The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 30

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

XXX

der Geister im nachapostolischen Zeitalter" (1899); while a little earlier the Dutch theologian Beversluis issued a more comprehensive

De Heilige Geest en zijne werkingen volgens de Schriften des Nieuwen Verbonds" (1896). Their investigation of the Biblical material, however, is not only very formal, but it is also dominated study, "

by such imperfect theological presuppositions that it can carry the student scarcely a step forward. Very recently something better in this respect has appeared in such books as Th. Meinhold's " Der heilige Geist und sein Wirken am einzelnen Menschen, mit besonderer Beziehung auf Luther" (1890, i2mo, pp. 228);* W. Kolling's " " Pneumatologie, oder die Lehre von der Person des heiligen Geistes 1894, 8vo, pp. 368); Karl von Lechler's "Die biblische Lehre vom heiligenGeiste"(i899, 8vo, pp. 307); andK. F. Nosgen's" Geschichte von der Lehre vom heiligen Geiste" (1899, 8vo, pp. 376); which it is to be hoped are the beginnings of a varied body of scholarly works from the Lutheran side, out of which may, after a while, grow some such comprehensive and many-sided treatment of the whole subject as that which Dr. Kuyper has given our Dutch brethren, and now us in this English translation. But none of them provides the desired treatise itself, and it is significant that no one even professes to do so. Even where, as in the case of the books of Meinhold and von Lechler, the treatment is really topical, the

—

author is careful to disclaim the purpose to provide a well-compacted, systematic view of the subject, by putting on his title-page a hint of a historical or exegetical point of view.

German Kuyper in the

In fact, only in a single instance in the whole history of theological literature

—

or,

we may

say, prior to Dr.

—

entire history of continental theological literature has any one hadthe courage or found the impulse to face the task Dr. Kuyper has

so admirably executed.

work on

"

Die Lehre

vom

We

are referring, of course, to the great

was projected by part of which only was published in a thin volume of three hundred and fifty-six pages, in 1847. It was doubtless symptomatic of the state of feeling in Germany on the subject that Kahnis never found time or encouragement in a long life of theological pursuits to complete his heiligen Geiste," which

that theological giant. K. A. Kahnis, but the

first

—

* Meinhold's book is mainly a Lutheran polemic in behalf of fundamental princii^les, against the Ritschlian rationalism on this subject. As such its obverse is provided in the recent treatise of Rudolf Otto, " Die Auschauung vom heiligen Geiste bei Luther " (1898).

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