# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1860_S108
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

108 On the Foundations of Schenkel's Christian Dogmatics as Set Forth from the Standpoint of Conscience, etc.

again and again the familiar knavish face of the old rationalism, as we
shall see further.

When the Reverend Consistorial Councillor Dr. Schenkel defines
dogmatics as "the scientifically coherent, personally-convinced presentation
of the truth of Christian salvation, as this has been historically
mediated in the form of the Christian 'congregational consciousness,'"
then the sack is thereby prudently opened wide enough to take in every
error and pass it off as Christian. According to this, then, the Christian
congregational consciousness is to be the principle of knowledge for his
dogmatics. "But," the Erlangen critique reminds us on p. 268, "Schenkel
himself expressly denies that the congregation's apprehension of the
Christian salvation corresponds perfectly to that salvation (I, 10); he says
that the Christian congregational consciousness does not contain the fact
of salvation in its immediacy, but has only formed a picture of it, and this
picture is only a relatively true one." Rightly, therefore, the critique
concludes: "that, because the congregation's apprehension of the
Christian salvation is not perfectly adequate to the Christian salvation
itself, every attempt to demonstrate the Christian salvation, as it is
reflected, clouded or imperfectly, in the consciousness of the congregation,
to be the true salvation that satisfies the need for salvation, must from
the outset be a vain one that can accomplish nothing."

Yet Schenkel does promise to set forth his dogmatics from the standpoint
of conscience. What, then, according to him, is conscience really? On
this the critique says, p. 289: "We must state at the outset that we do not
believe that the scientific investigation of conscience has been
particularly advanced by these determinations. For the essentially new
thing in Schenkel's expositions is really only this, that he calls
'conscience' what one otherwise called self-consciousness, or simply
human consciousness. For the human spirit is 'in part related inwardly,
originally, to God, in part related outwardly to the world' (I, 142). Insofar
as the human spirit is related to the world, reason and will serve it as the
organs of its self-activity; feeling, however, belongs originally only to 'the
sensuous-natural side of man' (I, 136). Insofar, on the other hand, as
man is related inwardly to God, conscience is the organ of his
self-activity. Conscience is therefore 'a distinctive and independent
organ within the human spirit,' alongside reason and will; it is the organ
entrusted with the religious functions, the organ for the religious faculty
of the spirit (II, 136f). As such it is now 'in its general nature a distinctive
and independent, indeed the most distinctive and most independent form
of self-consciousness. In conscience the human spirit is conscious most
immediately of itself. This manifests itself, as anyone can easily
experience in himself, first of all as a heightened self-consciousness in
the form of self-certainty' (I, 138f)." With this Schenkel has given of
conscience the very same definition