# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1879_S13
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 13 —

this point may teach falsely, why should others not be allowed to teach falsely in other points? —

Now let us come to the second part of this thesis:

It contradicts the Confession in the most decided manner when, in a body calling itself Lutheran, the favoured theory of "open questions" is indulged,

we must first ascertain what is to be understood by "open questions." The Iowans have declared the doctrines of Church and Ministry, of ordination, of the Antichrist, of the last things and of the Sabbath to be "open questions," and when the contrariness to Scripture of their error was put to them, they answered that they had not been understood. By "open questions" they meant such doctrines on account of which no separation of churches can take place. But that is only to define a property of open questions, not the open questions themselves. Open questions are those that anyone can answer as he ventures to in his conscience, because God's Word gives no answer to them. With almost every doctrine there are so-called quaestiones juxta adnatae [side questions], questions that arise incidentally and are related to the doctrine under discussion. For example, with the doctrine of original sin, the question arises: How does original sin come to the child, who was not present at the Fall in Paradise? — the question suggests itself: How does the child get its soul? Some teachers of the Church have held that God creates the soul in the child, and these are called Creationists; others, and indeed by far the most, have held that the child receives its soul by transmission from the parents, and these are called Traducianists. That is an open question; for God has left it open, in that he has given no revelation about it. Such open questions can be solved only from reason, from experience and from history. Is it not then dreadful, indeed antichristian, to make revealed doctrines into open questions? The Antichrist at Rome took it upon himself to dispense from certain doctrines of Scripture. The devil first made a definite word of God into an open question, when he persuaded Eve: "Should God have said, you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?"

Where the theory of "open questions" is indulged, no doctrinal discipline can be exercised, and in order to escape doctrinal discipline, Iowa set up this theory. Because Iowa called articles of faith "open questions," its colloquents in Milwaukee were not ready to accept "problems" for the expression "open questions," although in justification of their position they always appealed to the fact that problems too, such as that of the perpetual virginity of Mary, are touched on in the Symbols. But Iowa could not do that either, namely put "problems" for "open questions."