This was the result produced by the Protest ant scholasticism, which differed from the Catho lic scholasticism of the Middle Ages in being less ingenuous. It professed to base its system only on the Scriptures, but in reality based it on the Scriptures as interpreted by the party creeds in the Church. so that the Scriptures became an armory of controversial proof-texts without any recognized difference between the Old Testament and the New, or any understood idea of progress or development in revelation.
(2) The sub-period of Rationalism, represent ed by Lessing, 1729-81; Michaelis, 1817-91; and Eichhorn, 1752-1827.
Such degeneration in the spirit and life of in terpretation was not without protest on the part of those who held equal right to Reformation principles with those who were responsible for the degeneration. It was not, however, until the philosophical movement, which saw its begin ning in Descartes and Spinoza, reached its full vigor in Lessing that this protest effected the revolution in interpretative method which is known as rationalism.
The underlying principle of this revolution was its insistence upon reason as the test of rev elation and the judge of the meaning of Scrip ture, which was taken only in its Uteri] sense. It was anti-supernatural in its bias, however, and consequently negative in attitude and es sentially destructive in results. It brought to ridicule the confessional dependence upon a me chanical inspiration by emphasizing the difficul ties and discrepancies of Scripture, and held up to such scorn the speculative squabbles of the credal parties in the Church that the way was opened in men's minds to a general skepticism and an unbelief of the crudest kind. There was little in the Church to oppose this movement, since pietism and mysticism had spent their force, and scholarship was all arrayed on the critical side.
(C) The Modern Stage, represented by Semler, 1725-91 ; Sehleiermacher, 1768-1834 ; Baur. 17 92 1860; Meyer, 1800-73; and Ritschl, 1822-89.
It was from scholarship, however, that the first impulse was to come toward the newer in terpretation which characterizes the present day; since, however difficult it may he to state the year and day with which the rationalistic period ceased and the modern stage of interpre tation began, it is quite clear that with the effort of Semler to interpret the Scripture writ ers in the light of the circumstances and con ditions with which they were surrounded, there was given to interpretation a historical basis which has characteristically marked it ever since.
Semler's interpretative work necessarily par took of the rationalistic spirit of his day, though it improved upon the rationalistic method. The power of rationalism, however, was broken by the philosophy of Kant. whose system left. rea son essentially robbed of its ability to stand in judgment over Scripture. To produce order out of the destructive wreckage of this onslaught. there was needed a constructive force, which was largely supplied by Schleiermacher and his followers, whose attitude to Scripture was one which. in proportion as it rejected all idea of mechanical inspiration, emphasized the practical character of the divine message to the soul, and the results of whose Scripture study were seen not only in constructive work in the field of gos pel and apostolic history, but also in a profound quickening of the religious life of the time.
A final effort. however, was made by rational ism in the philosophy of 'Hegel. who returned to the theory that Scripture must he judged by rea son, and whose philosophy and history furnished the fundamental basis for that interpretation of the New Testament which characterized the Tii bingen School of biblical criticism, the influence of which on Scripture interpretation was in its day well-nigh universal. This effort failed, and its failure was due as largely as anything to the work of Ritsehl, who showed the essential dis agreement of this philosophy of history with the historical facts given in the New Testament record, and who, especially whose followers, in Scripture interpretation, returned practically to the spirit of Sehleiermacher's position—that the Scriptures constitute a divine message to the soul. Involved in this position there was not only a denial of all mechanical inspiration. hut of all objective authority as attaching to Scrip ture, and a conception of the Church, not as an ecclesiastical organization whose doctrines were to be proved by Scripture, but as a spiritual community whose religious consciousness inter prets for itself the Scripture contents. At the same time, in spite of those spiritual conceptions of Scripture and the Church. the Ritschlian method of interpretation essentially emphasized the historical sense of Scripture to the exclusion of all hidden senses behind it.