# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S22
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

22 Proceedings of the eleventh convention

But the so-called positive theologians in Germany, too, have to a man abandoned the old doctrine of the divinity of Holy Scripture. Kübel, in his work "Ueber den Unterschied zwischen der positiven und der liberalen Richtung in der modernen Theologie" [On the Difference between the Positive and the Liberal Tendency in Modern Theology], has no hesitation in saying: "The doctrine of inspiration of the orthodox Lutheran dogmaticians is no longer held in its whole strictness by any modern positive theologian; 'it has fallen, says Kahnis, and rightly.'" (p. 288.)

To be sure, in this camp one still seeks to keep up the appearance of teaching also a divinity of Holy Scripture, and may thereby deceive oneself and others who do not look deeper. Thus one distinguishes the spirit and the form of Scripture in order to gain a divine and a human side. Of this Kübel writes, loc. cit.: "They (the positive theologians) distinguish the spirit and the form; but to this form belongs thoroughly and really only what is properly formal, e.g. the character of the language, the difference between poetic and prose presentation, then, from the category of the 'conceptions' of Holy Scripture, only that which can be counted as the mere vessel that harbors the divine content, possibly e.g. psychological, still more physical, geological and similar 'conceptions' (and these too, among the consistent Positives, only with a certain restriction, see below). This form the modern Positives surrender more or less as the subjective-individualistic property of the human writers, and as is well known they have already with this crossed the line of the older orthodoxy, for which all such distinctions simply did not exist and everything in the Bible, down to the letter, was equally divinely infallible." P. 105 f.

Beck writes: "It extends to the divine mysteries of the kingdom; to the external and human only so far as it stands in essential connection with the former." (Einl. in das System der christl. Glaubenslehre [Introduction to the System of Christian Doctrine].)

Twesten: "One finally went too far in attributing to everything and anything in Scripture an unconditional infallibility, so that one conceded not only no significant*) error in matters of faith and life, but also no lapse of memory in minor things, in chronological, topographical and other trifles." (Vorlesungen über die Dogmatik der ev.-luth. Kirche [Lectures on the Dogmatics of the Ev. Luth. Church], p. 414.)

Tholuck: "If we finally cast one more glance at the results arising from these investigations for the dogma of inspiration and revelation, then a view of inspiration according to which the

*) Underlined by the essayist. So insignificant errors are to be conceded even in matters of faith!