# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S180
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

crooked, and others seem to us to be missing for complete harmony. So we are tempted to give some lines a somewhat different direction and to sketch in, according to our own imagination, the ones we feel are missing. If we do this, the picture is corrupted just as surely as no human being has seen God or knows God of himself. To the extent that we have corrected and redrawn the picture, to that extent we have turned God's image into an idol.

Before moving on to Thesis 2, let us briefly call to mind once more what was said under Thesis 1. We have convinced ourselves that we truly follow the principle "Scripture alone establishes articles of faith" only when we derive a doctrine of Scripture from the passages that actually reveal that doctrine — or, what amounts to the same thing, when we cite the express word of Scripture for a doctrine. If, on the other hand, I take up passages of Scripture that do not deal with the doctrine in question, and try to find that doctrine in those passages only by inferences of reason, then I am in fact standing not on God's word but on my own thoughts; in that doctrine I am then following not the word of Scripture but my own notions; I have then proved my point only seemingly from Scripture, but in reality from reason. For example, if I ask: How does God justify a poor sinner? then I must fetch the answer from the passages that deal with justification; if I ask: What is the nature of man? then only those passages can answer me which say that the natural man perceives nothing of the Spirit of God, that he is dead in sin, and so on; if I ask what God's eternal election is, then only the passages that expressly deal with that doctrine can answer my question. Only when we proceed in this way do we stand on the express word of Scripture and thereby hold to the principle of the church of the Reformation: Scripture alone founds articles of faith. Nor do we let the word of Scripture be pulled out from under our feet by so-called necessary inferences, through which people in effect maintain that an express word of Scripture must be given such a meaning that it rhymes, by reason, with some other word of Scripture.

How important it is that we hold fast to this is now shown to us by Thesis 2 with some examples. For "only if we hold fast to this (what was said under Thesis 1) do

a. the individual articles of Christian doctrine stand."

For if one makes the demand that a word of Scripture must take on a meaning that, by reason, rhymes with some other word of Scripture; if one makes the demand that an article of faith is legitimated not merely by having an express word of Scripture in its favor, but also by demonstrating its rationally coherent connection with other doctrines — then, consistently, the whole of Christian doctrine