# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S36
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

34 Proceedings of the tenth convention

the devil depart. A more glorious proof we could not have of how we are to conduct ourselves in disputes about doctrine. There we should not say: So it stands in Gerhard! so it stands in Hunnius! so in Hollaz! But as Christ did, so we also should say: So it stands written, namely in Scripture. Christ does not add the "in Scripture," because it goes without saying. Only it is the Book of all books.

Therefore it is a misery not to be lamented enough that in the present controversy, when it is a matter of proving, one regularly at once comes along with passages from the dogmaticians. What consequences this will yet have! One thereby leads Christians out of Scripture, accustoms them to let themselves be bound to men. Thereby many will in the end lose all faith. For a faith that is not founded on Scripture is no faith. God's Word and faith can be separated from each other as little as mountain and valley.

Luke 10 tells us that a scribe asked Christ: "Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And what does the Lord answer him? It says in verse 26: "He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?" Christ, as God of one essence with the Father, could have shown the scribe at once what is necessary to get into heaven and refuted his false opinion. But he refers him to the written Word of God, thereby to indicate that the Word is the judge in all religious controversies. If now the Son of God refers us to Scripture, what an outrage it is if we men will not do so! What shameful idolatry he practices with himself who will not say with Christ: How stands it written in the Bible?!

The same is testified also by John 10:33–36: "The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God." It was a matter, then, here of the doctrine of the deity of Christ, and precisely of whether the man Jesus might be called God, whether therefore the Godhead was united with the manhood in Jesus into one Person. What does the Lord now answer these blasphemers? Verses 34–36 say: "Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?" The Lord means to say: You have a book, after all, from which you can know that; I refer you to nothing else. The Lord therefore beats down the dispute about his deity with nothing other than that he cites Scripture. He could just as easily have brought a whole number of other proofs for his Godhead