552 OLD TESTAMENT 



to take for granted that you do not expect anything heroic from me. 

 You simply suppose that one who for full thirty years has worked in 

 his department is in a position to present its peculiarities and its 

 aims with approximate accuracy. 



The department which I represent, and of which you to-day 

 demand from me an account, is the Old Testament branch of theology, 

 in short, Old Testament theology. Strictly speaking, we are here not 

 concerned with a branch of pure science, which investigates its 

 object simply for its own sake. Therefore I must hesitate to accept 

 the position you have given my Department as a branch of the His- 

 tory of Religion. What we understand by theology is really not the 

 science of religion as such, but the science of the Christian Church. 

 In fact, as matters stand to-day and have stood since time im- 

 memorial, it is the science of only one of its forms of development 

 in my case of the German Evangelical Church whose interests 

 and needs our theology serves. Theology is, thus, only an applied 

 science, for which fact it must console itself in common with many 

 others for example, to mention only those most nearly related, in 

 our university programme, with law and with medicine. 



Now, to the Old Testament department, in comparison with 

 others, and with the multiplicity of churches within Christianity, 

 there might be conceded a favored, one might say an ecumenical, 

 position, in that it ends at the point where Christianity begins; that 

 is to say, before there were schisms within its own body. Neverthe- 

 less, the individual beliefs of members of the department will certainly 

 never entirely lack influence upon the work of the department as 

 a whole. And, in any case, our position toward the religion of the 

 Old Testament, as far as it claims to be a living religion, is very 

 sharply defined. We have no other calling than to explain how 

 the religion of the New Testament, the Christian religion, could - 

 nay, must spring up on the ground of the Old Testament religion; 

 or, religiously expressed, how God through Israel prepared his human 

 children for the coming of salvation in Jesus Christ. This prescribed 

 task has naturally its correlate in individual conviction, and if ever 

 one of us should come to the conclusion that not Christianity, but 

 Judaism, is the fulfillment of the Old Testament, then he must, for 

 his profession as well as for his belief, draw from this its inevitable 

 conclusions. 



In thus fully and freely accepting the church's traditional name, 

 Old Testament, Old (that is, outgrown) Covenant, for the 

 object of our research, we really exercise a certain amount of self- 

 denial, and resign ourselves to accept a comparatively humble posi- 

 tion. Whether this always wins us due gratitude from the Christian 

 Church is anything but sure. Our position and our r61e in the church 

 organism have, indeed, changed essentially in the course of the cen- 



