The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 31

:

BY PROFESSOR WARFIELD

xxxi

And, indeed, it was greeted in theological circles at the time with something like amused amazement that any one could devote so much time and labor to this theme, or expect others to find time and energy to read such a treatise. We are told that a wellbook.

known

theologian remarked caustically of

it

that

if

things were to

no one could expect to live long enough to read the literature of his subject; and the similar remark made by C. Hase in the preface to the fifth edition of his " Dogmatic," tho it names no names, is said to have had Kahnis's book in view.* The significance of Kahnis's unique and unsuccessful attempt to provide for German Protestantism some worthy treatment of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is so great that it will repay us to fix And to this end we exthe facts concerning it well in our minds. be carried out on that

scale,

it from the introduction of the work von Lechler which we have just mentioned (p. 22 sgq.)

tract the following account of

of

"We

to indicate, in conclusion, another

have

tory of our doctrine, which

is in its

way

circumstance in the his-

just as significant for the attitude

of present-day science toward this topic as was the silence of the first Ecumenical Council concerning it for the end of the first theological age. It is

monographs on the Holy Spirit. Altho some instances important, studies dealing

the extraordinary poverty of

there do exist some,

and

in

with the subject, yet their number and the extent of the problems.

out of all proportion to the greatness doubtless should not err in assuming that vital interest in a scientific question will express itself not merely in comprehensive handbooks and encyclopedic compendiums, the latter of

is

We

which are especially forced

to see to the

completeness of the

list

of subjects treated, but of necessity also in those separate investigations in

which especially the fresh vigor of youth fitness for higher studies.

What

accustomed to make proof of its we should have to regret in other

is

lacuncE

branches of theological science if a rich development of monographic literature did not range itself by the side of the compendiums, breaking out here and there new paths, laying deeper foundations, supplying valuable material for the constructive or decorative completion of the scientific structure All this, in the present instance, however, has scarcely made a beginning. The sole separate treatise which has been projected on a really profound and broad basis of investigation the " Lehre vom heiligen Geiste " of K. A. Kahnis (then at Breslau), 1847 came to a standstill with its first part. This celebrated theologian, who had certainly in his possession in surpri!

— —

sing measure the qualities and acquisitions that fitted him to come forward as a preparer of the way in this uncertain and little worthily studied subject, had set before himself the purpose of investigating this, as he himself called it, extraordinarily neglected topic, at once on its Biblical, ec« '

'

*

See Holtzmann in the Theolog. Literaturzeitung of

1896, xxv., p. 646.

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