Lehre und Wehre St. Louis, Missouri — März 1905, Seite 139

German transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

Cited in Eckhardt's Reallexikon (1907) under: Analogie 14 · Gnadenwahl · Gnadenwahl — Sedes 3 · Inſpiration 5 · Buldiut · Buldiut 16 · Inſpiration

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Kirchlich-Zeitgeschichtliches. 139

on matters of business without direct dictation in every ease. At the same
time he would be expressing his own thoughts, would he not? And 80
long as the employer put his seal and signature to the document, it would
be considered correct, whether composed by direct dictation, or simply im-
bued with the spirit and purpose of the employer. Thus, we believe, God
employed His amanuenses in the composition of the Sacred Scriptures. By
this view there is ample room for the play of the human element, and yet
the inerrauncy of the Holy Word is conserved. It is well to distinguish
between inspiration and revelation. The Bible is all inspired, every line
and Word of it, all fllled with and produced by the breath of God; but not
everything in the Bible is supernaturally revealed. Take a concrete case as
an example. The history of creation up to the time of the making of a self-
conscious man all had to be especially revealed by the Almighty, whether to
Moses or the scribes who lived before his day, because there was no man
in existence to observe the acts of creation in prehistoric ages. On the other
hand, when Moses wrote dowu the events of the exodus which were tran-
spiripg before his eyes, there was no need of a special revelation of these
events. He simply needed to use his own powers of observation. But note —
what he wrote about such events was all inspired of God, who moved upon
the historian's mind in such a way as to lead him to chronicle the things that
God wanted in the sacred record; nothing inserted that God did not desire
there, nothing omitted that He desired included.“ (S. 475 f.) P. Keyser, der
nicht immer ganz correct redet, hätte in den obigen beiden Stellen stark betonen sollen,
daß in der heiligen Schrift alles inspirirt, wörtlich inspirirt ist und daß sich in der⸗
selben gar nichts befindet, was Gott nur controlirt, nicht aber eingegeben habe. Sehr
schön spricht sich P. Keyser darüber aus, was die Leugnung der Verbalinspiration für
praktische Folgen habe: „First, itf the original Scriptures were not inerrant, the
whole record is rendered untrustworthy; you do not know what to belleve
or what to reject; the feeling of uncertainty becomes at once so great that
vou lose vour spirituat power and unction, and can no longer look upon any
portion of Scripture as the true and absolute Word of God. Then, instead
of making God's Word the ultimate rule and standard, you must either make
reason that standard, in which case you have rationalism, or else you must
make subjective experience the arbiter, in which case you open the floodgates
of false mysticism. Some men may be able to retain faith in an imperfectly
inspired Bible, but most men cannot — men of practical minds will say, If
the Bible is mistaken on one point, it may be mistaken on many others, and
therefore we cannot trust its record on anything!' Shall we tell a pastor how
to deplete his congregation in a single year, and rob it of all faith and spir-
itual nerve? Let him preach that the Bible is a fallible book, that it now con-
tains errors, and always has.“' (S. 479.) „Suppose there were errors in the
original Scriptures — then who is to decide what is true and what is untrue?
How eis the true to be separated from the untrue? Vou must accept only that
which appeals to reason — rationalism; or that which answers to your ex-
perience — the destruction of the whole Bible history. Lou and I never ex⸗
perienced that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, or was laid in a man-
ger, or that the angels sang to the shepherds on the first Christmas night, or
that Jesus disputed with the doctors in the temple at the age of twelve, and
a thousand other events recorded in the Gospels! The historical and the spir-
itual portions of the Gospels are so interblended that you cannot take away

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