Doctrine & Practice

I begin with our position on the Holy Scripture. Not only in Christianity outside in general, but also in some parts of the church that call themselves Lutheran, the infallible authority of the Holy Scripture is attacked nowadays. The Holy Scripture is supposedly no longer the infallible Word of God, to which all that are called human have to subject themselves in the obedience of faith, but rather a book that also contains erroneous opinions of people, as to which people can and must exercise criticism. Such attacks on the Holy Scripture are nothing new. Heathens and open unbelievers have asserted at all times that there could be found errors and contradictions in the Scripture and that therefore the Scripture could not be the Word of God. Hence we find the fathers of the Church, as well as also the later teachers of the Church occupied occasionally with repelling these attacks on the Holy Scripture. But it is new that in our time the teachers of the Church, and actually some of the most respected, make common cause with heathens and unbelievers in the attack on the Holy Scripture. This is the unique situation of our time! The teachers of the church, from defenders of the Holy Scripture, have become its accusers. They now also assert–in word and writing–that not the whole Holy Scripture is God’s Word and infallible truth. The old church doctrine of inspiration, that is, the teaching that the holy writers did not write on their own, but only wrote that which the Holy Spirit gave them, must be given up. One must distinguish between essential and inessential, between main and secondary things. Those are inspired by the Holy Ghost, these not. In the latter things, one must admit errors. It is obvious that, with this, an entirely new order of things is being shaped in the Christian Church. The relation of people to the Scripture is entirely changed. People are no longer under, but above, the Scripture. For even if one confesses that all essential parts of the saving truth are found in the Scripture, the determination, what in the Scripture is infallible truth and to be accepted by faith, depends on people. Ultimately, the Scripture does not determine our faith, but people, who distinguish between truth and error in the Scripture. God no longer rules in the Church through the Word of the Holy Scripture, but people are installed as regents in the Church, who draw the distinction between the truth and the supposed error in the Scripture.This position is Godless. Anyone who assumes errors in Scripture contradicts Christ to His face. He said of the whole Scripture and every single word of it: “And Scripture cannot be broken.” Those who wish to restrict the inspiration of the Holy Scripture contradict the Apostle of Christ who testifies: “All Scripture is inspired of God.”But here also the Devil attempts to transform himself into an angel of light. The deniers of the inerrancy of Scripture assert that they are dealing in the interest of true faithfulness and piety. They claim against us that faith which is so simply based on the Bible is literalism which promotes a dead orthodoxy. On the other hand, with their position, the matter of Christianity is placed in one’s inner experience. Christians are told to accept that as truth which has in their spiritual experience proved true. In that way, inner faithfulness is supposedly furthered and placed ahead of the externalization of Christianity. Christianity is claimed to be something that finds its certainty in itself and does not need the guarantee in the letters of Scripture.What is new here is only a number of expressions, inasmuch as one calls this kind of theology nowadays “Christian science”, but can call it more accurately a variation of doctrine from the single principle of the born-again or Christian “I”, out of the Christian consciousness, out of the faith of the Church, etc. The thing is old. We are dealing here with the same thing, the same error, that Luther fought with the Enthusiasts. It is the “Spirit”, which is of itself and through itself so smart and pious that it does not need the external, objectively certain Word of God, yes, feels itself unduly cramped by it. Luther, and after him, our church, speaks of the piety of this spirit, thus: “Everything which is proclaimed about the spirit without this Word (that is, the external Word) and Sacrament, that is the devil.” (SA III.VIII.10; Triglotta p. 496). We must enter the same judgment against the newer theology, insofar as it would lead us from the certain, externally inspired Word of the Holy Scripture to the “inner faith”. It does not impress us that this is being called “science”, and that it is being called the true “faith” does not catch on with us. We know what it is. It is unbelief.
Faith is, in Biblical and church usage, to rely–even against reason and “experience”–on God’s Word, as it is written in the Scripture. Only to want to believe and hold firmly to that which shows itself to people as true and acceptable–now that is- -again according to the usage of the Scripture and the Christian Church–unbelief! It is not the Christian, but the unchristian “I”, that acts that way. It is the spirit of revolution of man against God in His infallible Word, around which one seeks to hang a very threadbare little cloak of faith and piety.With this recipe, everything in the church of God is turned backwards and upside down. Faith no longer rests on the Scripture, but the Scripture rests on faith. The Church is no longer built on the ground of the Apostles and Prophets, rather the church stands on its own and the writings of the Apostles and Prophets are a growth, needing improvements, on the tree of the Church. It is not the Scripture that judges, what is right or wrong in the Church, but the Church judges what is true and false in the Scripture. In short: The supremacy of the so-called “Christian I” is proclaimed. The Church is to be the sovereign of the Word of God, and thereby of God. It is anarchy in the territory of the Church. An anarchism in the Church steps up to join the anarchism in the territory of the state in our time. It is the necessary consequence thereof, that one surrenders the Christian teaching of the inspiration of Scripture, and with that the full inerrancy of Scripture.We wish, by the grace of God, to stay thoroughly far away from this insane drive–for one cannot name it anything else.