Lehre und Wehre St. Louis, Missouri — April 1913, Seite 163

German transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

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Moderner Unglaube in der Generalsynode. 163

Wissenschaft, der historischen Kritik, Philosophie und Ethik ebenfalls ein
modifizierendes und illuminierendes Wort zu sagen habe. Früher habe
man geglaubt, daß die Erde eine Scheibe und der Mittelpunkt der Welt
sei, um den sich Sonne und Sterne bewegen, daß der Himmel ein
Gewölbe mit Fenstern sei, durch die der Regen herabfließe, und daß
hoch über den Wolken Gott seinen Thron habe. An die Stelle dieser
und ähnlicher Anschauungen über die Welt und ihre Entstehung sowie
auch über den Ursprung des Menschen seien jetzt getreten die astrono⸗
mischen, geologischen und evolutionistischen Lehren des Kopernikus,
Laplace, Lamarck, Malthus. Darwin und anderer modernen Forscher
und Denker. Delk schreibt: „One has but to recall the éarlier cos-
mogoniès of Babylon and Assxria. the early Semitie modifications
of the Assyrio-Babslonian traditions, and these Hebrew transfor-
mations in oOur New Testament ideéa of the universe to see how in⸗
fluential the gradual discoverg of the facts concerning the earth's
structure, growth, and relation to the solar system has been in giving
the setting to the permanent truths concerning God, the creation of
worlds and man. The transition from the Ptolemaic to the Coper-
nican theors of the universe was theimost moinentous shift of seien-
tifie belief. When men çcameé to beliéve that our eéarth was not the
center of the universe, was not à flat plane around which sun and
stars revolved, that the heavens were not à curved dome with windows
through which the rain pouréd, that there was not an abode of the
dead below the earth's surface, and that there were various super-
imposed stages above theé sky reuching up to a throne, theé back⸗
ground of belief in the creation method was changed. Not only the
theologians, but the seientists of that transition period of thought
bitterly opposeéd the new view. But now we accept the new knowledge
as a part of our theology. The later contributions concerning the
limitless reach of space in which our universe floats, and the endless-
ness of time in which God has been at work, and is at work, in the
perfecting of His world-plan, have contributed mightily in the modi-
fication of our ideas of creation and providence. No longer do we
think of the creation process as covering only six ordinary days:
We do not base our chronology on Bishop Usher's computation as to
the age of the human family. What is trueé in the sphere of astronomy
and geology is true also in the spheres of biology and anthropology.
The Hebrew tradition of how man was made has also béeen modified
by later scientifie research. What Laplace, Kepler, and Lyell did for
us in astronomy and geology, Lamarck, the elder Darwin, and Mal-
thus began in biology and anthropology. The intuitions and guesses
of the old philosophers and naturalists were subject to the rigid in-
vestigation, first of Wallace and Charles Darwin, who simultaneously
published the results of their studies on the origin of species.“
(558 f.) Von alledem also, was die Bibel lehrt von der Entstehung,

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