# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1874_S7
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 7 —

come no lies." (Das willige Glaubensbekenntniß oder Ermahnung zu Verwahrung der Lehre der Augsburgiſchen Confeſſion [The Willing Confession of Faith, or Exhortation to the Preservation of the Doctrine of the Augsburg Confession]. — Frankfurt a. M. 1692. pp. 136 f.)

Carpzov further writes: "The question whether under the doctrine of the Augsburg Confession there is contained only what is literally contained in it, but by no means also the rest, which either the papists teach against Scripture or which is required for the proof of articles of faith, or flows and follows from them by necessary inference — this question the Saxon theologians answer in the negative in the Evangelischer Augapfel [Evangelical Apple of the Eye]." (Isag. p. 131 sq.)

The same writes: "The Protestants added with emphasis, in the words 'This is almost the sum of the doctrine,' etc., the little word 'almost.' For the Protestants did not wish to draw up a list of all the articles of faith necessary to salvation, but only to make a confession of those doctrines of faith which concerned the matter at hand and could be sufficient." (l. c. p. 115.)

Therefore the Augsburg Confession itself also writes: "If anyone should be found who had a deficiency in this, we are ready to give him further report (latiorem informationem) on the basis of divine Holy Scripture." (Art. XXVIII.)

Finally it says in the Formula of Concord: "Although the Christian doctrine has for the most part remained unassailed in that (Augsburg) Confession (apart from what has been done by the papists), yet it cannot nevertheless be denied that some theologians have departed from some high and notable articles of the said Confession and have either not attained the right understanding or at any rate not remained by it, and some have even ventured to suggest a foreign meaning for them, and yet, in spite of all this, have wished to be and to avail and boast themselves of the Augsburg Confession, whence grievous and harmful divisions in the pure evangelical churches have arisen." (Repetition. Introduction. p. 566.)

In the very thorough debate it was first pointed out that it is of very great importance to become fully aware of the meaning of this 5th Thesis.

Some, namely, think it a very questionable matter to profess everything that follows logically from the Augsburg Confession. For if one does so, one professes something one does not yet know at all, and so might perhaps reject if one knew it. One could then confess all the consequences of the Augsburg Confession with the mouth and yet be no true Lutheran. But this is not so. For either we must also grant the consequences, or deny the organ God has given us to infer truths from truths, namely reason. And that conclusions may also be drawn from truths of Scripture, and, when logically drawn, cannot yield any result contradicting Scripture, is taught us by the example of Christ toward the Sadducees, Matt. 22:24 ff. For there He rebukes those who deny the resurrection for their perverse inference as one contradicting Scripture, calling out to them: "You err and know not the Scriptures"; but at the same time He himself draws a conclusion by which He proves to them irrefutably the very thing they had meant to argue away by their false inference, namely the resurrection of the dead.