# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S48
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

48 Proceedings of the fifteenth convention

ments themselves, however, want and must be understood as grounded, resp. in their worth, in order not to restrict or abolish scientific work as a more or less external authority, so the historically conceived proof from Scripture requires, as its complement, the demonstration of the connection of the statement concerned with the fundamental and central Christian certainty, or the demonstration of the so-called analogia fidei (analogy of faith) according to Rom. 12:6." Here we have an important piece from the armory of the subjectivist, enthusiast newer theology: the subjection of Scripture to subjectivism. Proof from Scripture is spoken of, but the light of Scripture falls first through the focus of the Christian consciousness before it illumines, as a light of proof, the propositions of faith. This is also called proving something through Scripture apprehended according to the Spirit. The opposite is called today again, as in the age of the Pietists, literalism, mechanical conception of Scripture, etc.

That the newer dogmatics is completely dominated by subjectivism and is somehow a variety of Schleiermacher's enthusiasm is shown by a survey of the newer dogmatics, correct on the whole (excepting, namely, Philippi), with regard to the question on what the truth of Christian knowledge is grounded: 1. Biblical dogmatics answers: on the Scripture word that proves itself in the conscience (Beck). 2. Ecclesiastical dogmatics: on the confession "experienced" in the course of its history (Philippi only in the first edition). 3. Speculative dogmatics: on the possibility of exhibiting the results of independent speculation as the core of Christian dogma (Ritter, Biedermann). 4. The dogmatics of mediating theology: on the convergence of the critically purified dogmas according to the secured results of empirical and philological research (Dorner). 5. The dogmatics of the Christian consciousness: on the psychological derivation of Christian ideas from the Christian consciousness (Lipsius). 6. The dogmatics of practical postulates: on the demonstration that the Christian propositions of faith are such postulates or Christian value judgments.

This whole arrangement is a testimony for our assertion above that subjectivism, the Christian consciousness of a Schleiermacher, called by us however enthusiastic arbitrariness and rebellion against the authority of Scripture, dominates modern theology. Two brief remarks we still want to make on the above arrangement before we attack the next point. Beck's position toward Scripture is by no means the one in accord with Scripture. He is dependent on mystics like Oetinger and Menken. Then: Luthardt says in his Compendium der Dogmatik [Compendium of Dogmatics], Prolegomena § 13: "If dogmatics is to be the systematic presentation of the Christian faith, it must develop the whole of Christian doctrine genetically from a fundamental unity, thus not merely from a