# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S50
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 50 —

They do indeed grant that this is what Scripture says, and admit that man surely cannot do it alone — but that the decision should not lie with man at all, that to them is foolishness. It is almost universally acknowledged among these so-called orthodox theologians of Germany that one can no longer believe the Lutheran doctrine of inspiration. Without exception, they all say: not every single word in the canonical Scriptures of the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit; and because we still believe that, they mock us as ignorant people who have been left behind by the times — even though the Savior says so plainly: "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God," and his Apostle: "We speak not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth," and how often it is said, when passages from the Old Testament are cited in the New, "the Holy Spirit says." But this much is certain: where the doctrine of inspiration is no longer held, there can no longer be any talk of a purely Lutheran Church, for it lacks the very foundation for one. Instead, theology is now built upon one's own Christian consciousness — but that is a foundation of sand that cannot stand. "But the Word stands as firm as a wall, which no one, however clever he may be, can pervert" — that they have abandoned. — In such a time as this, God has now, out of unspeakable, wondrous, unfathomable mercy, let us come together into a Lutheran Church such as He caused to arise 300 years ago — one that again confesses and is united even on the doctrine of inspiration. To be sure, even the newer theologians of the Lutheran Church all say: God's Word is in the Bible; but that the Bible is God's Word — that, they say, only the simple-minded Missourians still believe. Whatever agrees with their reason, that is to count as God's Word in the Bible; the rest, they think, is chaff. So the formal principle [*Formalprincip*] is now being denied — that is, they teach that the source from which everything is to be drawn is itself no longer pure; it is therefore, the theologians say, not so easy for a simple Christian to draw his salvation from it; but, they say, that is precisely why the good God has raised up such learned men, so that after years of labor and untold effort they might be skilled enough to work out what is correct by study. According to them, one may not say: here stands a word of Scripture, and to that I will hold. Not so — rather, the right understanding of what is God's Word in the Bible must first be derived from the whole, from the relation of the individual books to one another. And for that one needs a man who has all but studied himself to death before he could master this art. So they have overturned the formal principle for us. But more than that: they have also thrown over the material principle [*Materialprincip*] — that is, the article concerning our Lord Jesus Christ. Almost no one, apart perhaps from Philippi and a few others, believes that Christ is true God and true man in one person from the very first moment of his conception, and that he remained and will remain so in