# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1882_S61
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 61 —

and flesh can and shall be certain of their salvation; and that they (namely the Minnesota Synod) will practise no further synodical, or eventually church, fellowship with the persons and church bodies who revile us and others as false teachers over such an understanding of Article 11 of the Formula of Concord, so long as they do not honestly retract."

The delegates declared further: The expression "intuitu fidei" is liable to misunderstanding, but we do not wish to reject it if someone makes use of the expression in describing the elect: those whom He foresaw, etc.

On the Missouri side it was said: There is no doubt that they (the Wisconsin and Minnesota men) wished to say nothing but this: We know what is understood by the expression "intuitu fidei," and we must reject this doctrine, for the Formula of Concord says plainly: Election is a cause, etc. In so doing the two synods did not mean to say that this expression could not be explained in an orthodox way. That is not the question. But we know that this doctrine is now conducted by our opponents, and that precisely the expression "intuitu fidei" is regarded by them as a jewel. What was a weakness in the old theologians is counted by them as a strength. In this sense Wisconsin and Minnesota have rejected this expression.

It was therefore proposed that the Conference, in view of the rejection of the "intuitu fidei," declare that it by no means declares the teachers of the seventeenth century, who made use of this expression, to be false teachers or heretics, but rejects this expression only in the sense of the present opponents. It was also said that one did not wish to go into the question here of how the old writers understood the "intuitu fidei," but only that one cannot regard them as heretics.

Some Norwegian delegates submitted the following declaration: "Although we must declare the doctrine of an election in view of faith, as it is now conducted by Prof. Schmidt, the Ohio Synod and others, to be false, and the expression is also not in accordance with Scripture, we nevertheless believe both that a correct meaning can be attached to that expression, which is admittedly in itself liable to misunderstanding, and also that the earlier teachers of our church who used that expression need not on that account be condemned as false teachers."

When the vote was about to be taken on whether the Synodical Conference should acknowledge as correct the declaration of the two synods named on the election of grace, Pastor Muus rose and said: "I must call it strange that, with such important propositions as are put before us, we are expected to vote on propositions that have been laid before the Synodical Conference only here in this session. I had thought that at the sessions of the Synodical Conference the controversies were to be removed by talking them over together, by colloquies. Instead of that