By Dr. Reinhold Seeberg. London and New York: Harper and Brothers. 1909.1
Prof. Reinhold Seeberg is one of the leaders of that school of recent German thought the object of whose research is a “Modern Positive Theology,” or, as Prof. Grützmacher, another of its leaders, prefers to phrase it, a “Modern-positive Theology.” We are happily relieved from all necessity of explaining to the readers of this Review the nature of this “Modern Positive Theology,” by the admirable exposition of it which was given by Dr. C. W. Hodge in the April number. It will suffice now to remind ourselves that, as its very name advises us, it attempts to be at once “modern” and “positive.” It wishes first of all to be “modern”; but in being “modern” it does not wish to break utterly with the historical faith of the Church—it wishes so far to remain “positive.” In one word, its purpose is—as Prof. Grützmacher’s mode of phrasing its chosen self-designation perhaps most clearly suggests—to “modernize” the historical faith of the Church. The particular elements of that faith which Prof. Seeberg undertakes to “modernize” in the booklet now before us, are the doctrines of Revelation and Inspiration. In its German form this booklet constitutes the seventh and eighth “Hefte” of the fourth series of the well-known “Biblische Zeitund Streitfragen” which have been publishing for the last five or six years “zur Aufklärung der Gebildeten.” Belonging to the fourth year of this publication, this booklet appeared in 1908, and is now (1909) offered afresh for the enlightenment of the English educated public. It would fain show them that “the opinion that the Bible is a religious book is compatible with strict historical criticism of its contents”; that it is possible “to avoid the errors of the old doctrine” of Revelation and Inspiration “while not surrendering any of its material value.” From the language of this statement it is already apparent that Prof. Seeberg is concerned to preserve the religious value of the Bible; but it is also apparent that he supposes that its “religious” can somewhat sharply be distinguished from its “historic” contents, and the one be taken and the other left.
The task which Prof. Seeberg has set before himself is not a new one. It is rather the task which everyone who has not liked “the old doctrine” of Revelation and Inspiration has set before himself for the last hundred years; “the kernel and the husk” has been the watchword of a century’s criticism and reconstruction of Christian doctrine. Anything new Prof. Seeberg has to offer must be sought, therefore, in the particular manner in which he attempts to separate the kernel from the husk, and in the particular elements in “the old doctrine” which he accounts respectively kernel and husk. Even here, however, diligent search will be needed for the detection of anything specifically new. He tells us certainly that he has “attempted to outline the main features of a new theory of Inspiration”; and there are, no doubt, new elements discoverable in the details of his treatment of the subject. But in essence this “new theory” proves to be just the old theory which Richard Rothe set forth so winningly in his “Zur Dogmatik” a half century ago (1869) that it has infected the great body of subsequent thinking. The earnestness with which Prof. Seeberg works out his theory, however; the evident seriousness of his purpose to secure to Christianity a really revelatory character; and the modifications he has introduced into Rothe’s theory for the furtherance of this end; will justify dropping out of sight for the moment the affiliation of his theory with Rothe’s and seeking to learn from his own development of it how “the Modern Positive Theology” would have us think of the Bible, and what it would have us understand by the two great terms, “Revelation” and “Inspiration.”
Prof. Seeberg’s purpose requires of him two tasks, a negative and a positive one. He must clear the ground by showing that “the old theory of inspiration” must be “definitely abandoned,” “in all its forms and details.” And, then, on this cleared ground he must build up the structure of his “new theory of inspiration,” “avoiding the errors of the old doctrine” but retaining all in it “of material value.” In prosecuting the former of these two tasks he follows the ordinary lines of the destructive criticism with which we have long been only too familiar, and repeats all its most glaring faults. The notions which have become traditional in so-called “critical circles” as to the formation of the Biblical Canon, the ground of the authority of the Bible, the trustworthiness of the Biblical record, are assumed, and “the old theory” condemned for its lack of accord with them. There is no need to dwell on this destructive side of the argument. There is nothing distinctive in it; it is conventional in the extreme. We pause only to advert briefly to a few isolated points.