# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S183
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Fourth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. 1884.   183

word for poor sinners, but wanted to make it acceptable and pleasing to the wise of this world as such. The old rationalism was back, only its outer garment had become a different one. This rationalism, too, transformed every article of faith. We would not know of a single principal article of Christian doctrine in which the new "scientific" theology still stood on the confession. The rationalistic "mediation" that has been made theology's task has made a clean sweep of the doctrines as our church confesses them. How this is done in the doctrine of election by grace [Gnadenwahl] may be shown by the following words of Luthardt. He writes: "It rests, if I am not mistaken" — note the "if I am not mistaken," by which Luthardt himself testifies that what he says here he does not have from Scripture — "almost entirely on a twofold recognition: first, that in the coming-about of faith one's own personal conduct is preserved, and that this is, in its actuality, not to be thought of as a purely exclusive work and act of God; and second, that predestination is not to be referred immediately and without further ado to individuals. If both of these are not held fast, then the danger exists, on the one side, of the deterministic error, and on the other, of the predestinarian error." — In order to arrive at a doctrine that fits his system, Luthardt here does away with two articles of our faith in a single stroke: first, the article on the unfree will of man; for if faith does not come about exclusively through God's work and act, but man too cooperates toward its coming-about through his "personal conduct," then man is not wholly dead in sin but only half dead. Second, Luthardt also does away with God's eternal election. For Luthardt does not want election referred to individual persons. But if it is denied that election is election of individuals, then election as such is denied and abolished altogether.

This mediating theology just described also came at us in recent years with the demand that we acknowledge it. For the request made of us was, at bottom, nothing other than to trim the articles of faith down into a whole that would suit reason. Had we yielded to this demand, we would today no longer be a Lutheran church, but only a Lutheran sect. We can therefore never thank God enough that in those days of severe trial he so graciously protected us and kept us firm in his word and faith, so that even today the principle still holds among us that has rightly stood from the beginning in our dear Lutheran church: to accept the word of Scripture as it reads, even when it does not appear, to reason, to agree with some other statement of Scripture. Our Confession, too, impresses on us with great force that we must not let ourselves be led astray, at the clear word—