Part 3

Inspiration

In Zöckler’s Handbuch der Theologischen Wissenschaft (2nd Ed, III, 149.) beside the Reformed theologians, Kohlbruegge, Gaussen, and Kuyper, Walther in St. Louis is named as a champion of the old church doctrine of inspiration “on the Lutheran side.” As proof for this, reference is made to an article in Lehre und Wehre which later appeared in pamphlet form. This was indeed not written by Walther (the article: “Was lehren die neueren orthodox sein wollenden Theologen von der Inspiration?” Lehre und Wehre 1871, p. 33ff.), but the statement of the “Handbuch” is nevertheless correct. Walther not only championed the old church doctrine of inspiration with fullest conviction throughout his whole career as a teacher of the church, but he also designated the yielding up of this doctrine as an apostasy from the Christian religion in principle.

In the very first volume of Lehre und Wehre (1855, p. 248), in a review of Kahnis’ work Der innere Gang des deutschen Protestantismus, etc., Walther makes reference to the following words of Kahnis: “Protestantism stands and falls with the Principle of the sole authority of Scripture. But this principle is independent of the doctrine of inspiration taught by the old dogmaticians. To return to this doctrine as it was previously taught could only be done by hardening oneself against the truth.” Kahnis held a better position then than he did later on. At that time his name was still in good repute in the Lutheran Church. Yet even then Walther remarked on these words: “We must confess that when we read these words we were terrified in our very heart: Who would want to follow a new theology that presents itself as the further development of the old Lutheran theology, but then departs from the dogmatic type of our old church in the doctrine of the formal principle of theology, of the Holy Scriptures; namely from the ratio formalis scripturae, that which makes Scriptures the Holy Scriptures?” So wrote Walther in the first volume of Lehre und Wehre. He also treats inspiration in the last Foreword written by him in the Foreword to the 32nd volume of Lehre und Wehre (1886).

Walther shows in brief what doctrine of inspiration he holds to be correct in “Lehre und Wehre,” 1875, p. 257f. in three short citations from Baier and Quenstedt. However, he always treated this subject very exhaustively in his regular lectures, and finally in the academic year 1885–1886 in his evening lectures. Walther’s doctrine of inspiration may be briefly summarized as follows: Holy Scripture does not merely contain God’s Word, but is according to its entire compass God’s Word in the proper sense, because God spoke through the sacred writers or gave to them the subject matter and words, such that in Holy Scripture not the slightest error can occur, whether in dogmatical or in historical, geographical, and other matters. So one must believe, says Walther, concerning Holy Scripture, if one accepts “what Holy Scripture says of itself,” 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:20,21; 1 Cor. 2:13; John 10:35; etc. He regards the concept of the inspiration of Scripture as having been given up by all those “who acknowledge only an inspiration of the ‘what’ and not of the ‘how,’ of the matters and not also of the words of Holy Scripture, or who assume degrees of Inspiration giving precedence to one book before another, or who grant that Scripture may contain any error, or that it condescends, not only to the comprehension of simple people but also to their false notions.” (Lehre und Wehre 13,100.) With regard to those who confuse inspiration with enlightenment and transform inspiration into a mere preservation from error, and thusly to have an infallible Scripture, Walther remarked: “That seems harmless enough, and yet thereby the entire doctrine of inspiration is given up. We need not merely truth, but divine truth. We must have a word which has passed through the mouth of God, and consequently is glowing with divine power and penetration, immersed, so to speak, in the mind of God. The simple truth works through the power of persuasion; not so the Word of God.” With regard to the expressions of the Church Fathers and the old Lutheran teachers, to the effect that the holy writers were like manus, clami, notarii, tabelliones of the Holy Ghost, Walther remarks: “Though more recent positive theologians (die Neugläubigen) may ridicule these expressions, yet they express the teaching of Holy Scripture.” Regarding the variations of style which are found in the various books of Scripture, Dr. Walther explained them, together with the great majority of the old teachers, by the fact that the Holy Ghost used His instruments as He found them; for the “essence of inspiration lies not in new words but in that words which may indeed have been otherwise in common use passed through the mouth of God, that God made them His own words.” Whether the Hebrew vowel points which appear in the current pointed Hebrew text were written in the text from the beginning, as the majority of the old Lutheran teachers supposed, Walther declared to be not a dogmatical but a critical question. He, personally, held with Luther, who declared the traditional Hebrew system of vowel points to be the product of a later age.

