# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S168
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

says that everything is already against God that is without God's word. Knowledge in spiritual matters is given to us here below solely through the word. We walk here below by faith, not by sight. Here God wraps himself for us in the word. Hence every article of faith must have an explicit word of Scripture that reveals it. Luther impresses this forcefully. Luther writes (in his warning-letter to the people of Frankfurt am Main) concerning the claim of the fanatics that it is enough to believe that the body which Christ meant is present in the Supper: "I will hold to the words, and set my faith on them (as they read), so that I will not believe in the body that Christ means apart from and without his word, but the body that his words mean, as they stand and read. For that is his true meaning, and he has told and shown us his meaning in the words and through the words. Apart from his word and without his word we know of no Christ, still less of Christ's meaning. For the Christ who presents his meaning to us without Christ's word is the wretched devil out of hell, who bears Christ's holy name and under it peddles his hellish poison." (Erl. Ausg. Bd. 26, S. 303.) Luther further explains that all our knowing and speaking regarding divine things is bound to the word of Scripture. Luther does not want one merely to set out from a word of Scripture and then, without any explicit word of Scripture, to keep moving forward by one's own thoughts and speculations, as newer theology does — rather he wants our thoughts in divine matters not to advance a single line further than God's word goes. The reason: man of himself, without God's word, has absolutely no knowledge of spiritual things. Luther writes: "Therefore whoever wants to travel safely should above all guard against whatever reason and human thoughts would master in this article" (concerning Christ and justification) "and should know that there is no counsel for withstanding the devil's seduction except to cling to the plain, clear word of Scripture and think and speculate no further, but simply shut one's eyes and say: what Christ says must and shall be true, whether I or any man can understand, grasp, or know how it can be true. He well knows what he is, and what or how one should speak of him. Whoever does not do this must stumble and err and fall headlong; for it is simply not possible to grasp even the least article of the faith by human reason or sense, so that no man, without God's word, could ever arrive at a right thought and sure knowledge of God." (In John Corvinus, *loci comm.* etc., p. 40.) Concerning those who claim that Scripture itself forces them to depart from the word of Scripture, while in fact only trying to rescue their own thoughts, formed beforehand without Scripture, Luther writes: "I