# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S47
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1894. 47

still talk as if one had known nothing of such a thing before. Even newer theologians, however, have put the exuberant praise of Schleiermacher by his imitators fairly forcefully and, what is best, quite rightly within the bounds of modesty. Flügel writes loc. cit. 272: "Not much differently did Schleiermacher know how to help himself, in order to keep religion scientific, when the old, familiar proofs for the existence of God counted as a superseded standpoint. Knowledge did not lead to God, the domain of the will was already occupied by morality; therefore nothing seemed to him left but to become immediately certain of God in feeling and to see in the so-called feeling of absolute dependence the surest guarantee of religion." The position of Schleiermacher was not new; it is that of all mystics, all enthusiasts.

So we have proved that Schleiermacher indeed uses the expressions Scripture, Gospel, theology, Holy Spirit, service of the Word, etc., but what he teaches by them is not the doctrine of the Church of God. His Glaubenslehre is a presentation of a God-consciousness that is completely detached from Scripture. The newer theology, however, proclaims Schleiermacher the great prophet, and for that reason we have spoken of him at greater length. The newer theology has entered upon Schleiermacher's inheritance, not the inheritance of Luther. Calvin and Melanchthon still count for something with the newer theologians; but Luther, the Reformer sent by God and angel with the eternal Gospel, counts for nothing with the newer theology. Yes, they hate him, because his testimony, drawn from the spring of the living Word, condemns their falsely praised art on all sides.

With few exceptions the newer theologians teach two things from Schleiermacher's legacy: Common to them is 1. their development of theology from subjectivism, from the Christian consciousness, from certainty of faith, conscience, etc., perhaps from the ecclesiastical consciousness, etc. 2. Common to them is their assertion that only thus can a truly life-full and life-giving theology be attained.

Let us hear a real mouthpiece of modern theology, a Zöckler, in his Handbuch der theologischen Wissenschaften [Handbook of the Theological Sciences], vol. II, 607: "Dogmatics is a discipline of systematic or thetic theology, which within the connection of the whole of theological knowledge has the task of presenting scientifically the content of the Christian God-consciousness, as it at the same time determines the self- and world-consciousness, or of developing systematically the doctrine of Christianity. It formulates the scientific self-declaration of Christianity." This explanation as the collective voice of the newer theology can fittingly stand in place of many individual citations. The newer theologians, to be sure, also speak of the proof from Scripture, but as the same Zöckler says p. 612: "Since the Scripture-