# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S167
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Fourth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. 1884.   167

notions of a proper coherence. According to these notions the word of Scripture is "supplemented," trimmed, and cut to fit. Human reason in fact sits in judgment on God's word. Reason lights the way for faith, as Luther says. That is why the Scripture-principle of the church of the Reformation stands or falls with our thesis: a doctrine is to be drawn, and judged, solely from the passages that speak precisely of that doctrine — or, what is the same, a doctrine must have the explicit word of Scripture for itself. Whoever does not act on this principle may quote ever so many passages of Scripture and cry "Scripture," "Scripture" as loudly as he likes — it is pure appearance! He does not bring Scripture, but, under the cloak of Scripture, his own thoughts. What is passed off as Scripture is human thoughts, inferences, "patched-on consequences," as Luther says, and so forth.

It was further remarked:

The Lord Christ says: the Scripture cannot be broken. When that man came to Christ with the question, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" he said to him: "What is written in the law? how readest thou?" Christ knows nothing higher for our salvation than the law, that is, Scripture. Isaiah says: "To the law and to the testimony!" — if they do not speak according to this word, they shall have no "dawn," that is, no light of truth and no salvation, but shall remain sitting in darkness. Hence also John Gerhard testifies that the sole principle (source) of our faith is God's word, and he declares everything that cannot be grounded on the word of Scripture to be untheological, that is, something that does not belong to theology.*) Aug. Pfeifer says that theology at bottom is nothing other than Scripture itself. Thus, for example, dogmatics is only a certain method of setting forth the doctrines of Scripture — and only these. — People want to form articles of doctrine with the help of chains of reasoning. What folly! If someone wished to describe a country, with its inhabitants and institutions, that he had never seen and of which he had never heard anything certain, he would by far not act as foolishly as does the man who takes it upon himself to bring forth the spiritual, divine things by inferences of his own reason. These things St. Paul, in 1 Cor. 2:7, calls the hidden and secret wisdom of God, and he describes them as things that no eye has seen, no ear heard, and that have not entered into any man's heart. How, then, is man to take even a single sure step here, apart from the word of Scripture? Luther calls such conduct plague, death, and hell, and

*) His words run: "The sole principle of theology is God's word; whatever, then, is not revealed in God's word does not belong to theology." (Loc. de creatione § 3.)