# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S23
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1884. 23

and said: 'I believe what is in this book,' and had" (with him) "the Bible in his arms. — But God grant us not much of such faith. For since these held nothing else than this, and believed so, both doctor and charcoal-burner have believed themselves into the abyss of hell." (Warning Writing to Those at Frankfurt on the Main, to Beware of Zwinglian Doctrine and Teachers. From the year 1533. XVII, 2442 f.)

To faith belongs, as the first part, knowledge, as the second, assent, and as the third, confidence. Where the first part, knowledge, is lacking, the whole faith is lacking. As Scripture says: "This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." Truly, that procedure of the Ohioans is an example in the most recent church history which, at least in the so-called Protestant Church, has not its like.

2. The second thing that we recognize from the declaration of the Ohio Synod is that its confession is a wavering and unsteady one. No man can know what it actually holds in the doctrine of election now. For they say: "As it has been conducted by the teachers of our Church on the whole and in the main at all times." That is a wide gate, through which much can be brought out and much in. If one shows them something from a dogmatician and says: Do you believe this also? they can say: No, for we say only: on the whole and in the main. That is a trick which does the leaders in the Ohio Synod poor credit.

3. Finally we must also charge the Ohio Synod with binding the consciences to the same expressions which the dogmaticians use. For they say: Only the doctrine "in view of faith" is permitted among us, and whoever is against this expression and the doctrine now connected with it must either leave our synod, or, if he stays, he reveals himself as a Unionist.

These are three terrible things into which God has let them fall because they did not hold to what Holy Scripture teaches about election. Besides, they also repeatedly say what is untrue in their declaration. For example: "Anew we profess" etc., and: "as in the past." For it is simply not true that the Ohio Synod earlier had any definite doctrine about the Intuitu fidei. On the contrary, it is a fact that shortly before the outbreak of the controversy it held an opposite doctrine. In the year 1877 a preacher of the then Illinois Synod asked for an opinion from the faculty at St. Louis and from that at Columbus on whether the old Herford Catechism was pure in doctrine. The faculty then declared, after having rightly praised much in this catechism, expressly that the expression "in view of faith," which is found in the catechism, was questionable, for it "could easily lead to errors"! So