# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1959_S27
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

DOCTRINAL ESSAY 27

nesses, which are to show in what manner after the time of
the apostles, and at what places, this pure doctrine of the
prophets and apostles was preserved. (Triglot, 177)

The Holy Scriptures alone remain the only judge, rule, and

standard, according to which, as the only teststone, all dogmas

shall and must be discerned and judged, as to whether they are

good or evil, right or wrong. (Triglot, 779)

Unfortunately, however, throughout the history of the church,
in fact, since Old Testament times, not only the prophetic and
apostolic Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament, but also
other sources have been, and in instances still are, regarded to be
sources of divine doctrine. There were the false prophets and
seers in the Old Testament period who also claimed to be possessed
of the Spirit of God and to proclaim divine truth. There were the
traditions of the scribes and Pharisees, termed by Jesus “traditions
of men,” which had in course of time achieved the same author-
itative status as the Old Testament itself. There were the false
teachers, false spirits, antichrists, who appeared in the apostolic
church and claimed to have a divine mission. There were the efforts
of some in the early centuries to introduce as other sources of
truth pagan myths and Greek philosophic speculation as sources
of divine truth. There was, for a time at least, an alleged “secret
apostolic tradition” known only, so it was claimed, to certain espe-
cially endowed leaders in the early church.

We must object also to, the position of the Roman Catholic
Church regarding its source of doctrine. In this church tradition
replaces Scripture as norm of doctrine. For this church tradition
is not merely conservatism, but the dynamic voice of the church.
The Roman Church, then, is in a position in which it can, and in
fact does, add to the sum of saving truth. We need think only,
as a case in point, of the promulgation of the “Dogma of the Bodily
Assumption of Mary” by Pius XII (1950).

But we think also of the enthusiasts in Luther’s day — Luther
regarded even the pope to be an enthusiast, but they are found
in every age — who claimed to receive revelations from the Spirit
of God apart from the Word of God which we have in the Holy
Scriptures. There is furthermore the effort first made in the early
Christian centuries to combine with the divine doctrine of Scrip-
ture philosophic thought, an effort which culminated in the thir-
teenth century in the theological system of Thomas Aquinas. There
is the effort in our day to do the same thing by theologians who are
not satisfied with the doctrine of God as Scripture has it, but who
limit it by an existential interpretation or broaden its scope by
proposing a wider philosophic foundation for the determination
of Christian doctrine.