# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S176
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

(even under one kind alone) devours the Bishop of Meissen along with his mandate and circular; from that it follows that a priest of Meissen devours and swills down his bishop twice over in every single mass; from that it follows that the Bishop of Meissen must have a bigger body than heaven and earth; and who could ever finish reciting all these inferences? But in the end it also follows from all this that all such inference-mongers are asses, fools, blind, mad, senseless, raving, foolish, and raging: this last inference is certain. ... Dear God, what great toil and trouble it is for a Christian to remain one, even when he has before him the plain, clear, sure words of God! What, then, is to become of him where the words are abandoned and one gives oneself over to the inferring and cleverness of reason?" (Erl. Ausg. B. 30, S. 418 ff.)

When the opposing side, by way of inferences, has set the statements of Scripture about the universal gracious will in contradiction with the statements of Scripture about eternal election, they ought already to recognize this very procedure as rationalistic. After all, they do not allow themselves the same thing with other articles of doctrine. Let us take, for example, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Without any mediation, Scripture teaches us to believe: there is only one God, and besides him there is no other God. There are three persons, and each of these three persons — considered as such — is the true, one, and only God. It is therefore rightly said: Jesus, who hangs on the cross, is the one and only God, and besides him there is no other God. — In these two doctrines reason finds a contradiction that it cannot get past. It says: if there is only one God, then there is also only one person who is this one God. Whoever says otherwise talks nonsense. Or: if there are three persons, each of whom is the true God, then there are three Gods. Whoever says otherwise is mad and foolish. For three are not one, and one is not three. — How does it come about, we ask, that people are not troubled by the apparent contradiction present, for reason, in these doctrines to exactly the same degree as the apparent contradiction reason finds in the doctrines of gracious election and of God's universal gracious will? This is not because the apparent contradiction in the mystery of the Holy Trinity is of an entirely different kind from that in the doctrines last named, and somehow gives reason some measure of satisfaction; rather, it is because we, having grown up familiar with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, mostly do not subject it to such sharp scrutiny, especially since we are not assailed or troubled about it. It is different with the doctrine of gracious election. Because it is not a fundamental doctrine of the same kind as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, but chiefly a doctrine of comfort, especially for assailed Christians, it is not driven home in sermons, catechesis, and so forth to the same degree as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity;