# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1864_S168
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

168 The Modern Theory of the Various Doctrinal Types of the New Testament.

part to the writers, we have no other choice but to regard the New
Testament as a work of man; for only so can it be explained that it turned
out so differently in its various parts. The one Spirit of truth can, to be
sure, proclaim the one truth through various human organs, by way of
accommodation to their personal peculiarities, in various forms of speech
and expression — but not different truths; that would be an inner
contradiction. Such consequences, to be sure, people are unwilling to
acknowledge; but they follow, as has been said, of necessity, and it is
clear that, however positively one has shown oneself on the one hand, and
however decisively one has fought off and rejected the rationalists'
assertions of gross contradictions, the principle is nevertheless the same
as theirs: namely, that one regards the New Testament writings — despite
all mutual assertions to the contrary — as, in their basic view, products of
the human spirit, and has thus chased rationalism out of the temple in a
sham fight, only to leave the back door open for it!

But this theory not only contradicts the divine inspiration of the New
Testament, sufficiently attested by Christian experience, which absolutely
does not admit of different doctrinal types as regards content (for an
inspiration in which the inspired writings nevertheless appear as
independent, and therefore, in content, different products of the human
spirit, is an absurdity), and is thus contrary to the analogy of faith — it
also rests, considered purely exegetically, on utterly arbitrary
assertions.

If, for example, it is asserted that the doctrinal type of James (to which
the Gospel of Matthew is also reckoned, with its so numerous, consistent
references and citations of prophetic passages of the Old Testament as
proof of the fulfillment of the promise) regards the Gospel as the
fulfilled, completed law, whereas the Petrine doctrinal concept (which is
also supposed to be represented by the Gospel of Mark, in whose relation to
the Old Testament, however, no difference whatsoever can be found compared
with Matthew) is regarded as the fulfillment of the promise — then the
following must be replied: 1. that one is not at all entitled to develop a
particular doctrinal concept out of the single surviving document by which
the doctrinal type of James is represented — namely, the short epistle of
James pursuing a definite purpose (for as regards the Gospel of Matthew,
the fact cited above suffices to make the obvious arbitrariness of what is
claimed about it evident to every sensible reader of the Bible). 2. If in
this epistle the new obedience of believers forms the keynote — and indeed,
in complete agreement with the whole of Holy Scripture, as the fulfillment,
taking place in the New Testament, of the Old Testament moral law which is
impossible to fulfill without grace — while, on the other hand, no
reference to an Old Testament word of promise concerning Christ is to be
found, then this has its ground simply in the particular tendency of the
epistle, clearly evident throughout it, of the