We shall here give just one example of the way Walther refuted the objections raised against the church’s doctrine of inspiration. It is well known that the recent theologians assert that they gave up the old doctrine of inspiration in order to rescue the “divine-human character” of Scripture, which the earlier theologians had overlooked. So also in the “Handbuch der theologischen Wissenschaften” l.c. Walther said, “Among the many objections which modern believing theologians raise against the doctrine of inspiration as taught by our old dogmaticians, one of the most common is that this doctrine in its emphasis on the divine character of Holy Scripture does not do justice to its human side, yes, entirely abolishes this aspect. As in the Apostolic age the sect of the Docetists denied that in Christ God had become a true man, and taught that the apparently human in Christ was only an appearance, in like manner it is now said, the old Lutheran dogmatics did with the Bible; the old dogmatics, they assert, makes everything human in the Bible a mere appearance. — All this is simply not true. Indeed, the old dogmatics also acknowledges a human side of the Bible in a certain sense. It acknowledges that the Bible was not, like the Ten Commandments, written directly by God’s own finger, but through men, namely, the apostles and prophets. Also, the old dogmatics further acknowledges that the Bible does not speak the language of heaven, of which St. Paul says he heard unspeakable words, but that the Word of God has clothed itself in our human language and human writing. Indeed, the old dogmatics admits that the Bible was written by the holy writers not in a state of ecstasy but with full consciousness, and that the Holy Spirit adapted or accommodated Himself to the language and the human style of each apostle and prophet. — The old dogmatics, however, and we with it, teaches that in Christ the Son of God became a true man, but without sin, and thus also in the Bible the Word of God became true human speech, but without error. As therefore a man for the reason that he is without sin is still not a mere appearance of a man, but a real man, so also human speech which is without error is not for that reason a mere appearance of human speech, but truly human speech. — So what is all this fuss about, that the old dogmatics does not do justice to the human side of the Scripture? Nothing other than this: That we err when we do not ascribe errors to Holy Scripture like we do to every other human writing, but that we hold it, among all books, to be the Book of Truth.” (Evening Lecture on the Doctrine of Inspiration, December 18, 1885).

Why did Walther hold so firmly to the church’s doctrine of inspiration? Above all else because this is the clear teaching of Scripture concerning itself. But also because, as already suggested, when the church’s doctrine of inspiration is surrendered, the truth that Scripture alone is the source and norm of Christian doctrine is likewise surrendered. It is inconceivable how a man like Kahnis, who has been labeled a “thinker,” can put forward the proposition that the principle of Protestantism concerning the sole authority of Scripture is “independent” of the old church doctrine of inspiration, that is, from the teaching that Scripture is the perfectly inerrant Word of God. Everyone will at once be constrained to agree with Walther when he repeatedly declares: “We must absolutely hold fast to the doctrine of inspiration taught by our old dogmaticians. If we grant that in the Bible even the least error can occur, then man must undertake to separate truth from error. Thereby man is placed over the Scripture and Scripture has thereby ceased to be the source and norm of faith. Human reason is made the norma of truth and Scripture sinks to the level of a norma normata. The slightest deviation from the old doctrine of inspiration introduces a rationalistic germ into theology and leavens the entire structure of doctrine.” (In lecture 1874-1875 [according to Walther’s own notes from that lecture cf. Note 1 to installment #2].

On the same subject Walther said, with reference to the controversy over the doctrine of inspiration recently provoked by the Dorpat professors Volck and Mühlau: “With the doctrine of inspiration stands and falls the truth, certainty, and divine authority of Holy Scripture and therefore of the entire Christian religion and church. This is not just one doctrine alongside of others, but upon it rest all other doctrines as upon their foundation. If Holy Scripture is not inspired by God, but brought forth by the will of man, then it is also no divine but a human Scripture. Someone will say: Whatever Scripture reports and testifies concerning the acquisition and attainment of eternal salvation is of divine origin and in this way infallible; only in those things which are not directly connected to salvation, that is, in the non-essential and incidental matters, is it of a human character and therefore not entirely error-free — this does not help matters. For this assertion, that human error is mixed with the parts of Scripture that are divine truth, renders not only a part but the whole of Scripture unsteady and unreliable (wackend und schwakend), and the reader is made the supreme judge as to which of Scriptures component parts contain the essential and which the non-essential; which the divine and which the human; which contain truth and which contain error, or at least could contain error. Then it would be a massive and terrible deception that the Christian Church has, until now, always regarded Holy Scripture as the formal principle or as the pure source of all her Christian knowledge, as the inerrant rule and standard of all faith and life, and as the supreme and ultimate arbiter in all controversies concerning faith and religion. Then one could no longer admonish a Christian, whenever he opens his Bible, to pray with Samuel ‘Speak, Lord; for Thy servant heareth,’ but would rather have to warn every reader of the Bible not to surrender himself to Scripture with full confidence, and admonish him to read Scripture with caution and with constant discrimination and to devote himself to the task of separating out divine truth from the midst of human error.” (Evening Lecture on the doctrine of Inspiration, November 27,1885).

Hence Walther exclaims: “God have mercy upon His poor Christendom in this last age of distress and danger” (L.u.W, 32, pp. 77), in which Christians have their Bible taken from them, “the lamp unto their feet and the light unto their path to eternity, their rod and staff in the dark valley of tribulation, in short, God’s Word, and therefore their comfort in the anguish of sin, their hope in the night of their dying hour.” (L.c. p. 76). It is his desire therefore that “Lehre und Wehre” shall also in the future warn against the deniers of the inspiration of Holy Scripture “as the worst false prophets of our time.”

He writes: “It is time indeed for every believing theologian, as he values his soul’s salvation, with the utmost earnestness to join the fight for the highest Christian treasure which God has given to men after the bestowal of His Son. Woe to him who wants to be reckoned among the theologians and yet will not acknowledge that this above all is his vocation, to preserve for the common Christian that upon which his faith, and hence also his salvation and blessedness rests, the ‘foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.’ Woe to him who wants to be reckoned among the theologians and then, on the contrary, imagines that for this reason, above all else, he must fight to preserve the full freedom of science! For therein lies the deepest reason for the ever-increasing apostasy of modern theology from the revealed divine truth, and for the complete transformation of the Christian religion into a human science, namely, that modern theology no longer wants to be a habitus practicus θεόσδοτος, but the ‘scientific self-consciousness of the church’ or ‘the ecclesiastical science of Christianity.’” ( L.c, .p. 6).