# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1959_S44
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

44 DOCTRINAL ESSAY

His way of salvation. Nor is the unique nature of divine doctrine
necessarily inferred from the noble and virtuous character of Bible
heroes, saints, and martyrs whose lives some people believe should
be imitated for the purpose of gaining God’s favor. Divine doc-
trine, though it comes to us through the mind and understanding,
is never mere information or a mere challenge to better moral
conduct. Rather, doctrine being “divine,” God Himself addresses
the person who is brought under the influence of that doctrine.
This doctrine uncovers for man the true nature of his being. It
reveals to him his sinfulness. It rouses his conscience. It compels
him to realize that he can do nothing to save himself from God’s
fiery anger. But this doctrine — and this is its noblest and sub-
limest feature —also tells the sinner that in Jesus Christ he is
holy and just in the sight of God and an heir of eternal salvation.
This doctrine persuades him that it is divine and therefore abso-
lutely authoritative. At the same time it fills him with the power
of the Spirit to lay hold on the gracious promises in this doctrine,
to rejoice in the proffered forgiveness, to love the brethren, to
resist sin, and to tell and teach others about the doctrine he has
learned.

The teaching of divine doctrine became a more and more
significant factor in the expansion of Christianity following the
apostolic period. Catechumens preparing for reception into the
church were thoroughly taught the elements of divine doctrine.

But even as errors crept into the “pure doctrine” when it was
preached, so they also crept into the teaching of that doctrine.
In course of time divine doctrine included not only the great
articles of the creeds, but also such false and unscriptural teach-
ings as purgatory, invocation of saints, penances, and other com-
mandments and doctrines of men. We owe it to Luther that, having
discovered by God’s enlightening Spirit that the heart and center
of divine doctrine is the sinner’s justification by God without any
merit in man and purely as a result of God’s love and because
of the substitutionary suffering and death of Jesus Christ, he
set about to have that “pure doctrine” also taught by parents to
their children and by pastors and teachers to the laity of the
church. To that end Luther wrote his two catechisms, the Small
and the Large Catechism. What blessings have come to the church
as a result of these catechisms! What an incomparable though
brief compend of the chief elements of divine doctrine the Small
Catechism contains! Here we have, one should like to say, the
purest exhibition of divine doctrine ever gathered in so small
a compass!

The very mention of Luther’s Small Catechism must evoke in
all of us most grateful recollections! Is it an overstatement that