# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1874_S12
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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In this connection the question was also raised whether even unenlightened reason is capable of drawing correct conclusions from Scripture or from the Augsburg Confession, or whether that is possible only to the enlightened reason of the regenerate? Whether there are not mysteries of the faith that could be explained by no inference? To this it was replied that even unregenerate reason can draw correct conclusions; if it proceeds not from erroneous propositions but from God's Word, then its conclusion, if it is a compelling one, can be no other than a correct one. If its conclusion is incorrect according to God's Word, then we must infer back from the incorrectness of the conclusio that at least one of the premises was false. It does not matter here who draws the conclusion, whether an enlightened Christian, or a heathen, Jew or Turk, provided he does not bring his darkness into it but concludes objectively correctly; whether he himself believes what he has inferred or not, that does not come into consideration here. So, for example, the Jews and Nicodemus drew correct conclusions as to the divinity of Christ, although they did not stand in faith.

In this Thesis it is moreover not to be said that the Augsburg Confession was given in order that the sophists might exercise their art upon it, but that we confess our faith. We believe that the Augsburg Confession is true; we therefore also confess that nothing false can follow from it. An example of this is the whole Formula of Concord. It wishes nothing other than to draw clear conclusions from the Augsburg Confession; its content belongs, then, quite properly among the conclusions meant in this Thesis. But our faith is not grounded on conclusions as such, but on Scripture. Moreover the principle remains unrefuted, also in regard to the Augsburg Confession, that from something true no lie can ever come by correct inference (1 John 2:21), and such conclusions as nevertheless bring a lie to light mark themselves at once as false. If, for example, a Calvinist wished to infer absolute predestination from the words of the 5th Article of the Augsburg Confession: "God works faith, when and where He wills," he would be guilty of plain sophistical dishonesty. For in these words only the time and the place are stated, not the selection of individual men by God.

We speak, as a matter of course, in this Thesis of evident conclusions. It must be such a conclusion as anyone endowed with sound reason can see. Yet it was now repeatedly stressed that this is not at all about the procedure in the individual case, but about the principle that the Augsburg Confession is true and that we can confidently draw logical conclusions from it, without having to fear that our reason on this path might bring us into contradiction with a clear word of Holy Scripture.