Germany -- Politics and government -- 1888-1918; William II, German Emperor, 1859-1941; World War, 1914-1918
And thus it goes through the centuries, until the Messiah announced
and foreshadowed by the Prophets and Psalmists shall at last
appear. The greatest revelation of God in the world! For He Himself
appeared in the body of His Son; Christ is God, God in human
form. He saved us. He inspires us, we are led to follow Him, we
feel His fire burning within us, His pity strengthening us, His
dissatisfaction destroying us, but also His intercession saving us.
Sure of victory, building solely upon His word, we go through work,
scorn, grief, misery, and death, for in Him we have the revealed
word of God, and God never lies.
That is my view of this question. The Word, especially for us of
the Evangelical faith, has become everything on account of Luther;
and Delitzsch, as a good theologian, should not forget that our
great Luther taught us to sing and believe: "Das Wort sie sollen
lassen stehn" ("The Word they must allow to stand").
It is self-evident that the Old Testament contains a large number
of parts which are of purely human-historical character and not
"God's revealed Word." These are purely historical descriptions
of events of all sorts, which occur in the life of the people of
Israel in the domain of politics, religion, morals, and spiritual
life.
For instance, the giving out of the Law on Mount Sinai can be
looked upon only symbolically as having been inspired by God,
since Moses had to turn to a revival of laws perhaps known of old
(possibly drawn from the Code of Hammurabi), in order to bring
coherence and solidarity to the framework of his people, which was
loose and little capable of resistance. Here the historian may
perhaps find a connection, either in sense or words, with the laws
of Hammurabi, the friend of Abraham, which may be logically right;
but this can never affect the fact that God had inspired Moses to
act thus, and, to that extent, had revealed Himself to the people
of Israel.
Therefore, my view is that our good professor should rather avoid
introducing and treating of religion as such in his lectures
before our association, but that he may continue, unhindered, to
describe whatever brings the religion, customs, and so on of the
Babylonians, and so on, into relation with the Old Testament.
As far as I am concerned, I am led by the above to the following
conclusion:
(a) I believe in one only God.
(b) We men need, in order to teach Him, a _Form_, especially for
our children.
(c) This _Form_ has been, up to now, the Old Testament, as we now
know it. This _Form_ will be essentially changed by research,
inscriptions, and excavations; but that will cause no harm, nor
will the fact that, thereby, much of the halo of the Chosen People
will disappear, cause any harm. The kernel and content remain
always the same: God and His influence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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