Full Text for Verbal Inspiration - a Stumbling Block for the Jews and Foolishness to the Greeks, part 14 (Text)

- Contin L E I WEHRf MAGAZIN UE ... . L'TH. Ho. 11. .11 K TJ EOLOGICAL QUA Tr;RLY-Tl' -U~ G1~. i.L M HLV October, 1 '2 1" u tt> tAuicl .. L':C in , drriage Probl .. L. Verbal Inspiration - a Stumbli T! '" I. tk 10 I C ness to the Grr. ". 'I Sermon Stu y 0 0 ·)M.14:1·9. T 1""., • .11 Outll" I 1'; Epbtl. ~clCL io 1 , rh . - Kif d.lich·Zeitg( ... Ww tithes t..n Pred!.~ - mUJII nlc:ht "Up1n wd- ... •• ..u UI w!'f\., 81-0 , er dle Sci ~ uu'r- r -IIX' "' .. c. . e rechtM eM , r .. 1.rt"- m :111.1 ,e""r~ lV' " ., . , , . · ver- T' l ITtum !niw .. n. ... 0 n'.J, ...k~O iJ L.."'<.n' t b ' - 1 Publlshed for r 1 F. ~ ~ 0 No. 10 ,, __ 722 ,. ,, ___ """ 731 ___ "" 757 if ' i83 i95 , Ev. Lu{ = 'IIuJ 0' . OLII .. , 1.1. L C tes C J' Verbal Inspiration-a Stumbling-Block to Jews, Etc. 731 marriage ceremony without giving the couple some Christian, pastoral advice in the shape of a well-prepared address. In many places the address has been dropped because "The people will not listen anyhow," or "because it takes too lang." In many cases the form has been cut, the section concerning the troubles of the married estate has been deleted in order not to shock the sen- sibilities of the blushing bride, the "obey" often is omitted, and so it happens that the parade of the bridal party to and from the altar frequently takes longer than the ceremony itself. This is a mistake and constitutes a lack of pastoral guidance. It may be well to mention that one of our pastors tries to solve the problem by offering courses of instruction on marital matters to the parents of his church, so that they may be better qualified to deal with their young people at home. Another pastor makes it a practice to write to all young couples on the occasion of their first wedding anniversary reminding them of their marriage vows, marriage obligations, and marital blessings. One of our Sunday schools gives the book Why Was I Not Told by Marquardt to all r..igh school graduates in that Su.'1day schooL Other pastors have sought to solve the problem of postwedding adjustment by clubs for the newly married where marriage problems could be rather freely discussed. In conclusion it may be said that it does not make much dif- ference whether the pastor uses one form of guidance or another, whether he deals with the young people in groups or whether he would rather deal with them as individuals, but all evidence points to the fact that all Christian parents, pastors, and teachers should give more regular, more systematic, more planned guidance to our youth in this important matter which so definitely affects their whole life, both physical and spiritual, and at times, because of abuse or sinful misuse, even jeopardizes their soul's salvation. St. Louis, Mo. ELFRED L. RaSCHKE .. ~ Verbal Inspiration - a Stumbling-Block to the Jews and Foolishness to the Greeks ( Continued) VI The indignation of the moderns reaches white heat when they are asked to receive every word of Scripture as inerrant and authoritative. If Verbal Inspiration means that every word of Scripture must be received as God's word, with unquestioning faith and obedience - and it means just that ~ they will have 7~2 Verbal Inspiration-a Stumbling-Block to Jews, Etc. none of it. That is their strongest objection to Verbal Inspiration, and they express their abhorrence of it with the frightful word legaListic. Let H. E. Fosdick tell us why he can no longer believe in Verbal Inspiration: "We used to think of Inspiration as a procedure which produced a book guaranteed in all its parts against error and containing from beginning to end a unanimous system of truth .... When Josiah swore the people to a solemn league and covenant, or when Ezra pledged the nation's loyalty to the keeping of the Levitical Law, the Bible which thus was coming into being, was primarily a book of divine requirements. It told the people what they ought to do. . .. One might have expected the Christians to break with this legalistic employment of Scripture," but "when the New Testament was added to the Old and the whole Book was bound up into unity by a the017 of inerrant inspiration, Christians used the whole Book as the Jews had used part of it; it was a divine oracle to tell men how to live." (The Modern Use of the Bible, pp. 30, 236 ft.) R. Seeberg thanks God for the "fall of Verbal Inspiration." "The wall to which I refer was the Verbal Inspiration of the Bible, the conviction that every word of Holy Scripture was given by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to the authors of the Old and Nbv Testaments. . .. Every single word was regarded as of legal validity, and precisely on that account every single word was said to be given to man by the inspiration of God. It was not interests specifically Christian, but the theories and ideas of later Judaism which produced this 'old' theory of inspira- tion." (Revelation and Inspiration, pp.1, 32.) The Lutheran Church Quarterly thus voices its protest: "It is of course no secret that Verbal Inspiration is not taught in some of the sem- inaries of the United Lutheran Church. . .. What results 'when the Word of God is identified with the words of the Scriptures" is 'a legalistic and an atomistic conception of the Scriptures, far more congenial to Calvinism than to Lutheranism.''' (1937, p.195.) "Scriptural theology will not set up a deified Book in the place of the deified Church of Roman Catholicism nor hold to legalistic, unhistorical, and unpsychological theories of its inspiration. . . . It will not quibble over such questions as whether the Bible is the Word of God or contains the Word of God." (1934, p.114. By Prof. T. A. Kantonen.) "Ockham regarded the Bible as an object