# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1911_S202
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

202 Proceedings of the 28th General or

fanaticisms with his splendid testimony to the distinction between
Law and Gospel and to the doctrine of justification, according to
which faith is grounded not on one's own heart with its deceptive
feelings, but on God's Word and Sacrament, which offer, give, and
seal full forgiveness freely to every poor sinner, and according to
which hope is directed not toward some earthly glory of the Church
in a thousand-year kingdom, but toward the consummation of
salvation in the world to come, at Christ's return for judgment.

When Walther, by God's grace, came to right understanding,
rationalism still ruled as the reasoned faith in Germany. And even
later, most believing theologians there did not become entirely free
of it. Rationalism instead made a new, showy entrance, veiled as
"theological science," which would not follow Scripture alone and
did not hold it to be God's infallible Word. This leaven began to
ferment in America too, when theologians undertook to explain the
mystery of conversion and election by grace [Gnadenwahl]. In
difficult but successful struggles, Walther opposed this rationalism
and has thus, thank God, preserved for us the great truths: Scripture
is infallible; it alone is the source of theology, and all its doctrines
are to be believed, even when we are unable to reconcile them
logically.

Walther further stood up with spiritual power for free, purely
unmixed grace in conversion and salvation. Melanchthon had been
the first to shake this foundational truth. And nearly all the more
recent theologians followed him. Here in America, too, the cry soon
went up: salvation ultimately depends on man's own free decision!
In a certain sense, conversion and salvation are dependent not on
grace alone, but also on human conduct. But Walther, here too,
remained faithful to the scriptural teaching of Luther and of the
Lutheran symbols, and in long, mighty struggles bore victorious
witness to "by grace alone" and "to God alone the glory."

And with these, as with other Lutheran truths, Walther was also
in complete, great, full earnest. When God called him onto the
scene, a dreadful indifference in doctrine and practice generally
prevailed. Without shame, Lutheran preachers, congregations, and
synods in America were in the habit of maintaining fraternal,
ecclesiastical fellowship with all sorts of sects, thereby denying the
last meager remnant of their Lutheranism, and were steering with
full sails toward union. Walther opposed this self-abandonment of
the Lutheran Church in earnest. He brought the pure truths of
Lutheranism to light, and with holy earnestness insisted on their
inviolability in doctrine and practice, as well as on their unconditional
and exclusive validity in the Lutheran Church. Lutheran earnestness