# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1857_S337
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— Page 337 —

...hn as a Scripture inspired by God, not even in the slightest.

Nevertheless, the Synod affirms what Martin Chemnitz — the principal
author of the Formula of Concord — says, in his "Examination of the
Council of Trent" (p. 45, Geneva edition), concerning the "disputed"
books of the New Testament. There it reads as follows:

"The third question is: whether the Church of the present day may
make the writings over which some in the earliest Church raised doubt
because of disagreement — since the testimonies of the early Church
regarding them did not agree — whether, I say, the Church of the
present day may equate those writings, as 'canonical' and 'catholic,'
with those that hold first rank? The papists not only argue that they
can do this, but actually claim that authority for themselves,
thereby entirely abolishing the necessary distinction the original and
earliest Church made between 'canonical' and 'apocryphal' or
'ecclesiastical' books. But it is entirely evident from what we have
said that the Church has no such authority in any way; for on the
same grounds it could either reject canonical books or turn spurious
ones into canonical ones. For the whole matter depends, as has been
said, on certain testimonies of that Church which existed at the time
of the apostles — testimonies which the Church immediately following
received and preserved through sure and credible histories. Where,
therefore, wholly certain documents of the original and earliest
Church cannot be produced, according to the testimonies of the
ancients who lived not long after the apostles' times, to show that
the disputed books were received without contradiction or doubt as
legitimate and certain and handed down to the Church, no human decree
carries weight. For what shameless audacity it would be to assert:
although the original and the following earliest Church doubted those
books because of the disagreement of many within the Church
(Ecclesiasticorum), on the ground that sufficiently sure and firm
testimonies for their authority were lacking — nevertheless, despite
all that, we resolve that they must be accepted as wholly certain,
with the same authority as those that have always been regarded as
legitimate.

"..... The Church that existed at the time when those books were
first written stands in a different position from the Church that
followed afterward; for the latter only preserves and hands down to
posterity the testimonies of the first Church, but it may not, and
cannot, determine anything about those books for which it does not
possess sure documentation from the testimony of the first Church." —
(cf. Appendix B in the supplement.)

Following this resolution, the reading of Pastor Gruber's letter was
continued. Concerning chiliasm, Pastor Gruber declared "that he must
hold fast to his conviction, as it had come to him from the Word of
God, and to the statement he had given about it at the Altenburg
convention (cf. the Western District's most recent report, pp. 26 and
27), even though he did not wish to present it as a complete and in
every respect infallible exposition. The word 'permanent' must have
crept into that exposition through some misunderstanding or oversight

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