The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

says Hegel, "always flaps her wings in the twilight." 103 Göbel, Nitzsch, and
Heppe affirm that in Reformed Protestantism, the formal principle of the
exclusive normal authority of the Holy Scriptures (acknowledged by both)
is the dominating principle. In Lutheran Protestantism, the material
principle, justification by faith, (acknowledged by both,) dominates.
Distinctive principle of the Lutheran Church.
In the former, Scripture is regarded more exclusively as the sole
source; in the latter, more as the norm of a doctrine which is evolved from
the analogy of faith, and to which, consequently, the pure exegetical and
confessional tradition of the Church possesses more value. Herzog says
that Lutheran Protestantism is the antithesis to the Judaism of the Romish
Church--an antithesis which has imparted to the Lutheran doctrines a
Gnosticizing tinge: the Reformed Protestantism was opposed to the
paganism of the Roman Church, and thus came to exhibit in its doctrine a
Judaizing ethical character. Schweizer says: "The Reformed Protestantism
is the protestation against every deification of the creature, and,
consequently, lays its emphasis on the absoluteness of God, and the
sovereignty of his will. This is its material principle, with which coheres the
exclusive emphasizing of Scripture as the normal principle." In a similar
vein of thought, Baur says: "The Reformed system begins above, and
comes down; the Lutheran begins below, and ascends." We might perhaps
phrase it: the Reformed begins with God, and reasons down to manward;
the Lutheran begins with man, and reasons up to Godward. In opposition
to this view, Schneckenburger says that the distinction does not arise from
the predominance of the theological in the one system, of the
anthropological in the other, of the absolute idea of God upon the one side,
or of the subjective consciousness of salvation on the other, but in the
different shape taken in the two systems by the consciousness of salvation
itself; from which it results that the one system falls back upon the eternal
decree, the other is satisfied to stop at justification by faith. Stahl,
approximating more to the view of Schweizer, finds in the "absolute
causality" of God the dominating principle of
103 Kahnis, Princip. d. Protestant.,4.