# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1879_S6
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 6 —

This is the most important thesis in the whole series, for it concerns a point that we cannot emphasize enough and that puts into our hand the light for examining the various church bodies in the old and the new fatherland that call themselves Lutheran. But it serves not merely for judging those church bodies that are not connected with us; it also puts us in a position to examine ourselves above all, in the Synodical Conference [*Synodalconferenz*], as to how matters stand on this point in our midst, and to act according to what is found. — There are church communions that officially acknowledge the Symbols of the Lutheran Church and have set up the content of the Confessional writings as doctrina publica [public doctrine], but make no serious effort to combat the errors condemned in them, and on the contrary tolerate the false teachings that run counter to them. But that contradicts not only individual passages in the Confession, but the whole character of the Lutheran Church, which consists not only in believing, but also in confessing what is believed and in rejecting everything that opposes it. That doctrinal discipline ought and must be exercised is demanded already by the First Commandment. It requires that everyone submit to the utterances of the living God. But how can a church communion say that it acknowledges the almighty God, without holding unbreakably to this, that nothing be taken from his Word and nothing added to it? God's Word shows that false doctrine is sin. It is bad enough that after the Fall, even after regeneration, we still have sin in us. But now we surely do not want to go further and say, and ought not to say, that the sin of false doctrine should be allowed to stand! No, rather the doctrine that has been officially acknowledged according to God's Word shall alone be current. — Furthermore, all servants of the divine Word are commanded to hold fast to the pattern of sound doctrine and to keep the good deposit [*Beilage*]. If now a church communion will not keep the deposit, will not hold to it, but wants to tolerate, and does tolerate, that false doctrine too is preached, then it has already fallen away. Yes, how many warnings are there in Scripture to beware of false prophets, to flee from them and to avoid them! The holy ministry of preaching is, according to the divine Word, instituted also for this: to use Holy Scripture for the reproof of false doctrine; and it makes itself a partaker in the sins of the false teachers through silence toward them. All this shows clearly that a church body bears the Lutheran name with right only when it exercises doctrinal discipline over its members. Admittedly, in those church communions too in which doctrinal discipline is practised, something false in respect of doctrine will here and there occur; but such bodies, as soon as the matter becomes manifest, will promptly rouse themselves and cleanse themselves of the error in the manner pleasing to God, sweeping out the leaven.

Now if we apply — hard as it is for us to pass spiritual judgment on the now so-called Lutheran state