Lehre und Wehre St. Louis, Missouri — April 1913, Seite 156

German transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

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156 Moderner Unglaube in der Generalsynode.

beherrschende Stellung gebe. Diese Tatsache sei es auch, welche die
Theologie zu einer fortschreitenden Wissenschaft und die Religion zu
einem Leben mache.

Delk schreibt: Never has the mind as mind been so thoroughly
studied as to-day. Not only do the objective facts of science, history,
and literature furnish the phenomena and material of belief, but the
processes of knowing, the nature of the emotions, the will, and the
religious instinets are à component part of our beliefs and faith.“
(569 f.) „God's revelation has béen progressive because man has
slowly been prepared for the reception of more sublime spiritual and
moral truth; but in every age it is truth revealed in man and ap⸗
propriated by man. This gives Christian experience, which is the
final and commanding authority in our lives. The Bible, the Church,
and the Reason are all channels or seats of authority in religion.
The cruc in the theological debate has been the false exaltation of
one or another of these seats of authority. Certainly the final appeal
in religious belief cannot rest on any one of these factors divorced
from the others. The Christian truths existed and were taught before
the various gospels and epistles were written. The Church rejected,
and accepted, sometimes arbitrarily, the various treatises that make
up our present Bible, and she has always insisted upon interpreting
the book which she has canonized. But in the final analysis the
Biblical truths and the Church's Creeds and Confessions must be
made real and vital by their personal revaluation and be experienced
as religious facts beforeé they command and compel the soul to sub-
mission and action. Knowledge must be made faith. The outward
authority must become an inward authority before the reason and
the heart areé aflame with light and holy zeal. It is from this inner
spiritual eitadel of the mind, conscience, and heart that the ques-
tions of revelation, inspiration, conversion, regeneration, and the
eternal life receive their final interpretation and ultimate illumi⸗
nation. The final appeal is made to the Christian consciousness.
The attempt to corral all of Christian experience under the head of
Ritschlianism is futile, and displays a most pitiable ignorance of the
history of theology. All through the medieval and modern period
of theological history, though the infallibility of Bible and Church
has been preached, there have always stood clear-eyed and honest
champions of the néecessity and right of Christian experience to
interpret and enforce the truths of our holy faith. Schleiermacher
stands first among our Protestant theologians in the explication of
this point of view.“ (570 f.) „The Christian consciousness based on
Christian experience, all through the later Middle Ages was made a
point of departure in the valuation of Ohurch dogma. Schleier-
macher a hundred years ago made his immortal contribution toward
such a theological system.“ ((556.) „Personal experience, just be-

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