# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S162
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

162   Doctrinal Proceedings of the 19th General [Synod], or

Church, nor even human reason, that ground the articles of faith, but the word of God alone. — Yet some who, in words, share this confession with us nonetheless stand in opposition to us, advancing un-Lutheran doctrines and fighting Lutheran ones. This raises the question for us: whether, at bottom, our respective positions toward Holy Scripture are not after all entirely different? A closer examination yields this result: on the opposing side the doctrine is taken from Scripture only in appearance; in fact the principle of the church and of the Reformation — that Scripture alone sets forth the articles of faith — is overturned; in fact only one's own thoughts are given force under the guise of the word of Scripture; rationalism has been reintroduced in another form. Hence the question arises: when is a doctrine drawn from Scripture not merely in appearance but in reality? When, in actual fact, does one let the principle stand that Holy Scripture alone sets forth the articles of faith? — The theses before us are meant to answer this question.

The answer, then, runs first of all thus: "A doctrine is Scriptural doctrine only when it is grounded on the explicit word of Scripture." — We require, for every article of faith, an explicit word of Scripture. Whatever lacks an explicit word of Scripture we will not let be forced upon us as an article of faith. If someone comes with a doctrine that we are to believe and accept, we ask: where is that written? We require of him that he show us the word of Scripture in which this doctrine is revealed. — By this we do not mean that a doctrine must appear in Scripture precisely in churchly and theological phrasing, in order to count as Scriptural doctrine, or that the very words in which we speak of a doctrine must be found letter for letter in Scripture. But this we do say: everything that is asserted with a doctrine, its whole content in all its parts, must lie revealed in the words of Scripture. For example, the word "Trinity" does not occur in Scripture; but what is asserted by that word lies before us in explicit words of Scripture. There stands the word of Scripture: "Baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Here Scripture names three distinct persons of the Godhead. The word of Scripture thus expresses clearly and plainly what we confess in the words of the Athanasian Creed: "The Father is one person, the Son another, the Holy Spirit another." Indeed, the word of Scripture has explicitly this "another" as well. The Son says of the Father in *John* 5:32, "It is another that beareth witness of me," and of the Holy Spirit in John 14:16, "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter." But just as the Son here distinguishes himself with a clear word from the Father and the Holy Spirit, so he says with an equally clear word, John 10:30: "I