§ 27. All propositions which claim a place in an epitome of Evangelical (Protestant) doctrine must approve themselves both by appeal to Evangelical confessional documents, or in default of these, to the New Testament Scriptures, and by exhibition of their homogeneity with other propositions already recognized. 1. It may seem strange that here the confessional documents of the Evangelical Church, collectively, are, as it were, given a prior place to the New Testament Scriptures themselves. But this must not by any means be taken as establishing a precedence for these documents. That, indeed, would contradict the documents themselves, since they always appeal to Scripture. Thus the appeal to them in fact always implies indirectly an appeal to Scripture. But the appeal to Scripture can directly prove only that a proposition which has been set up is Christian, while its distinctively Protestant content is not decided upon, except in the few cases where it can be shown that the Catholic Church has sanctioned an opposite use of the same passages of Scripture. Thus for the Protestant content there remain only the other two kinds of proof; and, of these, the first place is assured to the proof from the confessional documents, in virtue of the general demand made upon Dogmatics to set forth doctrine prevalent in the Church. For these documents are plainly the first common possession of Protestantism; and just as all Protestant communities grew together into the Church primarily through attachment to these, so every system of doctrine which desires to pass as Protestant must strive to attach itself to this history. Indeed, this holds of its original and distinctive elements as much as of its common elements, only that for the former, it is naturally enough to have an indirect demonstration that its propositions are compatible with the Symbols. Thus the direct appeal to Scripture is only necessary either when the use which the confessional documents make of the New Testament books cannot be approved of (and we must at least admit the possibility that in individual cases all the testimonies adduced, even if not falsely applied, may nevertheless be unsatisfying, since other passages of Scripture must be applied as means of proof), or when propositions of the confessional documents do not themselves seem sufficiently scriptural or Protestant, and these must accordingly be superannuated and other expressions substituted, which will then certainly the more easily find acceptance, the more it is shown that Scripture on the whole favours them or even perhaps demands them. Therefore this method of always going back in the first instance to the confessional documents affords at the same time the advantage, that the ecclesiastical status of any proposition thereby at once becomes clear, and consequently the significance of the whole presentation for the further development of the system of doctrine is much more easily perceived.
From this it follows that, if we look at individual cases, the proving of a proposition by exhibiting its relation to other propositions already proved in another way is a merely subordinate matter, and only suitable to propositions of second rank, which neither appear directly in the Symbols nor are represented in any definite way in Scripture. But, on the other hand, when this reference is added at each point to that original method of proof, it does properly illuminate for the first time the suitability both of the arrangement of the system of doctrine and of the terminology which prevails in it.
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Now, as we here class together all confessional documents of the Evangelical Church, in both its main branches, as of equal right, there is for us no single one which could have proceeded from the whole Church or even have been recognized by it. And so the distinction between the greater and more universal authority of some, and the more doubtful and scantier authority of others, vanishes as of no significance at all. Indeed, since in the confessional documents, at least of the second stage, Reformed modes of presentation are directed against Lutheran, and vice versa, it must be admitted at the outset that only that part of the confessional documents in which they all agree can be really essential to Protestantism; and indeed that, through this conflict between the different particular confessional documents, the right of holding different views on all non-essential points has itself, as it were, received symbolic recognition for the whole Evangelical Church. Further, it is unquestionable that in a certain sense all our Symbols, though some more than others, are merely occasional documents, in which therefore the precise mode of statement of many points depends upon time and place; and we have no reason to suppose that the authors themselves would offer the selected expression as the only perfectly right one. And here is another related point: the authors themselves (certainly quite in accordance with their then convictions, but nevertheless too precipitately for the character of a confessional document, since they were still engaged in inquiry) repudiated views then held to be heretical, and, in all points which had not yet become definitely controversial, testified to their agreement with the then prevalent doctrine. That sentence of condemnation may have fallen on many a divergence which had proceeded from the same spirit as the Reformation itself, because this spirit had not learnt to recognize itself promptly. And similarly many an older doctrinal view might be taken over, simply because people failed to see at once how it conflicted with the essence of Protestantism. From this it follows that, in going back to the Symbols, if we are to avoid making that procedure a hindrance to the further development of doctrine, we must, in the first place, rather have regard to the spirit than cling to the letter, and, in the second place, we must apply the exegetical art to the letter itself, in order to make a right use of it.
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Our proposition mentions only the New Testament Scriptures, not the Bible in general. We have already to some extent prepared the reader for this in what we said above about the relation of Christianity to Judaism.1 But, further, everyone must admit that if a doctrine had neither direct nor indirect attestation in the New Testament, but only in the Old, no one could have much confidence in regarding it as a genuinely Christian doctrine; whereas if a doctrine is attested by the New Testament, no one will object to it, because there is nothing about it in the Old. Hence the Old Testament appears simply a superfluous authority for Dogmatics. Now it is indeed true that even New Testament passages can demonstrate no more than that a proposition or doctrine is Christian. But, nevertheless, this is a thoroughly Protestant mode of procedure, in the case of every dogmatic proposition to go back to Scripture itself, and to human claims only in so far as they are attested by Scripture, but in this use of Scripture to allow everyone the free application of the exegetical art, as based on linguistic science. Naturally, however, the use made of Scripture varies itself a great deal, according to the differing character of the propositions. When the original trend towards purification of the Church is uppermost, the agreement must be so exact that Scripture can be used polemically against the assertions of the Roman Church. When it is rather the distinctive character of Protestantism that is concerned, it is enough to show that this more particularized form of doctrine is embraced within what Scripture says, without having to show that this particular form is the only scriptural one. And, similarly, all that the original and peculiar element in the presentation can with certainty venture to assert is, that it contains nothing demonstrably contrary to Scripture; the common element, on the other hand, must definitely attach itself to Scripture.