# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1894_S51
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1894. 51

indivisible being, as the Bible teaches, but a divisible and therefore composite one, which the Bible rejects.

Another example is Christian v. Hofmann, whose best-known work is the "Schriftbeweis" [Scriptural Proof]. The doctrines that govern his whole system are the doctrine of man and the doctrine of justification, but of course each in the form that v. Hofmann gives it, and in the particular connection that he establishes and, indeed, that the newer theologians in general have established since their master Schleiermacher. According to this, mankind is not yet in perfection, to be sure, but was created and designed for perfection, and it attains this perfection through justification (so Hofmann precisely) or through redemption in Christ generally. Therefore the coming of the Redeemer is also supposed to have been necessary in and of itself, even if Adam's fall had never occurred. Prof. v. Hofmann in particular came forward with the pretension of bringing a truly purified theology, according to the real spiritual sense of Scripture, a true theology of the Spirit. Now consider what the systematic relating of all articles of faith to the central point of the system of Prof. v. Hofmann has produced as a supposedly truly Holy-Spirit-worthy formulation of the articles of faith. There we read sentences like the following: "God posited himself from eternity as the Triune only because he wished to reveal himself in time as trinitarian (triune)." (I, 36, 177.) According to this explanation of Prof. v. Hofmann, either the trinitarian revelation in time must be absolutely necessary, or the trinitarian distinction is accidental. In that case the Trinity in God would be not something essential but only something incidental; in reality the Scriptural doctrine of the Trinity is thereby denied. The expression "Son of God," according to the two-volume Schriftbeweis, is supposed to refer only to the incarnate Christ, likewise "the Word," John 1:14. — Adam's sin, according to this Schriftbeweis, did not consist in self-deification or in setting oneself against God, but only in the first human beings desiring something God-created in a manner contrary to God. When it says in the book of Moses: You will know what is good and evil — this is meant not morally but physically, that is, you will know what is good and bad for you. This comes down to the old, stale rationalist wisdom that the tree of knowledge was a poison tree and did harm by its poison. Such a weakening and flattening of the doctrine of the fall and of sin, as Prof. v. Hofmann presents it there, is now supposed to be true theology of the Spirit. But his very system demands such a doctrine of the fall and of sin, one that takes away the power of Scripture, for only such a doctrine suits his central and fundamental heresy, namely that of justification, which with him is also nothing other than what miserable rationalism knew, namely work-righteousness. The old rationalists