# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S36
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

36 Proceedings of the eleventh convention

Lexikon one does not say: that is a "Wortebuch," but "Wörterbuch." *Wörter* [words, as separate items] are accordingly articulate sounds without regard to the context in which the word happens to stand. *Worte* [words, as units of meaning], on the other hand, are articulate sounds in their sense, which they have in the sentence. Applied to Holy Scripture, the meaning would then be this: God did indeed inspire the holy writers to take words that corresponded to his thoughts, but the individual particular word the holy writers chose for themselves. Where, for example, "LORD" stands in the Bible, there, they say, the apostles could just as well have put "God." We, however, say: No, precisely this word was to be and had to be. So God willed it. Whether, then, in Scripture this word or another of similar sound, whether here a singular or a plural is to stand, etc., that, they say, was left to the writers of the Bible. But that is nothing but deceit, nothing is gained by it. For consider well: by that distinction all *Worte* are at the same time also *Wörter*, but not all *Wörter* are at the same time *Worte*. The distinction between inspiration of *Wort* and of *Wörter* has for Holy Scripture absolutely no sense whatever. For there are in Holy Scripture no *Wörter* in the sense that they are thought of apart from context. What nonsense it is to say: The Holy Spirit did indeed inspire the expression, but not the words? Therefore note well: It is the characteristic of the modern doctrine of inspiration that it makes no sense; one is not to look for much logic in the modern theories, although these scholars marvelously imagine how logically and reasonably they proceed. Dear Philippi unfortunately did not want earlier to bear the disgrace of not also standing on the height of the times. And that has done him much harm.

It is now indeed true that over there in the most recent time the separation of content and expression in Scripture has been given up. It has been conceded that the expression of Scripture cannot be separated from the content. Harnack, loc. cit. p. 29, rejects the separation of content and form in inspiration. He writes: "Finally the thoroughgoing inspiration-character of Holy Scripture forbids that mechanical, unnatural division of content and form, spirit and language. . . . The Holy Spirit, who equips and determines the authors inspired by him for the testimony of salvation, lets them, according to the measure of their individuality, find with the matter also the expression." But this concession does not make the matter better with Harnack. He also believes in no inspiration of the "matter," taking the word "inspiration" in its proper meaning. Scripture is written, in his view, only on the "basis of inspiration," and the holy writers had so much "free movement" that they could also err and show themselves "children of their time" (p. 27). Indeed, Volck has Holy Scripture arise in the same way as the history of the Church has come about: "The origin of the Bible too (is) a work