Deissmann se woorde, in skrille kontras met die werk van MacCulloch, is as volg. Hier gaan dit oor ware aard en grondslag van die Christelike Godsdiens en oor die Nuwe Testament se aanvaarbaarheid in die moderne wêreld – ’n kwessie wat, nog meer so as vandag, deur agnostici en antagoniste van die tyd bevraagteken, was:
“Everything religious is simple. It becomes complicated only when strange elements are introduced into it. This question as to the religious value can only be answered from a religious standpoint. A work of art cannot be appreciated by a savage (Spiritueel onbekwames), and the religious value of the New Testament cannot be appreciated by a man who has no feeling for religion (byvoorbeeld MacCulloch). Just as the grinning savage would perhaps shatter the work of art with a blow of his club, so the unreligious man would regard as absurd the question of the religious value of the New Testament. Thus the religious value of the New Testament cannot be forced upon anyone by demonstrations. It can only be perceived by the man who has a sensitiveness for the sublime object. It obtrudes itself upon the religious man. Therefore there is no need for long words to prove that value. It is written large on every page of the New Testament ...”
“But it is advisable first of all to avert a misunderstanding which, I believe, is still widespread. I have already touched upon it in the fifth lecture. Many believe that the religious value of a Biblical text depends on the results of historical criticism. As a young theologian I shared this opinion. But I came to regard it more and more as untenable. With the final rejection of that principle, I experienced a beneficent inner deliverance. I was of the opinion that the demonstration of the historical value of the New Testament was the basis for the recognition and validity of its religious value. I thought that theological science must for each new generation, perhaps with new methods, first bring the demonstration of the historical value of the classical sources of the New Testament, and that on this foundation would arise the religious value and the religious appreciation of the New Testament would be possible, beginning with personal edification and going on to the edification of communities and inspiration of the work of evangelization and missions. Put in other words, if the demonstration of the historical value of the classical sources should fail, as a whole or in part, through a proof of the spuriousness of any one of the texts, then the religious foundation not only of the Christian Church but also of Christianity in general would be shaken. This theory to which I look back today with sympathy as belonging to struggling youth, expressed in formula would be this: the historical is the basis of the holy. Whoever understands this formula in all that it implies will perceive that with it an attitude is taken to one of the greatest problems of modern thought since the time of Richard Simon, Spinoza, and Lessing. It is a problem, recognized or not, that lies behind all controversies about the Bible which have moved and shaken, impoverished and enriched, Christendom since historical criticism entered into theology … I cannot unfold at full length this problem of the relation of the historical to the holy. I must be content with emphasizing that I became more and more convinced of the primacy and the autonomy of the holy. A very great part of the historical flows directly or indirectly from the self-manifestation of the holy, while the holy has many inner relations with the historical. But finally the holy depends on itself, and in itself lies the source of its immanent development. The holy is prehistoric and metahistoric. The holy does not live on the favors of history. It lives on the secret of divine spontaneous generation.”
“That we value the New Testament as Holy Scriptures thus need not be justified on the detour of a historical examination of its contents, because it is justified from within through the testimony which our fathers called the “testimonium spiritus Sancti internum,” “the testimony of the Holy Spirit from within,” and which Paul called the “demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Corinthians 2:4). Our examination of the historical value of the New Testament, therefore, did not mean that we sought to find in a secular way something that was necessary in the interest of the holy, like a foundation of hewn stones on which the Sanctissimum could be erected. It did not mean that in the laboratory of the week-day we sought to distill the Water of Life for Sunday, or that the New Testament chair should be the fire protection for the pulpit.”
Vervolg -
Kobus de Klerk