# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S19
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1884. 19

has not yet been treated and set out in any one place, and that therefore many a hearer has wrong thoughts about it. In that case I cannot say at once: he is a heretic. So we must not deal with our simple people, but just as little with our Church Fathers either. For there is also a great difference between earlier and now. It is said of us that we are inconsistent: Gerhard and others we defended or excused after all, and our opponents we call false teachers. But consider: if in Gerhard's time such a church fellowship had existed as now, and someone had said to him: Most reverend sir, I cannot comprehend how you can hold to the Intuitu fidei! and if he had then refuted it for him, Gerhard would certainly not have said: What? Do you want to know better than I? But however that may be, if someone now, when this doctrine has been worked through and fought through, still stays with the Intuitu fidei, although it has been proved to him not to be correct and he has been convinced in his conscience by the weight of the counter-arguments, he is certainly a false teacher, who holds to his Intuitu fidei for entirely other reasons than those old faithful teachers of our Church. —

The theme of our present paper (*Vorlage*) is:

How reprehensible it is to want to establish matters of faith from the writings of the Fathers and to bind consciences to their doctrinal decisions.

The reason why precisely this theme has been submitted to the Honorable Synodical Conference is this: Four years ago a spirit of error arose within the Synodical Conference, which has already gained a considerable following. It asserts: the only correct presentation of the doctrine of *Gnadenwahl* [election of grace / predestination] is that the elect were elected *intuitu fidei*, that is, in view of faith. For this, it says, is the doctrine of the orthodox Church of the past, the doctrine of all our teachers of old. Those, therefore, are Calvinists or at least Calvinizing who oppose this form of doctrine, who, like us, do not accept it at all, but posit only two causes of election, namely the mercy of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, and therefore teach that it is not faith that precedes election, but on the contrary election that is the cause of faith persevering to death.

But according to God's Word we must so teach. Paul says: "Whom he did predestinate" (that is, determined beforehand, as all who know Greek will admit), "them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified." Rom. 8:30. Paul therefore puts in the first place the ordaining or predestinating, upon which follows the