# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S163
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Fourth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. 1884.   163

and the Father are one"; as also it is written 1 Cor. 8:4: "There is none other God but one." Here is expressed in the word of Scripture what the Athanasian Creed puts in these words: "But the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one God, equal in glory, equal in eternal majesty," and what the Augsburg Confession states thus: "All three, one divine being, eternal, without part, without end." Just as for this doctrine, so for every single doctrine of our Lutheran church a clear word of Scripture can be shown. And that is why — let it be remarked in passing — the Lutheran church is the true visible church of God on earth.

But where in Scripture does the explicit word of Scripture for a doctrine stand? Answer: we find it at those passages of Holy Scripture which reveal the doctrine in question, which speak of it explicitly. There, and nowhere else, do we have the word of Scripture for the doctrine under consideration. Hence the statement "every article of faith must have an explicit word of Scripture for itself" can also be put this way: every article of faith is to be drawn, and judged, solely from the passages that reveal precisely that article of faith. If, for example, I ask what God has set before me to believe concerning his being, I turn to the passages where I am told in the word that there is one God and three persons in the one God. I do not then, say, take up the passage "God is love" in order to derive the doctrine of the triune God from the concept of love. If I further ask by what means God was reconciled with the world, I turn to the passages where it is written in explicit words: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin." But I do not, say, take up the passage Deut. 25:1, where God says that the righteous is to be justified and the wicked condemned, in order to derive from it the doctrine that God could not impute to the innocent Christ our — that is, someone else's — guilt, could not punish the innocent for the guilty, and so reconcile the world to himself. It is therefore not enough, to prove that a doctrine is Scriptural, to invoke Scripture in general; rather the right Scripture, the Scripture that actually contains the doctrine in question, must be produced. This is what we wish to impress when we say: a doctrine is Scriptural doctrine only when it is grounded on the explicit word of Scripture; or, what is the same, when it is derived and judged solely from the passages of Scripture that speak directly of that doctrine.

And what do we reject by this? — There is a tendency in newer theology that emphatically calls itself "Scripture theology," yet at the same time explicitly refuses to draw the individual articles of faith solely from the passages that speak precisely of those doctrines, and accuses the old theology, which does so, of a dead, mechanical procedure.