Walther vs. Delitzsch on "human side of Bible" (LuW 1880)

      Six years before C. F. W. Walther wrote a passionate defense of the Inspiration of Scripture in the "Foreword" to the 1886 Lehre und Wehre, he wrote a short blurb about a famous German theologian on this same subject.  In Franz Pieper's Dogmatik, Pieper stated of Dr. Franz Delitzsch that "he deserted the inspiration of Scripture". — From Lehre und Wehre, vol. 26 (1880), p. 18-19 [EN]: 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Biblical Criticism. Dr. [Franz] Delitzsch writes in a preface to the work of [Pastor Adolph] Saphir, pastor of the Presbyterian Trinity Church in London, Christ and the Scriptures (Leipzig 1879): 

“The impiety with which some theologians treat the Holy Scriptures and thus undermine the foundation of our Evangelical people, born of the spirit of the Reformation, is becoming ever more immoderate and exasperating. We do not deny the right of criticism, but we reject the profanity of its approach, which tears down without building, and from which vanishes its awe-inspiring divine side over the human side of the biblical books. There was a time when people talked about dead orthodoxy. In our time there are all the more dead critics, from whose books we can see vain decay. They have not penetrated the experiential path of repentance to the life of faith and are therefore not able to judge spiritual things spiritually. Of course, the Holy Scriptures are also an object of scholarly research, but they want to be more than that, and whoever does not accept them for anything else, they become a stench of death to death. It is not merely a monument to the history of religion, but the document of God's ways to the salvation of mankind, the document of the way of salvation that leads to the saved community of God, the document of God's will that leaves no questioner in the lurch. Only those who have begun to feel the need for the forgiveness of sins will learn to appreciate the value of the Holy Scriptures, if they continue to submit themselves to the course and guidance of grace on the basis of this basic prerequisite of spiritual experience. The present book of Saphir is a precious guide to the lifting of the hidden treasure.” — 

Would not Dr. Delitzsch himself like to emphasize the so-called "human side of the biblical books" so that the word of the Apostle "vanishes" through his treatment of the same [“human side”]?: πᾶσα γραφὴ θεόπνευστος καὶ etc. (2 Tim. 3:16) [LED “all scripture, inspired of God”] W. [Walther]

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

While Delitzsch's Preface may sound pious enough, yet his "divine-human" Scripture, just like today's LC-MS "divine-human" Scripture, is exposed by Walther for what it is. Walther is saying in his short comment that to speak of the “so-called ‘human side of the biblical books’” is to essentially erase, or "vanish" the “divine side”, to negate 2 Tim. 3:16, which in Greek says "All Scripture is God-breathed". 

      I took a little time to read from the book by Pastor Adolph Saphir who was a converted Jew, and found that it ostensibly seems to uphold the divinity of Scripture. He reminds me of Alfred Edersheim, another converted Jew who became an author about the same time. But we see how Walther focuses on the Preface and sees through Delitzsch's seeming regard for Holy Scripture. Walther focuses on the contradiction that exposes Delitzsch's, and today's LC-MS's, actual weak position towards the Holy Scriptures. I take this opportunity to repeat Walther's final warning written in 1886:

“Beware, beware, I say, of this 'divine-human' Scripture. It is a devil's mask, for at last it manufactures such a Bible according to which I certainly would not care to be a Bible Christian; namely, that henceforth the Bible should be no more than any good book, a book which I would have to read with constant scrutiny in order not to be led into error. For if I believe that the Bible also contains errors, it is to me no longer a touchstone, but itself stands in need of one. In a word, it is unspeakable what the devil seeks with this 'divine­-human' Scripture.”