# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1886_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1886. 17

Spirit, the Spirit must teach us the truth. So cry the more recent men: No, not the Scripture, but Christ is the foundation of faith. But with that they directly contradict Eph. 2: "Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets," that is, upon the testimony, upon the writings of the apostles and prophets. And precisely of this they say: whoever teaches thus misleads the young; that is a foundation of sand. Oh, the evil foe is in great earnest about robbing us of the foundation of the Christian faith. It sounds indeed quite fine when one says: No! Christ is the foundation of the Christian faith. But that is nothing but a grand deception. There is no other Christ than the Christ of the Bible. Only in so far do we have Christ as we take him from the Scripture. It is therefore quite dreadful to speak as the more recent theologians do. Woe to Christendom if these people are not opposed with great earnestness! No one before, who wished to be regarded as a believer, was ever so bold as to say: "Not the Bible is the foundation of the Christian faith." That surpasses everything that was ever said by those who nevertheless wished to be believers. So long as only unbelievers said it, there was no danger. But now it is said by those who wish to be pillars of the Church. From this, however, we should also recognize how important it is that there always remain an orthodox church that resists such spirits. The Christ who is presented to me apart from the Bible is nothing but a figment of the brain; the only true one is the Christ of the twelve apostles. It is therefore also well to note that apart from the Bible we know very little of the LORD Christ. From that time when the apostles wrote we have otherwise no reports at all to which credibility attaches.

Frivolous, too, are the proofs which the Dorpat men bring for their monstrous propositions. A synod in the Baltic provinces attacked the above proposition of Volck's. Volck then exclaims: "Has a Lutheran synod not read Rom. 10:17: 'So then faith cometh by hearing'?" It did not occur to Volck at all to come to terms with the sentence that follows: "and hearing by the word of God." But precisely this is very important. For what is stated by it? True faith comes from the word that is preached, but not from just any sermon, rather through a quite definite one, namely one that is God's Word. A sermon produces faith only in so far as it is taken from the written Word of God, only in so far as it reproduces exactly the thoughts of Scripture. Volck also appeals to Luther. Luther, he says, obtained the first little spark of faith through the consoling word of a monastery brother. But why were the words of the monastery brother consoling? Because what he said was God's Word. "I believe in the forgiveness of sins" is a truth of God revealed in Scripture, as it were a concentrated Gospel,