# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S14
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

14 Proceedings of the eleventh convention

A happy man, who can say that! Of course it is settled that the Bible is God's Word, and for us too it is settled. We have no intention at all of first establishing this, nor of first trying to convince the hearers, who have found comfort, peace, and hope in Scripture, that Holy Scripture is from God alone; rather, because this doctrine is attacked from so many sides, we stand up for it for that reason. Consider that all these attacks are directed against the fortress of our faith. And that fills us with great sorrow. We know indeed that they will not reach their final goal, for the LORD is within with us. But it plunges us into sorrow, first that the enemies are so blinded, and second that they do quite a lot of damage. With David we must lament: "They destroy the foundations." Ps. 11:3. For as in the case of a fortress the attackers do not merely storm now here, now there, but at times try to undermine the whole fortress in order to blow it into the air at a single stroke, so also do the enemies of Christianity. They attack now this doctrine, now that, but above all they seek to destroy the foundation of the Christian faith. For if this doctrine of the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture falls, it will soon be all over with our whole faith. And unfortunately this storming against the foundation of the Christian faith comes not only from open unbelievers but also from members of other church fellowships, yes, since Rationalism even in the midst of the Lutheran Church. It was reserved precisely for our century that theologians whose name for a time had a good ring in the Lutheran Church have, in the interest of scholarship, cut up and dismembered Holy Scripture. They do grant in part that God's Word is contained in Scripture, but say that there is also much that is human in it, and that to separate the one from the other is the task of scholarship. But were that the case, on what could our faith then stand? Who can say with certainty what in Scripture is divine and what is human? Therefore we come forward and confess: Holy Scripture is God's Word from beginning to end. To this testimony we are called; to strengthen ourselves in it is our task, especially because there are now so many who have no firm foundation of faith, who cannot say with David, Psalm 119:120: "My flesh trembleth for fear of thee; and I am afraid of thy judgments." For only he who can believe that Scripture is of divine origin will be seized with dread before the judgments of God. As Luther says, that every saying of Scripture makes the world too narrow for him.

And one reason why precisely we must raise our warning voice against this overthrow of the foundation of faith is also this, that our American opponents here seek the friendship of the modern theologians. If this modern theology comes into our people, then