# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S478
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

478 INTERSYNODICAL AND DOCTRINAL MATTERS

as horrible and blasphemous, since it flatly contradicts Christ and
His holy apostles, sets up men as judges over the Word of God,
and thus overthrows the foundation of the Christian Church

Of God.

4. On the basis of the Holy Scriptures we teach the sublime
article of the Holy Trinity; that is, we teach that the one true
God, Deut. 6, 4; 1 Cor. 8, 4, is the Father and the Son and the Holy
Ghost, three distinct persons, but of one and the same divine
essence, equal in power, equal in eternity, equal in majesty, because
each person possesses the one divine essence entire, Col. 2,9; Matt.
28, 19. We hold that all teachers and communions that deny the
doctrine of the Holy Trinity are outside the pale of the Christian
Church. The Triune God is the God who is gracious to man, John
3, 16—18; 1 Cor, 12, 3. Since the Fall no man can believe in the
“fatherhood” of God except he believe in the eternal Son of God,
who became man and reconciled us to God by His vicarious satis-
faction, 1 John 2, 23; John 14, 6. Hence we warn against Uni-
tarianism, which in our country has to a great extent impenetrated
the sects and is being spread particularly also through the influence
of the lodges.

‘Of Creation.

5. We teach that God has created heaven and earth, and that
in the manner and in the space of time recorded in the Holy Scrip-
tures, especially Gen. 1 and 2, namely, by His almighty creative
word, and in six days. We reject every doctrine which denies or
limits the work of creation as taught in Scripture. In our days
it is denied or limited by those who assert, ostensibly in deference
to science, that the world came into existence through a process
of evolution; that is, that it has, in immense periods of time,
developed more or less out of itself. Since no man was present
when it pleased God to create the world, we must look for a
reliable account of creation to God’s own record, found in God’s
own Book, the Bible. We accept God’s own record with full con-
fidence and confess with Luther’s Catechism: “I believe that God
has made me and all creatures,”

Of Man and of Sin.

6. We teach that the first man was not brutelike nor merely
capable of intellectual development, but that God created man
in His own image, Gen, 1, 26, 27; Eph. 4, 24; Col. 3, 10, that is,
in true knowledge of God and in true righteousness and holiness
and endowed with a truly scientific knowledge of nature, Gen.
2, 19-~23. :

7. We furthermore teach that sin came into the world by the