# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1879_S12
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 12 —

he still does wrong and sins, he is still carnal and not in the Church. If we now want to define a Lutheran correctly according to these explanations, we shall do it best if we call him, like the ancients, an adherent of the Augsburg Confession. —

This point too was brought out: that in judging a church communion on account of doctrinal discipline, one must by all means make a distinction as to whether it is not exercised in that communion, in this or that point, from lack of knowledge or from indifference toward the pure doctrine. For we find that several of the teachers of the Church of earlier and later times did not hit the right thing in some points but erred and also put their error down in writings, and yet were not for that reason put under doctrinal discipline by the orthodox Church of their time. Did the Church then on that account cease to be orthodox, to be faithful to the Confession? No; for here one must consider that their fellow Christians and fellow teachers did not punish this out of false liberality, but from lack of knowledge; at the time they knew as little that these were errors as those by whom such things were put forward. Had they recognized it as error, they would surely have punished it. If we take this distinction into account, we shall be all the less able to hesitate to maintain firmly: that is a Lutheran church and synod which exercises doctrinal discipline in the teachings of the Word of God that it has recognized. —

Finally the following question was answered here: It is known to all that the General Council sins in this, that it tolerates quite decided chiliasts and exercises no doctrinal discipline. Must we not therefore give all faithful confessors in it the counsel to come out? Answer: Without doubt one should counsel: Come out as quickly as possible, after you have first done your duty there yourselves by your open confession and have seen that it bears no fruit. Otherwise the synods that earlier separated from the Council on account of the lack of doctrinal discipline in it would have done wrong, whereas we wish them God's blessing still today for their separation from it. It is true that someone does not cease at once to be a Lutheran in a synod or church that exercises no doctrinal discipline; but if his eyes are opened and he nevertheless remains stuck in it, he ceases to be a Lutheran. Formerly we were accustomed to regard as Lutheran what was historically Lutheran; but after we have looked around and found it otherwise, we must also warn and call upon all Lutherans to come out of a communion that is constituted like the Council, where the chiliasts and those who teach falsely about the Lord's Day, against the fundamental articles of Christ's return to judgment, of the kingdom of God in this world and of Christian liberty, may contend; and if some in it in