# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S42
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

40 Proceedings of the tenth convention

There is a great difference in the use of citations from the Fathers. When a doctrine is already generally acknowledged as a doctrine of Scripture, one may by all means read out much from the writings of the Fathers for it, if one only does not do it to prove the doctrine thereby; but because very often the Church Fathers ground a doctrine from Scripture much better than one can oneself. But as soon as a controversy over a doctrine arises, then one must go back to Scripture. However high Prof. Schmidt may therefore protest that he does not practice idolatry with the Fathers and lets only Scripture be judge, he refutes this by his deed.

When it is now said here that our opponents have acted, spoken and argued in a papistic way, it is not thereby said that this papistic element is their fundamental error. For there is no doubt: their fundamental error is rationalism, religion of reason. They want, by common sense, to arrange certain apparently contradictory passages, instead of taking their reason captive. For this reason they take their well-known position in the doctrine of election. But in order to bring this among the people they use the Fathers. And so they fall, without intending it, into a thoroughly papistic attitude. In the first article which they wrote against us they said at once: Should it be possible that in this our Fathers have erred for 300 years? That, however, is just genuinely papistic talk. The principle of submission to traditional interpretations is thereby clearly set up in the Ohio Synod. And if in individual cases before their congregations they do not so much insist on the Fathers, but pretend to fetch everything from Scripture, while they have fetched the main thing from the Fathers, that is so much the worse for the poor people and the danger so much the greater. If they were always and everywhere to put the Fathers forward, one or another could sooner come to knowledge, become uncertain about them and say: After all, we do not stand right in the end.

The second reason why it is contrary to Scripture to want to establish matters of faith from the writings of the Fathers and to bind consciences to their doctrinal decisions is:

Because it is contrary to the teaching of Scripture.

To be sure, it is already reason enough to reject this, if in matters of faith one wants to bind consciences to the writings of the Fathers and to their doctrinal decisions, that this conflicts with the authority that belongs to Scripture alone. For thereby Scripture is thrust from the throne and men are set upon it. Thereby the eternal foundation of the Church is pulled away from under her feet; then she no longer stands upon a rock that cannot waver, of which the Lord Christ says: