# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1857_S336
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— Page 336 —

...had once acted so recklessly against God's Word, then nothing would
remain of the whole Reformation either. As a faithful pastor, Pastor
Schieferdecker was bound to have regard for the consciences not of
one party, but of everyone.

Pastor Schieferdecker remarked that he was willing to answer, before
the judgment seat of Christ, for what he had preached and testified.
For whoever, as he did, is livingly convinced that the Revelation of
St. John truly is Christ's own revelation, and contains divine
prophecy, comfort, and strength for the fortifying of faith, must also
care that no doubt about the book's divine origin be aroused in the
hearts of the congregations. To this it was replied that it is the
Pope and his followers who decree on the genuineness or spuriousness
of biblical books, branding as a heretic anyone who does not assent
to their judgment. The Lutheran Church, by contrast, does not presume
to settle such things on its own authority, but holds instead to the
distinction between canonical books of the first and second rank, a
distinction that has held in the Church since the earliest times. Like
the earliest Church, it too has had to leave it uncertain whether
Revelation — like the other writings of the New Testament that some in
the early Church disputed — was written by an apostle or under
apostolic authority, or not. It is not out of carelessness toward
God's Word but out of proper reverence for it that the Church retains
this distinction, one that has always existed within the orthodox
Church; for just as it would be an intolerable presumption for the
Church, by its own decree, to turn spurious books into genuine ones,
it would likewise be papistic — not Christian or Lutheran — to decree
as equally certain those books which the earliest Church listed as
"disputed" and did not include in the proper canon of Holy Scripture.
This freedom must remain; the opposite would be papistic tyranny.
Whoever, along with the earliest Church, with Luther, and with the
Lutheran Church's own acknowledged orthodox theologians, doubts the
canonicity of Revelation on historical grounds is not therefore a
heretic or a despiser of the divine Word. If, then, on the one hand,
Pastor Schieferdecker remained free to present his own grounds for
Revelation's genuineness to his congregation and to warn it against
giving room to any doubt about it, it was, on the other hand, unwise,
unchristian, and offensive of him to conceal, in doing so, the actual
state of the matter as it has always stood in the Christian Church on
this point, thereby stirring up an uproar and casting an odious
suspicion on those who — together with the earliest Church, with
Luther, and with our Church's older orthodox theologians — hold to
the distinction between canonical books of the first and second rank;
it was wrong to make his own Synod suspect among simple people within
the synodical district, since there had not been the slightest
occasion for such suspicion.

In the course of the proceedings, Professor Walther also declared:
"I confess that I hold Revelation to be the work of an apostle and,
from beginning to end, God's revealed Word; but I have neither the
right to impose such a conviction of mine on the Synod as a law, nor
did I believe I could refuse to admit into 'Der Lutheraner' the
article of a brother who, along with Luther, harbors the same doubts
about the book of Revelation, without touching the divine character
of the prophecies contained in it" — a statement the Synod agreed
with.

After lengthy, thorough debates, it was

Resolved: the Synod declares that it rejects the accusation as wholly
baseless and as a slander, as though it wished to diminish the
standing of the Revelation of St. Jo[hn]—