# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S172
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

and yet only a part of mankind is saved, then that part must have cooperated toward its own salvation. That is an inference of reason to be rejected, although reason, once its way of inferring is allowed to stand, cannot infer otherwise. — In the words "You were dead through trespasses and sins" it is stated that man has not even the slightest power in himself toward conversion, and that consequently conversion is solely and alone the work of God. But a patched-on consequence is that God does not will to save all people, or that, in those who are actually saved, a forced conversion takes place. The reasoning runs thus: if conversion is God's work alone, and, as we see, part of mankind remains unconverted, then God cannot have willed to convert that part. Further: if conversion is God's work alone, and on man's side there is absolutely no cooperation, but, so far as it depends on him, only resistance, then conversion must happen by force. With such patched-on consequences the church has recently been gravely troubled and many minds thrown into confusion.

Let us beware of the rationalism that has again taken hold, even in places that call themselves Lutheran. In his last sermon, which Luther preached at Wittenberg a few weeks before his death, these words occur: "Thus far you have heard the true, genuine word; now be on your guard against your own thoughts and cleverness. The devil will light the light of reason and lead you away from the faith, as happened to the Anabaptists and the sacramentarian fanatics, and there are now more heresy-founders on hand." In these words Luther, with a prophetic spirit, points out that the church of God, torn loose from the bonds of the papacy, is threatened with the danger of being attacked and swallowed up by rationalism (a religion of reason). Experience has indeed since taught how rationalism penetrated into Christendom. The adherents of crude rationalism declared openly: "Human reason alone is the rule and standard of faith." Hence, they said, only what can stand before the judgment of reason is to be accepted from Scripture as an article of faith. This same religion of reason has, in most recent times, also been pressed for acceptance among us — though, to be sure, in a concealed manner, and unbeknown even to many who were led astray by it. People did not say bluntly, in the manner of the old rationalists: our reason cannot bear the acceptance of this or that doctrine; instead, they hid behind Scripture, put Scripture forward as their pretext, and said: Scripture itself cannot bear it that we should confess this doctrine. Scripture says: God will have all men to be saved. This statement of Scripture, they say, cannot bear the doctrine that God's eternal election is a cause of the faith and salvation of the elect. All passages of Scripture that seem to say this must be taken in some other sense. But Luther had already exposed this very procedure as rational-