# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S27
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1886. 27

received impression. While the theologians are there to make the Christian people certain of the divinity of Holy Scripture, they seem to consider it their calling to make them uncertain of it.

And when v. Hofmann speaks so contemptuously here of a collection of proof-texts, one sees that for the newer theologians the mere individual passages of Holy Scripture count for nothing at all. No, they say, if one wants to find the divine element of Scripture, one must first penetrate into the whole of Scripture, and by that they do not mean, say, as the ancients did, the analogy of faith, which results from the clear passages of Scripture, but their own system, already fashioned before the Scripture.

Grau now himself continues thus: "Not in a human semblance, as the Docetists taught, has the Godhead revealed itself on earth." Quite true! But what is the human semblance that the old doctrine of inspiration leaves over? Or does error and sin perhaps belong to the true human form?! — The warning against Docetism is here a warning against a bugbear.

Grau writes further: "So also the human character, the historical development of the holy Scriptures, is not mere appearance, produced by an external accommodation of the Holy Spirit to the natural character of the human authors." We say: Yes, it is true: when the Holy Spirit writes through Paul, he speaks differently than when he writes through Peter. It is a quite different style when Isaiah, this distinguished, cultivated man, is God's writer, than when Amos writes, who was a cowherd. But precisely in this consists the infinite mercy of God, that he has recorded his holy Word through all sorts of instruments. Now there sounds, to use that beautiful image, from an organ a lovely flute, now again the strong tone of a trombone, now he also strikes in with a kettledrum. Shall we blame God for this? And is it not after all more than mere appearance, when the organ pipes sound different, yet driven by one wind? Holy Scripture is and remains in truth the most majestic, most sublime book. For no mortal has written as sublimely as, for example, John begins his Gospel. Even heathens have acknowledged this of the Bible. They have said: If one wants to have the most sublime model of rhetorical speech, one will find it among the Jews, namely in Genesis 1. —

Grau writes further: "Here it is a matter of recognizing: Not in spite of the authorship of the Holy Spirit has Scripture arisen truly human and historical, but precisely through that origin. The Spirit of God, as the one working in the world, is a Spirit of history and of development; and as the Spirit of Christ he is a Spirit of self-emptying and humility. (!) . . . There is now no retreat to Quenstedt and Calov possible any more . . ." (The gentlemen thus permit