# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S52
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

50 Proceedings of the tenth convention

will not go away is much stronger than all fear and terror from without. God's Word stands behind him like a giant and drives him forward, so that he then does not ask at all what will come of the confession. Luther, too, could not know what kind of church he would build, or whether he would not within the shortest time be burned."

So far, then, as God's Word extends, so far does true faith have place. Where that ends, there is no faith but a delusion, which can even rise to fanaticism. Hence no papist has ever really believed that justification rests also on our works, or that the Pope is the head of the Christian Church, because there is nothing of it in Scripture. The fathers of the seventeenth century wrote many thousands of pages about the *intuitu fidei* [in view of faith]. But none of them had real faith in this matter, because the *intuitu fidei* is not in Scripture. They no doubt supposed that they believed it, but it was only a delusion, an imagination. And those who have opposed us so bitterly in this doctrine could have no faith in it, but it is sheer fanaticism. Therefore Luther writes: "The essence and nature of faith is that it builds and relies upon God's Word. And where there is no God's Word, there can and shall be no faith." (On the day of the Holy Three Kings [Epiphany]. Erlangen edition X, 380.)

Note also in our thesis the words: "divinely certain." For the Turks are also certain of their faith, so that they let themselves be slain for it, or go into the plague house and carry the corpses out on their shoulders. The faith of the Turks is, namely: what God wills happens anyway, let man do what he will.

So it is quite possible that our opponents, too, are certain of their cause, but they cannot be *divinely* certain of it, for that comes only through the Word. A member of the Conference related on this point the following from his earlier experiences: I too have often experienced how dreadful it is to rely on the fathers. As an unbeliever I came to the university. Yet I had brought so much from my father's house, that the Bible is God's Word. Then I came at last among believers, was awakened, and now everything was equally certain to me. But I could not believe that Christ's body and blood are in the Lord's Supper. Then I thought: if only you knew how the old first Christians understood the words "This is my body," then you would believe it too. For I thought: yes, Zwingli also has weighty grounds on his side. Ah, I thought, if only you had a book from the apostles' time! From a Jew I then got the New Testament in five translations, with the writings of the apostles' disciples bound in at the back, which I bought for 6 groschen. Now at last I found a passage which read, in a poor translation: "Thanksgiving is the flesh and blood of Christ, and whoever denies that, one should avoid as one would a wild beast."