# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S170
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

a right one, indeed one commanded by God? Because what holds of the whole genus must also hold of the individual species of that genus. If, for example, I make a statement about birds (as a generic concept), then what I have stated must hold true of every bird. If what I have stated about the bird as a generic concept does not, say, also fit the nightingale, then my statement was false and wrong. The same would hold of Christ's word, "Baptize all nations," if it were his will that children should remain unbaptized. A nation consists not only of adults but also of children. Had Christ wished to make an exception for children, he would have had to tell us so in explicit words. But as it stands, it is expressed within "all nations" that children, too, are to be baptized. — It is entirely different with the following statements of Scripture: "God will have all men to be saved," and, "As many as were ordained to eternal life believed." These two statements do not contain one and the same doctrine; rather, each of these two statements contains a distinct doctrine, thoroughly different from the other. The first of these two doctrines is therefore in no way a genus of which the second would be a species belonging to it. Each of these two doctrines stands — so to speak — as its own distinct genus. To want to mediate here by inference, or indeed to subordinate or superordinate one to the other, is to commit an outrage against God himself. God is so great and majestic that in his affairs we are simply not in a position to say: this or that in his holy revelation stands in contradiction with something else, or this or that word may not be taken as it stands, that is, in its proper sense. We know God's affairs at all only so far as God has revealed them to us. It is therefore a dreadful outrage committed against God's word when someone, without producing the proof for it from God's word itself, says: "Such and such a doctrine cannot be taken as it stands according to its wording." We do not even treat a man this way whose sincerity we do not doubt. If he speaks tomorrow in a different manner than he spoke today, we trust him enough to suppose that he spoke according to differing circumstances, and we do not immediately make him a liar by a "necessary inference." For example, I say today: man is mortal, and tomorrow I say: man is immortal. My two statements seem to contradict each other, and yet I have spoken the truth both times. For the first time I spoke of man with regard to his body, and the second time with regard to his soul. — We know well that God is; but who he is and what he is like we know only so far as he has revealed himself to us. — A further example of an inference was pointed out, one also commonly cited by the ancients. Christ himself says, in Matt. 22, that in the words