# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1853_S253
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 253 —

...to hold a conversation about the doctrinal differences, finding
justification for this in such Bible passages as 2 Thess. 3:14-15 and Rom.
16:17-18. But even if we place ourselves at the standpoint from which the
Venerable Synod views and judges us, the analogy of Scripture nevertheless
teaches that in passages like these, only such fellowship with sinners and
heretical people is against God's command as makes the orthodox believer
a partaker in their heresies, or strengthens them in their evil ways and
gives offense to others. It is by no means contrary to God's Word,
however, to comply with a call to a conversation with opponents, through
which they might be convinced of the error of their ways, or at least it
might be made clear on which side the truth lies, the opponents silenced,
put to shame, the wavering steadied, and the weak strengthened in the
truth. On the contrary, God's Word demands that every individual
Christian, as well as every whole Christian fellowship, always be ready
to give an answer to anyone who asks a reason for the hope that is in
them, and to do so with gentleness and fear, so that those who slander
them as evildoers may be put to shame for having reviled their good
conduct in Christ (1 Peter 3:15-16). To this is added the example of
Jesus Christ himself, of his holy apostles, and of all upright confessors
of the truth in every age, who never refused — even with the worst
enemies of the truth and persecutors of the Church of God — to deal
first with the maligned truth when called upon by those very people to
do so. As for the practice of our Evangelical Lutheran Church in
particular, we need only recall the *Colloquium* [formal doctrinal
conference] of Marburg between Luther and Zwingli, the one at Regensburg
between Hunnius and Heilbrunner on one side and the Jesuit Gretser on the
other, the one at Baden between Andreae and the apostate Pistorius, and
the one at Montbéliard (Mömpelgaarder, as printed) between Andreae and
the Calvinist Beza. We can only call it a grave error for the Buffalo
Synod to imagine that it would be sinning by entering, with us, into a
religious conversation we have proposed for the sake of reaching
agreement in the truth; for by doing so it would concede nothing more
than that it is willing not to refuse the opportunity we offer it to
convince us of our error in doctrine and practice — whereas we, if we
agreed to the renunciation demanded of us regarding our past conduct
toward the Synod of Buffalo, would thereby at the same time renounce the
doctrine we recognize and confess as divine truth.

The Venerable Synod of Buffalo does hold up against us the case of
unchristian self-help, in which the sin evidently committed in the
dispute would first have to be established before mutual claims could be
judged; but this does not apply to our present case, since a wrong on
our side could only be shown once the Venerable Synod of Buffalo had
cleared itself of the charge of false doctrine that we have brought
against it.

Finally, the Venerable Synod accuses us of self-contradiction, in that we
granted that we had not so far ventured to declare it a sect or faction,
and yet received into our fellowship those who had separated from it. We
grant that a church erring only out of weakness, though scarcely
excusable, ought not to be abandoned at once; but if the witnesses for
the truth...