# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1874_S13
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 13 —

When Holy Scripture says of our reason that we are to give it captive under the obedience of Christ, it does not demand of us that we renounce the organic use of reason. For this organic (instrumental) or tool-like use of reason is as necessary in an adult as the knowledge of faith. The inference, moreover, is no product of reason. The truth must already lie, as it were wrapped up, in the premises; otherwise it could not be drawn out.

A second subject, to which the Conference devoted four full afternoon sessions, was the

Theses on the Jus parochiale [parochial right]
that is, on parish boundaries,

likewise already begun in the previous year.

In the previous year the first four Theses had been finally adopted. This year the Conference in its discussion reached the 1st point of the 9th Thesis inclusive. Here too, for the sake of continuity, the Theses already adopted last year follow first.

Thesis 1.

The public ministry is not a human but a divine ordinance (1 Cor. 12:28–30), and indeed an ordinance for the edification of the body of Christ or the Church for all time until the last day (Eph. 4:11–13); it is therefore also God's will that every Christian make use of this public ministry (1 Cor. 16:15–16; 1 Thess. 5:12–13), as the third commandment already requires.

Thesis 2.

The totality of all individual Christians shall join together into individual congregations, in which the Word of God in doctrine and discipline is in force by means of the public ministry (Matt. 18:15–20); it is therefore God's will that every Christian let himself be found as a member in such a congregation (Acts 2:47), take part in its assemblies (Heb. 10:24–25), serve it with his gifts (1 Cor. 12:4–27), and not become an offense to it (1 Cor. 10:32).

Thesis 3.

Only the apostles had a general call to the whole world; the mediately called preachers, however, shall their particular flock of God (τὸ ἐν ὑμῖν ποίμνιον τοῦ θεοῦ, 1 Pet. 5:2), their clerus, their portio gregis Dominici [portion of the Lord's flock], the particular part of the people of God allotted to them (v. 3),