustment of theology with modern thought in his-
tory, science, and philosophy either impious or revolutionary.“ (568.)
Selbstverständlich läßt Delk mit der Inspiration auch die Irrtumslosig⸗
keit der Schrift fallen. Eine irrtumsfreie, unfehlbare Bibel, meint er,
gebe es ebensowenig wie eine unfehlbare Kirche. (557.) Der Theo⸗
logie, die sich auf das klare Schriftwort gründet, ist hiermit der Boden
entzogen, so daß alle ihre Lehren ins Schwanken geraten. Auch Delk
ist dies nicht entgangen. Verblendet, wie er ist, erblickt er aber auch
hierin einen Gewinn für die Kirche. Er schreibt: „It (die höhere
Kritik) has taught us that the language of the Scriptures is fluid,
pictorial, and contemporary. It is true that we are not now in a
position to projéet finished systems of theology, as writers of an
earlier age did when they unhesitatingly used texts from any and
all parts of the Bible to sustain the most abstruse doctrines of
theology. The cocksureness of systems has been humbled in the
light of the various values and meanings of the texts. The d priori