# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1859_S178
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

178 Thoughts on Modern Theology.

purely natural consciousness the content of its teaching, and that of a
consciousness professedly prophetic, professedly possessing the
immediacy of God, and presenting itself as the sole remedy for public ills."
How indeed the end returns to the beginning! As at the beginning, so now
again the Church has to contend against pantheistic Gnosticism.

Furthermore it appears to us a great harm of modern theology that it
partly ignores, partly despises, the symbolical books and the older
Lutheran dogmatics. Clumsiness of presentation, folly of outlook, use of
the old formal logic, the scholasticizing character of its method, etc., are
often cast up against it as reproaches. Many a highly learned man seeks to
win his spurs by attacking it. Before he proceeds to the treatment of his
own subject, he often first cites a few propositions from the old dogmatics
concerning it and takes pains to show how rigid, one-sided, and
inadequate they are, whereupon he then begins, in the strength of modern
scholarliness, to construct his own matter ab ovo out of profound-seeming
ideas. The impression intended for the reader is then this: You see, there
is nothing sensible to be found in the lumber-room of the old dogmatics.
We cannot, however, help but be struck by the impression that many
newer theologians either do not thoroughly understand the opinions of the
old dogmaticians in their proper context, or do not wish to understand
them. And if we compare the result of the inquiry, it turns out — so far as
we, with our slight knowledge and acquaintance with the ancients, are able
to judge — decidedly in favor of the older dogmatics. For it knows no
subjectivistic weakening of biblical truth and no admixture of it with
philosophical matter for thought. Though it too carries its treasure in
earthen vessels, it nevertheless has this advantage over the newer
dogmatics: that it has drawn from Holy Scripture a far more comprehensive
treasure of real divine truth and has developed it in a manner far more
worthy of the majesty of God, more akin to faith, and more fruitful unto
godliness. And above all it deserves the glorious honor of having made
holy earnest of acknowledging the divine Word as the absolute, real truth
and sole principle of knowledge for theology, and of having carried this
through consistently.

But by the very fact that modern theology does not take up into itself
the whole earlier development of doctrine, nor build further upon it, but
mostly negates it and wants to set up something new, it judges itself and
testifies that it is not called to an organic further development and
advancement of ecclesiastical knowledge. For what is the positive gain in
truth which the Church would have to thank modern theology for? Far
from having actually advanced the doctrine by even a single step, it finds
itself rather still caught in long-since-overcome errors, seeing that it pays
homage, almost throughout, to unionism and chiliasm.

Just as little can we join in the praise which the newer theology so
readily bestows on itself, on account of its progress in formal