# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S61
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1884. 59

This is especially important in our time. Many pass for Lutherans who lack the very first characteristic of a true Lutheran. Even many so-called Lutherans say that errors are to be found in Holy Scripture too. Let such people teach rightly in individual doctrines as they will: because they allow themselves a criticism of Holy Scripture, they are not Lutherans. For the Lutheran church acknowledges the Bible as the right, pure well of Israel.

The second mark of a true Lutheran is that he always subjects human writings to criticism. He does not accept writings that deal with spiritual matters just because this or that esteemed man has written them. Whoever practises criticism on God's Word is a rationalist and a heathen; whoever will not practise criticism on human writings is a papist. Man's desire, it is true, goes by nature toward looking at men. To cure us in this respect, and to satisfy our desire in the right way, God has — says Luther — let his own Son become man.

Luther writes: "Therefore I do not speak much of it, except that one should remain simply with the words and let oneself be caught by the words. We have enough in the Creed, where we say: I believe in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Now one is to believe in no one but God alone. Therefore he also wanted to become man, so that the heart should never hang on any angel or man but on him." (Loc. cit., p. 357.)

II.

Our second thesis reads: "It is therefore so reprehensible to want to ground matters of faith on the writings of the fathers and to bind consciences to their doctrinal decisions, because it is a relapse into the antichristian papacy."

For in this above all consists the abomination of the papacy and of the papists, that they set beside Holy Scripture another source of the knowledge of faith, and indeed something that has no limits at all, namely the so-called traditions, that is, doctrines that are not in the Bible but of which they claim that Christ taught them, that the Holy Spirit also gave them to the apostles and that these also preached them but did not write them down; but their disciples, to whom they communicated them, told them again to later teachers, and so they passed from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth, and finally were propagated especially through the writings of the church fathers down to our time. Hence the Pope can come forward without scruple with nothing but new articles of faith, as for example in our time with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary and later with the dogma of the infalli-