# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S50
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

50 Proceedings of the nineteenth convention

And I would say, though I am no Walther: whoever in a world history does not dare to confess the fact outright, Jesus has risen from the dead, cannot demand that one credit everything else he presents as fact with more than a certain percentage of possibility.

But can one be greatly surprised at Ranke when one sees how matters stand with scholarly theology in Germany in this respect? Schleiermacher, the father of modern theology, points out in his "Introduction to the New Testament" that in the history of the resurrection one does not find the same agreement among the Gospels as, for instance, in the Passion story. "It is well known," he says, "that the narratives of the resurrection are in this respect full of difficulties, and that the opponents of Christianity have repeatedly chosen precisely this section in order to demonstrate the unreliability of all the reports in our Gospels generally." But what does Schleiermacher himself then do? Dr. Fr. Strauss characterizes his procedure quite rightly in the book "The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History" (1865), when he says there: "Schleiermacher points in particular to the differences between the first three Gospels and the fourth, which run through the whole history of Jesus; but in the resurrection story it is not merely this, but there, one may say, each contradicts every other and even himself."

Yes, that the Gospels contradict one another in the history of the resurrection of Jesus is regarded in the widest circles of modern German theology as a dogma, which only ignorance still doubts, and to which only stupidity still opposes powerless attempts at rescue on behalf of the Gospels. People say: Just take the story of the two travelers going to Emmaus, as Luke has it, and compare it with the other Gospels, and you will see at once several irreconcilable contradictions. The two say to Jesus: "Certain women of our company made us astonished, who were early at the sepulchre; and when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive." Accordingly the women must have spoken when they came back from the tomb; but in Mark it says, on the contrary, that trembling and astonishment had come upon the women, "neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid." Only one of the two can be true. Further it says at the close of this story, when the Emmaus disciples returned full of joy to Jerusalem and found the Eleven gathered and those who were with them, that these had called out to them: "The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon," and they, the two, had then told the others what had happened on the way, and how they had known Jesus in the breaking of bread. How, then, does this agree again with what at the close of the