# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1860_S109
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Foundations of Schenkel's Christian Dogmatics as Set Forth from the Standpoint of Conscience, etc. 109

which he otherwise also gives of spirit (I, 24): "The distinctive essence of
the human spirit is self-consciousness, and this is at the same time the
essence of spirit in general.'" Further, Schenkel sets up as the norm of his
dogmatics: "No doctrinal proposition can find admission into the
executive part of Christian dogmatics which cannot be traced back to a
deliverance of conscience." "Whatever is presently taught in dogmatics as
the truth of salvation must at some time have been, in some conscience,
immediately a religious and moral fact; it must have dawned on some
human spirit like a higher ray of light and have brought that spirit nearer
to the fellowship of God than it had been before" (I, 218f; cf. I, 81f).

If Schenkel wished to build up dogmatics from the standpoint of a
conscience that is captive and bound by the Word of God, the feasibility
of such an attempt could still be made a matter of controversy. But we are
relieved of that question by Schenkel's own explanations. For according to
him conscience equals self-consciousness, this equals spirit, and this in
turn equals reason and conscience. Thus reason and conscience are at
bottom one and the same thing. For the distinction he draws between the
two is nothing but empty word-splitting. Should he nevertheless wish to
maintain it pro forma, it would come out thus: whereas the rationalists say
it is against their reason to accept the content of revelation in faith,
Schenkel will maintain that it is against his conscience. But Schenkel is
not even consistent in this, for he unhesitatingly follows in the footsteps
of his rationalist predecessors.

On Schenkel's relation to Holy Scripture the Erlangen critique says, p.
282: "We maintain that Schenkel's dogmatics lacks a methodical exegesis
of Scripture, notwithstanding that he himself says (I, 388) that the
dogmatician, in order to establish the truth of salvation, must investigate
and recognize, and grasp under a single point of view, the continuous
thread of the salvation-historical connection of the scriptural facts of
salvation, of the scriptural teachings, of the scriptural foundings of
congregations, etc. — that he must trace the entire economy of movement
and development of the divine revelations, the tidings of salvation from
their first traces to their most glorious manifestations. Schenkel himself
has met these fine demands of his own only very slightly." Since
conscience, as Schenkel claims, is the formal and material principle of his
dogmatics, he uses Scripture only afterward, incidentally, to substantiate
the deliverances of conscience. If it resists, it is explained away as
rationalistic.

Let us now hear some of what conscience reveals to Schenkel, first his
anthropology. Erlangen critique, p. 275: "When Schenkel says: 'Man is
spirit' (to be compared with I, 22: 'Man indeed has spirit, and he is spirit
preeminently, but he also has soul and body'), and

if spirit is personality (person), then Schenkel does indeed seem to
picture the matter to himself in such a way that one of the three factors of
man, person,