# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1855_S197
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Erlangen “Journal for Protestantism and the Church.” 197

they must therefore first be tested by Scripture and, wherever they depart from it, rejected and condemned; or, wherever their expressions can be shown to be unclear and ambiguous, they must be explained and interpreted according to Holy Scripture, which they expressly declare to be their sole norm and rule.*) Our Synod is far from ascribing to the confessional writings any kind of divine inspiration, divinity, or canonicity, as theologians of a certain school, especially in the previous century, have done. Rather, it holds the living conviction that only the authors of the Holy Scriptures enjoyed the direct illumination of the Holy Spirit, and that therefore they alone possessed the privilege of being incapable of error in matters concerning the salvation of mankind. Accordingly, it ascribes to Holy Scripture alone—which it believes to have been inspired by the Holy Spirit in both content and form, down to the smallest jot—that fullness of content by virtue of which every little saying of Scripture is an inexhaustible source of a divine thought, a divine seed capable of infinite development, and that perfectly adequate expression by virtue of which every word, every word order, and every turn of phrase in it is of such a character that the more insistently all these are examined, the more mysteries of divine wisdom and the divine will are disclosed to the student of Scripture. But our Synod just as firmly denies all this to the confessional writings.

Despite these principles, however, our Synod has indeed declared that it cannot consent to the request of a number of members of the Fürth Pastoral Conference “to understand our good confessions according to the guidance of Scripture,” and in response to this request it first advanced the assertion: “Lutherans, as such, are not to interpret their confessional writings according to Scripture.” We cannot retract this. The confessional writings of our church, which we have all publicly acknowledged as our own with a solemn oath, out of the living conviction of our hearts, themselves declare that they are a “testimony and declaration of the faith, showing how at all times Holy Scripture was understood and interpreted by those then living in the Church of God with regard to disputed articles, and how doctrine contrary to it was rejected and condemned”; and that they are “witnesses showing in what manner, after the time of the apostles, and in what places, this doctrine of the prophets and apostles was preserved”; and this, among other things, for the purpose “that the truth might be retained all the more distinctly and clearly, distinguished from all errors, and that nothing might be concealed and hidden under general terms,” and “that it might be a public and certain testimony not only among those now living but also among our descendants as to what the unanimous opinion and judgment of our churches is concerning the disputed

*) Strictly speaking, unclear and ambiguous passages occurring in the confessional writings could not be considered parts of the confession at all, but would have to be entirely disregarded as though they did not exist.