# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1860_S37
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— Page 37 —

and unloosed — therefore there must be something else present besides
the Word and the keys: the Spirit, the Spirit, the Spirit must do it.
But do you think that he who does not believe the binding key is not
bound? He shall indeed learn in due time that, because of his
unbelief, the binding key was neither in vain nor did it fail. So
too, whoever does not believe that he is loosed and his sins
forgiven shall in time likewise learn how certainly his sins were
forgiven him even then, though he refused to believe it. St. Paul
says in Romans 3:3: 'For your unbelief's sake God will not fail.'
So too we are not now speaking of what the key does and gives in
itself. Whoever does not accept it indeed has nothing, but the key
does not thereby fail. Many do not believe the Gospel, yet the
Gospel does not thereby lie or fail. A king gives you a castle; if
you do not accept it, the king has not thereby lied or failed, but
you have deceived yourself and it is your own fault — the king has
certainly given it."

Note: "Falsche key," "wavering key," *clavis errans*, is the
papal error that not every absolution spoken by a priest also looses
before God in heaven. This error is bound up with the other error, in
which absolution is made dependent on contrition and satisfaction and
set within a judicial finding of the priest. Through this the whole
of absolution becomes wavering and uncertain. Luther will have
absolutely nothing to do with a *clavis conditionalis* (a conditional
key) that points us not to God's Word but to our own contrition,
although in his opinion to the Nuremberg council he has no hesitation
in speaking of an *absolutio conditionalis* (an absolution conditioned
by faith).

6. Through private absolution, to be sure, no essentially
different or better forgiveness is conveyed than in the
preaching of the Gospel; nor is it necessary, in the sense
that without it no forgiveness would take place; nevertheless
it has its own particular worth and use, because through it
the individual is made more certain that the forgiveness of
sins belongs to him as well.

Second Opinion to the Council of Nuremberg:
"Although we hold private absolution to be very Christian and
comforting, and that it should be retained in the Church, we
nevertheless can and will not burden consciences so heavily as to
suggest that there is no forgiveness of sin except through private
absolution alone."

On Confession and the Sacrament: "In confession you also have
the advantage that the word is directed solely at your own person.
For in preaching it flies out into the congregation at large, and
although it strikes you too, you are not so certain of it; but here
it can strike no one but you alone."

7. Closely connected with private absolution is private
confession, which is nothing other than the desiring of
absolution. Beyond that it also has the benefit of giving the
confessor an opportunity to examine people,