German Theologian’s Conversion Changed Her Biblical Outlook

by   Lee Weeks                                                                                                                                          Vol. IX, No. 2, February 1996

For 16 years, Etta Linnemann taught students at a seminary in Berlin, Germany, to view the Bible skeptically, professing the Gospel accounts of Jesus' miracles as more fable than fact.

But in November 1977 the German theologian's views changed radically when she accepted Christ as Lord and Savior. Since then, Linnemann, whose doctorate is in historical-critical methodology, has been exposing the faults and weaknesses of the anti-supernatural theology she once espoused as a student of the German scholar Rudolf Bultmann.

Speaking Nov. 3 at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, NC, Linnemann said arguments held by historical-critical theologians against the inerrancy of the Bible are based on a presupposition that "research must proceed as if God does not exist." "With this unjustified demand, historical-critical theology makes the denial of faith in the living Triune God its basic premise," she said.

Linnemann, 69, quoted C. H. Spurgeon as assessing the historical-critical theological movement: "This weed of modern theology is nothing other than unbelief that is too cowardly to own up to its name."

Linnemann said as a student she was subtly deceived under the training of Bultmann. She said historical-critical theology mythologizes Scripture. "He has some logical arguments founded on faulty presuppositions, that he didn't tell," Linnemann said. "I wasn't conscious of those presuppositions. You take it in as if it were fact." For years, Linnemann said, she explained the three synoptic Gospels' accounts of Jesus miracles by claiming literary dependence among the books. "I was told - and I was no better, I told my students - that Mark was the framework for Matthew and Luke," she said.

Through painstaking analysis of the synoptic gospels, Linnemann has refuted the literary dependence theory by showing only 22.17 percent of the words examined in the three Gospels were identical.

Linnemann said claims that historical-critical theology is based on "scientific" findings are lacking proof as well. "Instead, hypotheses that have found acceptance are treated like scientific results and circulated as facts," she said. "In the area of theology, whatever does not conform to historical-critical conventions is not acknowledged as scientific. It accordingly remains disregarded and is suppressed."

The documentary hypothesis theory, supported by historical-critical theologians and which attributes authorship of the Pentateuch to several authors instead of Moses alone, may only be accepted, Linnemann said, by "ignoring the findings of the last 100 years in archaeology."

In 1978, Linnemann said, she trashed all her writings questioning the validity of God's Word which had been based on positions held by scholars of historical-critical methodology.

"We have only to believe in the Bible," she stated confidently. [BP]