# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1875_S21
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 21 —

teach that the body and blood of Christ become present only through the eating and drinking in the Supper. But when we say that the body of Christ is given, and so is already present at the giving, we understand by such giving one to which the receiving for the purpose of eating and drinking belongs, in short the whole action in the Holy Supper, and we confess the axiom of Melanchthon: Nihil habet rationem sacramenti extra usum a Deo institutum (Nothing has the nature of a sacrament outside the use instituted by God).

As the third item of the contradiction between confession and practice, the 8th Thesis names the case where a Lutheran church body "does not decisively oppose every form of chiliasm." To the question why precisely this single item of false doctrine was named in the thesis, the answer was: These theses have particular regard to the General Council, which tolerates chiliasm, indeed whose leaders are partly chiliasts. Since we could therefore enter into no church fellowship with it, it was an act of self-defense that we testified that not separatist desires on our side, but the Council in its unlutheran position, among other things also toward chiliasm, prevented us from it. Chiliasm is the favorite doctrine of our time, and is quite often the dregs that remain when a church communion has already cleansed itself of other false doctrines.

The following testimonies were cited here: J. E. Gerhard: "In the Augsburg Confession, in Article 17, not only the gross (*crassus*) but altogether every chiliasm has been rejected and condemned." (A. C. enucleata 1734, p. 85.)

S. J. Baumgarten: "The defenders of such (chiliastic) errors cannot be true confessors of Article 17 of the Augsburg Confession. They cannot defend themselves in this either with the evasion that their chiliasm differs from the dreams of the Jews and from a resurrection of all saints preceding the expected kingdom of Christ, or from a worldly kingdom (which they do not assert) with a complete end of all the godless; nor with the pretext that they do not spread such opinions." (Explanations of the Christian Book of Concord, p. 103.)

Joh. Gerhard: "It is obvious that the hope and opinion of all about this thousand-year kingdom are not one and the same. For first, some contend for a subtle chiliasm, which consists in the peace of the church, in perfect righteousness, in rest from tribulations, in general acceptance of the orthodox faith, etc.; others on the contrary advocate a gross chiliasm, which wallows in bodily delights and pleasures. . . . We hold that the mask must be pulled off the chiliastic delusion, whatever color one may paint on it and however one may adorn it." (Loci theol. de consummat. seculi § 79, 80.)