# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1856_S73
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Dr. Seyffarth's Corrections, etc.             73

...creation, must have lived hundreds of thousands of years beyond the span of 930 years reported in Holy Scripture, which Holy Scripture plainly does not teach. 2. The Sabbath commandment (Ex. 20:9–11 and 31:12–17) is grounded on the fact that God, after creation was accomplished, sanctified the Sabbath through his rest and his blessing. But from nothing can we conclude that the seventh day, on which God rested, was a longer span of time than the day on which Israel is to rest. Accordingly, the Word of God teaches that in six days, of twenty-four hours each, God made the world. — In the manner just rejected as inadmissible, Professor Dr. Kurtz in Dorpat has unfortunately, in his book Astronomy and the Bible (2nd edition, Berlin 1849) and in the essay "On the History of the Primeval World" in the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, 1845, Nos. 33–39 and 69–71, paid homage to the findings of recent science, and grafted them onto the green tree of life of the Bible. The fruits of such an application are, naturally, rotten. For the sake of natural history and against the Bible, he teaches, instead of the days in the creation account, great phases of development; he volatilizes the creation account into a mere prophetic vision, and distinguishes in the Word of God between what is "objectively true" and what is merely "subjectively true." That the consistent application of such principles to the interpretation of Holy Scripture must lead to the complete dissolution and evaporation of its content is obvious, and yet Kurtz passes, with no small number of theologians, for a representative of Lutheran orthodoxy. In saying this we gladly acknowledge the great deal that is good, able, and praiseworthy to be found in the writings of Kurtz. Here it is our concern only to show into what a crooked position, in what way, an otherwise capable and believing theologian can fall by not knowing how to assign to [other] sciences their proper relationship to Holy Scripture and to theology. We therefore mention here also that the textbook of sacred history by Kurtz, into which the error just mentioned has, perhaps for that very reason — because it is meant to serve as a manual in educational institutions — not carried over, has to our great joy been translated into English. We hope that, as in Germany, so also here, it may prove a blessing to many.

Other sciences too have, just as much as natural history, raised their banner against Holy Scripture far more often than they have stepped into the lists on its behalf. One must not, therefore, cheer them too gladly whenever they happen to have found a single grain of truth. This holds equally for all the sciences, whether for the natural sciences, or for astronomy, or for history, or for philosophy, and whatever else they may be called. For otherwise many a soul might well think of us, and not without reason, that we were not firm in heart in the faith, but wished to secure for ourselves a merely external, historical faith through science, and expected our salvation from the