# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S75
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1884. 73

III.

Our third thesis, finally, 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 falling away from the chief principle of the Church of the Reformation."

Time unfortunately did not permit this thesis also to be treated at length. In order, however, to bring the matter somewhat to a conclusion, the Referent [presenter of the paper] at least laid before the convention the most important testimonies from our confessions to show that it was a chief principle of the Church of the Reformation to ground matters of faith not on the writings of the fathers but solely on Holy Scripture, and therefore also not to bind consciences to the doctrinal decisions of the fathers.

In the Smalcald Articles we read: "God's Word shall establish articles of faith, and no one else, not even an angel." (Part II, Art. 2, fol. 138 b.)

In the Formula of Concord it says: "As we lay God's Word as the eternal truth to the ground, so also these" (our first symbolical) "writings, for testimony of the truth and for the unanimous right understanding of our forefathers, who steadfastly held to the pure doctrine, we introduce and adduce." (Repetition and Declaration. Of the Summary Formulation. p. 571.)

So the confession too is not to be put on a level with the Word of God, but treated as a human writing, only that this is the confession, drawn from God's Word, of the orthodox church.

Further we read in the Formula of Concord: "So we also confess the first unaltered Augsburg Confession, not because it was composed by our theologians, but because it is taken from God's Word and is firmly and well grounded therein." (Repetition and Declaration. Of the Summary Formulation. p. 569.)

That is an exceedingly important passage for us. For it is not on that account, accordingly, that we hold the Augsburg Confession, this fundamental confession of our church, to be so important a document, which we sign with joy, because it was drawn up by such highly enlightened men, but because it agrees so exactly with God's Word.

Finally the Formula of Concord also confesses: "These public common writings have in the pure churches and schools been always held as the sum and pattern of the doctrine which Dr. Luther, of blessed memory, handsomely set forth and well grounded in his writings out of God's Word against the papacy and other sects; to whose more detailed explanations in his doctrinal and polemical writings we wish to be understood as having referred