# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1882_S7
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 7 —

quires of the holy Apostle Paul that he "hold fast the word that is sure, and be able to teach, so that he may be mighty to exhort by sound doctrine and to rebuke the gainsayers. For," the Apostle adds, "there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake." (Titus 1:9-11.) For this reason both the Lord Himself and the holy Apostles and Prophets did not refuse, when occasion offered, to hold colloquies and disputations even with the most hardened false teachers, seducers of the people and blasphemers of the divine truth. That all pure teachers have likewise acted so from time to time, and have in this followed the example of the Lord and of the holy Apostles and Prophets, is so well known from the history of the Christian church of all ages that no proofs are needed. We recall only Luther's world-famous public disputation with Dr. Eck at Leipzig and that no less well-known colloquy of Luther with Zwingli and his associates at Marburg. Far from such dealings of an orthodox person with a heterodox one involving a denial of the truth, they are rather an act of confession. There the orthodox person stands over against the heterodox, not as a brother in the faith whom he recognizes, but as an enemy of the divine truth whom he is to overcome.

Assemblies convened for the purpose of colloquies and disputations of this kind, however, are by no means to be put on a level with councils, synods or any other kind of church-governing bodies. The latter are a quite different matter. Such church assemblies are representations of the church, in whose commission and name they are held. The same qualities that are required for being a member of an orthodox church must therefore of course also be possessed by the members of such bodies. Indeed, persons who lack the requirements for being recognized as members of an orthodox church can in any case be recognized even less as members of a body that has the commission to represent an orthodox church and in its name to deliberate, resolve and act. And if an orthodox Christian, according to God's Word, cannot stand in church and sacramental fellowship with certain persons, then he can naturally still less sit together with them, even as with members of equal standing, in an assembly representing the orthodox church, to deliberate with them on the welfare of the church and to judge and decide on right doctrine and practice. Evidently it also makes no difference here whether it concerns only one single such person or several; for if it were really not against God to sit with a person with whom one does not stand in church fellowship