# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S32
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

32 Proceedings of the eleventh convention

they may name the one who has said this or that, or not. . . . That the Old Testament Scripture is a work of the Holy Spirit, that it is inspired, our doctrinal statement does not mention; but only for this reason, that for us it is settled once for all that everything that serves the continuation of the holy history takes place by virtue of an operation of the Holy Spirit, who for this purpose rules over man, in the manner required for the particular purpose of such operation, determining him in respect of his natural life. . . . Not only on the writers, but also on those who put together the individual components of the Scripture, whether into books or into the whole of it, has such operation taken place. By this the manifold operation of the Spirit of God, which one comprehends under the one name of inspiration, is to be described; so, however, that one always keeps in view how the individual is in each case produced in its relation to the intended whole by operation of the Holy Spirit." (Der Schriftbeweis [The Scriptural Proof]. Nördlingen. 1852. I, 567–573.)

Luthardt: "On the whole, believing theology still seeks to find a formula in which it can express the 'God-human' character of Scripture. . . . Tholuck and Rothe have demonstrated the untenability of the old doctrine. . . . One must start from the necessity and significance of the whole of Scripture for the Church and from there both derive the certainty which the Church as a whole first has of the whole of Scripture and its individual parts, in so far as they are integral parts of this whole, and also infer the divine operation in its origin, so that the individual is always grasped in relation to the whole, the psychological state however as that of the unity of receptivity and spontaneity." (This vividly recalls Goethe's: "Where concepts fail, a word comes in at the right time.") "Scripture is the norming Word of God (for the Church) and contains the saving Word of God (for individuals). Cf. Hofmann, Schriftbew. II. 2, 98–109." (Compendium. Third ed. p. 255.) With this so-called whole of Scripture they can of course also dismiss all the individual passages that treat of inspiration. For inspiration too is to be proved first from the whole of Scripture.

Delitzsch: "Theopneusty too is a generic concept which comprises under itself quite variously graded workings of the Spirit, according as the writer relates productively and continuatively, or reproductively and applicatively, to the revelation and history of salvation. But in both cases the divine appears under the affections of the human. In the latter case even errors in the reproduction of what is historical and given are possible, lapses of memory, errors of combination, in general such errors as the most spiritual